Official FutureBit Apollo BTC Software/Image and Support thread

[Frisco415]

That support is dead….No help at alll

[1714826402]

1714826402

[1714826402]

1714826402

[1714826402]

1714826402

[1714826402]

1714826402

[brain brain]

I've scoured this thread but I'm sure I missed the answer to my problem, so sorry in advance!

I received my FULL and my STANDARD yesterday, and when hooked up to power, only the STANDARD mines. The FULL module is correctly syncing to the chain (it's at 69% after 12 hours) but does not mine.

I've re-seated the SD card, tried a different PSU, and have restarted and rebooted and re-everything'd a bunch of times. I've tried different pools, too.

Ideas for next steps?

I suggest to first concentrate on full unit. Do not connect anything to it, just make sure it works all right. Reinstall SD card if need be, check all connections etc, full miner must work. Only when you achieve it, try and experiment with connecting secondary standard unit to it via USB cable.

Well, after 6 hours of mining as a working Full model, it is back to not mining again XD

Now I think I have two choices...run the SBC separately with power and hook up miners via USB, or scrap the Node and just run the Standard units off a RasPi. What do you think?


FutureBit won't take it back as I've messed with it too much in trying to troubleshoot. I have no problem running it as a controller+3 standards. Just curious what everyone thinks is a good next-step.

**1st EDIT: it was more than just re-flashing as there was a crimped/pinched wire on the wiring harness when I opened it up. That part I had to replace. I'm on the 3rd SD card, still not mining as a Full unit.

***2nd EDIT: I decided to employ a VERY hi-tech solution (read: sarcasm)...I just plugged another USB cable into the SBC and ran it into the micro-USB jack of the miner it's sitting in   Guess what? Worked...so it seems the issue lies again in the wiring harness? Anyone else have thoughts? My voltmeter/continuity checker is at my office which I won't get to until probably Tuesday, but that's what I'm thinking. If USB works externally but not internally...

[PakoTor]

Nice little machine.
I'm running my Apollo with an old Linux desktop on Turbo mode and get about 3 TH.
Although not recommended, anyone tried to run it faster?

[nullama]

Nice little machine.
I'm running my Apollo with an old Linux desktop on Turbo mode and get about 3 TH.
Although not recommended, anyone tried to run it faster?

Yeah, I've run it faster than Turbo using a power supply with more watts than the "official" one.

It's a bit of diminishing returns really, I got around 4TH for a bit but the fans were just incredibly loud and the heat was a lot more than normal. At that point might as well use an industrial miner for much better results.

I'm now actually running it extremely quiet (internal fan not moving plus a silent noctua fan on top) and it's mining at 1-1.5 TH. It can actually go to 2-2.5 TH with minimum noise but I prefer it basically noiseless.

[gregwatson]

That support is dead….No help at alll

I suspect when someone laughed and said "sell it to me" they were implicitly suggesting that the answers already existed in the support thread (so they would love a working machine) ... there are a lot of social communities that can be pretty tough and sometimes require a little bit of a thick skin - so there is often an expectation that questions that have already been asked an answered (often a dozen times or more) can be read ...

And as someone suggested in this Apollo BTC thread - this is the BTC support thread where you probably are not going to get help about an LTC miner ...

So while 71 pages of LTC help in the LTC Support Thread may sound like a lot to read - there is a wealth of knowledge and education in there ... and a lot of very basic troubleshooting tips ...

Then when you ask a question you can outline the troubleshooting steps you have already taken (and the results you experienced with each troubleshooting step you took) ... then community members don't ask the basic questions like "is your Ethernet cable plugged in" (ok, no one is probably going to take time to ask if you haven't taken the time to troubleshoot and provide the community the information they can use to help you) ...

You would be shocked how often a bad cable is the culprit - but even the most sophisticated technical people overlook this basic obvious tech 101 - here is an edit from someone with a problem just a few days ago "***2nd EDIT: I decided to employ a VERY hi-tech solution (read: sarcasm)...I just plugged another USB cable in [...] Grin Cheesy Guess what? Worked" ... yet people self-admit sarcasm when they do it after wasting countless hours of their own time and other people's time - simply because they didn't troubleshoot the basics first ...

