Build your own Litecoin Mining Rig, part 2: Linux Setup

Linux Litecoin Mining Setup Guide
In the second installment of our DIY litecoin mining guide, we’ll look at how to install and configure Linux to properly mine with your GPUs at optimal settings. Don’t be dissuaded if you’ve never used Linux before—our step-by-step guide makes it easy.

Linux has a few advantages over Windows, including the ability to install to a USB stick (which means you don’t need a harddrive), lesser hardware requirements (you can get by just fine with less than 4GB of RAM), and simpler remote administration capabilities. Best of all, Linux is free! However, be aware that if you’d like to undervolt your GPUs to save power, Windows might be a better choice for you (update 10/2013: no longer true!).

If you missed the hardware portion of our guide, make sure to check it out first. Otherwise, read on.

Build a Litecoin Mining Rig, part 2:  Linux Setup

So you’ve decided to use Linux to run your mining rig—a fine choice! If you’re still a bit nervous because you’ve a complete Linux newbie, don’t be. Simply follow the step-by-step instructions exactly as they’re written, and you’ll be fine. Even if you’ve never done anything like this before, you should be up and running in about an hour.

Step 1: Configure BIOS settings

Before we even get to Linux, make sure your mining computer’s BIOS settings are in order. Power on your computer, and press the “delete” key a few times immediately after power on. You should end up in the BIOS configuration area. Do the following, then save & exit:

  • Change power options so that the computer automatically turns itself on whenever power is restored. The reason for this is two-fold: first, it’ll make sure that your miner automatically starts up after a power outage. Second, it makes powering the computer on much easier if you don’t happen to have a power switch connected to the motherboard.
  • Make sure that your USB stick is first in the boot-up order (you may need to have a USB stick attached).
  • Disable all components that you don’t plan to use. This will save a little bit of power, and since your miner will likely be running 24/7, it’ll add up. For me, that meant disabling onboard audio, the SATA controller, the USB 3.0 ports (I only had a 2.0 USB stick), the Firewire port, and the serial port.

Step 2: Install Xubuntu Desktop to your USB stick

Xubuntu is a lightweight version of Ubuntu, a popular Linux distribution. Most other distros should work just fine, but be aware that the GPU drivers require the presence of Xorg, which means server distros that don’t have a GUI will not work properly.

  • Download the Xubuntu Desktop x64 v12.10 installation image.
  • You’ll need to either burn the installation image onto a CD, or write the image to a second USB stick. If you use a CD, you’ll need to temporarily hook up a CD-ROM drive to your mining rig for the installation (make sure you temporarily enable your SATA controller if you disabled it in step 1!).
  • Once you have the installation media prepared, you’re ready to install Xubuntu to the blank USB stick on your miner. Make sure your blank USB stick is inserted into a USB port on your mining, and then boot into your installation media. The Xubuntu installer should appear.
  • Make sure to click the “auto-login” box towards the end of the installer; otherwise take all of the default installation options.
  • If you’re using a USB stick that is exactly 8GB, the installer may complain about the default partition sizes being too small. Create a new partition table with these settings: 5500mb for root (/), 315mb for swap, and the remaining amount for home (/home). If you’re using a USB stick larger than 8GB, you will not have to do this.
  • When the installation is complete, you should automatically boot into the Xubuntu desktop. Make sure to remove your installation media.

Step 3: Install AMD Catalyst drivers

Open a terminal session by mousing over the bottom center of the screen so that a list of icons appears. Click on “terminal” (it looks like a black box).

  • Type the following commands (press “enter” at the end of each line and wait for Linux to finish doing it’s thing):
    sudo apt-get install fglrx-updates fglrx-amdcccle-updates fglrx-updates-dev
    sudo aticonfig --lsa
    sudo aticonfig --adapter=all --initial
    sudo reboot
  • After your computer reboots, you can verify that everything worked by typing:
    sudo aticonfig --adapter=all --odgt
  • If you see all of your GPUs listed, with “hardware monitoring enabled” next to each, you’re good to go.

Important: you may need to have something plugged into each GPU to prevent the OS from idling it. You can plug 3 monitors into your 3 GPUs, but that isn’t very practical. The easiest option is to create 3 dummy plugs, and leave them attached to your GPUs. They’ll “trick” the OS into believing that a monitor is attached, which will prevent the hardware from being idled. Check out how to create your own dummy plugs.

