Hi All
I'm the founder of Slicify, and would like to start a thread here to get some feedback on your experiences using our platform for mining altcoins, answer any questions that you have, and hopefully get some ideas on how we can improve the platform.
For those of you that are new to us, we run a cloud computing site that aggregates peoples home computers and lets you buy time on them. We run a secure Linux VM on every node, which you can access through our website. We price dynamically, based on supply & demand, and prices are often very low compared to other cloud providers (like $0.02-$0.10 per hour for high-end i5/i7/Xeon with 16GB+ RAM). Currently our machines are CPU ONLY (because there are no mass-market GPU virtualisation solutions - let me know if you have other suggestions).
For those of you that haven't looked at us in a while, we've recently fixed a couple of issues that affected some buyers:
* SSH is now very stable (we found and fixed an issue in the third-party SSH lib that we used)
* We now have a proper auction system (so you just enter your max bid, and automatically get allocated the best/cheapest machine) - no more messing around with bids
I also just posted a java app that can get you up and running with primecoin mining (via be^5r) on the platform in our github account here:
https://github.com/slicify/jslicify-demoFor those of you that are familiar with java, it should be very easy to change it to whatever miner you like. Even if you are not familiar with java, you can run it out of the box by downloading the JAR and BAT files from github.
thanks
Steve Cook, Founder / CTO @ Slicify.
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EDIT: Full instructions for running the java mining manager
- Register for the site (you currently get $1 free credit to start with. After that you'll need to fund with PayPal)
- Install Java 7 Runtime (JRE)
- Download
https://github.com/slicify/jslicify-demo/PrimecoinMinerDemo.jar &
https://github.com/slicify/jslicify-demo/PrimecoinMinerDemo/PrimecoinMinerDemo.bat- Run the .bat file
- Type in the name of your beeeeer.org pool address/wallet (don't forget to do this, or your shares will go into our account!)
- Type in the username/password that you used to register at the site
- To start with, you'll get a warning that you don't have any machines.
- To fix that, go to the site, login and hit "Buy Compute". Enter some bids at the bottom of the screen (make sure you set bits=64 so that you only book 64-bit machines). You'll most likely want to set the min ECU to some sensible value, and min RAM to 1024.
- If your bid is high enough to match against a machine, you'll see a notification appear next to your bid.
- It takes a couple of mins to set up your new VM. After that, the Java program will automatically pick it up, set up the required libraries, download and start running the primecoin client.
- Your machine may be outbid by someone else - but if that's the case, you don't pay for the last hour on the machine.
- In addition, if another machine comes available at the price you set, we'll automatically book it, and the java program will automatically pick it up again.
I've tested it running for a few hours across multiple machines (10-15) and it seems fine, but let me know if you find any bugs.