So what is troubleshooting tip #1? Check your cables - even if you think they are ok, swap them out with a cable you know is good ... if you are getting a "solid red light" - guess what, we expect you to do the basics and when you ask a question - provide useful information ...  or most of us will be too polite to tell you that your question lacked any useful information and was "NO HELP AT ALL" ... so who was no help at all?

What is troubleshooting tip #2? Provide detail about what you have tried, done, are observing at each step - someone else will catch the "been there done that" captain obvious thing that is usually occurring - but you will have asked a useful question with useful information rather than being the "no help at all" person ending up in the wrong forum ... and when you provide useful information, there are a lot of people who enjoy helping troubleshoot - and you will get useful helpful replies - rather than offers to purchase you rig ...

Of course - most people get their answers and "go away" and never come back to say thank you to the community that solved their problem - a diehard members who have a thick enough skin stick around for the long haul and provide thankless help - and they are the ones along with Jstefanop that really deserve thanks for serving and supporting a small hobby blockchain/node/miner community that is able to support the various backbone networks ... and not just coin bags.

So thank you again - to all of the great members of the Apollo community and Jstefanop - for supporting nodes and the network! Keep up the great work! Keep being awesome! And know that a lot of us really appreciate this great community (I even appreciate the long-time trolls and haters knowing they can't bring good people down) ...

Dr. G

[brain brain]

You would be shocked how often a bad cable is the culprit - but even the most sophisticated technical people overlook this basic obvious tech 101 - here is an edit from someone with a problem just a few days ago "***2nd EDIT: I decided to employ a VERY hi-tech solution (read: sarcasm)...I just plugged another USB cable in [...] Grin Cheesy Guess what? Worked" ... yet people self-admit sarcasm when they do it after wasting countless hours of their own time and other people's time - simply because they didn't troubleshoot the basics first ...

So what is troubleshooting tip #1? Check your cables - even if you think they are ok, swap them out with a cable you know is good ... if you are getting a "solid red light" - guess what, we expect you to do the basics and when you ask a question - provide useful information ...  or most of us will be too polite to tell you that your question lacked any useful information and was "NO HELP AT ALL" ... so who was no help at all?

What is troubleshooting tip #2? Provide detail about what you have tried, done, are observing at each step - someone else will catch the "been there done that" captain obvious thing that is usually occurring - but you will have asked a useful question with useful information rather than being the "no help at all" person ending up in the wrong forum ... and when you provide useful information, there are a lot of people who enjoy helping troubleshoot - and you will get useful helpful replies - rather than offers to purchase you rig ...

That was definitely me  , palm to face for not using my continuity tester first thing -- tunnel vision is real, though, when one suspects it being a software issue. Miners (2x Standard and 1x Full) mining away solidly on Turbo Mode for over 36 straight hours now, no more faults after I fixed the wiring harness with its 1 faulty wire.

Ave power draw: 599w on Turbo
Ave w per Th/s: 66
15min hashrate: 9.05 Th/s

[nyxmercer]

Node has stopped running. Appears to be due to storage filling up since it's only a 500gb drive. If I'm not mistaken, the solution is to simply obtain a larger capacity sd card and insert into the bottom of the node unit, yes?

[heslo]

Node has stopped running. Appears to be due to storage filling up since it's only a 500gb drive. If I'm not mistaken, the solution is to simply obtain a larger capacity sd card and insert into the bottom of the node unit, yes?

Not SD card, you need a new M.2 NVMe SSD drive. 1TB will suffice

[Denormal]

I see that Bitcoin Core 23.0 is available on the link at the top of the forum.  There are several versions of Linux for download.  Which one do we use for the FutureBit?

1. Linux (tgz)
2. ARM Linux (64 bit - 32 bit)
3. RISC-V Linux (64 bit)
4. PPC64 Linux (64 bit - 64 bit LE)

To install do I then just copy all the files to the appropriate directories on the FutureBit and restart?

[crypto_curious]

Node has stopped running. Appears to be due to storage filling up since it's only a 500gb drive. If I'm not mistaken, the solution is to simply obtain a larger capacity sd card and insert into the bottom of the node unit, yes?

Simplest solution is to enable bitcoind pruning (which is limiting number of blocks to certain value, basically discarding old blocks, so hard drive don't overspill). But Futurebit has not got around to support their users properly - this is nowhere to be found in the settings. They knew the day is coming but did nothing, now all early batch users with 512GB drives running with crashed bitcoin nodes, not providing any benefit to Bitcoin blockchain p2p network, which was heavily advertised during sales.
You are left out, you either have to configure pruning yourself in bitcoind config files inside Apollo, or purchase 1TB NVMe drive, brand new for around 70 USD (in the UK where I live) last time I checked.

