[StarMiner] - ARM controller image for your ASIC mining needs!

[LinuxETC]

ANNOUNCING: StarMiner

An ARM controller image for your ASIC mining needs.

Made by The Linux ETC Company.

This is a SourceForge hosted project.

Description
StarMiner (also known as *Miner) is a Linux based image design to be used for the digital currency or "crypto currency" mining purposes.

The Logic
Most people in the "crypto currency" arena want to be able to "plug and play" (or "mine" in this case) an ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) device to a simple system, put in the desired mining pool targets, and have this device "just do it". This means keeping things as simple as possible. StarMiner is designed for such purposes.

Under The Hood
StarMiner includes the following Projects that are Open Source based:

• Raspbian, http://www.raspbian.org/
• cgminer, https://github.com/dmaxl/cgminer
• Linux SeedManager, https://github.com/starlilyth/Linux-SeedManager
• wicd, https://launchpad.net/wicd

Screenshots
Everyone loves visual images for examples plus "show and tell".  These can be found on the Summary SourceForge page.

Files
The StarMiner image (.img; ~3.5GB in size), bzip2 (.bz2; ~65% of the image size), and zip (.zip; ~61% of the image size) versions of the release with MD5SUM information can be found on SourceForge under the Files section.  The file naming convention will be using the release date in the name and version, so do use the most recent accordingly.

Documentation
Currently being made and put up on SourceForge in the Wiki section.

Discussion and Support
We have both forum based and support tickets via SourceForge under the project's Discussion and Tickets sections.

Donations and Contributions
One can donate and/or contribute to the project in a few ways:

• (US residents only) Purchase a Raspberry Pi StarMiner kit (with USB wifi or without USB wifi) from us directly. The Raspberry Pi comes from a distributor who contributes a majority of the sales back into the Raspberry Pi organization.
  Note: We cannot ship Raspberry Pi StarMiner kits internationally without a cause for headaches with various customs, VAT, import/export related issues unfortunately. Believe us...we would love to send you one! (Temporarily suspended until further notice.)
• Download our image from SourceForge here under Files. The run the startest command which will use a default "test" configuration to donate mining hashrate to one of our wallets. Since you are operating the miner, you may run startest for as long as you desire. This is also a simple way to test (hence, the command name startest) your ASIC miner with our image.
• Use and write a Review (preferably positive of course) on SourceForge StarMiner. If there are issues, open up a Support Ticket on SourceForge so that said issues may be addressed (prior to any Reviews preferred of course ).
• Join the Discussions and add your thoughts, comments, and feedback accordingly.
• Donate some Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin, and/or Vertcoin to the following addresses:
  
  • Bitcoin: 1Ac9TYKxGEvwe4ECM84BEZTWzCn3HZhMFN
  • Litecoin: LTFKFPkVw3kXdzg7JQibPd7ZFQe11brADB
  • Dogecoin: DRaMFszv9bgDPUKiE6mfcM8cHxkRQ5wNXG
  • Vertcoin: VpMfewgraj4QCNSFLnfErY7xnf9EUhVYuM
  Do send us an email if you wish to be noted for such as well.
  

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[LinuxETC]

Release Information and Announcements.

Announcements can also be found as well as subscribed to on our SourceForge Project site here.

03 July 2014 version release notes and change log:
Files for download from SourceForge can be found here.

• Modifications to the Gridseed configuration files removing the "per_chip_stats" as noted in StarMiner SourceForge ticket #7.
• Updated modules/drivers for both Gridseed and Zeus Miner ASIC units.
• With respects to the "newer" Zeus Miner "batch 2" ASIC units, the ability to use the provided serial number to have specific settings per individual ASIC unit if using USB mode via libusb (versus --scan-serial mode).
• With respects to the "newer" Zeus Miner "batch 2" ASIC units, the ability to ID the individual ASIC unit based off of the number of chips within each unit. These will have the Zeus Miner ASIC names by default instead of the rebranded names.

27 June 2014 version release notes and change log:
Files for download from SourceForge can be found here.

• Patch of the mining application by dmaxl that addresses "wall of rejects" with mining pools that have network latency issues.
• Fix of the Gridseed ASIC configuration files so that they appear when editing via the webUI.

25 June 2014 version release notes and change log:
Files for download from SourceForge can be found here.

• Improved Gridseed and Zeus Miner ASIC unit support via an improved mining application and related driver/modules.
• Updated configuration profiles for individual and multiple Gridseed, Scriptor, and Zeus Miner ASIC units to parallel with the updated and improved driver/modules.
• The webUI being HTTP by default, though HTTPS can be enabled if desired to address some latency issues.
• Updated all of the StarMiner scripts accordingly to work with the previously noted configuration profiles.
• Updated Raspberry Pi Linux kernel/firmware.

15 June 2014 version release notes and change log:
Files for download from SourceForge can be found here.

• Scriptor 8x FPGA support.
• Created multiple configuration profiles for individual Gridseed, Scriptor, and Zeus Miner ASIC units including the following:

• Gridseed "Mini".
• Gridseed "Blade".
• Scriptor, "Scriptor 8x".
• Zeus Miner "Blizzard".
• Zeus Miner "Cyclone".
• Zeus Miner "Hurricane X2".
• Zeus Miner "Hurricane X3".
• Xeus Miner "Thunder X2".
• Zeus Miner "Thunder X3".

and also included profiles matching the Zeus Miner ASIC units rebranded by GAW Miners.  The defaults are made for using up to ten (10) ASIC units at once.  Depending on the ASIC brand, the end user will need to adjust accordingly to account for multiple ASIC units being controlled by StarMiner.

• The webUI is running on lighttpd which should have some improvement on the previous latency issues.  Thanks to sling00 on Github for this work here.
• The additional of a "if the mining application stops" script and related scheduled checking of such to restart a "dead miner".  Thanks to worldly on LitecoinTalk for this work here.
• The webUI will now show the Zeus Miner ASIC units on the "Overview" page (below the Pools, above the graph).
• Updated all of the StarMiner scripts accordingly to work with the previously noted configuration profiles.
• Updated Raspberry Pi Linux kernel/firmware.

Possible issues:

• Due to StarMiner being able to support Gridseed, Scriptor, and Zeus Miner ASICs, it is strongly advised <strong>NOT</strong> to attempt to use a single StarMiner Raspberry Pi unit to control a mix of both types of ASIC units.  This is due to the limitations of a Raspberry Pi being just an ARM CPU with 512MB of RAM running a single mining application and webUI with statistical data reporting.  Unfortunately and once again, this "little guy" (the Raspberry Pi that is) can only handle so much.

07 June 2014 version release notes and change log:
Files for download from SourceForge can be found here.

• Created multiple configuration profiles for individual Gridseed and Zeus Miner ASIC units including the following:
  
  • Gridseed Mini.
  • Gridseed Blade.
  • Zeus Miner Blizzard.
  • Zeus Miner Hurricane X2.
  • Zeus Miner Thunder X3.
  and also included profiles matching the Zeus Miner ASIC units "rebranded" by GAW Miners.  These default configurations are made for using only one (1) ASIC unit.  Depending on the ASIC brand, the end user will need to adjust accordingly to account for multiple ASIC units being controlled by StarMiner.
  

• Updated all of the StarMiner scripts accordingly to work with the previously noted configuration profiles.
• Updated Raspberry Pi Linux kernel/firmware.
• Applied security updates to Raspbian including recent OpenSSL issues (05 June 2014 announced ones).

Possible issues and considerations:

• Due to Zeus Miner ASIC units being released with cgminer v3.1.1 (versus a "more recent" version such as currently v4.3.4), thus using an older API version, the webUI will not display the individual ASIC miner units at this time. We are aware of this. However, everything else should function "normally".
• Due to StarMiner being able to support Gridseed and Zeus Miner ASICs, it is strongly advised NOT to attempt to use a single StarMiner Raspberry Pi unit to control a mix of both types of ASIC units. This is due to the limitations of a Raspberry Pi being just an ARM CPU with 512MB of RAM running a single mining application and webUI with statistical data reporting. Unfortunately, this "little guy" (the Raspberry Pi that is) can only handle so much.

02 June 2014 version release notes and change log:
Files for download from SourceForge can be found here.

• Added Zeus Miner ASIC support to command line scripts and webUI profiles.
• Fixed OpenSSH and OpenSSL issues so that end users attempting to run apt-get upgrade will not "muck up" either service as reported on Bitcoin Talk forum.
• Security updates to the base Linux system.
• Raspberry Pi firmware updates.

12 May 2014 version release notes and change log:
Files for download from SourceForge can be found here.

• Properly IDs the ASIC units noted as "GSD" on all IFMI pages.
• Properly creates and displays the Overview graph information including accepted shares and hash rate.
• Properly creates and displays graph of the individual Gridseed Mini ASIC unit.
• Security updates to the base Linux system.
• Raspberry Pi firmware updates.
• Addition of Gridseed specific mining profile within IFMI.

