Ubuntu Natty Narwhal 11.04 Mining Guide / HOWTO

[Inaba]

Glad it's working for you guys

[aerion]

Has anyone got Dual 6990 video cards working with Ubuntu 11.04. I followed this guide, and a single 6990 works perfectly. However as soon as I put in the second card, Ubuntu fails to boot, and locks up with a black screen, cannot even SSH to the machine, or bring up any TTY terminals. I enter recover mode, delete the xorg.conf file, reboot with the dual 6990 still in place; X boots into failsafe mode. I than run the command  "sudo aticonfig --initial -f --adapter=all", and reboot the machine. Than it locks up again with a black screen. Similar posts about it here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=15908.0

I experience similar problems with Debian Wheezy, however less fatal, as in only the screen locks up, however I can still SSH to the machine.

I have also tried out LinuxCoin and found it to be the only distro with minimal effort to work with Dual 6990 video cards, however I would prefer to run something more Vanilla like Debian Wheezy or even Ubuntu11.04.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[Inaba]

I have a couple 6990's on order, as soon as they come in I'll be able to answer your question.  Assuming they come in... :p

[village.idiot]

Okay, here's another N00B lost in the woods.

I've tried to follow the instructions but may have screwed it up somewhere.
And this may be where: I'm using PinguyOS which, if I understand correctly, is basically Ubuntu 11.04 with improvements.
I like it a lot better than the Ubuntu distro but am willing to switch if it proves to be the problem.

I have 2 5770 cards and used SDK 2.1

The good news:
When I enter ./poclbm.py with no options, it reports my CPU

• and two GPUs [1] & [2].

I can check temps, clock and fan speed as well as affect fan speed.
So, all appears to be working.

Not so good news:
I decided to use BTC Guild and Eligius...(no, that's not the bad part)

According to BTC Guild's How to Connect page, my command line should look something like
./poclbm.py -d1 --host=nl.btcguild.com --port=8332 --user=worker_name --pass=XXXX
(they do note that they don't actually require the password)

And I believe Eligius wants something like
./poclbm.py -d1 --host=mining.eligius.st --port=8337 --user=<YourAddress> --pass=x

When I try to execute the command, poclbm gives me errors telling me that --host is not an option.
After using the -h option, I tried --server and got past that to discover that it thinks I want to use the --port, --user and --pass options which I only want to send to the server.
Actually, I don't know if port is for this end or the other.
--version reports 2011.b7

Any guess as to what I've done wrong?

[Inaba]

You should use something like this:

./poclbm.py --user=<username> --pass=<password> --host=http://us.eclipsemc.com --port=8337 --worksize=128 --vectors --frames=5 --device=1


EclipseMC is better than btcguild or Eligius anyway.

[village.idiot]

poclbm.py: error: no such option: --user

I'll look into EclipseMC

[Inaba]

Looks like poclbm has been substantially changed in the latest git. 

Your new command line should be:


./poclbm.py --server=http://<username>:<password>@us.eclipsemc.com:8337 --worksize=128 -v -f 5 --device=1

[village.idiot]

That got it running!  THANKS!!

I need to tweak the setup a bit and I have questions about what I see on my terminals verses My Workers screen on EclipseMC but I should probably ask them on that forum.
I registered but haven't received the confirmation email.  Maybe that village doesn't need an idiot.

[Inaba]

What user name did you register as on the forums?

[village.idiot]

My name, of course, village.idiot

[Inaba]

You should be fixed now.

[village.idiot]

Yeah, that's what they said when they discovered I was an idiot!

[IlbiStarz]

Can anyone help me?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=26412.0

[aerion]

Okay I finally got two 6990 vid cards working in both Debian Wheezy and Ubuntu 11.04. Instead of installing the packaged fglrx drivers for each distro, I downloaded the latest drivers from AMD website and installed that instead, no issues so far, system does not lockup at bootup anymore.

[irishmick]

Does anyone know how to remove the restriction where when running from a ubuntu 11.04 "Live USB" with persistent storage it requires you to hit the enter key after doing a shutdown? I was at work (and of course this was on my lunch break) ha ha ha did a shutdown now -r and I had to call my brother to run downstairs and hit the enter key so ubuntu would actually do the reboot rather than requesting that the CD or USB drive be removed. This would be a tip-able reply ;o) first valid first served.

Gracias!

And for any wondering no I don't live with my parents I'm old enough that my brother is renting from me. No free electricity here ;o)

Edit: yes I really did do a sudo shutdown -r now in case anyone is quick to say I didn't type it correctly above lol

[Inaba]

Have you tried simply "reboot" instead of shutdown?

[irishmick]

Thanks it was worth a try. I still get the "please remove the installation media (if any) and hit ENTER:"

[Inaba]

Add "noprompt" without the quotes to the kernel append line in syslinux.cfg.  I don't recall where that file is kept off hand as I don't have a Live USB install handy.

But again, I always question why anyone does a Live install to a USB key in the first place.  Why not just do a normal install to a bootable USB key?  It's what I do and it saves all the problems people consistently have with Live installs.  I honestly fail to see the point of a live install to a writable medium, it shouldn't even be an allowed option on most distro's.  The whole point of a live install is to NOT write data to the medium.  If you are enabling persistent storage to a writable medium, you should be doing a normal installation.

[irishmick]

Add "noprompt" without the quotes to the kernel append line in syslinux.cfg.  I don't recall where that file is kept off hand as I don't have a Live USB install handy.

But again, I always question why anyone does a Live install to a USB key in the first place.  Why not just do a normal install to a bootable USB key?  It's what I do and it saves all the problems people consistently have with Live installs.  I honestly fail to see the point of a live install to a writable medium, it shouldn't even be an allowed option on most distro's.  The whole point of a live install is to NOT write data to the medium.  If you are enabling persistent storage to a writable medium, you should be doing a normal installation.

Thank you for the noprompt tip. I'll give it a whirl tonight.

Now that you say that I entirely agree, well mostly. Really a live boot was just the simplist/quickest way I could get an image up and running as I had borrowed a win7 enterprise install disk that I was using in "test" or unregistered mode. I believe it allows 30 days under that scenario without a check in/registration to a kms server and I was on 29 days or somesuch.

On a side note what other problems do people have running a live usb? I've had none other than the prompting.

[Nivco]

Great HowTo Inaba, thanks a lot.
I followed step by step, had almost no trouble but a major pain in the a** with my extender (Ubuntu won't load properly Xorg, very weird stuff).
What's your adress for donation ? (why not in signature btw ?)