[Alpha RC1] MinerPE w/Server and standalone WinPE LAN/Pendrive boot

[shivansps]

Hi guys, for some time ive working to get WinPE 3.0 fully working for mining, well its not fully working, but its at 80%, some problems may happen with some cards.
Right now im looking at better alternatives for a Windows OS that is capable of lan booting, im now looking at iSCSI, but i still have trouble with it. So for now, WinPE, or what i like to call it, MinerPE had to be enoght.

MinerPE supports Catalyst 11.4/11.5, OpenCL 2.4, MSI Afterburner, HWmonitorPRO, VNC Server, and miners poclbm, ufasoft, rpcminer, phoenix and guiminer.

"The Server"
Well, the server consist in several batch files that MinerPE runs when they connect to server, batch file usage made it trivial to edit funtions, when a MinerPE connects to a server, it uses a small program i made in C to retrive MAC and ip information, the batch files inn server uses this information, the MAC is used to give every MinerPE unique ID that will never change upon reboot, this is important because every miner in needs to use diferent pool users (remember that EVERY pc on the lan will boot up the SAME WinPE image).

The Sever has a folder called "General Drivers", every extracted driver you put in here will be installed to EVERY MinerPE when they boot up, OpenCL and Python 3.2 is also set to install in this stage, if you want to add additional software to be installed on every MinerPE you can do it here be placing what you need there and edit the "install.bat" file.

When a MinerPE boot up, the batch files check the MAC address, and create a folder called by its MAC intro the "clients" folder, if the MinerPE already exist, it will just use the already created folder.

Inside this unique folder, you will find a folder called "Personal Drivers", this folder has the same funtionality as the "General drivers", except everything here is loaded intro this MinerPE client only.

You will also find the guiminer config file, a lot of batch files, a MinerSetup.txt file (where you can configure the miners), and two .exe files called "monitor.exe" and "minermenu.exe", minermenu ats a small control panel for this MinerPE only, the Monitor has some info of the setup of this MinerPE, those files looks like this:



Note: DONT use the display hashrate funtion, its not finished, does not work well for somw miners, and phoenix create a really BIG log file (1GB the night lol)

The control panel and monitor should display the correct MinerPE IP, you can use this ip to connect to the MinerPE using VNC_viewer and/or add the PC to the Hwmonitor, so you can keep an eye on temperatures.
You can connect to the MinerPE with VNC and overclock it using MSI Afterburner, OC data is saved and keep upon reboot. (profiles not tested), you can also oc the cards from the server editing the .cfg files in the msi afterburner, profiles folder, once the .cfg files are created.

Miners: Miners are copied from the "Miners" folder on the server to the MinerPE ramdisk on every boot up, this makes updating mining software really easy.

So, the server is really rustic, not fancy features and uses batch files and Windows file sharing to work.
This is important, to "install" the server you must place the folder somewhere of easy access for you (desktop work fine) and SHARE the "server" folder for both reading and writing for all users, the Windows user "running" the server must have a password, any password. Remember the name of the server pc, the name of the shared resource of the "server" folder, user name and password, is asked when creating the MinerPE.

PXE Lan Boot:
This is mainly intended for LAN Boot, using the TFTPD32 server, inside the tftpd32 folder you will pictures with instructions to setup the network for PXE boot.

Creating the MinerPE:
Full instructions are in the "Setup_clients\minerpe" folder, i cant give you a MinerPE already generated because it cant be distributed, but i can give you the scritps and instructions to build your own, besides you need to put the lan drivers of your pcs, because it may not incluided in the MinerPE.

MinerPE is based from "MakePE3"

Download(183MB):
v0.2
http://www.mediafire.com/?f6zg1jbaju970hr
-Added Cat 11.6, MSIAfterburner 220B3, AMD SDK 2.5, guiminer as default, updated to last version of guiminer, added +3% hashrate fix to guiminer phoenix, minor changes in batch files.

v0.1(old)
http://www.mediafire.com/?355txg4n59i6m6q
-First release

MinerPE Standalone
This is the same MinerPE but its intended for use whiout the server, from a pendrive, it fits perfectly on a 1GB pendrive. Full instructions in the .txt file.
Download(256mb): http://www.megaupload.com/?d=96SE3HPZ

This is a first release, expect some bugs, i dont recomend to expand its use to 50 pcs bitcoin farm, feedback is much apreciated.