25 April 2014 version release notes:
Files for download from SourceForge can be found here.

• Raspbian is the lastest stable (via Debian Wheezy) version with patches to OpenSSL to address any concerns about HeartBleed.
• bfgminer is version 3.99.0 and compiled for Gridseed and scrypt use only.
• SeedManager includes updates from LinuxETC's GitHub fork with contributions from sling00.
• wicd is installed for those with wireless network connection to help with configuration using the ncurses version.

[/list]

[LinuxETC]

This is an announcement of the a version "12May2014" release (to be available on the noted date as well, yes ).  More details can be found on our SourceForge project Blog page.

You can download the updated image via the SourceForge project Files page.

From the Blog post:
Thanks to sling00 for doing most of the "heavy lifting" with IFMI (the webUI portion of StarMiner), StarMiner will be releasing an updated version of StarMiner.

ChangeLog for 12 May 2014 Gridseed version:

• Properly IDs the ASIC units noted as "GSD" on all IFMI pages.
• Properly creates and displays the Overview graph information including accepted shares and hash rate.
• Properly creates and displays graph of the individual Gridseed Mini ASIC unit.
• Security updates to the base Linux system.
• Raspberry Pi firmware updates.
• Addition of Gridseed specific mining profile within IFMI.

Coming soon:

• Scriptor 8X FPGA unit support with IFMI specific mining profile within IFMI.
• Updated HowTo use StarMiner documentation.

[LinuxETC]

Files for the recent release (12-May-2014) are available now for download from SourceForge and can be found here.

[LinuxETC]

Here are a few screen shots of a Linux ETC client's x9 (#10 has a bad plug unfortunately ) Gridseed Mini ASIC units + StarMiner working quite nicely.  The Gridseed Mini's are not modified, running at 850Mhz (so ~360kh/s per ASIC unit).



The blue shows the consistent combined hash rate of all x9 ASIC units (have to love consistency! ).  The green is the number of shares accepted by the mining pool(s) at that time.  



Just an image of one of the nine Gridseed ASIC mini stats.  Same color scheme depiction as well.  

Also do note, the "uptime" since there are miners out there citing issues with other controller images/software who cannot consistently mine for more than a few hours.  We have had this system running for a few days actually.  The "uptime" is actually for the specific ASIC mining profile ("cgminer-gridseed" in this case) running, which unfortunately resets if one changes the profile.  

[Raptor2213]

Fired this up today, but I'm having a few problems.  Running my miner from my desktop, I get no errors.  Running it from StarMiner, I get around a 5% HW error rate.  It also only seems to run for 30-60 min before it crashes and will not start up again.  The web-based application is also running very slowly.  Each page is taking 30-60 seconds to load.  I've tried other Pi miners without this delay.

I'm running 3 Gridseed 5-chip miners off a D-link hub.

[LinuxETC]

Fired this up today, but I'm having a few problems.  Running my miner from my desktop, I get no errors.  Running it from StarMiner, I get around a 5% HW error rate.  It also only seems to run for 30-60 min before it crashes and will not start up again.  The web-based application is also running very slowly.  Each page is taking 30-60 seconds to load.  I've tried other Pi miners without this delay.

I'm running 3 Gridseed 5-chip miners off a D-link hub.

Run starhelpme and send us the URL provided at the end of such directly via private message here or via a Support Ticket on SourceForge.

[LinuxETC]

The web-based application is also running very slowly.  Each page is taking 30-60 seconds to load.  I've tried other Pi miners without this delay.

This is something we are quite aware of and are working on.  The webUI is Perl based running on Apache at this time, both of which take a bit of system resources to run (not including a mining application also running at the same time).  A Raspberry Pi is just an ARM CPU with 512MB of RAM as well.

More to come on this, so stay tuned.

[Raptor2213]

Fired this up today, but I'm having a few problems.  Running my miner from my desktop, I get no errors.  Running it from StarMiner, I get around a 5% HW error rate.  It also only seems to run for 30-60 min before it crashes and will not start up again.  The web-based application is also running very slowly.  Each page is taking 30-60 seconds to load.  I've tried other Pi miners without this delay.

I'm running 3 Gridseed 5-chip miners off a D-link hub.

Run starhelpme and send us the URL provided at the end of such directly via private message here or via a Support Ticket on SourceForge.

I shut it off yesterday and swapped back to the other machine.  I attempted to do this, but I can't even SSH into it today - connection refused.  Web UI still connects on the same IP.

[LinuxETC]

I shut it off yesterday and swapped back to the other machine.  I attempted to do this, but I can't even SSH into it today - connection refused.  Web UI still connects on the same IP.

Sounds like SSH did not start properly on StarMiner.

If you can access the Raspberry Pi via a terminal (i.e., plug a USB keyboard and HDMI monitor into it), you can start SSH by service ssh restart.  Worst case, restart the Raspberry Pi system as a whole since SSH is set to start by default.

[Raptor2213]

I shut it off yesterday and swapped back to the other machine.  I attempted to do this, but I can't even SSH into it today - connection refused.  Web UI still connects on the same IP.

Sounds like SSH did not start properly on StarMiner.

If you can access the Raspberry Pi via a terminal (i.e., plug a USB keyboard and HDMI monitor into it), you can start SSH by service ssh restart.  Worst case, restart the Raspberry Pi system as a whole since SSH is set to start by default.

Think I figured it out.  Your OS is VERY picky.  I'd run an apt-get update/upgrade to see if updated versions fixed some of the slowness issues. 
SSH won't run because it's not the expected version, and I'm betting that's the problem with everything else too.

[LinuxETC]

Think I figured it out.  Your OS is VERY picky.  I'd run an apt-get update/upgrade to see if updated versions fixed some of the slowness issues.  
SSH won't run because it's not the expected version, and I'm betting that's the problem with everything else too.

Actually, it sounds like you broke Raspbian (which is the OS being used here, not "our OS", a community made one for reference) by doing apt-get upgrade and thus, is not suggested nor advised due to reasons like this.  I would suggest re-imaging StarMiner with the 12 May 2014 release and starting over to correct the issues from doing the apt-get upgrade.

The releases we push out on SourceForge are done to correct issues with the base OS (= Raspbian) for reference and update other aspects not covered by the OS's package manager.  Just because something is perceived to be "slow" (in this case) is NOT a good reason to try and do a manual upgrade on a system.  We do quite a bit of QA and testing prior to putting out a release as well, however we are also human and do not catch everything possible.  We aim for the best case scenario which is a stable and working version of StarMiner.

As noted previously, we are aware of the "slowness" with the webUI.  However, the miner application runs properly and at full capacity which is the more important aspect.  Any webUI in general is in the end "eye candy" and a layer on top of the actual mining application itself.  Granted, the webUI is meant to make things "easier" for the end user, yes.

[LinuxETC]

I would like to extend a "thank you" to schnauzr for posting a Review (five stars as well!) on StarMiner's SourceForge project page. 

Happy and profitable mining to all!

[LinuxETC]

02 June 2014 version release notes and change log:
Files for download from SourceForge can be found here.

• Added Zeus Miner ASIC support to command line scripts and webUI profiles.
• Fixed OpenSSH and OpenSSL issues so that end users attempting to run apt-get upgrade will not "muck up" either service as reported on Bitcoin Talk forum.
• Security updates to the base Linux system.
• Raspberry Pi firmware updates.

[LinuxETC]

Great!  Thanks for the heads up.

The recent release is now up on SourceForge under the Files available for download.  

Do note, since Linux ETC does not have any Zeus Miner ASIC units on hand (with the recent threads on the LitecoinTalk forums, I am a little glad as well     ), so we have only done some testing and thus quality control/analysis with a few members in the community indirectly.  Any testing and/or feed back outside of "the webUI is slow" is quite welcomed.  If someone wants to donate a Blizzard (or GAW's Fury, with out the PSU melting or pieces falling off of the ASIC of course ), we do welcome such.

The initial settings for the Zeus Miner ASIC is also for the "Blizzard" unit (= GAW's "Fury" unit), so this will need to be changed (the chips-count parameter) for other ASIC units slightly.  These should be as follows going from Zeus Miner's web page:

• Blizzard (= GAW's Fury) = 6
• Hurricane X3 (=GAW's Black Widow) = 64
• Thunder X2 (= unknown GAW unit) = 96
• Thunder X3 (= GAW's Falcon) = 128
• Unknown unit (= GAW's War Machine) = 256

[LinuxETC]

We are awaiting some information from beekeeper to help with the webUI here at this time.  We apologize for the delay (we were hoping to have a version out late last week    ), but wanted the release to have a majority (if not all) of the current webUI functioning versus partially.

This release will actually be specific for FPGA (versus ASIC) mining units for reference due to the changes potentially needed to the webUI.

More to come soon.  Thanks for everyone's patience and support as well.