[n0nce]

I see that Bitcoin Core 23.0 is available on the link at the top of the forum.  There are several versions of Linux for download.  Which one do we use for the FutureBit?

1. Linux (tgz)
2. ARM Linux (64 bit - 32 bit)
3. RISC-V Linux (64 bit)
4. PPC64 Linux (64 bit - 64 bit LE)

To install do I then just copy all the files to the appropriate directories on the FutureBit and restart?

The Futurebit Apollo BTC has an OrangePi 4, which is a 64-bit ARM CPU. So this would be option 2.
However, I don't think on Futurebit OS it is installed in the default location.

You can check with locate bitcoin-cli and locate bitcoind, as well as checking the version before and after upgrading with bitcoind --version.

[nyxmercer]

Node has stopped running. Appears to be due to storage filling up since it's only a 500gb drive. If I'm not mistaken, the solution is to simply obtain a larger capacity sd card and insert into the bottom of the node unit, yes?

Simplest solution is to enable bitcoind pruning (which is limiting number of blocks to certain value, basically discarding old blocks, so hard drive don't overspill). But Futurebit has not got around to support their users properly - this is nowhere to be found in the settings. They knew the day is coming but did nothing, now all early batch users with 512GB drives running with crashed bitcoin nodes, not providing any benefit to Bitcoin blockchain p2p network, which was heavily advertised during sales.
You are left out, you either have to configure pruning yourself in bitcoind config files inside Apollo, or purchase 1TB NVMe drive, brand new for around 70 USD (in the UK where I live) last time I checked.

So I:

1. Swap the internal drive, which is more annoyance than I'd prefer to deal with..
2. Attempt to modify the software, which is more annoyance than I'd prefer to deal with..
or
3. Ignore the situation and lose out on the money and purpose for buying a node unit to begin with?

[Sledge0001]

1. Swap the internal drive, which is more annoyance than I'd prefer to deal with..
2. Attempt to modify the software, which is more annoyance than I'd prefer to deal with..
or
3. Ignore the situation and lose out on the money and purpose for buying a node unit to begin with?

Swapping the drive to a new one is the easiest thing to do.

Shut the device down, flip it over and you will see the drive is accessible from the bottom, it has 1 physical Phillips head screw holding it in place. Just slide it out and inset the new one!

you will then have to resync with the blockchain then however which takes a few days but that's it.

[crypto_curious]

Node has stopped running. Appears to be due to storage filling up since it's only a 500gb drive. If I'm not mistaken, the solution is to simply obtain a larger capacity sd card and insert into the bottom of the node unit, yes?

Simplest solution is to enable bitcoind pruning (which is limiting number of blocks to certain value, basically discarding old blocks, so hard drive don't overspill). But Futurebit has not got around to support their users properly - this is nowhere to be found in the settings. They knew the day is coming but did nothing, now all early batch users with 512GB drives running with crashed bitcoin nodes, not providing any benefit to Bitcoin blockchain p2p network, which was heavily advertised during sales.
You are left out, you either have to configure pruning yourself in bitcoind config files inside Apollo, or purchase 1TB NVMe drive, brand new for around 70 USD (in the UK where I live) last time I checked.

So I:

1. Swap the internal drive, which is more annoyance than I'd prefer to deal with..
2. Attempt to modify the software, which is more annoyance than I'd prefer to deal with..
or
3. Ignore the situation and lose out on the money and purpose for buying a node unit to begin with?

Yes, exactly, that's all options you have. As Sledge0001 mentioned, buying new 1TB NVMe drive may be easiest option, but it costs money. Second great alternative option would be Futurebit adding pruning, so you can lose out 20GB of old blocks and still serve 490GB of newer blocks. This interferes with planned in the future Lightning Node support, but LN support is nowhere at the moment.
But unfortunately, because Futurebit did nothing to prevent this, we now arrived at option no. 3, where ALL nodes from 512GB users just crashed and no one is serving any blocks to Bitcoin network, and no one (apart from few here in this thread) even knows why, because there was no announcement or warning to users, no newsletter, mailing, nothing. Every node just dead.

