BAMT version 0.5 - Easy USB based mining Linux with farm wide management tools

[lodcrappo]

I am a big fan of BAMT. 

I there any way to schedule BAMT mining to run at a specific time of the day?  I have 3 rigs (each with 5 5830’s).  Each rig draws about 1KW of power.  This is a lot of power consumption and I am not sure it is economically profitable to run during “Peak demand” time periods.  Fortunately, my power company offers substantial discounts to shift loads to “Off peak”.

Ideally, I would like to power up and mine at night and use minimal power during the day.

I have heard that cron jobs may be a solution but I have not yet figured out how they work.

Any ideas?

cron jobs are the correct solution.  time to figure them out.

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[lodcrappo]

Lodcrappo,

You have any ideas on how to keep from killing the hashrate on 5 & 6 series cards if/when you add 7 series support?  Seems like the easiest way would just to do a BAMT split, one with the 2.5 SDK for the older cards, and one with the 2.6 SDK for the 7 series, but everything else under the hood the same.

Or perhaps just a push through the fixer to update the SDK, but with big warning signs to not install it for the 5 & 6 series card users.

I have some ideas, but none that don't result in a lot of work for me.  That's why I was not willing to do it unless there was enough donated to at least get a 7 series card myself.

Two images is a pita, thats why I won't do both a 32 and a 64 bit image unless donations fund that work (which is frankly unlikely to happen).  It will probably be some sort of optional operation to switch to 7 series.   Of course people will want to mix 5,6 with 7 and thats just too bad, its just not possible without sacrificing hashrate.

[tosku]

cron jobs are the correct solution.  time to figure them out.

Can you turn the computer on and off with cron jobs? I don't think it's enough just to stop mining, even idle cards can pull something like 30W.

[lodcrappo]

cron jobs are the correct solution.  time to figure them out.

Can you turn the computer on and off with cron jobs? I don't think it's enough just to stop mining, even idle cards can pull something like 30W.

you can turn it off with cron.  back on could be done simply with a setting in the bios to power on @ certain time.  that would at least avoid the inevitable filesystem corruption and other issues that stem from simply cutting power to a running linux box over and over.

however, I strongly recommend you *do not* implement a scheme of powering your mining rigs on and off every day.

a vast majority of the USB key wear occurs during boot up.  you will accelerate the death of your usb keys tremendously.  if you're so worried about power that you can't run a box at idle, you're in the wrong hobby (or the wrong location, at very least).


  

[Red Emerald]

cron jobs are the correct solution.  time to figure them out.

Can you turn the computer on and off with cron jobs? I don't think it's enough just to stop mining, even idle cards can pull something like 30W.

you can turn it off with cron.  back on could be done simply with a setting in the bios to power on @ certain time.  that would at least avoid the inevitable filesystem corruption and other issues that stem from simply cutting power to a running linux box over and over.

however, I strongly recommend you *do not* implement a scheme of powering your mining rigs on and off every day.

a vast majority of the USB key wear occurs during boot up.  you will accelerate the death of your usb keys tremendously.  if you're so worried about power that you can't run a box at idle, you're in the wrong hobby (or the wrong location, at very least).


  

Make a cron job that does "stop_mining" and "start_mining"

[lodcrappo]

cron jobs are the correct solution.  time to figure them out.

Can you turn the computer on and off with cron jobs? I don't think it's enough just to stop mining, even idle cards can pull something like 30W.

you can turn it off with cron.  back on could be done simply with a setting in the bios to power on @ certain time.  that would at least avoid the inevitable filesystem corruption and other issues that stem from simply cutting power to a running linux box over and over.

however, I strongly recommend you *do not* implement a scheme of powering your mining rigs on and off every day.

a vast majority of the USB key wear occurs during boot up.  you will accelerate the death of your usb keys tremendously.  if you're so worried about power that you can't run a box at idle, you're in the wrong hobby (or the wrong location, at very least).


  

Make a cron job that does "stop_mining" and "start_mining"

that is exactly what I would do, yep.

[tosku]

I strongly recommend you *do not* implement a scheme of powering your mining rigs on and off every day.

a vast majority of the USB key wear occurs during boot up.  you will accelerate the death of your usb keys tremendously.  if you're so worried about power that you can't run a box at idle, you're in the wrong hobby (or the wrong location, at very least).