[LinuxETC]

04 June 2014 version release notes and change log:
Files for download from SourceForge can be found here.

• Fixes the Zeus Miner configuration file to match the StarMiner test configuration properly.

[Suika]

I went ahead and gave StarMiner a try and it has been working pretty well so far!  I'm running 3 GAWMiners Furies (Zeus Blizzard) on it, and I just thought I'd share my experiences with anyone else who wants to run multiple GAW/Zeus miners with StarMiner.  You will need to edit the SeedManager config settings for the miner to manually configure each miner's search parameter, like so:

http://img.psiblade.net/gawstarminer.jpg

Since I am running 3 Furies, I specified the USB port for each one.  It will generally start at USB0 and increment by one from there, so just add as many as you have devices.  Once you do this, just restart the profile and you should have all of your miners hashing away!  You can always ssh into the Pi and type the "starsc" command to view the miner console to make sure it found them all.  Hope this helps!

@LinuxETC:

Thanks for StarMiner!  I hope you'll be able to optimize the web front end to give it better performance in the future!

[LinuxETC]

I went ahead and gave StarMiner a try and it has been working pretty well so far!  I'm running 3 GAWMiners Furies (Zeus Blizzard) on it, and I just thought I'd share my experiences with anyone else who wants to run multiple GAW/Zeus miners with StarMiner.  You will need to edit the SeedManager config settings for the miner to manually configure each miner's search parameter, like so:



Since I am running 3 Furies, I specified the USB port for each one.  It will generally start at USB0 and increment by one from there, so just add as many as you have devices.  Once you do this, just restart the profile and you should have all of your miners hashing away!  You can always ssh into the Pi and type the "starsc" command to view the miner console to make sure it found them all.  Hope this helps!

@LinuxETC:

Thanks for StarMiner!  I hope you'll be able to optimize the web front end to give it better performance in the future!

@Suika:

Thanks for the compliments.  For reference, we are doing an updated release that should incorporate specific Gridseed and Zeus Miner (or GAW Miner's rebranded warez) to help facilitate easier start up.  Your note above though is a good suggestion since there were a few people on the LitecoinTalk.org thread inquiring about similar.

As for the "improved web front end performance", we are also looking into that as well.  However, (granted, there is some latency), the webUI currently "works".  So the recent priority is for better and easier "get going and start mining now with <insert your ASIC unit here>" for the general masses of "StarMiner groupies".

[LinuxETC]

07 June 2014 version release notes and change log:
Files for download from SourceForge can be found here.

• Created multiple configuration profiles for individual Gridseed and Zeus Miner ASIC units including the following:
  
  • Gridseed Mini.
  • Gridseed Blade.
  • Zeus Miner Blizzard.
  • Zeus Miner Hurricane X2.
  • Zeus Miner Thunder X3.
  and also included profiles matching the Zeus Miner ASIC units "rebranded" by GAW Miners.  These default configurations are made for using only one (1) ASIC unit.  Depending on the ASIC brand, the end user will need to adjust accordingly to account for multiple ASIC units being controlled by StarMiner.
  

• Updated all of the StarMiner scripts accordingly to work with the previously noted configuration profiles.
• Updated Raspberry Pi Linux kernel/firmware.
• Applied security updates to Raspbian including recent OpenSSL issues (05 June 2014 announced ones).

Possible issues and considerations:

• Due to Zeus Miner ASIC units being released with cgminer v3.1.1 (versus a "more recent" version such as currently v4.3.4), thus using an older API version, the webUI will not display the individual ASIC miner units at this time. We are aware of this. However, everything else should function "normally".
• Due to StarMiner being able to support Gridseed and Zeus Miner ASICs, it is strongly advised NOT to attempt to use a single StarMiner Raspberry Pi unit to control a mix of both types of ASIC units. This is due to the limitations of a Raspberry Pi being just an ARM CPU with 512MB of RAM running a single mining application and webUI with statistical data reporting. Unfortunately, this "little guy" (the Raspberry Pi that is) can only handle so much.

[LinuxETC]

We decided to start on our SourceForge Project page in the Discussion section a listing by ASIC manufacturer of verified and tested units with StarMiner.  I invite everyone to take a quick look here and advise if we are missing a particular model that you, yourself, have tested and can verify that "StarMiner with my particular ASIC is working". 

How would you verify such?  Message us via the forums the URL produced by starhelpme from the command line on a StarMiner Raspberry Pi, and inform us "I have this particular ASIC unit".  If you do not mind posting even a screen shot of the webUI's Overview page (with the ASIC(s) mining a bit for some time of course ) that would be even better.

Thanks to all of the folks out there mining away via StarMiner!

[film2240]

I'm glad I found this thread.I'm not sure about some things.

1.How do I get the GUI to show and make it stay there?
2.How do I get wi-fi to work on this,if this works at all?
3.Does this support a DualMiner ASIC?
4.Does this support the Gridseed 5 chip (orb) miner?

Would appreciate some help before I commit to using this ROM. Thanks

[LinuxETC]

I'm glad I found this thread.I'm not sure about some things.

1.How do I get the GUI to show and make it stay there?
2.How do I get wi-fi to work on this,if this works at all?
3.Does this support a DualMiner ASIC?
4.Does this support the Gridseed 5 chip (orb) miner?

Would appreciate some help before I commit to using this ROM. Thanks

For clarification purposes, StarMiner is not a "ROM" nor "firmware" (both terms have been commonly misused by both hardware manufacturers and community members).  This is an "image file" that is parallel (for example) to one installing Linux on a Raspberry Pi.  We just simplified the process by making sure that this image runs both Gridseed and Zeus Miner ASIC units, and eventually Scriptor 8X FPGA units.

To answer your questions in order:

• StarMiner does not use a GUI "per se" from the Raspberry Pi itself.  There is a webUI which is accessible by going to a web browser (e.g., Firefox, Chrome, IE (yuk!), Safari) and going to the IP address of the StarMiner Raspberry Pi.  This is "our GUI" and is focused on the specific aspects of ASIC mining for the "end user" without "extras" that could get any "curious George" type end user into trouble.
• WiFi can work on the Raspberry Pi via the command line and using wicd-curses.  However, not all USB wifi dongles will work with a Raspberry Pi.  Please refer to this site for more specifics related to "Raspberry Pi friendly" Wifi devices.
• StarMiner "could", however and to prevent people from damaging their Gridseed Mini and Blade units, we compiled and configured cgminer for "scrypt only".  Looking at the "operation costs", you are actually wasting power trying to "dual mine" with a Gridseed Mini ASIC versus just scrypt mine with it.
• By the "Gridseed 5 chips (orb)", if you mean the "Gridseed Mini" (as it is commonly referred to), then yes.

There is also more information and further discussions on our LitecoinTalk forum thread for further review, as well as our SourceForge site under Wiki and Discussion, both of which are "work in progress".

Let us know if you have any further questions. 

Happy and profitable mining to all!

[film2240]

I'm glad I found this thread.I'm not sure about some things.

1.How do I get the GUI to show and make it stay there?
2.How do I get wi-fi to work on this,if this works at all?
3.Does this support a DualMiner ASIC?
4.Does this support the Gridseed 5 chip (orb) miner?

Would appreciate some help before I commit to using this ROM. Thanks

For clarification purposes, StarMiner is not a "ROM" nor "firmware" (both terms have been commonly misused by both hardware manufacturers and community members).  This is an "image file" that is parallel (for example) to one installing Linux on a Raspberry Pi.  We just simplified the process by making sure that this image runs both Gridseed and Zeus Miner ASIC units, and eventually Scriptor 8X FPGA units.

To answer your questions in order:

• StarMiner does not use a GUI "per se" from the Raspberry Pi itself.  There is a webUI which is accessible by going to a web browser (e.g., Firefox, Chrome, IE (yuk!), Safari) and going to the IP address of the StarMiner Raspberry Pi.  This is "our GUI" and is focused on the specific aspects of ASIC mining for the "end user" without "extras" that could get any "curious George" type end user into trouble.
• WiFi can work on the Raspberry Pi via the command line and using wicd-curses.  However, not all USB wifi dongles will work with a Raspberry Pi.  Please refer to this site for more specifics related to "Raspberry Pi friendly" Wifi devices.
• StarMiner "could", however and to prevent people from damaging their Gridseed Mini and Blade units, we compiled and configured cgminer for "scrypt only".  Looking at the "operation costs", you are actually wasting power trying to "dual mine" with a Gridseed Mini ASIC versus just scrypt mine with it.
• By the "Gridseed 5 chips (orb)", if you mean the "Gridseed Mini" (as it is commonly referred to), then yes.

There is also more information and further discussions on our LitecoinTalk forum thread for further review, as well as our SourceForge site under Wiki and Discussion, both of which are "work in progress".

Let us know if you have any further questions. 

Happy and profitable mining to all!