Edit: Before someone mentions this issue, to my knowledge pruned node are seeding blocks, and they are considered as "full nodes": https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/72617/how-can-a-pruned-node-be-classed-a-full-node-without-the-full-blockchain says:

Since, they don't keep older block data, only thing that they can't do is to return older block data to other nodes. They still keep latest block data for reogranization, which they can share with other nodes

[End_The_Fed_42]

I did apt update and apt upgrade today and the miner stopped working. It's probably been a couple weeks since I last upgraded. I re-flashed the SD card so that it was working again, but then as soon as I upgraded again the miner wouldn't work. It seems like it won't start even though eventually the status page just shows that it's inactive. Just passing this along so this can be tested an possibly fixed. I'm going to re-flash the SD card again to fix it but I guess I won't upgrade anything for now.

[nyxmercer]

Node has stopped running. Appears to be due to storage filling up since it's only a 500gb drive. If I'm not mistaken, the solution is to simply obtain a larger capacity sd card and insert into the bottom of the node unit, yes?

Simplest solution is to enable bitcoind pruning (which is limiting number of blocks to certain value, basically discarding old blocks, so hard drive don't overspill). But Futurebit has not got around to support their users properly - this is nowhere to be found in the settings. They knew the day is coming but did nothing, now all early batch users with 512GB drives running with crashed bitcoin nodes, not providing any benefit to Bitcoin blockchain p2p network, which was heavily advertised during sales.
You are left out, you either have to configure pruning yourself in bitcoind config files inside Apollo, or purchase 1TB NVMe drive, brand new for around 70 USD (in the UK where I live) last time I checked.

So I:

1. Swap the internal drive, which is more annoyance than I'd prefer to deal with..
2. Attempt to modify the software, which is more annoyance than I'd prefer to deal with..
or
3. Ignore the situation and lose out on the money and purpose for buying a node unit to begin with?

Yes, exactly, that's all options you have. As Sledge0001 mentioned, buying new 1TB NVMe drive may be easiest option, but it costs money. Second great alternative option would be Futurebit adding pruning, so you can lose out 20GB of old blocks and still serve 490GB of newer blocks. This interferes with planned in the future Lightning Node support, but LN support is nowhere at the moment.
But unfortunately, because Futurebit did nothing to prevent this, we now arrived at option no. 3, where ALL nodes from 512GB users just crashed and no one is serving any blocks to Bitcoin network, and no one (apart from few here in this thread) even knows why, because there was no announcement or warning to users, no newsletter, mailing, nothing. Every node just dead.

Edit: Before someone mentions this issue, to my knowledge pruned node are seeding blocks, and they are considered as "full nodes": https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/72617/how-can-a-pruned-node-be-classed-a-full-node-without-the-full-blockchain says:

Since, they don't keep older block data, only thing that they can't do is to return older block data to other nodes. They still keep latest block data for reogranization, which they can share with other nodes

Amused. Just got an email from FutureBit perfectly explaining how to upgrade the drive.

[crypto_curious]

Node has stopped running. Appears to be due to storage filling up since it's only a 500gb drive. If I'm not mistaken, the solution is to simply obtain a larger capacity sd card and insert into the bottom of the node unit, yes?

Simplest solution is to enable bitcoind pruning (which is limiting number of blocks to certain value, basically discarding old blocks, so hard drive don't overspill). But Futurebit has not got around to support their users properly - this is nowhere to be found in the settings. They knew the day is coming but did nothing, now all early batch users with 512GB drives running with crashed bitcoin nodes, not providing any benefit to Bitcoin blockchain p2p network, which was heavily advertised during sales.
You are left out, you either have to configure pruning yourself in bitcoind config files inside Apollo, or purchase 1TB NVMe drive, brand new for around 70 USD (in the UK where I live) last time I checked.

So I:

1. Swap the internal drive, which is more annoyance than I'd prefer to deal with..
2. Attempt to modify the software, which is more annoyance than I'd prefer to deal with..
or
3. Ignore the situation and lose out on the money and purpose for buying a node unit to begin with?

Yes, exactly, that's all options you have. As Sledge0001 mentioned, buying new 1TB NVMe drive may be easiest option, but it costs money. Second great alternative option would be Futurebit adding pruning, so you can lose out 20GB of old blocks and still serve 490GB of newer blocks. This interferes with planned in the future Lightning Node support, but LN support is nowhere at the moment.
But unfortunately, because Futurebit did nothing to prevent this, we now arrived at option no. 3, where ALL nodes from 512GB users just crashed and no one is serving any blocks to Bitcoin network, and no one (apart from few here in this thread) even knows why, because there was no announcement or warning to users, no newsletter, mailing, nothing. Every node just dead.

