After Steemfest, I had to recover for some days.
I considered wrinting a post about it, but I got carried away:
I'm into mining now :)
Earlier, 3 month ago ( I checked my blog ), I tried to mine Steem - with no success.
I didn't dare to comment on the guides that were out on Steemit then.
I knew my problem was mainly that I hadn't used Linux before.
With the precompiled Windows-miner I had no problems.
But we had a fork, so I need to recompile the Steem Daemon.
I spent the last 2 days compiling miners and trying out different Linux distributions.
The only distribution that let me install my GPU (AMD) drivers in a simple, reproducable way was:
- Ubuntu 14.04.1
Any newer version doesn't support the proprietary drivers from AMD.
This goes for any 3d card by AMD.
No wonder gamers don't use Linux.
( I understand this has to do with Xorg, so a server version - without GUI - could accept the driver ? )
The miners ( as well as most 3d games ) rely on that fglrx driver, which replaces catalyst for Windows.
I now have the ethminer running - and it gets around 5% more hashes, than on Windows.
I also compiled the sgminer, but daggerhashimoto pays best right now:
https://www.nicehash.com/index.jsp?utm_source=NHM&p=miners&addr=112spqqhvAQhU3qXDiiCiYY6tbe3rDwJr6
I feel more confident with Linux now and finally understand what all those lines meant.
I can pull and compile stuff myself now.
Even the Steem Daemon.
The hashrates for ETH should be higher - not sure what's up with that- Noticed this in Windows also.
AMD 280X should get me 18-20 Mh/s.
Still happy it's runnning now.
After that journey, let me first tell you:
There wasn't one guide on Steemit that worked for me !
For anybody who hasn't used Linux before, those guides or tutorials won't work.
My advice: Before you try compiling the Steem Daemon, try compiling an older, more prominent miner.
It's not that complicated, once you break it down into steps.
The early guides here on Steemit ( and especially the comment section ) perfectly show the attitude of the authors.
No love for noobs.
'Can't do it ? Go back to facebook !'
...
Same people who made those guides said that GPU mining Steem was impossible.
At the end of the day, I have to thank them for their posts; Without those, I wouldn't have had a clue, where to start.
Special thanks to @oaldamster and @l0k1 for helping me in my early days with Linux.
( Sorry for the complaining )
I now have it all set up with little bash scripts.
It's almost as simple as clicking an icon now.
sudo ./eth.sh
Starts ethminer with all settings.
Ethminer is for pools and doesn't store the whole blockchain.
Steemd is not that easy.
Freshly compiled it will start to syncronize the blockchain. ( 2.3 GB )
That took forever, because I was running it in debug mode.
Ctrl + C will stop the processs and I can then start up again - starting where I was.
Restarting Linux however breaks it.
steemd is now complaining about something in the witness_note_data_dir.
I assume, it can't find the blockchain, because I couldn't find it either, when I tried downloading it and placing it in the right folder manually.
In before: 'Go back to blogging - Don't waste your time mining !'
- I know it's not cost effective.
- I know a cute post can make more in hours than my CPU in months.
- I know I'm late to the party
I'm trying to educate myself.
Checking the stats on nicehash, there was a big rush on equihash (ZCash) after I first tried mining Steem.
For some weeks you could mine with a high profit, even with a CPU.
Now that it's more mainstream and the guides and miners are out, it pays ok.
daggerhashimoto (ETH) pays better now, than before.
It took a while for equihash to pick up and some mining capacity is now allocated to ZCash.
Apparently there is an adoption rate and when you are quick, you can make some money.
( Especially when you hold and trade )
That's why I want to learn more about mining and wallets, code and blockchains.
Any help with that Steem Dragon Daemon is much appreciated.
Did I not run it with the right permissions ?
Why did it store the chain only temporarily ?
Steem on !
P.S.:
Thanks to everybody, who came to Steemfest.
I talked to too many people to start mentions here;
Thank you for a great time !
Improving the usability and documentation of the command line tools for our p2p node users (miners, witnesses, developers, et c) is high on my list. I can't give a timeline but I really want to make building, installing, upgrading, and running steemd as straightforward as possible.
I recall back in the old bitcoin days when there weren't yet packages - I made one of the first bitcoind spec files to build an RPM to deploy on CentOS. We're at that point in steem-land right now. :)
Thanks for sticking with us through this early phase. Things will improve.
Thanks for the reply.
As I mentioned above, my problems were not Steem-related for the most part.
I was quite impressed with your presentation at Steemfest and I expect great things from you now :)
Gib alles !
That's really great to hear!
About steem mining - why don't you mine something else and buy steem with that? ;)
Did you ask @cryptos? He is my designated expert when it comes to mining.
I want to be able to compile and mine steem so I'm prepared for the next fork.
@dan placed a bounty on equihash support. As soon as that's implemented, my GPU will fire up ;)
Even if I misunderstood that, the experience and skills learned are worth it for me.
That's true.
Yes, linux installs are full of trial and error steps. Good luck.
I'll be in your footsteps as soon as my new machine finally arrives. Hopefully next week. Then I'll setup several Ubuntu VMs. One for Synereo node, one for ZEC minning, one for steemd - probably ... Lot's of fun ahead :)
As I heard at #mining it won't be that easy. Steem will use different settings so we can't use zec miners for steem. We need to build new ones. I hope we will have a gpu miner soon.
I tried plain old windows mining, it was rubbish but that was due to my old PC. Well done you on going down the Linux route!! It was cool meeting you at steemfest!!
Likewise !
There were so many people and so little time :D !
I got 2 Steem through Windows mining in 48 hours.
I think one of the Uber-miners had to reboot his rig for 60 seconds and I got a block by accident :D
I think trying to figure out how to build steemd from the source in Linux is a test of sorts to determine if you are worthy of using it. ;-) Otherwise they would just post binaries for each new release.
I've been meaning to try it myself on my Debian box but I can never seem to find the time. My interest is more in just running a node to use for development purposes, though. My hardware is too crappy for mining.
Thanks for sharing your experiences!
That's how it started: I wanted my own node for development purposes.
Great to see you advance in the beautifull world of Linux @felixxx! And complaining and cursing are just part of the learning proces. ;-) Your drive is great, that's what is moving you forward!
Steem on!
Wow I wish I could do that also but I'm a total newbie with linux almost nothing. I dont even understand everything you have written but I'm interested to mine.
I will post a more detailed version of how to set it up, once I figure it out.
It's hard to write a guide, when you don't know where to pick people up;
I will start from scratch.
Thanks. Hope I can understand it
I like that so many people have come back from SteemFest with a real drive to push forward through skills and networking. I'm not technical enough to provide any answers- sorry! But, I think your motivation with this is great. Even if you don't stick with mining Steem you have developed your skills even further this week- imagine where you will be in a months time!
Thanks for that !
Steemfest was motivating and inspiring :)
It seems to attract people, who want to improve themselves.
It was nice meeting you.