Thanks a lot for that.I only used the term ROM as that's what I grew up with,to refer to anything that needs flashing to a device,like firmware on my smartphone,router,etc but I can now accept that ROM will simply cause confusion so I'll refer to this as image from now on.

Since wi-fi isn't switched on out of the box,I'm a little put off by this due to my lack of familarity of using linux in general (I use a mac as I moved away from windows as I was still required to use command line to make some things work whereas with a mac,everything is simplified for me to work with with no command line to worry about).

I'm happy to know that my gridseed ASICs are supported.I was confused by the name as I've never heard of them being referred to as the Gridseed Mini before (I was told they were Gridseed 5-chip miners).

I want something as simple as my mac to start running the system.Here's how (first time) setup works for a mac user since apparently ease of use doesn't seem to be addressed as much as I thought it would:
1.Plug in to the mains
2.Switch on
3.Log in with my Apple ID (Does all the basic setup for me as well as create my profile,migrate important info/settings)
4.Agree with the TOS (may be a few pages,just click 'agree')
5.Connect to wi-fi (as wi-fi works out of the box and sometimes you can even skip this step if connected to wifi before login)
6.I'm done and ready to go.

I'm not planning to dualmine,I was simply referring to a type of device (in Scrypt only mode)

I'm the kind of user who just wants to get his work done quickly hence why I prefer and love macs without having to worry about setup.The reason I don't like windows/Linux systems is they take far too long for me to setup as time is money as both a professional video editor and a mining contract seller.

I think you need to remind your developer team the importance of understanding that time is money to some members of it's target audience as I'm not happy with such a basic feature being overlooked.I also expect a GUI (system wide,not me having to remember IP addresses/web addresses,etc to access an online webpage as no internet=no control).

However if you can sell me an SD card with a prepared image for me to just switch on,connect to wifi and go,I'll be happy to buy one as I can't buy one of your kits (as I'm in the UK and I only want the SD card anyway).

I hope my feedback is helpful to your developer team as I think as it is,leaves a lot to be desired for me.

[LinuxETC]

Thanks a lot for that.I only used the term ROM as that's what I grew up with,to refer to anything that needs flashing to a device,like firmware on my smartphone,router,etc but I can now accept that ROM will simply cause confusion so I'll refer to this as image from now on.

Since wi-fi isn't switched on out of the box,I'm a little put off by this due to my lack of familarity of using linux in general (I use a mac as I moved away from windows as I was still required to use command line to make some things work whereas with a mac,everything is simplified for me to work with with no command line to worry about).

For any WiFi device, one still needs to configure it properly unless you really want to run all of your network traffic via wifi unencrypted and "open", thus vulnerable.  Using the command line (thus, logging into StarMiner via SSH or via the console by plugging the Raspberry Pi into a monitor and keyboard), this is done via wicd-curses.  It is not "sexy" as a GUI, but it does the job it is designed to do in a TUI (Text User Interface) style just as well.

I think you need to remind your developer team the importance of understanding that time is money to some members of it's target audience as I'm not happy with such a basic feature being overlooked.I also expect a GUI (system wide,not me having to remember IP addresses/web addresses,etc to access an online webpage as no internet=no control).

For reference, I am part of the developer team, as well as the Owner of Linux ETC.   StarMiner is my original concept and thus, it is "my baby" as a project here as well.  StarMiner came to be due to the lack of proper controllers that "looked pretty and sexy", but were "not up to snuff" mining functionality wise.  Reminds me of buying a car...always look "under the hood", not just at the body.

Yes, "time is money".  Most of us in the mining circles know and understand this as well (myself included here).  However, this is also a Raspberry Pi which is just a minimal/basic ARM CPU and 512MB of RAM, not like perhaps your video editing workstation on Apple's Mac hardware with 16GB+ of RAM and an Intel i7 CPU (as a polite guess ).  Having a GUI run on top of (1) a mining application like cgminer or bfgminer; and (2) Apache web server running Perl scripts will overload a Raspberry Pi to make it operate under an extremely and excessively high load (i.e., you are moving at "snail's pace").  The webUI is meant to resolve some of the "plug and play/miner" needs of basic users in place of using a GUI.  So, when you refer to "time is money", having a miner that runs as "snail's pace" also fits in this situation.  We are aware of such, and designed StarMiner to avoid running as "snail's pace" and thus be more effective and efficient as a mining controller tool.

So while I admit, StarMiner may not make everyone happy (as you so noted above) by not having a GUI interface, the reason, sound logic, and engineering behind such is noted.  Most would prefer knowing that StarMiner can and does mine with their particular ASIC device (we have a growing list on our SourceForge Discussion section) in full and efficiently versus "where is my pretty GUI" that will overload a simple Raspberry Pi.

[LinuxETC]

This post is in reference to a StarMiner SourceForge Ticket made recently.

There is publicly known an issue in general with Raspberry Pi model B units that have stamped on the board itself Made in China (versus the Made in the UK versions).  We (Linux ETC) have experienced this issue first hand as well.  If one were to Google such, you will find a list of various complaints and griefs about this.  The "short version" is that quite often, the Made in China Raspberry Pi units are poorly fabricated when compared to the Made in the UK versions.  This is why Raspberry Pi (the company and .org itself) decided to move a majority of their production to the Sony UK facility.  There are still "some" Raspberry Pi's made in China (allegedly for the "far east market"), and I am not saying that all Raspberry Pi units from China "are bad" here, nor all from the UK "are good" either.  It seems though the reason for the move (besides RaspberryPi.org is based in the UK ) is for better quality and overall control of the manufacturing process.

So when you first boot up StarMiner on a Raspberry Pi, and things start going wrong with your network, do not blame StarMiner on it right off please.  StarMiner is a bit more "process and resource" intensive that a majority of images and applications that can run on a Raspberry Pi, yes.  However, out of nearly 300 downloads since StarMiner's initial release on 20 April 2014, and this is the only reported instance of "gremlins in mix", I think I will trust the logic and stats that 1 out of ~300 that StarMiner is not the cause nor fault here.  Now potentially a faulty Raspberry Pi with a bad NIC (Network Interface Controller) in this particular case does seem to fit the bill as potentially the cause.

[LinuxETC]

15 June 2014 version release notes and change log:
Files for download from SourceForge can be found here.

• Scriptor 8x FPGA support.
• Created multiple configuration profiles for individual Gridseed, Scriptor, and Zeus Miner ASIC units including the following:

• Gridseed "Mini".
• Gridseed "Blade".
• Scriptor, "Scriptor 8x".
• Zeus Miner "Blizzard".
• Zeus Miner "Cyclone".
• Zeus Miner "Hurricane X2".
• Zeus Miner "Hurricane X3".
• Xeus Miner "Thunder X2".
• Zeus Miner "Thunder X3".

and also included profiles matching the Zeus Miner ASIC units rebranded by GAW Miners.  The defaults are made for using up to ten (10) ASIC units at once.  Depending on the ASIC brand, the end user will need to adjust accordingly to account for multiple ASIC units being controlled by StarMiner.

• The webUI is running on lighttpd which should have some improvement on the previous latency issues.  Thanks to sling00 on Github for this work here.
• The additional of a "if the mining application stops" script and related scheduled checking of such to restart a "dead miner".  Thanks to worldly on LitecoinTalk for this work here.
• The webUI will now show the Zeus Miner ASIC units on the "Overview" page (below the Pools, above the graph).
• Updated all of the StarMiner scripts accordingly to work with the previously noted configuration profiles.
• Updated Raspberry Pi Linux kernel/firmware.

Possible issues:

• Due to StarMiner being able to support Gridseed, Scriptor, and Zeus Miner ASICs, it is strongly advised <strong>NOT</strong> to attempt to use a single StarMiner Raspberry Pi unit to control a mix of both types of ASIC units.  This is due to the limitations of a Raspberry Pi being just an ARM CPU with 512MB of RAM running a single mining application and webUI with statistical data reporting.  Unfortunately and once again, this "little guy" (the Raspberry Pi that is) can only handle so much.

[LinuxETC]

Just some "eye candy" screen shots from our end.

This is x2 Gridseed Mini ASIC units on StarMiner via dmaxl on Github's cgminer fork. 



This is x2 Zeus Miner Blizzard ASIC units on StarMiner via the Zeus Miner "version" of cgminer.   



Folks using the prior release will note the addition of the actual ASIC units showing up just below the Pool section on the webUI.

[Androidicus]

Hi,

I have been running StarMiner on Pi with 1 x GS Dual / Mini 5 Chip for several weeks under my desk! Remote access is fine as I can VNC into my desktop and view from there. It does occasionally seem to be reporting all ok but pool shows much lower hashrate - quick re-start of miner brings it back up.

In fact, StarMiner was the only Pi image I could get to see and recognise the GS Dual 'out of the box' - I have PIMP (which I really like), with Gridseed support, on a headless rig but I cannot get it to see the blades or mine...

I'm not sure which version of SM I have as the Pi is now in my briefcase ready to use for my G-Blades...

