23
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 ...
15
jzgarzik wrote a very basic miner in Python. It is slow on purpose, because it shows how a simple miner works (and the mining process). It can also be reused as boilerplate code (the getwork JSON-RPC command).
https://github.com/jgarzik/pyminer/blob/master/pyminer.py
15
The official list is on The Wiki and is constantly being modified since new software shows up fairly often, but here's the quick breakdown:
Poclbm - Python/OpenCL GPU miner (GUI)
DiabloMiner - Java/OpenCL GPU miner (MAC OS X GUI)
RPC Miner - remote RPC miner (MAC OS X GUI)
Phoenix miner - miner
Cpu Miner - miner
Ufasoft miner - miner
Pyminer - Python miner, ...
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,...
10
You would need a computer to program the FPGA, obtain the work units, distribute them to the FPGAs, collect the shares, and submit them back. If you're not using a mining pool, you'll also need the computer to generate the work unit, assemble solved blocks, and submit them to the Bitcoin network.
The computer won't be doing that much work. So you can use a ...
10
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 ...
9
LinuxCoin is probably the closest thing to what you're looking for. According to the wiki, Linuxcoin is:
A lightweight Debian-based OS which includes in the image everything
that is necessary to run as a Bitcoin client and everything needed to
get started mining on ATI hardware.
Edit: It may also be worth looking into BAMT if your operation is of ...
8
GPU Miners
DiabloMiner - https://github.com/Diablo-D3/DiabloMiner
poclbm - https://github.com/m0mchil/poclbm
hashkill - 64-bit http://www.gat3way.eu/poc/hashkill-0.2.4-x86_64.tgz
32-bit http://www.gat3way.eu/poc/hashkill-0.2.4-x86.tgz
Phoenix - https://github.com/jedi95/Phoenix-Miner
CPU Miners
Jgarzik - https://...
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
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 ...
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 ...
6
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
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=...
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
Try the DiabloMiner app. It uses an older version of Diablo Miner that should work. The developers behind bitcoin mining software usually do not put much effort into Mac compatibility mainly because of two aspects:
Most Macs (iMac/Macbook/Macbook Pro) are not suited for mining because they have poor ventilation, which causes overheating issues.
Apple's ...
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.
5
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)
5
"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.
5
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.
5
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
5
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.
4
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.
4
NVidia cards require that you install the CUDA drivers in addition to the standard video card drivers (ATI/AMD cards ship with OpenCL as part of their driver package). Without these drivers installed they will not be available to any miners.
Since the Quadro 600 appears on the list of CUDA compatible GPUs it should be mineable, though what kind of ...
4
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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