If you ever add or remove GPUs to your rig later, you’ll need to re-run this command:   sudo aticonfig --adapter=all --initial

Step 4: Install SSH, Curl, and package updates

  • Install SSH by typing:
    sudo apt-get install openssh-server byobu

With SSH installed, you can unplug the keyboard/mouse/monitor (put dummy plugs into all GPUs, though) from your miner, and complete the rest of the installation from your desktop computer. Simply download Putty onto your desktop, run it, and enter the IP address of your mining rig. That should bring up a remote terminal session to your miner, which is more or less just like sitting at the keyboard in front of it.

If you plan to manage your mining rig remotely over the internet, you’ll need to forward port 22 on your router to your miner. Make sure that you use a strong Xubuntu password!

Setup should be quicker from this point, as now you can simply copy text from this webpage (highlight it and press control-C) and then paste it into your Putty session by simply right-clicking anywhere inside the Putty window. Neat, eh?

  • Install Curl and package updates by typing (or copying & pasting into Putty) the following commands:

    sudo apt-get install curl
    sudo apt-get update
    sudo apt-get upgrade

Step 5: Install cgminer

Cgminer is the mining software we’ll be using. If the first command doesn’t work, you’ll need to check out the cgminer website and make a note of the current release version. Substitute that in the commands below.

Update: Cgminer 3.7.2 is the last version to support scrypt—do not use any version after that! In addition, depending on which version you choose to use, you may receive an error complaining about libudev.so.1 when you try to run cgminer—you can find the fix for that here.

  • Type the following:

    wget http://ck.kolivas.org/apps/cgminer/2.11/cgminer-2.11.4-x86_64-built.tar.bz2
    tar jxvf cgminer-2.11.4-x86_64-built.tar.bz2
  • If everything was uncompressed successfully, we can delete the downloaded archive; we don’t need it anymore:
    rm *.bz2
  • Now check if cgminer detects all of your GPUs properly:
    cd cgminer-2.11.4-x86_64-built
    export DISPLAY=:0
    export GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS=1
    ./cgminer -n

Step 6: Create cgminer startup script

We’re almost done—now we just need to create a few simple scripts to control cgminer.

  • If you’re still in the cgminer directory from the previous step, first return to your home directory:
    cd ..
  • Type the following to create a new file with nano, a Linux text editor:
    sudo nano mine_litecoins.sh
  • Type the following into nano (note where the places you need to substitute your own usernames!) :
    #!/bin/sh
    export DISPLAY=:0
    export GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT=100
    export GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS=1
    cd /home/YOUR_XUBUNTU_USERNAME/cgminer-2.11.4-x86_64-built
    ./cgminer --scrypt -I 19 --thread-concurrency 21712 -o stratum+tcp://coinotron.com:3334 -u USERNAME -p PASSWORD
  • Save the file and quit nano, then enter the following:
    sudo chmod +x mine_litecoins.sh

Note that the cgminer settings we’re using in our mine_litecoins.sh script correspond to a good starting point for Radeon 7950 series GPUs. If you followed our hardware guide, these settings will give you good hashrates. If you’re using another type of GPU, you’ll want to use Google to find optimal cgminer settings for it.

Also note that you’ll need to create an account at one of the litecoin mining pools, and plug your username and password into the script (the -u and -p parameters). I have Coinotron in there as an example, but there are quite a few to choose from.

Step 7: Create auto-start scripts

We want cgminer to automatically start mining whenever the rig is powered on. That way, we keep mining losses to a minimum whenever a power outage occurs, and we don’t have to worry about manually starting it back up in other situations.

