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Please check this question first:
How much Bitcoin will I mine right now with hardware X?
Before you go through all this work, it is important to know what to expect from your hardware.
There are two options: solo mining or pool mining. Unless you have a lot of computing power (several ASICs), you should probably mine at a pool.
So the first thing to do ...
10
There are several options for Mining Bitcoins some of these are no longer profitable, but for the sake of being thorough here they are in order of efficiency lowest to highest:
Methods
CPU Mining (minerd)
GPU Mining (cgminer, bfgminer)
FPGA Mining (Custom software - https://github.com/fpgaminer/Open-Source-FPGA-Bitcoin-Miner)
ASIC Mining (cgminer, bfgminer,...
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For Mac OSX users, you must have Snow Leopard (10.6) or newer
installed.
A fully-connected BitCoin wallet. see http://bitcoin.org/
If this is the first time you have launched BitCoin, it must
download and verify all the existing blocks in the system.
This can
take an hour or longer - just ignore it for a while.
Update: since the time of this ...
8
So is there a nice tutorial which explains how to start mining using FPGA.
Not really, not a "starting from scratch" one.
Or this is so complicated?
Yes, it is quite complicated - in order to work with FPGAs, some additional skills on top of software are required. You need to understand logic design and some (fairly basic) electronics in order to make ...
7
The -gen flag actually started a CPU miner process in older versions of the Bitcoin client, before CPU mining became obsolete.
What you're probably thinking was more like bitcoind -server or `bitcoind -server -RPCALLOWIP=192.168.1.* -RPCPORT=8333 which would start a listening Bitcoin server from which a proper miner could obtain getworks. Since namecoind is ...
7
That configuration parameter no longer has any effect because the CPU mining engine has been removed from the mainline client.
Earlier versions of the client did have a built in miner and the gen parameter controlled if it ran in the background. Given the much higher difficulty today the developers felt it no longer served a purpose and would be confusing ...
6
If you want to allow connections from any machine, use:
rpcallowip=*
If you want to allow connections from one specific IP address, put that IP address instead of *:
rpcallowip=192.168.0.101
You can have as many of these lines as you like. Use one for each IP address you want to allow. And wildcards are also allowed:
rpcallowip=192.168.0.*
rcpallowip=...
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OpenCL allows all graphic cards to be handled in a higher level in a uniform fashion. As all GPU mining software relies on OpenCL, you would need to create your own software to mine on non-OpenCL card. Whereas it is possible, the process would be very complicated and the reward probably wouldn't be worth it (NVIDIA cards aren't good for mining).
So all in ...
6
BitMinter is an attempt at making just this sort of thing easier and a more pleasant experience.
Install Java if you don't have it, e.g. on Ubuntu sudo apt-get install openjdk-6-jre icedtea-netx (the icedtea-netx is for Java WebStart)
If you will mine in GPUs, install the latest drivers (e.g. from amd.com)
If you will mine on FPGA/ASIC, give yourself access ...
6
poclbm has not been set to alter the clock rate of your GPU. Windows media player is doing this when open and adjusts the system to what it requires.
If you specify clock speeds for your GPU via parameters or a separate application you can overcome this.
Theres a number of applications which effect clock rates on windows machines, flash player open within ...
6
The higher difficulty means you will be reporting results less frequently to the pool. This reduces network load on both your system and the pool. It also reduces the restart delay for your mining hardware as it prepares for the next work unit. Most pools base the rewards on the number of difficulty 2 shares accepted. So they increase the reward based on ...
6
I was confused by this as well, but I figured it out through trial and error. AM means arbitrary message (they should have explained this), which is a regular message you send to the forging pool through your wallet.
First you must join the forging pool (Account Balance -> More Info -> Account Leasing). No additional message is necessary at this point.
...
5
Yes, with -gen=1 on the command line or in the configuration file, bitcoind will use its built-in miner to search for blocks. It is inefficient, does not support pools, and does not use GPUs. It is only left as a reference and for testing, and will probably be removed completely soon.
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After searching and searching I found these possiblites.