1) Is there a quick way to upgrade my existing StarMiner install via SSH on the Pi?

2) Or, is it quicker / cleaner to grab the latest IMG and write that out to the SDCard and re-configure pools etc?

TY 

[LinuxETC]

Hi,

I have been running StarMiner on Pi with 1 x GS Dual / Mini 5 Chip for several weeks under my desk! Remote access is fine as I can VNC into my desktop and view from there. It does occasionally seem to be reporting all ok but pool shows much lower hashrate - quick re-start of miner brings it back up.

In fact, StarMiner was the only Pi image I could get to see and recognise the GS Dual 'out of the box' - I have PIMP (which I really like), with Gridseed support, on a headless rig but I cannot get it to see the blades or mine...

I'm not sure which version of SM I have as the Pi is now in my briefcase ready to use for my G-Blades...

1) Is there a quick way to upgrade my existing StarMiner install via SSH on the Pi?

2) Or, is it quicker / cleaner to grab the latest IMG and write that out to the SDCard and re-configure pools etc?

TY 

Thanks for the positive remarks about your experience with StarMiner.

To answer your question, option (2) (download the latest image from our SourceForge site under Files and reimage your SD card) is the only choice currently.  We are working on a better upgrade methodology, but it is still "not up to par" to be released into the public unfortunately.

Also to note, our LitecoinTalk forum thread has several successful cases of "StarMiner groupies" using the Gridseed Blade ASIC units.   There are even a few screen shots as well, including one "groupie" who was able to successfully mix both Gridseed Blade units with Gridseed Mini units (it is recommended to NOT attempt this with Zeus Miner ASIC units at this time!).

Feel free to advise on any issues you may encounter, as well as share your experience in using StarMiner as well.  We actually encourage both, especially screen shots of StarMiner with your ASIC units "live" mining away.   We suggest using an image hosting service like Imgur (which is free) for the screen shots.

Happy and profitable mining to all!

[Androidicus]

8<---SNIP---

Thanks for the positive remarks about your experience with StarMiner.

To answer your question, option (2) (download the latest image from our SourceForge site under Files and reimage your SD card) is the only choice currently.  We are working on a better upgrade methodology, but it is still "not up to par" to be released into the public unfortunately.

Also to note, our LitecoinTalk forum thread has several successful cases of "StarMiner groupies" using the Gridseed Blade ASIC units.   There are even a few screen shots as well, including one "groupie" who was able to successfully mix both Gridseed Blade units with Gridseed Mini units (it is recommended to NOT attempt this with Zeus Miner ASIC units at this time!).

Feel free to advise on any issues you may encounter, as well as share your experience in using StarMiner as well.  We actually encourage both, especially screen shots of StarMiner with your ASIC units "live" mining away.   We suggest using an image hosting service like Imgur (which is free) for the screen shots.

Happy and profitable mining to all!

Hi LinuxETC,

Thanks for your rapid response! I am now about to re-write the new image and will give it a whirl!

If all goes well I may well add my little GS Dual to the mix as I will have a spare port on my powered hub... But only after I have got the blades working satisfactorily!

 

[LinuxETC]

Hi LinuxETC,

Thanks for your rapid response! I am now about to re-write the new image and will give it a whirl!

If all goes well I may well add my little GS Dual to the mix as I will have a spare port on my powered hub... But only after I have got the blades working satisfactorily!

 

You actually just caught me in front of the computer responding to messages.

With regards to the recent release, go into the SeedManager configuration (URL is http://<StarMiner IP address or hostname>/cgi-bin/sconfig.pl) and raise the "Hardware Error" level a bit.  This is causing some concerns, when in fact if you take a closer look, the Accept/Reject numbers are appropriate with Rejects being "low" (relatively speaking of course).  Unlike GPU rigs, ASIC units can produce hardware errors, but the share is still acceptable from the results.

[Androidicus]

Really weird stats reported for first 2 G-Blades! Have clocked at 800Mhz initially.

435M/hs for 2 x Blades - I wish!

This is remote setup - so I'm concerned for heat issues etc. so not running continuously if I have doubts!

Is the SHA-256 cores definitely SWITCHED OFF / DISABLED on this cgminer version?

This using the latest stable image of Starminer... I'm going to try a couple of other pools to see if it is anything to do with MagicPool also.

[Androidicus]

Really weird stats reported for first 2 G-Blades! Have clocked at 800Mhz initially.

435M/hs for 2 x Blades - I wish!

This is remote setup - so I'm concerned for heat issues etc. so not running continuously if I have doubts!

Is the SHA-256 cores definitely SWITCHED OFF / DISABLED on this cgminer version?

This using the latest stable image of Starminer... I'm going to try a couple of other pools to see if it is anything to do with MagicPool also.

LinuxETC:

I have resolved this!!! Simply requires "chips=40,modules=1" inserted into the gridseed-options string in the conf file...

 

[LinuxETC]

Really weird stats reported for first 2 G-Blades! Have clocked at 800Mhz initially.

435M/hs for 2 x Blades - I wish!

This is remote setup - so I'm concerned for heat issues etc. so not running continuously if I have doubts!

Is the SHA-256 cores definitely SWITCHED OFF / DISABLED on this cgminer version?

This using the latest stable image of Starminer... I'm going to try a couple of other pools to see if it is anything to do with MagicPool also.

<...snipped...>

LinuxETC:

I have resolved this!!! Simply requires "chips=40,modules=1" inserted into the gridseed-options string in the conf file...

 

Good to hear!  If you want to share a screen shot after you run your StarMiner + Gridseed Blade units for a while, I am sure others would love to see the results.  Our LitecoinTalk forum thread actually has quite a few from the "StarMiner groupies" showing and sharing their successes as well.

Now a simple explanation about StarMiner and the initial configuration files and profiles being used.  These files are meant to be "basic" and "simple" so that one can run startest from the command line to verify StarMiner with your Gridseed or Zeus Miner ASIC or Scriptor FPGA "does work".  The configuration files with startest will work in full with the "basic model" of the ASIC hardware (e.g., a Gridseed "Mini" or a Zeus Miner "Blizzard"), but are not expected to be show "optimal" for the other ASIC nor run long term for efficient and effective mining performance.  So then, one needs to select the proper hardware profile from the webUI and adjust accordingly (e.g., "gs-blade" for your specific case) using stared on the command line or from the webUI editor page to have "optimal" performance for the most part (yes, occasionally some minor adjustments might be needed ).  By "basic" (with respect to Gridseed ASIC units) this is with a clock speed of 850MHz and a single unit.  One can adjust these by adding the parameters for the chip count, and even specific ASIC clock frequencies by the serial number if such is desired.  Do note, the "serial number" aspect is Gridseed units specific only as Zeus Miner did not include such an option with their ASIC hardware (i.e., all Zeus Miner ASIC units would have to use the same clock frequency "across the board" here).

Also to note, the "StarMiner crew" for the majority are located in the US Mountain Time zone (UTC/GMT-7).  Please keep this in mind when posting or sending messages since contrary to popular belief, most of us are not "glued to the computer 24 hours a day", and do have other obligations in life.  We do our best though to respond to postings and inquiries as quickly as possible though.

Congrats once again on getting StarMiner up and running on your Gridseed Blades!  

Happy and profitable mining to all!

[LinuxETC]

Since this thread has been relatively quiet, I am suspecting most of the "StarMiner groupies" are enjoying StarMiner and are happily mining away there in the crypto coin verse.

So a minor update on the prior update.  We are doing a few more tests of the mining application code for performance improvements (does anyone want to take a guess at the hash rate a Zeus Miner "Blizzard" ASIC is properly showing now? ).  We also have some improvements so that multiple Zeus Miner ASIC units can be detected without the -S option we implemented to help everyone out here a bit.  That is just with the mining application as well.   However, we want to be thorough with the testing first before releasing the updated image to ensure "quality" that our "StarMiner groupies" have come to expect and enjoy.  So please be patient a bit more and we should have something ready this coming week.

For upgrading, we will be documenting a slightly better process on "HowTo" do so.  However, one will still need to manually edit the pool settings in the configuration files due to the changes in the mining application itself.  The easiest way is to "copy and paste" your pool settings into a "note pad" text editor, upgrade the image, test out StarMiner with startest for your particular ASIC unit or pick one of the current ASIC profiles (e.g., zm-blizzard for a Zeus Miner "Blizzard" ASIC), then "copy and paste" the pool settings back via either the webUI text editor (which is fixed in the upcoming release) or via stared on the command line.  Due to the enhancements to the mining application, copying the prior configuration files in full will not work here and in fact prevent the mining application from properly mining with the ASIC.

More to come of course.   Happy and profitable mining to all!

[LinuxETC]

I figured I would "tempt some tummies" of our "StarMiner groupies" out here with a screen shot preview of our latest test round of StarMiner.  Here are two screen shots of StarMiner with Zeus Miner "Blizzard" ASIC units.  For reference, these are "stock" units without any physical modifications.


