Quote from: gopher on July 21, 2011, 07:22:03 PM

STEP-BY-STEP HEADLESS LINUXCOIN
A good step-by-step guide for a noob, especially to someone who've tried to figure this magic and as a result, got lost in the sea of inaccurate and incomplete guides, almost the way I did

INTRODUCTION

After going through number of "How-To's" and "Guides" I've found on the Internet, then reading trough hundreds of forum pages, I found myself less wiser, tremendously confused, and far from being able to put together this seemingly simple Linux system LinuxCoin. After a week of sleepless nights, rerading trough cryptic notes of the other (they claimed those to be complete guides), I've finally got it working.

Thats when I decided to compile my own guide, targeting the noobs (like me) with hope that this will safe someone the head-scratching I had to do.

Please note, this guide is based on a certain release of LinuxCoin and most definitely will not be accurate if used with any consecutive releases.

Thanks and gratitude to saving someone time and efforts can be expressed by sending fractions of BTC to 18KusJBxwh4WyV9t72q1WFppwoVxTs2BeB

REQUIREMENTS

Before attempting to build a BTC mining machine, you must ensure that you understand what is required:

1. Account with a mining pool
2. Create miners (a.k.a. workers) one miner per GPU
3. 64-bit computer system - CPU, MOBO, RAM, PSU, CASE
4. ATI 4xxx - 6xxx series graphics card(s) depending on your MOBO, CASE and PSU
5. 4GB USB flash-drive
6. unetbootin-win-549 - download it here
7. linuxcoin-v0.2.1b.iso - download it here
8. live-rw persistent file (2GB) - download it here

CREATE LIVE-ISO ON A USB FLASH-DRIVE

1.   Assemble the 64-BIT computer system, install the cheapest 64-bit CPU you can buy in it, install 2 x 1GB memory sticks (again, cheapest you can find), install the ATI card(s), don't forget to connect the PCI-e power cables, power-it on, set the BIOS to boot from USB and the power option to "last state

2.   Quick format the USB flash-drive with FAT32, now is the time to label it something meaningful, i.e. LinuxCoin

3.   Using unetbootin, install the live-iso onto the formatted flash-drive, set 128MB for the Ubuntu reboot-files (only if you wondered...)

4.   When finished, don't reboot your PC as unetbootin asks you, instead remove the USB flash-drive, re-insert it, then copy the live-rw persistent file into the root of the USB flash-drive

5.   Now you have the LinuxCoin live-iso ready on the USB flash-drive - it comes pre-loaded with

a.   Latest ATI drivers
b.   Latest ATI SDK
c.   Aticonfig
d.   AMDOverdriveCTRL
e.   Python
f.   Poclbm
g.   Phoenix

All these components pre-installed will make your life so-much-easier and allow you to dive into configuring the system straight away.

You can boot the computer using the freshly loaded USB flash-drive and see if everything loads OK. Don't worry about the error messages you see during the boot - I guess the author of LinuxCoin has had too much on his plate lately to worry about perfection - the truth is this distro works as it is and at the end of the day, it does the job it is designed to do.

The only thing left now is to configure the system to default boot into persistent mode, accept the ATI SDK license (once-off), set the AMDOverdriveCTRL application to clock each card at the desired parameters, write the script needed to start the miner(s) with one command, and set it to start on boot - quite a list of items to do, but the end result justifies it - you will end up with a "headless" LinuxCoin that you can leave unattended.

EDIT CONFIGS AND CREATE .SH FILES

1.   Boot from the newly created USB flash-drive

2.   Select "System Tools" > "ATI SDK License", read it (I mean scroll down until the end), accept it, confirm the registration.

