suchmoon
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https://bpip.org
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March 30, 2014, 02:00:19 AM
Last edit: March 30, 2014, 05:09:23 AM by suchmoon |
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Pi / Windows / Linux roundup
I did some experiments over the weekend trying to run 50+ miners in the most manageable and efficient way. By efficient I mean easy setup, preferably using cheapest parts or spares from my drawer, and to be able to fit into a space previously occupied by 4 GPU rigs. One somewhat unusual requirement I have is that I need to split the farm to mine into multiple pools. So here are the results. It's all obviously biased and I'm in no way pretending to offer the best solution for everyone, but I hope it might helpful to someone who encounters similar issues.
Gridseed controller (Wiibox)
I have a couple of those. Tried one, couldn't get it to work. I could connect to the web interface, but it wouldn't recognize the miners. Gave up after a couple of hours and moved onto Raspberry Pi (see below).
LightningASIC controller (TP-Link)
This one works to some extent. Unfortunately it does not allow root access and configuration options are rather limited. This refers to the original version. I understand there is a software update, but I have not tried it. The main problem with this controller was that it would reset all miners if one of them didn't submit shares within a certain period of time (10 minutes I think). This didn't work well with high difficulty pools. It also doesn't work well with more than 10 miners, becomes very slow and unresponsive. Replaced it with Linux (see below).
Raspberry Pi
This was the first controller that worked really well for me. I still have 9 miners connected to it and will probably add more. I'm using Scripta image with Andareed's precompiled cgminer. I have hacked it to run two instances of cgminer. Main problems with the Pi:
1) it can't handle more than 2 levels of USB hubs, which essentially limits you to one hub on each port, or a lot of daisy-chained 7-port hubs. Large hubs are expensive, for example 24-port hub costs as much as the Pi itself, and a 49-port hub is ~$150, and daisy-chaining 7-port hubs is messy. It is also sensitive to the quality of the hubs, some have reported issues with power backfeed and other problems. Luckily I have not experienced such issues.
2) it does not work well (slows down and loses hashrate) with more than 2 instances of cgminer, which is a requirement for me to be able to mine into multiple pools.
In my view, the Pi is a very good option for up to ~25 miners and possibly a lot more, if you can splurge on large hubs.
Windows 7
I had high hopes for this. I built a cheap mini ITX PC. This can be done for under $150 using the cheapest Pentium CPU, but I put in a Xeon as I was also planning to use the PC to run a webserver to monitor other mining farms. Unfortunately I had nothing but problems with Gridseeds connected to Windows:
1) Could not get cgminer to work properly. I installed the Zadig driver but cgminer would not see any miners. Hotplugging seemed to help, but not always. Besides that would be unacceptable anyway, I need this to work without any manual intervention.
2) bfgminer works without Zadig. It recognized first few miners without issues. Problems started when I ran three instances - it would not submit shares for some of the miners, without any obvious reason as to why. I wasted a lot of time thinking it is a hardware issue, replaced hubs, cables, miners, nothing helped.
3) cpuminer also works without Zadig. It is however not scalable to the level that I need as it can connect to only one miner at a time. I would need to run 50 cpuminer windows and that would be a substantial maintenance problem.
At the end of the day - quite literally, having mucked around with Windows for 8 hours straight - I decided to throw it away and install Linux.
Xubuntu
I chose Xubuntu as I'm familiar with Debian package management and not a big fan of the mainstream Ubuntu UI. However I think any modern Linux system would work fine for this purpose. I downloaded Xubuntu 13.10 ISO, used Universal USB Installer to create a bootable flash drive, and installed it into a 60GB SSD. It boots in about 5 seconds, which is quite important for a mining rig.
There were no issues whatsoever with Gridseeds connected to Linux. I compiled both cgminer and bfgminer from source code. Having done this recently with a couple of other cgminer clones it was easy, but even for first-time users it's not a complicated process. Essentially it's "git clone", "configure" (some options may be needed here), and "make", as outlined in the OP.
cgminer recognized all 52 miners right away. I'm using two 13-port hubs, and three 10-port hubs. My cheap mini ITX motherboard has only 4 USB ports at the back, so one 10-port hub is daisy-chained to another, as I didn't want to plug it in the front of the case. I'm currently running 5 cgminer instances, roughly one per hub. The only problem so far is that adding more hubs/miners renumbers USB devices, so I will need to update all cgminer config files if I decide to expand the farm.
I did not try bfgminer on Linux, because cgminer works well enough, and I had already wasted too much time, so I was just happy it's over.
Layout
I have ordered a case for Gridseeds from one of the sellers here in the forums, unfortunately they are very slow to ship. So for now I put them into four ~$5 file crates. Power is supplied by an old 450W ATX PSU, which is a bit too weak (pulls 430W at the wall), so a 750W PSU is coming next week. Cable management is a challenge and I haven't done it as well as I wanted to, but hopefully the case will come soon and will help with that.
Conclusion
Again, this is just my opinion and might not necessarily be the case for everyone else:
For a handful of miners Windows is great, since many of us already have it so no extra investment is needed. bfgminer (or cpuminer if you are adventurous) works well. I can't recommend cgminer/zadig.
Raspberry is great if you can fit within its limitations regarding hubs. Low power consumption, ready-to-use images available (Scripta, Hashra, etc), great user community.
Linux on a PC seems to be the most versatile option. I'm quite confident it can be pushed to the 127 device USB limit. It's also cheap enough - it can run on an old laptop/netbook for example.
I did not want to litter the post with links to everything I mention, since most of it is already listed in the OP or other posts, but if you need more details, links to products or software etc, just reply or PM me and I'll be happy to help.
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