This is using one "Blizzard" ASIC unit for over a 24 hour period (~36 hours in this case).  Please do note that yes, the ASIC is mining right around 1.5Mh/s here.  



This is using two "Blizzard" ASIC units.  Do note, we are hashing at ~1.5Mh/s per Blizzard here as well.  I was hoping to have some more graph data for a full "24 hour" representation, however I think our "proof of concept" with improved mining application software illustrates quite well here.

Now while some folks will say, "there are hardware errors", keep in mind that with an ASIC unit, hardware errors are acceptable to some degree.  The reject rate is...well...quite minimum (if not extremely minimal!).  Thus, quality is being produced here mining wise.

This image should be available in the next day or so (minus the upload time to SourceForge) pending some additional testing of our StarMiner code and script, plus some "house keeping" items.

Happy and profitable mining to all!

[LinuxETC]

25 June 2014 version release notes and change log:
Files for download from SourceForge can be found here.

• Improved Gridseed and Zeus Miner ASIC unit support via an improved mining application and related driver/modules.
• Updated configuration profiles for individual and multiple Gridseed, Scriptor, and Zeus Miner ASIC units to parallel with the updated and improved driver/modules.
• The webUI being HTTP by default, though HTTPS can be enabled if desired to address some latency issues.
• Updated all of the StarMiner scripts accordingly to work with the previously noted configuration profiles.
• Updated Raspberry Pi Linux kernel/firmware.

[Kokok]

25 June 2014 version release notes and change log:
Files for download from SourceForge can be found here.

• Improved Gridseed and Zeus Miner ASIC unit support via an improved mining application and related driver/modules.
• Updated configuration profiles for individual and multiple Gridseed, Scriptor, and Zeus Miner ASIC units to parallel with the updated and improved driver/modules.
• The webUI being HTTP by default, though HTTPS can be enabled if desired to address some latency issues.
• Updated all of the StarMiner scripts accordingly to work with the previously noted configuration profiles.
• Updated Raspberry Pi Linux kernel/firmware.

This is AWESOME!!!!

Thank you for all your hard work!!!

[LinuxETC]

25 June 2014 version release notes and change log:
Files for download from SourceForge can be found here.

• Improved Gridseed and Zeus Miner ASIC unit support via an improved mining application and related driver/modules.
• Updated configuration profiles for individual and multiple Gridseed, Scriptor, and Zeus Miner ASIC units to parallel with the updated and improved driver/modules.
• The webUI being HTTP by default, though HTTPS can be enabled if desired to address some latency issues.
• Updated all of the StarMiner scripts accordingly to work with the previously noted configuration profiles.
• Updated Raspberry Pi Linux kernel/firmware.

This is AWESOME!!!!

Thank you for all your hard work!!!

You (as well as everyone else) are quite welcome.   Download the latest image (web link noted above), give it a test run (or permanently which is even better ) and feel free to inquire if you have any questions and/or issues.  Feel free to post your results as well (including screen shots) and feedback (positive preferred, constructive as well of course).  We have a collection of screen shots from the previous images of various mining set ups on our LitecoinTalk forum thread.

Happy and profitable mining to all!

[LinuxETC]

27 June 2014 version release notes and change log:[/b]
Files for download from SourceForge can be found here.

• Patch of the mining application by dmaxl that addresses "wall of rejects" with mining pools that have network latency issues.
• Fix of the Gridseed ASIC configuration files so that they appear when editing via the webUI.

[Androidicus]

Hi LinuxETC

Quick question to save me some time...

I have updated /etc/hosts.allow and hosts.deny to only allow: ALL: myIPaddresses and block everything else.

What I want to do now is change the http & https ports for the web server. Ideally, I want to only use https by default...

Can you point me to the specific conf file (equivalent to httpd.conf / vhosts.conf for Apache) please?

TY in advance

PS Two rigs running 8 GS Blades total on 2 x Pi (one with PiFace Digital which I use to control the ATX PSU on/off remotely - it's really cool!)

 

[LinuxETC]

Hi LinuxETC

Quick question to save me some time...

I have updated /etc/hosts.allow and hosts.deny to only allow: ALL: myIPaddresses and block everything else.

What I want to do now is change the http & https ports for the web server. Ideally, I want to only use https by default...

Can you point me to the specific conf file (equivalent to httpd.conf / vhosts.conf for Apache) please?

TY in advance

PS Two rigs running 8 GS Blades total on 2 x Pi (one with PiFace Digital which I use to control the ATX PSU on/off remotely - it's really cool!)

 

The files would be (depending on the version of StarMiner) under either /etc/apache2/ (versions prior to 15 June 2014 release) or /etc/lighttpd/ (versions including and after 15 June 2014 release).

Happy and profitable mining to all!

[Androidicus]

Hi LinuxETC

Quick question to save me some time...

I have updated /etc/hosts.allow and hosts.deny to only allow: ALL: myIPaddresses and block everything else.

What I want to do now is change the http & https ports for the web server. Ideally, I want to only use https by default...

Can you point me to the specific conf file (equivalent to httpd.conf / vhosts.conf for Apache) please?

TY in advance

PS Two rigs running 8 GS Blades total on 2 x Pi (one with PiFace Digital which I use to control the ATX PSU on/off remotely - it's really cool!)

 

The files would be (depending on the version of StarMiner) under either /etc/apache2/ (versions prior to 15 June 2014 release) or /etc/lighttpd/ (versions including and after 15 June 2014 release).

Happy and profitable mining to all!

It's the /etc/lighttpd version - I can see the lighttpd.conf but also /etc/lighttpd/conf-enabled with 10-cgi.conf and 10-ssl.conf

Which is the active conf file containing the 'listening' port/s?

TY

[Androidicus]

Ok - sorted SSL port in 10-ssl.conf and all working...

Now to hosts / ips to allow!

[LinuxETC]

Ok - sorted SSL port in 10-ssl.conf and all working...

Now to hosts / ips to allow!

Good to hear and you are quite welcome.

For reference, lighttpd does break things down modular wise a bit, so the question is quite understandable.

Happy and profitable mining to all!

[silverthornne]

I don't see mention of the Rockminer units. Is it compatible with the R-Box?

[LinuxETC]

I don't see mention of the Rockminer units. Is it compatible with the R-Box?

It is quite possible, save we do not have this particular ASIC "in hand" to do any development work or testing with it for long term support.  It would also be one of the first SHA-256 ASIC units requested to be supported under StarMiner as well.

I have reached out to Rock Miners directly, though if you wish to post a request in their forum thread as well, that would probably help some.

Out of curiosity and assuming you have a R-Box ASIC with Rock Miner's Raspberry Pi image, how it is?

Happy and profitable mining to all!

[LinuxETC]

03 July 2014 version release notes and change log:
Files for download from SourceForge can be found here.

• Modifications to the Gridseed configuration files removing the "per_chip_stats" as noted in StarMiner SourceForge ticket #7.
• Updated modules/drivers for both Gridseed and Zeus Miner ASIC units.
• With respects to the "newer" Zeus Miner "batch 2" ASIC units, the ability to use the provided serial number to have specific settings per individual ASIC unit if using USB mode via libusb (versus --scan-serial mode).
• With respects to the "newer" Zeus Miner "batch 2" ASIC units, the ability to ID the individual ASIC unit based off of the number of chips within each unit. These will have the Zeus Miner ASIC names by default instead of the rebranded names.

[silverthornne]

It is quite possible, save we do not have this particular ASIC "in hand" to do any development work or testing with it for long term support.  It would also be one of the first SHA-256 ASIC units requested to be supported under StarMiner as well.

I have reached out to Rock Miners directly, though if you wish to post a request in their forum thread as well, that would probably help some.

Out of curiosity and assuming you have a R-Box ASIC with Rock Miner's Raspberry Pi image, how it is?

Happy and profitable mining to all!

Well, it gets the job done I guess. It gives out a web UI that gives out the usual information about miners (hashrate, hardware errors, accepted shares, etc.) so nothing special there. I just don't like it because even though it supposedly uses Raspbian, there's no way to change its default password. I've SSH'ed into the thing and done the passwd command and it says that it changed the password but it doesn't work; it just always keeps the default password which and that makes me quite uneasy about it. There are also some odd hashrate dips throughout the day that I don't know if they're related to my hardware or the Rock Miner UI and I'd like to compare against another software before reaching conclusions. Unfortunately I can't compare against my PC since I was never able to get my PC to recognize the R-Boxes.

[LinuxETC]

It is quite possible, save we do not have this particular ASIC "in hand" to do any development work or testing with it for long term support.  It would also be one of the first SHA-256 ASIC units requested to be supported under StarMiner as well.

I have reached out to Rock Miners directly, though if you wish to post a request in their forum thread as well, that would probably help some.

Out of curiosity and assuming you have a R-Box ASIC with Rock Miner's Raspberry Pi image, how it is?