  • Type the following to create a new script and open it in nano:
    sudo nano miner_launcher.sh
  • Enter the following text into the editor (substitute your Xubuntu username where shown!):
    #!/bin/bash
    DEFAULT_DELAY=0
    if [ "x$1" = "x" -o "x$1" = "xnone" ]; then
       DELAY=$DEFAULT_DELAY
    else
       DELAY=$1
    fi
    sleep $DELAY
    su YOUR_XUBUNTU_USERNAME -c "screen -dmS cgm /home/YOUR_XUBUNTU_USERNAME/mine_litecoins.sh"
  • Save and quit nano, and then type:
    sudo chmod +x miner_launcher.sh
  • Now we need to call our new script during startup; we do that by adding it to /etc/rc.local. Type the following to open /etc/rc.local in nano:
    sudo nano /etc/rc.local
  • Add the following text, right above the line that reads “exit 0” (substitute your own username!):
    /home/YOUR_XUBUNTU_USERNAME/miner_launcher.sh 30 &

Step 8: Create an alias to easily check on cgminer

We’re essentially done at this point, but you’ll probably want to manually SSH into your miner from time to time to manually check on your GPU temperatures & hashrates, etc. Creating an alias will make that easy.

  • Type:

    sudo nano .bashrc
  • Scroll to the end of the file, and then add this text above the line that reads “# enable programmable completion…”
    alias cgm='screen -x cgm'
  • Save and quit out of nano.

That’s it—you’re done! You’ll probably want to test everything now. The easiest way to do that is to close your Putty session and power down your miner. Turn it back on and the following should happen:

  1. Your miner should boot into Xubuntu. This may take about a minute, depending on the speed of your USB stick.
  2. 30 seconds after Xubuntu has loaded, cgminer will automatically start and begin mining. You’ll probably notice the fans on your GPUs spin up when this happens.
  3. You should be able to SSH into your miner at any time and type cgm to bring up the cgminer screen. To close the screen (and leave cgminer running), type control-A, then control-D.
  4. If you ever need to start cgminer manually (because you quit out of it, or kill it, etc), simply type ./miner_launcher.sh
cgminer running

If all went well, you should see something like this when checking cgminer via your “cgm” alias.

Congratulations—you have your own headless linux litecoin miner!

The next section of our guide covers setup under Windows, and then we take a look at optimizing cgminer settings for better performance.

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1,431 Responses to “Build your own Litecoin Mining Rig, part 2: Linux Setup”

  1. jonathan haywood says:

    ok so ..um…newish set of issues..i got putty, which i realized i didnt have before…i just did it all on thewminer itself..so now i have putty, and i typed cgm, and it didnt load, so i tried ./miner_launcher, and both times it says :not found….for both cgm comand and the opening manual one…what do i do? ive looked in the comments but so far i cant find an answer..but then again there are over 1000 of them…

    • ezpacer says:

      Hi jonathan,
      When you did your nano mine_litecoins, and nano miner_launcher, were they in your user directory. They can be not found if you were inadvertantly still in your cgminer directory after the step of checking to see if cgminer recognizes the GPU’s (the point where you type ./cgminer -n, which is while in thwe cgminer directory). You can check your files in your user directory (the one you start in when you go into the terminal screen) by typing ls (ell ess) -lrt ( that is: “ls -lrt”)
      Hope this is some help…

  2. jonathan haywood says:

    i checked again, the file is there, and the script id exactlly waht badger told me to put in there for the miner_launcher section, but just to make sure i checkedf ALL the others, just in case one of them sent he terminal to this file to open it..everything is exactly like it should be, yet its not working….

  3. matt says:

    Hi,

    I’m new to linux, however I had the complete crypto badger
    set up going April 2013, this was with help of a friend and in Jan 2014 I accidentally ran an update and screwed the whole rig up. I have been trying to get it going again by starting from scratch but cannot seem to work out what im doing wrong.(and my friend overseas)

    So I have got the exact cryto badger gear. apart from the PSU, but it worked fine in the past.

    So here is the problem :

    My start up script works the miner starts however it only mines with 1 GPU? when I preformed all the checks to see if all GPU are recognized
    it said :

    [2014-03-12 22:25:21] CL Platform 0 name: AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing
    [2014-03-12 22:25:21] CL Platform 0 version: OpenCL 1.2 AMD-APP (1016.4)
    [2014-03-12 22:25:21] Platform 0 devices: 3
    [2014-03-12 22:25:21] 0 Tahiti
    [2014-03-12 22:25:21] 1 Tahiti
    [2014-03-12 22:25:21] 2 Tahiti
    [2014-03-12 22:25:21] GPU 0 AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series hardware monitoring enabled
    [2014-03-12 22:25:21] GPU 1 AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series hardware monitoring enabled
    [2014-03-12 22:25:21] GPU 2 AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series hardware monitoring enabled
    [2014-03-12 22:25:21] 3 GPU devices max detected
    [2014-03-12 22:25:21] USB all: found 13 devices – listing known devices
    [2014-03-12 22:25:21] No known USB devices

