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This document is a WORK IN PROGRESS.
This is just a quick personal cheat sheet: treat its contents with caution!

Crypto mining...

TODO

Warning

This page is still a work in progress and is very Gentoo oriented.

Table of contents

...Ethereum with Ethminer

Ethminer is an Ethash GPU mining worker: with Ethminer you can mine every coin which relies on an Ethash Proof of Work thus including Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, Metaverse, Musicoin, Ellaism, Pirl, Expanse and others.

Prerequisite(s)

  • A valid graphic installation (you can confirm it with a valid Xorg install), meaning that the kernel is well configured with all the needed drivers.
  • An Ethereum wallet (e.g. with MyEtherWallet: https://www.myetherwallet.com/ ). So you should have a public Ethereum address (like 0x123456abcdef...).

  • A mining pool:

    • https://cryptobtcmining.com/best-ethereum-mining-pools/

    • https://github.com/ethereum-mining/ethminer/blob/master/docs/POOL_EXAMPLES_ETH.md#pools-alphabetic-order

    • Here, I will use https://miningpoolhub.com/. This mining pool...

      • ...support a lot of others coins (not only based on Ethash)

      • ...has a quite low pool fee of 0.9%

      • ...can auto-exchange your mined coins to any other supported altcoins

      • ...can mine several coins with the same algorithm with an algorithm switch mining functionality (e.g. with Ethminer, any Ethash based coin can be mined), in order to auto-mine the most profitable coin

      • ...has a pretty advanced payment system, it's calculated based on rewards depending on the coin difficulty, the block finding fee, transaction fee, the bonuses, the market cost, your hash rate etc.

      • ...has a PPLNS (Pay Per Last N Shares) system: a part of the payment is calculated not base on your hash rate but based on the number of shares you submitted during a shift

      • ...claims that it don't track miners

      • ...servers in each location (Europe, US, Asia) are redundant, meaning there’s no need for a backup

    • In any case, chose a pool that has a close server, a low fee, and that can mine multiple blocks per day (https://etherscan.io/blocks).

Reference(s)

Install

Install the last Ethminer (here, 0.18.0), and install it: 

$ git clone https://github.com/ethereum-mining/ethminer.git
$ cd ehtminer
$ git submodule update --init --recursive
$ git checkout v0.18.0 # checkout to the last stable version (e.g. v0.18.0)
$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ cmake .. -DETHASHCUDA=OFF # if running AMD, -DETHASHCL=OFF if running Nvidia without OpenCl
$ cmake --build .
$ sudo make install

If running AMD

Make sure those kernels options are set to [y]:

  • CONFIG_HMM_MIRROR
  • CONFIG_ZONE_DEVICE
  • CONFIG_DRM_AMDGPU_USERPTR

Then install OpenCL "Open Computing Language" is a framework for writing programs that execute across heterogeneous computing platforms (CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, ASICs, etc.). It is needed to mine with the GPU.

As far as I know, there is two valid options to install OpenCL:

A third option would be to use media-libs/mesa (with --oneshot) with the opencl use flag on. But one would only get OpenCL 1.1 (not 2.x) which seems not to be supported by Ethminer (to be confirmed).

If choosing ROCm

Install rocm-opencl-runtime: 

# emerge -a rocm-opencl-runtime

Check your OpenCL installation: 

# emerge -a rocminfo

$ rocminfo # optionnal

Tip

One might also want to install clinfo to check the opencl installation, but it might conflict with eselect-opencl: 

# emerge -a dev-util/clinfo

clinfo should print something like: 

$ clinfo -a
    > Number of platforms 1
    >   Platform Name     AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing
    > ...

Now it's time to launch Ethminer (v0.18.0): 

$ ethminer --cl-nobin --cl-local-work 256 --cl-global-work 8192 -G -P stratum+tcp://brioche.1:x@europe.ethash-hub.miningpoolhub.com:20535

Why --cl-nobin? Because binary kernels are not yet compiled for ROCm platform: https://github.com/ethereum-mining/ethminer/issues/1827

To better understand the other options, run: 

$ ./ethminer --help

ROCm WIP:

Binary kernels are not yet compiled for ROCm platform, one might try to build it's own...

  • isa files: /home/user/gitapps/ethminer/libethash-cl/kernels/isa
  • kernels: /usr/local/bin/kernels and /home/user/gitapps/ethminer/libethash-cl/kernels/bin

Install clrx (clrx might be useful to build it's own binary kernels, TODO): 

$ git clone git@github.com:CLRX/CLRX-mirror.git
$ cd CLRX-mirror
$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ cmake .. -DBUILD_TESTS=ON -DBUILD_SAMPLES=ON -DBUILD_DOCUMENTATION=ON
$ make
$ sudo make install

Then build new kernel binary:? 

?
$ cd ~/gitapps/ethminer/libethash-cl/kernels/isa
$ clxrasm GCN_ethash.isa # ?
?

If choosing AMDGPU-PRO

Download the AMDGPU-PRO driver from: https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/release-notes/rn-amdgpu-unified-navi-linux. E.g. amdgpu-pro-19.30-934563-ubuntu-18.04.tar.xz.