Happy and profitable mining to all!

Well, it gets the job done I guess. It gives out a web UI that gives out the usual information about miners (hashrate, hardware errors, accepted shares, etc.) so nothing special there. I just don't like it because even though it supposedly uses Raspbian, there's no way to change its default password. I've SSH'ed into the thing and done the passwd command and it says that it changed the password but it doesn't work; it just always keeps the default password which and that makes me quite uneasy about it. There are also some odd hashrate dips throughout the day that I don't know if they're related to my hardware or the Rock Miner UI and I'd like to compare against another software before reaching conclusions. Unfortunately I can't compare against my PC since I was never able to get my PC to recognize the R-Boxes.

From a quick review of Rock Miner's Github repository, it appears that Rock Miner ASIC units are using cgminer with a modified version of the Icarus driver/module.  The Icarus driver/module is more of a "generic FPGA" driver/module, thus it is not specific typically for one particular ASIC or FPGA unit.  This is what was initially released with Zeus Miner's ASIC unit (though we developed a "better driver/module" accordingly ) and also explains why some of the Zeus Miner ASIC units were not performing up to specification.  Without having some Rock Miner ASIC units "in hand", we (the "StarMiner crew") cannot say how their version of cgminer may or may not work of course.  This is just from reviewing the information on their Github repository and knowing the history of how others have used the Icarus driver/module in the past.

Happy and profitable mining to all!

[nwoolls]

From a quick review of Rock Miner's Github repository, it appears that Rock Miner ASIC units are using cgminer with a modified version of the Icarus driver/module.  The Icarus driver/module is more of a "generic FPGA" driver/module, thus it is not specific typically for one particular ASIC or FPGA unit.  This is what was initially released with Zeus Miner's ASIC unit (though we developed a "better driver/module" accordingly ) and also explains why some of the Zeus Miner ASIC units were not performing up to specification.  Without having some Rock Miner ASIC units "in hand", we (the "StarMiner crew") cannot say how their version of cgminer may or may not work of course.  This is just from reviewing the information on their Github repository and knowing the history of how others have used the Icarus driver/module in the past.

Happy and profitable mining to all!

If you haven't already, take a look at BFGMiner. It supports R-Box, ZeusMiners, GridSeeds, DualMiners, G-Blades, and more.

In addition, we have carefully written these drivers based on the manufacturer specs and documentation, so they are of a higher quality than what the HW manufacturers have been releasing (in my opinion). The hardware folks have a habit of delivering on hardware and then rushing the software, basing it on an existing driver (such as Icarus and Avalon) and then slashing and burning code until it hashes.

For example, here's our ZeusMiner driver (which works great):

https://github.com/luke-jr/bfgminer/blob/bfgminer/driver-zeusminer.c

Less than 250 lines, and many of those are comments and whitespace. Compare that to the driver the ZeusMiner folks are releasing:

https://github.com/zeusminer/cgminer_zeus/blob/master/driver-zeus.c

The driver is full of code that is unneeded / unnecessary in my testing and development with the devices, and not present in the documentation from ZeusMiner.

[powersup]

Can someone please help.

Im using starminer with gridseed pods and blades.  I'm experiencing a problem where cgminer will randomly stop.  It seems to be linked to high rejects, particularly on multipools.

I would like to force cgminer to restart every hour.  Can someone please guide me through how this could be done?

[LinuxETC]

Can someone please help.

Im using starminer with gridseed pods and blades.  I'm experiencing a problem where cgminer will randomly stop.  It seems to be linked to high rejects, particularly on multipools.

I would like to force cgminer to restart every hour.  Can someone please guide me through how this could be done?

You could make a cron job that runs every hour that would run the following code:

Code:

staminer stop; starmine start

once you had the proper ASIC profile selected (which I presume you do ) from the webUI.

Happy and profitable mining to all!

[powersup]

Can someone please help.

Im using starminer with gridseed pods and blades.  I'm experiencing a problem where cgminer will randomly stop.  It seems to be linked to high rejects, particularly on multipools.

I would like to force cgminer to restart every hour.  Can someone please guide me through how this could be done?

You could make a cron job that runs every hour that would run the following code:

Code:

staminer stop; starmine start

once you had the proper ASIC profile selected (which I presume you do ) from the webUI.

Happy and profitable mining to all!

Thanks!

Sorry for being lazy.  I should have looked at starminer commands before posting.  I have added "starminer restart" to cron job and now all is good!

[LinuxETC]

Can someone please help.

Im using starminer with gridseed pods and blades.  I'm experiencing a problem where cgminer will randomly stop.  It seems to be linked to high rejects, particularly on multipools.

I would like to force cgminer to restart every hour.  Can someone please guide me through how this could be done?

You could make a cron job that runs every hour that would run the following code:

Code:

staminer stop; starmine start

once you had the proper ASIC profile selected (which I presume you do ) from the webUI.

Happy and profitable mining to all!

Thanks!

Sorry for being lazy.  I should have looked at starminer commands before posting.  I have added "starminer restart" to cron job and now all is good!

You are quite welcome.  A cron job with starmine restart will work just as well.

As for your initial issue, perhaps doing some "fine tuning" of the configuration file for Gridseed ASIC units and considering other pools might be another option.  We have not received any similar reports of "random stops" with Gridseed ASIC units prior to yours at this time.

Happy and profitable mining to all!

[starsoccer9]

Being a bit of a noob relating to linux and arm, I can just download the image and flash it to the beaglebone black or rasp pi? Also is there a list of supported hardware somewhere?

[LinuxETC]

Being a bit of a noob relating to linux and arm, I can just download the image and flash it to the beaglebone black or rasp pi? Also is there a list of supported hardware somewhere?

StarMiner is currently imaged only for a Raspberry Pi.  We have a "StarMiner groupie" who plans on donating a set of CubieBoards (another ARM based system) for fulfill that request as well as to assist with long term support of that specific hardware.  At this time though, the BeagleBone line is not currently support.

As for supported hardware for the Raspberry Pi, you can find references to these on our SourceForge Discussion section here.

Happy and profitable mining to all!

[starsoccer9]

Being a bit of a noob relating to linux and arm, I can just download the image and flash it to the beaglebone black or rasp pi? Also is there a list of supported hardware somewhere?

StarMiner is currently imaged only for a Raspberry Pi.  We have a "StarMiner groupie" who plans on donating a set of CubieBoards (another ARM based system) for fulfill that request as well as to assist with long term support of that specific hardware.  At this time though, the BeagleBone line is not currently support.

As for supported hardware for the Raspberry Pi, you can find references to these on our SourceForge Discussion section here.

Happy and profitable mining to all!

Okay thanks, I tried to flash an sd card I have with the image but my pi turns on and gives me a steady red light with an occasional yellow light blink. I tried finding its IP on my network but cant seem to find anything.

[LinuxETC]

Okay thanks, I tried to flash an sd card I have with the image but my pi turns on and gives me a steady red light with an occasional yellow light blink. I tried finding its IP on my network but cant seem to find anything.

There should be a series of lights like a NIC card would have near that red light if you have a proper and active network connection via the RJ-45 port on the Raspberry Pi.  Sounds like you have either (1) a bad network cable, or (2) the Raspberry has a bad RJ-45 port.  Try a different cable and see how that works which is the simpler of the two trouble shooting wise.

[starsoccer9]

Okay thanks, I tried to flash an sd card I have with the image but my pi turns on and gives me a steady red light with an occasional yellow light blink. I tried finding its IP on my network but cant seem to find anything.

There should be a series of lights like a NIC card would have near that red light if you have a proper and active network connection via the RJ-45 port on the Raspberry Pi.  Sounds like you have either (1) a bad network cable, or (2) the Raspberry has a bad RJ-45 port.  Try a different cable and see how that works which is the simpler of the two trouble shooting wise.

I will give it another shot, but it isnt the ethernet cable. For future versions you should consider having it try to dedicate an IP. So for example it uses .132 and if not free it goes to the closes free one up. so if .133 is not free it would take .134

edit: seems to work now. Since it is running cgminer, it should support all hardware cgminer supports right? For example butterflylabs 60ghash asics, or even hashfast?

[LinuxETC]

Okay thanks, I tried to flash an sd card I have with the image but my pi turns on and gives me a steady red light with an occasional yellow light blink. I tried finding its IP on my network but cant seem to find anything.

There should be a series of lights like a NIC card would have near that red light if you have a proper and active network connection via the RJ-45 port on the Raspberry Pi.  Sounds like you have either (1) a bad network cable, or (2) the Raspberry has a bad RJ-45 port.  Try a different cable and see how that works which is the simpler of the two trouble shooting wise.

I will give it another shot, but it isnt the ethernet cable. For future versions you should consider having it try to dedicate an IP. So for example it uses .132 and if not free it goes to the closes free one up. so if .133 is not free it would take .134

edit: seems to work now. Since it is running cgminer, it should support all hardware cgminer supports right? For example butterflylabs 60ghash asics, or even hashfast?