    But when I start the miner with ./miner_launcher.sh I get :


    [P]ool management [G]PU management [S]ettings [D]isplay options [Q]uit
    GPU 0: 53.0C 2545RPM | OFF / 0.000h/s | A:0 R:0 HW:0 U:0.00/m I:20
    GPU 1: 34.0C 1928RPM | 464.7K/600.5Kh/s | A:0 R:0 HW:0 U:0.00/m I:20
    GPU 2: 30.0C 1969RPM | OFF / 0.000h/s | A:0 R:0 HW:0 U:0.00/m I:20
    ——————————————————————————–

    [2014-03-12 22:26:59] Started cgminer 2.11.4
    [2014-03-12 22:27:00] Probing for an alive pool
    [2014-03-12 22:27:02] Error -5: Enqueueing kernel onto command queue. (clEnqueu
    eNDRangeKernel)
    [2014-03-12 22:27:02] GPU 0 failure, disabling!
    [2014-03-12 22:27:02] Thread 0 being disabled
    [2014-03-12 22:27:06] Error -5: Enqueueing kernel onto command queue. (clEnque

    This is using the exact settings as described in the walk-trough.

    Whit some stuffing around I can get all 3 cards to work but their all running retarded +/- 200khs ea while originally the ran +/- 620 ea.

    I really don;t know what im doing wrong I tried the newer cgminer but this did not help either? I checked the dummy plugs but the seem fine.

    Any help would be greatly appreciated..

    p.s Also when using cryto badgers settings only 1 card mines at 610 khs
    with only 34 Celcius while the OFF card runs hotter doing nothing??

    cheers

    • ezpacer says:

      Hi Matt,
      All the above has happened randomly to me, with no clear evidences as to what exactly is the problem. Somehow initializing the GPU’s is part of this problem, but it is related also I think to the drivers. Why don’t you start from scratch with freshly formatted flash drive and see if you can’t exorcize the rig that way. I really believe that somehow the drivers get corrupted, but can’t tell you for sure that is the problem. I have seen problems clear up in my rigs just by redoing the whole mess. One thing before you do…have you tried “sudo – -adapter=all -f – -initial” Using the “force” command (-f) makes a difference> Good luck! hammer it with this command and sudo reboot, then run the command again, and see if it helps any. Remember you have to run “export DISPLAY=:0” after rebbot, to be able to see results sometimes.

      • Matt says:

        Hi ezpacer,

        Yeah what I ended up doing is a fresh install of xubuntu 12.04 and used
        guminer 2.11 and now everything is running fine.
        Weird as I installed everything the same way as before?

        Thanks mate.

        • CatLikeFelix says:

          Been having huge issues and just installed CGMiner 2.11 and everything is working fine (again!) – very strange but happy I’m mining again!

          • CatLikeFelix says:

            Ha! Spoke to soon!

            I’m now having the exact same problem that Matt had – only one card is active, GPU’s 0 & 2 are “OFF”

            I’m updating the OS to 13.10 to see if that makes a difference – if not guess it’s another fresh install…all fun on a Friday :'(

    • CatLikeFelix says:

      Btw Matt – the only way I could get around this problem was to; 1/ set different thread concurrencies for each card or 2/ remove any reference to thread concurrency but put in the Shaders setting!

      Very weird.

      …but now I have the issues mentioned below!

      ..help!

  4. EIKAS says:

    FORGET, what I was writing before. I got everything almost running.

    When I got a cgminer running and it was loading…. suddenly my rig totally stopped and it can’t be started from motherboard. the power button just do not work. I can still see light from USB stick, but I can’t just get it ON.

    I use same hardware that crypto badger was suggesting, only difference were in GPUs, Im using SAPPHIRE HD 7950 3GB OC GDDR5.

    Can someone help, or does anyone has any suggestions, what I should do now?

    Thanks!!!!!!!!!

  5. EIKAS says:

    Is it over for my motherboard? I use PSU LEPA G Series 1600-Watts .

  6. EIKAS says:

    its seems like 2 GPUs is working but when i add 3rd one, then it crashes and i need to totally unplug PSU, to get started again.