Find your DISTDIR location (see the DISTDIR variable in /etc/portage/make.conf indicated the path), and copy the downloaded AMDGPU-PRO driver to that location.

Make sure that media-libs/mesa (with --oneshot) isn't compiled with the opencl use flag and that rocm-opencl-runtime isn't emerged.

Then install amdgpu-pro-opencl: 

# emerge -a amdgpu-pro-opencl

Check your OpenCL installation: 

# emerge -a rocminfo

$ rocminfo # optionnal

Tip

One might also want to install clinfo to check the opencl installation, but it might conflict with eselect-opencl: 

# emerge -a dev-util/clinfo

clinfo should print something like: 

$ clinfo -a
    > Number of platforms 1
    >   Platform Name     AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing
    > ...

TODO

Old guide to avoid: https://web.archive.org/web/20170819033405/http://www2.warwick.ac.uk:80/fac/cross_fac/complexity/people/staff/delgenio/amdgpuprogentoo

If running Nvidia

TODO?

How to tweak your AMD graphic card

Install

In order to tweak the clocking and the voltage of the GPU, we will install and use: https://www.github.com/sibradzic/amdgpu-clocks 

$ mkdir -p ~/gitapps
$ cd ~/gitapps
$ git clone https://github.com/sibradzic/amdgpu-clocks.git

Config

First, edit /etc/default/grub in order to add the amdgpu.ppfeaturemask=0xfffd7fff parameter: 

# vi /etc/default/grub
    > ...
    > GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="amdgpu.ppfeaturemask=0xfffd7fff"
    > ...

According to this discussion: https://forum.ethereum.org/discussion/14678/overclocking-rx-580-on-ubuntu-16-04, one can also add the amdgpu.vm_fragment_size=9 parameter (only relevant for AMDGPU-PRO?): 

# vi /etc/default/grub
    > ...
    > GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="amdgpu.ppfeaturemask=0xfffd7fff amdgpu.vm_fragment_size=9"
    > ...

Reconfigure grub and reboot: 

# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
# reboot

Now copy and execute the following script to make sure that the amdgpu.ppfeaturemask=0xfffd7fff parameter has been taken into account: 

$ vi check_ppfeaturemask.sh
    >
    > #!/bin/bash
    >
    > USER_STATES_PATH=${USER_STATES_PATH:-/etc/default/amdgpu-custom-state}
    > SYS_PPFMASK=/sys/module/amdgpu/parameters/ppfeaturemask
    > [ ! -r ${SYS_PPFMASK} ] && echo "Can't access ${SYS_PPFMASK}" && exit 2
    >
    > function check_ppfeaturemask() {
    >   CURRENT_INT10_MASK=$(cat ${SYS_PPFMASK})
    >   # 0x4000 or 14th bit is one indicating if OverDrive has been enabled
    >   OVERDRIVE_MASK=$(printf '%#x' "$(($CURRENT_INT10_MASK & 0x4000))")
    >   [ "x${OVERDRIVE_MASK}" == "x0x4000" ] && echo "..." && echo "[OK] ppfeaturemask is well set, OverDrive is enabled!" && echo "..." && return 0
    >   echo -n "In order to set custom amdgpu power states, boot the machine with "
    >   echo -n "amdgpu.ppfeaturemask=0xfffd7fff or amdgpu.ppfeaturemask=0xffffffff "
    >   echo    "kernel option" && exit 2
    > }
    >
    > check_ppfeaturemask
    >

$ chown +x check_ppfeaturemask.sh
$ ./check_ppfeaturemask.sh
    > ...
    > [OK] ppfeaturemask is well set, OverDrive is enabled!
    > ...

Thanks to the amdgpu.ppfeaturemask=0xfffd7fff parameter, OverDrive functionality is enabled which will allow us to modify the clocking and the voltage.

So, one can configure amdgpu-clocks to use it: 

$ sudo vi /etc/default/amdgpu-custom-states.card0 # create this file if it's the first time
    > # Set custom GPU states 7:
    > OD_SCLK:
    > 7:       1450MHz        1150mV
    > #default:
    > #7:       1380MHz        1150mV
    >
    > # Set custom memory states 2:
    > OD_MCLK:
    > 2:       2050MHz        950mV
    > #default:
    > #2:       2000MHz        950mV
    >
    > # Only allow SCLK states 7:
    > FORCE_SCLK: 7
    >
    > # Force fixed memory state:
    > FORCE_MCLK: 2
    >
    > # In order to allow FORCE_SCLK & FORCE_MCLK:
    > FORCE_PERF_LEVEL: manual

When running amdgpu-clocks, this will override the /sys/class/drmm/card0/device/pp_od_clk_voltage file, which controls the card (see https://github.com/sibradzic/amdgpu-clocks to get more information).

Use

Now simply run amdgpu-clocks: 

$ cd ~/gitapps/amdgpu-clocks
# ./amdgpu-cloks

How to tweak your Nvidia graphic card

TODO?

...Ethereum with Claymore?

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