***WARNING***
Only 1 GPU per PC is supported, more than 1 causes OpenCL to fail.

[shivansps]

TUTORIALS

How to setup the network for PXE boot

Video Guide to add a new MinerPE pc to tne network, OC the VGAs and start mining
Sorry, no voice comments, english is not my first language

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xN52sWA1BBM

[lagmo]

Looks nice, I'll try it out later on one of my older test rigs, having  PXE booting Windows based miners might be fun 

[shivansps]

ive just added the video guide.

[lagmo]

ive just added the video guide.

Interesting, nice to see how it's supposed to work, though you may want to re-edit it a bit to speed things up a little

I had the TFTPd server and PXE booting working, couldn't get the Make_PE3.cmd/exe working on XP x86.
The script/installer makes a lot of hardcoded references to local win7 system files, which causes it to fail when unpacking install.wim from the Disc/ISO source. Tested with two different versions of Win7 SP0.
Initial error was Windows media player(wmplayer.exe) was missing "First find Win7 files".
For now i suggest adding a check if server/install OS is NOT Win7 X86 and throw an error.

I'll retry when i find a spare Win7 x86 machine   

[shivansps]

yup, you need to run it from a windows 7, do a win7 install intro a virtual machine.

and dont forget that do need the Windows 7 AIK installed in order to work.

[lagmo]

Well finally got around to creating that VM for the install, so got it booting and running now.
But for some reason i can not the display driver/Opencl install properly on boot up.

OpenCL driver doesn't throw an error but the AMD driver refuses to load if you start the .msi(says it needs catalyst install manager).

Launch a miner app(Phoenix 1.48 in my case) and it stalls for a while before throwing an error about the OpenCL wrapper not being found.

Can i integrate motherboard drivers into the bootup x86.wim file? Or would it mess up cross-platform compatibility?

Bit lost how to solve this, since no drivers can be installed after the fact, since they're lost at reboot  

Edit: Dpinst reports error on AMD driver install when run manually.

[RulerOf]

You can boot from HTTP (my preference for booting WinPE over LAN) using iPXE.

The lead developer has been making some strides with the SAN boot code, such that you can hook directly into an ISO image and boot it from SAN.  You can boot WinPE from an iSCSI hard disk, but if you're gonna do that, make sure that you disable or remove the iSCSI initiator from the PE, sort of a one and done that way once everything's in RAM.

A Winbuilder script would be ideal though, as MS frowns on redistributing their binaries

[shivansps]

If i incluided any MS binary please tell me, i not mean to, i using scritps to collect any bin from host pc when its builded, MakePE3 do the same. If there is any MS bin there it was an accident or just an old file i forgot about.

Well finally got around to creating that VM for the install, so got it booting and running now.
But for some reason i can not the display driver/Opencl install properly on boot up.

OpenCL driver doesn't throw an error but the AMD driver refuses to load if you start the .msi(says it needs catalyst install manager).

Launch a miner app(Phoenix 1.48 in my case) and it stalls for a while before throwing an error about the OpenCL wrapper not being found.

Can i integrate motherboard drivers into the bootup x86.wim file? Or would it mess up cross-platform compatibility?

Bit lost how to solve this, since no drivers can be installed after the fact, since they're lost at reboot  

Edit: Dpinst reports error on AMD driver install when run manually.

dpinst is not going to load AMD drivers intro a VM, are you trying with a physical pc? or just a VM?, because it checks for hardware and only loads what is nesesary, if you want to, you can still load everything intro everything using drvload.exe

drvload "Z:\Clients\General_Drivers\AMD 11.5\CW118870.inf" should work to load 11.5a, you may need to remove the spaces.

I didt not experience any troubles manually installing OpenCL intro PE... strange, just check the video, everything should work out of box, except for mb lan drivers that need to be loaded first, thats why they are copied intro the .wim file.

Integrating drivers intro PE does not work for some reason if you loading an image that already has drivers integrated intro it, thats why i have to use dpinst to load even the lan drivers.

OpenCL does not work properply with more than 1 card, thats what i noticed last night. i need to work intro it, but really, right now i just looking for a read-only Windows image to be loaded from server using iSCSI, instead of using WinPE...