  7. Matt says:

    I’m not sure why it wasn’t working before.

    But changed to xubuntu 12.04 and guminer 2.11.4
    and all my 7950 run like a dream now.

    Much thanks to the C badger!!

  8. CatLikeFelix says:

    Not sure what’s going on. Been having problems so have done a completely fresh install but when I get to this line;

    ./cgminer -n

    CGMiner doesn’t start at all. I have been through everything twice – what’s happened?

  9. CatLikeFelix says:

    After a fresh install due to other issues I now cannot get my cards (3x 7950’s) to hash at more than about 200Kh/s each and can’t set the Engine & Mem clock speeds to more than 300 & 150!. Just seems to be problem after problem since last month.

    Have done 3 fresh installs but this problem persists.

    Any ideas?

    Thanks.

    • angusW says:

      What versions of xubuntu and cgminer have you used? What hardware are you using?

      • CatLikeFelix says:

        Hey angusW

        I’m now back on Xubuntu 12.10 and CGM 2.11. Using CB’s setup with Sapphire 3x 7950’s

        • angusW says:

          When I was using xubuntu 12.10 with cgminer 3.7.2, only 1 card was running no matter what I did. Re-installed 12.10 a couple times and still the same result. I then installed 12.04.04 and all 4 of my cards, Sapphire 7950, are running 562 kh/s. Can’t get any of them to run any higher than that though so I’m going to try 2.11.4 cgminer.

          I’m using a Seasonic X-1250 and 4 powered risers on an Asrock 970 Extreme3.

          • Edwardf says:

            Hi angusW,
            I have two rigs using 4 Sapphire 7950 cards each on RsRock 970EX4 mobo and one Seasonic 1250 and one EVGA 1350. I am using Xubuntu 12.10 and cgminer 3.7.2. All the cards are hashing at or above 600Kh/s. They often jump up to 620 or 630. The average combined Khs/s for each rig is about 2200 but when I look at the pool that I am using, it shows a much higher hash rate. I have each rig set up as a separate worker and together they produce more than 4000Khs/s and sometime up to 5400Khs/s with a low rejection rate of less than 1%. I undervolted the cards but not all the same. One rig with 4 cards will work with 1.094V but the other rig will only work with 1.125 on 3 cards and 1.131 on the 4th card.
            My cgminer script that is working now:
            ./cgminer –scrypt -I 20 -g 1 -w 256 –thread-concurrency 24000 –gpu-engine 1050 –gpu-memclock 1500 –gpu-vddc 1.087 –temp-target 70 –auto-fan -o stratum+tcp://[mining pool] -u [YOUR USERNAME] -p [YOUR PASSWORD] –failover-only -o stratum+tcp://[mining pool] -u [YOUR USERNAME] -p [YOUR PASSWORD]

            Maybe thsi will help you decide.

  10. Jonathan Wood says:

    Hello, I have recently acquired very similar hardware to that of this tutorial. I have installed Xubuntu using the link given onto a usb and that onto another USB which is what the miner runs off. Ever since I installed the software, unfortunately I have had nothing but errors and trouble.
    I am a complete newbie to Xubuntu, I know absolutely nothing. All of the tutorials I have found have said beginner, but I still struggle desperately to understand any of it. I understand this tutorial but nothing in it has worked in terms of commands and such.

    I have:
    3 x gigabyte r9 280x’s OC edition
    1 x AMD A4 5300 2-Core Processor
    1 x Silverstone Strider 1200W Gold Evolution ST1200G
    1 x G.Skill Ripjaws F3-12800CL9D-4GBRL (2x2G) DDR3
    1 x ASRock FM2A88X Extreme6+ Motherboard

    At first when I had issues with the networking port because it was an Atheros made controller. After countless hours spent on Google and various forums, I found many solutions, but none that I either understood or worked at all. So I ended up buying an Ethernet adapter for one of my USB ports and this actually worked, finally. Now that I had internet, I attempted to install the AMD catalyst drivers, which, surprise surprise, returned me with an error in the terminal notifying me it was unable to locate any packages what so ever and it did nothing. Here I am stuck with not a clue what to do, being unable to find anything on the internet at all besides something telling me I should just go to BAMT.

