Am I in the right topic area? Hello, is this thing on?
Below is the story of how I got here, typing this out. Could I solo mine a coin, all on my local area network, using an old PC as the server. Can I compete with
mining pools on newer faster equipment and servers spread out all over the world?
After the story I will post a link to the block explorer with my address so you can see if I actually find some blocks!
Ok, so I had a few hard drives crash recently (bad sectors) but I was able to pull some files and folders off of one. On there was a wallet for Ether-1 (now called ETHOS.)
I used to mine it off and on two years ago. Throw some hash at it here and there, nothing crazy. But it's a smaller alt coin so there was never a lot of
network hash rate and the diff was fairly low so you could pull some blocks with minimal effort...like in the 500 Mh/s range. So I brought the coin up
to honestly see if it was still around/being mined. It is. It's up like 1000% from when I use to mine it. So I said what the hey, let's throw some small
hash at it again. Never know when it may hit a dollar or two down the road. So I pointed a few GPUs at some pools and let them dawgs eat. I tried a few PPS
pools and some solo pools. Some were actually decent. Quick pay out time, decent block per pool hash to network hash ratio, etc. But some of the pools are
sheeeeeyat. I think I am still waiting on payments from a few of them lol!
So that leads up to one of my many tinkering projects (yes, I am a tinkering shade tree wandering philosopher.) And thus, here we are.
I thought to myself, I said hey WP (that's what I call myself when I think to myself), what if you grab one of those old PCs you paid $50 for and
see if we can set up our own pool of sorts. Mine the blocks straight off the chain and not worry about pools, are they going to pay out, will
they black-out/go off line (yes, two went off line for hours, hell I'm not even sure if they are back online yet.)
So again, here we are.
So I picked out an old PC that had a decent amount of hard drive loaded in it. Brought it into my tinkering area and gave it a bath...it was pretty dusty.
Whilst opening her up and making sure the wires were decent and nothing looked out of place, I decided to call her Eleanor Ethos Server, because that is what
she is now...my test server...to stick it to the pools who put a bad taste in my mouth.
Here are Eleanor's specs:
Processor Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X5670 @ 2.93GHz, 2933 Mhz, 6 Core(s), 6 Logical Processor(s)
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 8.00 GB
Total Physical Memory 8.00 GB
Available Physical Memory 3.76 GB
DDR3...back in the day it was fast!!
yada yada yada. She may not be the prettiest or the fastest and flashiest, but I think she will work just fine.
Oh, she also has a 250GB and a 1TB hard drive loaded in her. Model is a Dell T3500. Operating system is Windows 10.
So, I fired that puppy up and let her start to warm up and EAT! Well, it had been a long while since she was turned on, so she and Mr. Gates had to
become acquainted again...holy smoly, 6 hours of updates later...she was ready.
So, I remembered a guide years back how to set up a mining pool. So I did some googlin, and found one on Geth's info page.
(This guide got me about 90% there, and had to wing the other 10%)
First things first, download/install Ubuntu 18.04 LTS as subsytem on Windows system. Check
Create sudo, create another user, start downloading packages. Check
I thought about creating a pool while I was at it but Go isn't supported on Ubuntu under Windows.
Now the fun part, syncing the chain, which actually wasn't bad.
Now I am typing this up, while waiting on Eleanor and Geth to finish their business.
Ok, only 3 years of light data and stuff so it only took about 3 hours for full sync.
Time to generate my address, tell Geth to let me mine, and fire up some GPUs. Going to max it out around 500 Mh/s to see what happens.
Now I'm thinking can I compete going solo? Maybe find more blocks then I was on the pools because every thing will be within feet of each other.
The server and GPUs, sitting right next to each other. Should be fun.
Current chain info:
Network Difficulty: 228.668 G
Network Hash Rate: 17.59 GH
Blockchain Height: 7,384,396
Ok, so I'll be competing with 17 GH/s. Eleanor says no worries. You built me, the blocks will come.
Alright, here is the address that I will be using to solo mine:
0x9697872A2a0e73C22028708f32F12537Ac8f1E9e
and here is the block explorer link to follow progress, see how long it takes to find a block:
https://explorer.ethoprotocol.com/address/0x9697872A2a0e73C22028708f32F12537Ac8f1E9e/transactionsOk, about to fire it up. Wish us luck!