Edit: Before someone mentions this issue, to my knowledge pruned node are seeding blocks, and they are considered as "full nodes": https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/72617/how-can-a-pruned-node-be-classed-a-full-node-without-the-full-blockchain says:

Since, they don't keep older block data, only thing that they can't do is to return older block data to other nodes. They still keep latest block data for reogranization, which they can share with other nodes

Amused. Just got an email from FutureBit perfectly explaining how to upgrade the drive.

At your own cost, of course. No pruning in sight.
And I received no e-mail whatsoever, so I assume it was you who contacted them, and another thousand of users get nothing.

[heslo]

I also got the same email. I've already upgraded the SSD, it's not hard at all and relatively inexpensive provided you watch for some good deals that pop up from time to time

[crypto_curious]

I was in batch #1 and #2, received nothing as of yet. But anyway, in my humble opinion, emergency update which enable pruning should have been done months ago. Now, only several people are aware from e-mails that SSD must be upgraded, and with time I hope more users will do the upgrade at their own expense.
Not ideal scenario, but better than nothing.

[jstefanop]

Node has stopped running. Appears to be due to storage filling up since it's only a 500gb drive. If I'm not mistaken, the solution is to simply obtain a larger capacity sd card and insert into the bottom of the node unit, yes?

Simplest solution is to enable bitcoind pruning (which is limiting number of blocks to certain value, basically discarding old blocks, so hard drive don't overspill). But Futurebit has not got around to support their users properly - this is nowhere to be found in the settings. They knew the day is coming but did nothing, now all early batch users with 512GB drives running with crashed bitcoin nodes, not providing any benefit to Bitcoin blockchain p2p network, which was heavily advertised during sales.
You are left out, you either have to configure pruning yourself in bitcoind config files inside Apollo, or purchase 1TB NVMe drive, brand new for around 70 USD (in the UK where I live) last time I checked.

So I:

1. Swap the internal drive, which is more annoyance than I'd prefer to deal with..
2. Attempt to modify the software, which is more annoyance than I'd prefer to deal with..
or
3. Ignore the situation and lose out on the money and purpose for buying a node unit to begin with?

Yes, exactly, that's all options you have. As Sledge0001 mentioned, buying new 1TB NVMe drive may be easiest option, but it costs money. Second great alternative option would be Futurebit adding pruning, so you can lose out 20GB of old blocks and still serve 490GB of newer blocks. This interferes with planned in the future Lightning Node support, but LN support is nowhere at the moment.
But unfortunately, because Futurebit did nothing to prevent this, we now arrived at option no. 3, where ALL nodes from 512GB users just crashed and no one is serving any blocks to Bitcoin network, and no one (apart from few here in this thread) even knows why, because there was no announcement or warning to users, no newsletter, mailing, nothing. Every node just dead.

Edit: Before someone mentions this issue, to my knowledge pruned node are seeding blocks, and they are considered as "full nodes": https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/72617/how-can-a-pruned-node-be-classed-a-full-node-without-the-full-blockchain says:

Since, they don't keep older block data, only thing that they can't do is to return older block data to other nodes. They still keep latest block data for reogranization, which they can share with other nodes

Amused. Just got an email from FutureBit perfectly explaining how to upgrade the drive.

At your own cost, of course. No pruning in sight.
And I received no e-mail whatsoever, so I assume it was you who contacted them, and another thousand of users get nothing.

Everyone that ordered a Batch 1 or 2 should have received the email. I will not advocate or push an update for pruned nodes, a pruned node is the same as a dead node in my eyes.

As has been discussed extensively  since the beginning, we purposely chose a 500GB drive knowing people would have to swap the drive out in 1-2 years because we knew prices would be a fraction of what we would have had to charge for Batch 1-2 devices with a 1TB drive and that was the right choice then and is the right choice now. We would have had to charge an extra 150 at the time for the 1TB drive, 1TB drives are now 75 and will end up costing you less than 50 if you sell your 500GB drive. I think this is the better decision all around, and swapping out the drive and setting it up takes 5 minutes.