    I don’t want to go to BAMT yet. I would really appreciate it if someone could help me figure out how to install some of these drivers and what not. I am a total rookie so detailed instructions on how to enter commands and the like would be very appreciated. I even tried just skipping and seeing if the next step would work, but it didn’t work either. Thanks in advance for any help at all.

  11. staffnsnake says:

    *mucking, *really

    Damn autocorrect

  12. CatLikeFelix says:

    When I uncompress the Cgminer files it adds a “.c” or a “.h” to the end of lots of the files in the directory. This results in a “.c” being added to the end of the ‘cgminer’ file so I cannot execute that file when the program has installed. I seem to have this problem with all versions of cgminer that don’t contain “64-built” in the download file.

    Too many fresh installs…

  13. Kent says:

    The .c file is the source c code, ie, not yet built. A build means compiled. That’s why you need the built versions, unless you were going to make some tweaks and compile “build” it yourself.

    • CatLikeFelix says:

      OK. Interesting but there is only one version of 3.7.2 so this would point to either a problem with the source file or a problem my end when unzipping / installing?

      • staffnsnake says:

        Did you use the built version I emailed you? The one in Kon’s site is only source code. I also have another version which is also patched to support scrypt-jane as well as scrypt, if you want to mine CACHeCoin or the new Romanian currency Bitleu.

        Do you still have my email address?

        • CatLikeFelix says:

          Don’t believe you sent me anything…could be wrong though.

          The strange thing is everything was working fine but now I’ve got all sorts of problems. Not being able to install a working version of cgminer is one them!

          • staffnsnake says:

            Sorry, must have been another here. Email me airbornerescue at hot mail dot com and I’ll send you the patched version. If you want to switch between scrypt and scrypt-Jane, you need to reboot.

          • CatLikeFelix says:

            done!

  14. Jensen says:

    I’m on step 3, I type the command “sudo aticonfig –lsa” and I get
    sudo “aticonfig: No supported adapter detected”.

    The GPU is properly installed, plugged into the mobo, it’s running, fan spinning and all. What could be the problem?

  15. jeanroger says:

    hi,
    first, sorry for my bad english !
    should i install the AMD SDK APP ? i don’t notice anything about the sdk perharps it is not recommanded ?
    i have two 5850 and my hashrate is bad, only 230 by card, with sdk, it’s worst, 200kh/s and only one card is recognized !
    do you have recommandation ?

    thanks !

  16. Milagros says:

    What’s up, I check your blog on a regular basis. Your humoristic style is witty, keep up the good work!

  17. Trent says:

    I think I did everything almost right but…..
    My puter does not automatically start the miner on restart. I think its looking for a password but I do not know how or where to enter it.
    I did the steps as specified. I might be just too Windows dumb to run Ubuntu.

  18. Sero says:

    So the mining started working except for the GPU temperature. I decided to edit the mining.sh script in nano by entering a –temp parameter. Ever since I am getting the following error message: Unexpected extra commandline arguments. I removed the parameter and went back to the original script that worked and it still gives me the same error message. I tried to make a totally new script file with mining2.sh and it STILL gives me the same error message. Does anyone have any idea what happened?

  19. Sero says:

    well, i was tired and tried to start cgminer by typing this: ./cgminer mining2.sh (WRONG). just type: ./mining2.sh . answered my own stupid question. as to the GPU temperature not showing, would still appreciate some help. tried the ADL-SDK thing which did not work.

  20. Christopher says:

    In step 3 the guide explains:

    “If you see all of your GPUs listed, with “hardware monitoring enabled” next to each, you’re good to go”.

    After I type in the command “sudo aticonfig –adapter=all –odgt” all my 3 GPUs show up, but it doesn’t SAY “hardware monitoring enabled” next to any of then. However they show up with temperature levels next to them, like:

    Adapter 0 – AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series
    Sensor 0: Temperature – 42.00 C

    All three GPUs show up like this.

    Is this what “hardware monitoring enabled” is suppose to look like, or am I doing something wrong?

    • Christopher says:

      Ok, here’s a follow-up

      I continued with the guide, hoping that everything was dandy. After completing the last step of the cgminer installation process (step 5), all my GPUs showed up with “hardware monitoring enabled” next to each of them.

      So far so good.

