Difference between revisions of "Litecoin Mining for Funtoo"

Revision as of 16:23, 10 October 2012

Litecoin mining is a fun and easy way that you can help support the Funtoo Linux project. Litecoin is a virtual cryptographic currency that is generated using CPUs and video card GPU computational power, and can be converted into a traditional currency like US dollars. Typically, it is mined by pools of computers, and Funtoo is part of the ozco.in pool.

Here's how to get started and convert your CPU power into a contribution to the Funtoo Linux project.

Compile Miner

The "miner" is the program that performs the computation to generate litecoins. It receives blocks from a server, which it performs computations on. Miners are designed to run continually in the background, where they use up idle CPU only, and will not impact the speed of your system. A significant contribution to Funtoo Linux is only realized when miners are run continually for days and weeks -- so running a miner for an hour or so is typically not effective.

Use your favorite CFLAGS to compile the cpuminer program. Note that -O2 seems to work much better than -O3:

# wget https://github.com/downloads/pooler/cpuminer/pooler-cpuminer-2.2.3.tar.gz
# tar xf pooler-cpuminer-2.2.3.tar.gz
# cd cpuminer-2.2.3
# ./configure CFLAGS="-O2 -march=corei7"
# make -j4
# cp minerd /usr/local/bin

An alternate way to install cpuminer is to use the shiny new flora-ebuild named "net-misc/pooler-cpuminer".

Set up go.sh

Create the following go.sh script to start the miner:

#!/bin/bash
threads=$(cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep -c "^processor" )
while true;
do
  minerd --algo scrypt -s 45 --retry-pause 5 --threads $threads --url http://lc.ozco.in:9332 --userpass funtoo.public:p
done

Make it executable:

# chmod +x go.sh

Run go.sh

Run go.sh to start the miner. The cpuminer will only use idle CPU and will not slow down your system. Modern systems will generate somewhere from 15 to 60 KHash/sec total, which will result in $10 to Funtoo Linux per month for a Core i7 system at current exchange rates.

Track our Progress

You can check the rank and hashrate of Funtoo on the following page: https://lc.ozco.in/stats.php

Keep those miners running and thanks for supporting Funtoo Linux!