One can change the network settings with wicd-curses for reference and assign a static IP address if that is desired.  The reason for using DHCP is that not everyone uses a private class C network address (e.g., 192.168.x.y) on personal networks since there is also the private class B and private class A ranges as well.

As for "other ASIC hardware support", these versions of cgminer are compiled specifically for Gridseed and Zeus Miner ASIC devices, and Scriptor FPGA devices.  If one wanted to hand compile other ASIC hardware, it is possible for these to be used with StarMiner with the proper configuration and settings provided the API's are relatively current as well.  However, at this time we (the "StarMiner crew") are limiting what we can support with what ASIC hardware units and ARM hardware platforms we have "on hand" to support with StarMiner accordingly.

Happy and profitable mining to all!

[starsoccer9]

Okay thanks, I tried to flash an sd card I have with the image but my pi turns on and gives me a steady red light with an occasional yellow light blink. I tried finding its IP on my network but cant seem to find anything.

There should be a series of lights like a NIC card would have near that red light if you have a proper and active network connection via the RJ-45 port on the Raspberry Pi.  Sounds like you have either (1) a bad network cable, or (2) the Raspberry has a bad RJ-45 port.  Try a different cable and see how that works which is the simpler of the two trouble shooting wise.

I will give it another shot, but it isnt the ethernet cable. For future versions you should consider having it try to dedicate an IP. So for example it uses .132 and if not free it goes to the closes free one up. so if .133 is not free it would take .134

edit: seems to work now. Since it is running cgminer, it should support all hardware cgminer supports right? For example butterflylabs 60ghash asics, or even hashfast?

One can change the network settings with wicd-curses for reference and assign a static IP address if that is desired.  The reason for using DHCP is that not everyone uses a private class C network address (e.g., 192.168.x.y) on personal networks since there is also the private class B and private class A ranges as well.

As for "other ASIC hardware support", these versions of cgminer are compiled specifically for Gridseed and Zeus Miner ASIC devices, and Scriptor FPGA devices.  If one wanted to hand compile other ASIC hardware, it is possible for these to be used with StarMiner with the proper configuration and settings provided the API's are relatively current as well.  However, at this time we (the "StarMiner crew") are limiting what we can support with what ASIC hardware units and ARM hardware platforms we have "on hand" to support with StarMiner accordingly.

Happy and profitable mining to all!

oo okay, thanks for the info. Just disappointed no one has a mining distribution for the PI or beagle bone that supports all the asics cgminer or bfgminer does out of the box. For people like me who have never compiled anything but tried it becomes a huge pain.

[LinuxETC]

oo okay, thanks for the info. Just disappointed no one has a mining distribution for the PI or beagle bone that supports all the asics cgminer or bfgminer does out of the box. For people like me who have never compiled anything but tried it becomes a huge pain.

If you would like to have support for specific ASIC hardware or ARM hardware, we do gladly accept donations of such or even contracted work requests for such.  We also do reach out to the various ASIC hardware vendors, however (and as noted by nwoolls a time or two), they seem to prefer to push out mining hardware first, and worry about mining software later.   So posting request for support of StarMiner on their particular hardware forum threads does help get the hardware vendors attention (which was the case for Zeus Miner for example).

Happy and profitable mining to all!

[starsoccer9]

oo okay, thanks for the info. Just disappointed no one has a mining distribution for the PI or beagle bone that supports all the asics cgminer or bfgminer does out of the box. For people like me who have never compiled anything but tried it becomes a huge pain.

If you would like to have support for specific ASIC hardware or ARM hardware, we do gladly accept donations of such or even contracted work requests for such.  We also do reach out to the various ASIC hardware vendors, however (and as noted by nwoolls a time or two), they seem to prefer to push out mining hardware first, and worry about mining software later.   So posting request for support of StarMiner on their particular hardware forum threads does help get the hardware vendors attention (which was the case for Zeus Miner for example).

Happy and profitable mining to all!

Sadly hashfast is going most likely bankrupt, so I dont think posting would do much.  I would for sure consider donating if you got hashfast support in. Which as far as I am aware is more/less just adding a flag when compiling cgminer. If you need someone to test it I would ofcourse.

[pr0d1gy]

Installation and use is pretty simple.

But I do have a question. Got my Thunder x3 hooked up, and in the first 60 seconds the HW is over 2000, should I be worried?

Rate                  Pool           Accept/Reject   HW
31020 Kh/s   N/A      18 / 0  0.00%   2084


Nothing turns red on the web console till about 6 mins, then its like

Rate                  Pool           Accept/Reject   HW
30410 Kh/s   N/A            121 / 1 0.82%   12707

[LinuxETC]

Installation and use is pretty simple.

But I do have a question. Got my Thunder x3 hooked up, and in the first 60 seconds the HW is over 2000, should I be worried?

Rate                  Pool           Accept/Reject   HW
31020 Kh/s   N/A      18 / 0  0.00%   2084


Nothing turns red on the web console till about 6 mins, then its like

Rate                  Pool           Accept/Reject   HW
30410 Kh/s   N/A            121 / 1 0.82%   12707

You can change the "alerts" in the webUI's configuration page on the HW errors.  Your reject rate though is quite low, so I would not be too worried about it (this is an ASIC after all versus a GPU).  If there was a high amount of rejects with the hardware errors, then I would be concerned.

Happy and profitable mining to all!

[LinuxETC]

Folks:

Due to the announcement and release of the Raspberry Pi "Model B+", we (Linux ETC) are temporarily suspending the sales of the Raspberry Pi "Model B" + StarMiner combination sets.  We are reviewing the specifications of this new model which is a "slight improvement" over the original "Model B" and will advise accordingly about StarMiner support on this newer Raspberry Pi "Model B+" version.

Happy and profitable mining to all!

[chulo]

Does Starminer support The War Machine (gawminer) out of the box now?

[LinuxETC]

Does Starminer support The War Machine (gawminer) out of the box now?

There is a profile for "War Machine" via the webUI, so yes there is a configuration for this particular ASIC unit on StarMiner.

Happy and profitable mining to all!

[chulo]

Tried starminer.

Guess something is wrong with my warmachine - going to RMA it.  Too many hardware errors and eventually stops mining.

[LinuxETC]

Tried starminer.

Guess something is wrong with my warmachine - going to RMA it.  Too many hardware errors and eventually stops mining.

Most of the Zeus Miner ASIC units (which include the GAW "rebranded" ASIC units as well) show a high amount of hardware error messages.  What one needs to consider (which is noted on our LitecoinTalk.org forum thread) is the actually accepted versus rejected share numbers.  The Zeus Miner "Blizzard" units the "StarMiner crew" has for development purposes both show eventually a high number of hardware errors.  To minimize this some requires adjust the clock frequency some (we have found that 342Mhz is typically "acceptable" for most Zeus Miner ASIC units; originally most were reporting 327Mhz was also a relatively "acceptable" frequency as well).  However, the percentage of rejects is extremely low relatively speaking as well.  One just needs to go into the SeedManager configuration page to adjust the "hardware error warning" to a high number to overlook this in the long term.

As for "eventually stops mining", there were reports of this with quite a few of the Zeus Miner "first batch/generation" units due to various reasons as well as speculations.  StarMiner for the majority of cases though was able to work well with these ASIC units that other mining applications and full images had issues with.  That said, "a majority" means that not every ASIC would perform well either.   Such happens unfortunately. 

Good luck with the RMA with GAW Miners there.  Feel free to continue reporting about StarMiner here or on our LitecoinTalk forum thread as well.

Happy and profitable mining to all!

[LinuxETC]

For those concerned about the recent announcement of the bash vulnerability (CVE-2014-6271) in regards to StarMiner, this can be addressed by the following which would be executed on the command line as root (either SSH into StarMiner or via the direct console):

Code:

aptitude clean;aptitude autoclean;aptitude update;aptitude install bash

Please do note, this is a partial patch or fix at this time since most Linux distributions have not implemented a full patch just yet (including the maintainers of bash itself as of earlier this afternoon, 25 September 2014, US Mountain Time).  So plan on running the above again early next week as well to address this CVE.

Any thoughts or concerns are welcomed to be posted here on the forums accordingly.

Happy and profitable mining to all!

[Androidicus]

Hi LinuxETC

Does the either 15th Jun 2014 and/or the latest version of StarMiner support 'Extranonce Subscription' i.e. used by NiceHash?

Many thanks

[LinuxETC]

Hi LinuxETC

Does the either 15th Jun 2014 and/or the latest version of StarMiner support 'Extranonce Subscription' i.e. used by NiceHash?

Many thanks

Unfortunately not at this time.  dmaxl's cgminer fork is based from the master branch of cklovias, and I seem to recall that there was a merge request of this feature which was rejected a few days ago from cklovias' master branch. 

Happy and profitable mining to all!