  21. Christopher says:

    I’ve completed the whole guide but I’m confused about one thing:

    How do I add the miner/worker to coinotron? Do I go online using my miner to register or do I register using my desktop?

    Thanks

    • Christopher says:

      I figured it out: include both the login name + the worker name, when programming cgminer.

      Username = login.worker

      Btw, anyone had any experience with homemade powered risers? I followed this guide and made a few:

      https://forum.nut2pools.com/thread-4-post-54.html#pid54

      I did however register that the leads got quite hot. hotter than the powered risers I got off ebay. I need to test them extensively before I dear to let the rig mine unattended.

      • Edwardf says:

        Christopher,
        I made three powered risers using the same guide and the have been on one of my rigs working 24/7 for about two months so far with no problems. The temps on the cards are the same as the ones on a second rig with power risers I purchased from China.

        • Christopher says:

          Edward,

          Good to hear it works, but I suspect we’ve been using different materials – different leads to be specific.

          The leads on my homemade power riser seems to be thinner than the one I got off Ebay. They’re very hot and have slightly melted the molex connector.

          [IMG]http://i58.tinypic.com/5niu5z.jpg[/IMG]

          http://tinypic.com/r/5niu5z/8

  22. Mike says:

    Help please 🙂 I entered the commands in Step 3 above, and after the ‘sudo reboot’ the Ubuntu start screen displays briely, but then the screen goes blank and I can’t see the desktop. The is a little (tiny) white square in the upper left and that’s it. Black screen. I suspect the commands did something to my graphics card. Any ideas? Do I need to re-install Xubuntu? Thanks for any help!

  23. Eric says:

    hey I was following along but I got lost and need to backtrack – how can I delete everything and make sure my miner isn’t working right now… or auto starting?

    After the settings it got really hot – but I just want to backtrack now and reverse any mining from the tutorial and any automining starting – I am going a different route – please tell me so I can make sure it isn’t auto mining from that automining script or doing any unnecessary work.

    Thank you I appreciate it!

  24. Mattter says:

    Hey
    This might seem to be a stupid question, but in no guide that I read this point is noticed:
    Do you have to connect (temporarily) a monitor and a keyboard to your rig to make these setups? Or can you use some kind of programs for that, like team viewer?

    I’m sorry for my bad english, I’m German 🙂

    Thank you for your replies 🙂

    • Kent says:

      Yes, you need a monitor/keyboard mouse until after step 4, which states,
      Step 4: Install SSH, Curl, and package updates

      Install SSH by typing:
      sudo apt-get install openssh-server byobu
      With SSH installed, you can unplug the keyboard/mouse/monitor (put dummy plugs into all GPUs, though) from your miner, and complete the rest of the installation from your desktop computer.

    • Matter says:

      Thank you! 😀

  25. Christopher says:

    Here’s an odd one:

    After running smoothly for about two weeks, my miner stopped working. I tried rebooting several times without any success, so I decided to reinstall xubuntu.

    I delete everyrhing on the USB stick and start the installation just like the guide explains. It all goes well until I get to “Step 3: Install AMD Catalyst drivers”

    I type in the commands below, and everything seems to go smoothly until I reboot.

    sudo apt-get install fglrx-updates fglrx-amdcccle-updates fglrx-updates-dev
    sudo aticonfig –lsa
    sudo aticonfig –adapter=all –initial
    sudo reboot

    When I boot up it does 1 out of 3 things:

    1. Desktop appears (sometimes with dock and top work bar, sometimes without), but the mouse/keyboard is not responding so I have to manually reboot.

    2. The miner goes straight into BIOS settings, even though xubuntu is installed.

    3. I get a GNU GRUB window which gives me 4 choices: Ubuntu, Advanced options for Ubuntu, Memory test (memtest86+) or Memory test (memtest86+, serial console 115200).

    In the GNU GRUB options window I have tried choosing all options with no luck.

    I am a bit at a loss here, so any feedback is greatly appreciated.

    BTW: I have tried to use a different USB drive, to rule out a faulty USB stick, but the same problem surfaced.

    I might also mention that I have run the reinstallation process several times, but it always goes wrong in “Step 3: Install AMD Catalyst drivers”.

    • ezpacer says:

      Christopher, did you sort through your recent problems? If not, answer this post with an update, I’ll try to give some help if you still are stuck as you described above.

      Regards

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