[mmortal03]

I tested out the standalone version, shivansps, and it's great work you've done.  I'm running into an issue, though, where my network adapter drivers are being detected, both Ethernet and wireless, but I can't connect over either.  The Ethernet gives a yellow exclamation mark, and the wireless doesn't display any networks to connect to whatsoever. Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

[mmortal03]

So, I've got networking working now, but the next problem I'm running into is that phoenix won't run.

It gives the following error:

Code:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "phoenix.py", line 123, in <module>
  File "Miner.pyc", line 75, in start
  File "phoenix.py", line 111, in makeKernel
  File "kernels\phatk\__init__.py", line 23, in <module>
    import pyopencl as cl
  File "zipextimporter.pyc", line 82, in load_module
  File "pyopencl\__init__.pyc", line 3, in <module>
  File "zipextimporter.pyc", line 98, in load_module
ImportError: MemoryLoadLibrary failed loading pyopencl\_cl.pyd

Is this because OpenCL is not detected, or something else?

I tried installing OpenCL, but obviously, there isn't enough space on X: to install it, so it won't let me.

[hollajandro]

I cannot get this to work, I just get a Failed to load OpenCL kernel! error when I try to run phoenix.

[shivansps]

About the problem with Ethernet with exclamation mark, dont worry about Windows network manager, it does not work 100% ok, look at the PEnetwork if it does detect the network card.


The OpenCL error only occurs if:

1) You have more than 1 GPU on system, as i said before OpenCL, fails if there is more than 1 GPU installed, thats incluides doble GPU vgas like 6990 and 5970.

2) Driver fails to load for some reason.

3) OpenCL fails to install for some reason.

If there is no free space on X it means you have less than 1GB ram, MinerPE uses 512MB of ram for the ramdisk and it still needs another 512MB of ram to work, it while it still may boot with less than 1GB, it may not work properly. BTW, check what you place inside the "Miners" folder... that folder is copied to the WinPE ramdisk (X:), if you put more things in it you may fill the ramdisk, thus causing the OpenCL driver to fail to load.

I have not tested it with all cards, only 5850s, maybe there is some problems with 6xxx series cards i not know.

Ive updated the download file, ive compressed the folders to build the MinerPE, because it was causing errors, and updated the guiminer to the last version and place it as default, i recomend to use the new guiminer now.

[mmortal03]

The OpenCL error only occurs if:

1) You have more than 1 GPU on system, as i said before OpenCL, fails if there is more than 1 GPU installed, thats incluides doble GPU vgas like 6990 and 5970.

It's definitely that.  Is there no workaround for that?

If there is no free space on X it means you have less than 1GB ram, MinerPE uses 512MB of ram for the ramdisk and it still needs another 512MB of ram to work, it while it still may boot with less than 1GB, it may not work properly. BTW, check what you place inside the "Miners" folder... that folder is copied to the WinPE ramdisk (X:), if you put more things in it you may fill the ramdisk, thus causing the OpenCL driver to fail to load.

I did have SOME free space on X, just not enough to have it successfully install the items in the Catalyst package. The laptop I was testing it on has 4GB of RAM installed. I don't recall how much of that amount was recognized as ramdisk space available, though.

[shivansps]

Im looking intro the issue, but i cant find the problem, AMD dont give support either, and i was asking simple questions about S.O. requeriments.

The best hope now is wait to APP 2.5 and hope for the best, the problem is in the APP itselft.

[hollajandro]

I've found in the past that in order to mine on multiple gpus you need to have windows extend the desktop to the additional cards, but in winPE you can only duplcate what is on the primary monitor and in fact when you go to the screen resolution settings where it would normally say extend desktop it is blank. I think this is why this doesn't work. I tried finding out how to use multiple monitors on winPE but I got nowhere. This is an awesome setup if you can get it working for multiple gpus, but I don't think you can

[shivansps]

It actually expand them by default (you have to had a monitor conected or dummy plug at boot up), Guiminer shows up the cards as devices correctly, but it does not work at all.

But dont get you hopes up, if it where the desktops it will at least allow you to mine on primary, and it does not... sometimes works on device 1(for a few minutes) and no on the 0 lol...

UPDATE:
No dice, it seems likely you can only start 1 miner, and the others just gives an memory error on guiminer.

[mirtyll]

Hi shivansps, i am very interested about your MinerPE Standalone, could you upload it again please.
Thanks !