Use bitminter Java client in Version 1.1.2 http://bitminter.com/client/1.1.2/bitminter.jnlp (current version doesn't work)
Make your own miner which supports proxy
Use a tool like Proxifier (I have not tested it personally, because it is commercial)
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"gen" is by default 0 (off), so you should not really need to specify "gen=0" anywhere.
"gen" will generate bitcoins (mining), but you should only do this if you know what you are doing (you probably want to mine in a pool, and use proper tuned hardware/software).
And yes, you will only get transaction fees if you mine a block.
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No, it doesn't have to be. Mining doesn't require private keys, only (part of) the public one. Having only the address of the destination is enough, so the wallet can be locked.
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Yes, this is related to GPU mining. From cgminer's README:
INTENSITY INFORMATION:
Intensity correlates with the size of work being submitted at any one
time to a GPU. The higher the number the larger the size of work.
Generally speaking finding an optimal value rather than the highest
value is the correct approach as hash rate rises up to a ...
5
The miner you are using does not support the stratum protocol. Instead you must use a pool that uses the old and now obsolete getwork protocol
If I see it correctly BTCGuild still offers the getwork access with the following URL:
minerd.exe -o http://btcguild.com:8332 -u username_1 -p password -a sha256d -R 2
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You need to be online because mining is sort of like a mathematical race: whoever finds the hash of the next block (with value less than the current target) wins. And in order to prove that you found this value before anybody else, you need to be online in order to broadcast it to other users.
4
The 7300's GPU isn't sufficiently software programmable to be used for mining. There's no known way to get it to mine Bitcoins.
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If you are after bitcoins I wouldn't even spend time on CPU or GPU. It is now difficult with specialized hardware (butterfly labs, kncminer ... ). You can have a look at cloud mining (cexio) as well it is expensive and you have to have bitcoins already but you can buy and sell GH/s and you can actually make more from trading than mining.
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Catalyst 11.9 resolved the issue for those mining on single GPUs but not multiple GPUs (including single cards which contain multiple GPUs like the 6990 and 5970). You can try setting the -f flag to higher numbers until CPU usage is reduced or try setting -aggression to 10 or lower. Note that these settings might reduce your hashrate significantly depending ...
4
I don't know what this frequency analysis technique would do, so this answer corresponds to the second question you asked:
Blockchain.info connects to hundreds of nodes:
http://www.blockchain.info/connected-nodes
The IP address Blockchain.info shows is the address of one of those nodes that they happened to be connected to which first saw that transaction....
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The hashespersec field reports the speed of the built-in miner. It does not (and can't accurately) report the hashing power connected to it via the getwork or getblocktemplate interfaces.
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So, while Mac includes python it does not include gcc by default, even once you've installed Xcode 4.2 or later. For now, grab that, go to preferences, downloads and get the command line tools.
Once a version of Xcode higher than 4.6 is out you'll have to find a new way to install gcc on your mac, as gcc will no longer be included, but I guess that's a ...
4
The official bitcoin client from bitcoin.org has a CPU mining option. Add a file named bitcoin.conf to the bitcoin data directory, with the contents gen=1
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Running_Bitcoin#Bitcoin.conf_Configuration_File
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I know this is an old question but recently I got a similar server.
I've tested rpcminer, GUI Miner (Which is actually UFASoft miner).
Personally the best I've found is CPUMiner. With a hash rate of about 75MH/s, it takes a bit of setting up as CPUMiner is normally used for Litecoin mining. CPUMiner gave me about 10%-20% more than the closest rival, which ...
4
You should use multiple workers if you want separate statistics for them, or if the pool you are using limits the number of connections that are allowed per worker.
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If you are mining bitcoins successfully, then don't worry about it.
There's no need to install the SDK. OpenCL drivers are included with AMD's Catalyst drivers.
Also note that solomining on a GPU could mean you never make a single coin. It may look like now that it will take a couple years, but by that time the difficulty is much higher. Unless you are ...
4
With the advent of ASICs, Bitcoin GPU mining is no longer profitable. I would recommend mining a Scrypt coin such as Dogecoin or Litecoin. (You can then trade it in for Bitcoin on an exchange, if you prefer.)
To answer your original question, yes, you can use one card for mining and the other for actually running the computer.
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