3.   The next few steps will be done through the Terminal window - select "Accessories" > "Root Terminal

4.   Now we will change the syslinux.cfg file so to boot by default into LinuxCoin persistent without the need to select any menu item, aka "headless"

5.   cd /live/image

6.   nano syslinux.cfg

7.   Change the menu title (third line) to something more meaningful like "--- LinuxCoin 0.2.1b ---", replace the section under the "label unetbootdefault" with the one you will find under "label ubnentry2" and then delete the remainder sections - don't worry, you will not need them in the future anyway (you can leave perhaps the memory test menu item)

Code:

default menu.c32
prompt 0
menu title --- LinuxCoin 0.2.1b ---
timeout 4

label unetbootindefault
menu label --> LinuxCoin (persistent)
kernel /live/vmlinuz
append initrd=/live/initrd.img boot=live config quiet splash persistent rw vga=791 persistent

label ubnentry0
menu label --> Memory Stress Test (loop)
kernel /isolinux/memtest.bin
append initrd=/ubninit - persistent

8.   "Ctrl+x", "y", "Enter"

9.   Now we will determine how many active cards (and their IDs) there are in this system before attempting to create the miner's shell script

10.   AMDOverdriveCtrl -i0

11.   Scroll-up and see how many adapters are "active" and note their numbers (i.e. 0,4,8,12) - you will need to insert those numbers info the appropriate "AMDOverdriveCtrl" lines (i.e. i0, i4, i8, i12) in the next script.

12.   Now we will create a script that will overclock the cards and start all your miners with a single shell command

13.   sudo touch /usr/local/bin/startminers.sh

14.   sudo chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/startminers.sh

15.   sudo nano /usr/local/bin/startminers.sh

Code:

#!/bin/bash

sudo aticonfig --od-enable

sudo AMDOverdriveCtrl -i0 &
sudo AMDOverdriveCtrl -i4 &
sudo AMDOverdriveCtrl -i8 &
sudo AMDOverdriveCtrl -i12 &

cd /opt/miners/phoenix/

./phoenix.py -u http://user1:pass1@bitcoins.lc:8080 -k poclbm DEVICE=0 BFI_INT VECTORS AGGRESSION=5 &

sleep 2

./phoenix.py -u http:// user2:pass2@bitcoins.lc:8080 -k poclbm DEVICE=1 BFI_INT VECTORS AGGRESSION=5 &

sleep 2

./phoenix.py -u http:// user3:pass3@bitcoins.lc:8080 -k poclbm DEVICE=2 BFI_INT VECTORS AGGRESSION=5 &

sleep 2

./phoenix.py -u http:// user4:pass4@bitcoins.lc:8080 -k poclbm DEVICE=3 BFI_INT VECTORS AGGRESSION=5 &

16.   "Ctrl+x", "y", "Enter"

17.   Now we will create an auto-start script, one that will start the startminers.sh script at start

18.   sudo touch /home/user/auto.sh

19.   sudo chmod 755 /home/user/auto.sh

20.   sudo nano /home/user/auto.sh

Code:

#!/bin/bash

xhost +
echo $DISPLAY > /home/user/.display
lxterminal --command "/usr/local/bin/startminers.sh"

21.   "Ctrl+x", "y", "Enter"

22.   Now we will configure the system to start that "auto.sh" script when the desktop loads

23.   cd /home/user/.config

24.   mkdir autostart

25.   sudo chmod 755 /home/user/.config/autostart

26.   sudo nano /home/user/.config/autostart/auto.desktop

Code:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=coin
Exec=lxterminal --command "/home/user/auto.sh"
Terminal=true

27.   "Ctrl+x", "y", "Enter"

28.   Now we are ready to tune the Overclocking parameters individually for each card

29.   cd /usr/local/bin

30.   startminers.sh

31.   A terminal session will open and (in this case) four instances of the AMDOverdriveCtrl will open on the desktop - just drag them separate so you can work in each of them.

32.   Select "Overdrive", slide the parameter selectors to your liking (in each Low-Med-High section), when ready, press "Set" and "Save defaults", then move to the next card's AMDOverdriveCtrl instance

33.   With all cards set, the machine is ready - fully configured - if you followed this document to the letter and did not made too many spelling or syntax errors in the shell scripts, the thing should work 100%

34.   Click on the On/Off red button in the bottom-right corner, then select reboot.

35.   Wait for the message that says you need to remove the USB flash-drive (DON'T DO THAT!), then just press "Enter"

That's it - hopefully the machine will boot nicely without requiring any interaction and go straight into mining using the overclocked settings, earning you some BTCs in the process.

Spend them wisely or keep them for a better day that might just be the best investment youve ever made!

If you have any comments, you can find me at the forum.bitcoing.org - I am gopher

I've followed this; everytime it reboots, all settings are lost, help?