Bitcoin Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for Bitcoin crypto-currency enthusiasts. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
Has anyone successfully set up a miner on Mac OSX? What are the most recent mining clients that will work on my 2011 MacBook Pro? I've tried DiabloMiner and poclbm but can't seem to get them running. I'd rather have a command line client if possible. Also, on what basis should I choose a mining pool? Can anyone recommend any and why?
I'm running Snow Leopard and have most programming technologies installed.
Apologies for being a n00b, this is all new to me!
If you want to run a command line client such as cgminer, bfgminer or cpuminer (minerd) without compiling them yourself you can download MacMiner from http://macminer.fabulouspanda.com/macminer/ and run them in the Terminal like so:
cd /Applications/MacMiner.app/Contents/Resources/bfgminer/bin
./bfgminer -o http://your.pool.com:9332 -u username -p password
there is a version specifically for 10.6 snow leopard, but the newer backends should work in the Terminal on 10.6 with the versions for 10.7+
Been using the Open Source MacMiner for over a month...:-) This mining GUI is mining engine agnostic because it natively supports bfgminer, cgminer and cpuminer/(minerd) under the hood on Mac Platforms. This GUI interface is mining pool agnostic because it can effectively interface to centralized pools and natively supports decentralized pooling, i.e., P2Pool.
I've exercised bfgminer functionality associated with MacMiner's "BFGMiner" and "FPGA/ASIC Miner" views using both the STM and GBT protocols at a number of different pools (e.g., the usual Centralized Mining suspects: BTC Guild, BitMinter, EclipseMC, Eligius...; Decentralized Mining: P2Pool through the Fabulous Panda P2Pool Service Provider and others). Albeit, not all pools support both STM & GBT. I've exercised minerd/(cpuminer) functionality associated with MacMiner's "CPUminer" view for mining Litecoins, but not recommended for Mac Mini - overheats unit. (You can guess what miner the "CGminer" view executes. Need time to exercise this functionality.) The performance of multiple ASIC devices can be seen from the "API Output" view. This Mining software is still a little rough around the edges, but software updates are automated, and require your approval.
Before executing the miners outside of MacMiner be sure to update your shell (such as the .cshrc that resides at your ~ directory) and source it.
That way "which bfgminer", "which cgminer", and "which minerd" will work, and you don't have to type fully qualified paths to the executables.
Once MacMiner is configured and running, you can "ps -A | grep bfgminer|minerd|cgminer" and you are off to the races building your own JSON config files (typically residing in your ~/Library/Application Support/MacMiner directory; examine the bfgurls.conf & ltcurls.conf files written when you save your pool settings) that can be used to execute the miners (i.e., bfgminer, cgminer, minerd) with a text terminal. Check out an alpha HOWTO for using MacMiner's bfgminer functionality at https://forums.butterflylabs.com/showwiki.php?title=Tutorials:HOWTO+Install+and+Run+MacMiner-+Version+0+9-alpha.
Good Luck!!!
stratum+tcp://stratum.slushpool.com:3333 and entered its password/worker-usermane -- but nothing. Now I am trying brew tap nwoolls/xgminer && brew install bfgminer -- do you really need to set up some environment variables?
I tested MacMiner but I found it hard to use. Then I tried bfgminer coming rom homebrew that I found very easy to use. You can install bfgminer from Homebrew
brew tap nwoolls/xgminer && brew install bfgminer
that is a nice commandline tool to join a pool, further information here. You need to have an account to some pool, I joined Slushpool where
URL: stratum+tcp://stratum.slushpool.com:3333
userID: userName.workerName
password: anything
I recommend DiabloMiner, and there is an .app for it. It is Java-based.
However, note that it is highly unlikely that your mining will be profitable.