I'm guessing power is quite expensive at Cray-1:s location, since mining isn't profitable at "peak demand" time. Having three rigs using 500W (total, my estimate) doing nothing at that time seems wasteful.

How about suspending to RAM? That should save power without really rebooting the computer, thus avoiding the wear on flash memory.

[tosku]

I'd like to try using cgminer instead of the default miner. The config file says " (see full example for how to use cgminer instead)". Where can I find that full example?

[Red Emerald]

I'd like to try using cgminer instead of the default miner. The config file says " (see full example for how to use cgminer instead)". Where can I find that full example?

Code:

$ ls /opt/bamt/examples/

[lodcrappo]

I strongly recommend you *do not* implement a scheme of powering your mining rigs on and off every day.

a vast majority of the USB key wear occurs during boot up.  you will accelerate the death of your usb keys tremendously.  if you're so worried about power that you can't run a box at idle, you're in the wrong hobby (or the wrong location, at very least).

I'm guessing power is quite expensive at Cray-1:s location, since mining isn't profitable at "peak demand" time. Having three rigs using 500W (total, my estimate) doing nothing at that time seems wasteful.

How about suspending to RAM? That should save power without really rebooting the computer, thus avoiding the wear on flash memory.

maybe.  finding a better location or realizing that mining is not practical where you are sounds like a more sensible solution.  in any case, cron is the tool one would use for any regularly scheduled action.

[tosku]

I'd like to try using cgminer instead of the default miner. The config file says " (see full example for how to use cgminer instead)". Where can I find that full example?

Code:

$ ls /opt/bamt/examples/

Thank you!

[lodcrappo]

30 BTC sent for the 7970 integration!  Looking forward to the bamt revamp!

edit: donation is on behaf of wtcr.ca, online bitcoin computer store !

very nice, thank you.  we now have enough for the GPU so I'll be getting this started soon.

why dont you pm me a banner ad or something and we'll put you up on the bamter.org site.  that goes for any other folks that have donated and would like to have some recognition.

[mc_lovin]

30 BTC sent for the 7970 integration!  Looking forward to the bamt revamp!

edit: donation is on behaf of wtcr.ca, online bitcoin computer store !

very nice, thank you.  we now have enough for the GPU so I'll be getting this started soon.

why dont you pm me a banner ad or something and we'll put you up on the bamter.org site.  that goes for any other folks that have donated and would like to have some recognition.

done and it looks great on the site there, thanks again!

[callmeivan]

I got a 5970 but i am not able to downlock the memory on GPU1, only on GPU0.

Is there a special trick to make this happen?

[Joshwaa]

Use atitweak.. Works wonders.

[mc_lovin]

I got a 5970 but i am not able to downlock the memory on GPU1, only on GPU0.

Is there a special trick to make this happen?

are there any files in

/live/image/BAMT/CONTROL/ACTIVE ?

[callmeivan]

Thanks Joshwaa, atitweak works.

Thanks mc_lovin, yeah there was a file and a little note, i deleted it - afterwards it worked

noOCGPU1
mother disabled overclocking on this GPU due to a defunct phoenix process at Thu Jun 14 13:14:02 2012

[lodcrappo]

Thanks Joshwaa, atitweak works.

Thanks mc_lovin, yeah there was a file and a little note, i deleted it - afterwards it worked

noOCGPU1
mother disabled overclocking on this GPU due to a defunct phoenix process at Thu Jun 14 13:14:02 2012

that little note means your rig locked up and BAMT restarted it.  reduce overclocking, or expect to see it again.

[Joshwaa]

Thanks Joshwaa, atitweak works.

Thanks mc_lovin, yeah there was a file and a little note, i deleted it - afterwards it worked

noOCGPU1
mother disabled overclocking on this GPU due to a defunct phoenix process at Thu Jun 14 13:14:02 2012

Also when using atitweak make sure to always use "-P 2" that way you do not mess with the wrong power level.

[Sant001]

I've been running BAMT here and my Rig will restart every couple of hours by itself, I think it's due to high temp on some cards.

Problem is when it restarts, it can't boot up as some of the cards seems locked and the system freezes when loading X.

When this happens I can only make it boot by removing the locked card from the rig...

Anybody with similar issues?