Litecoin Mining for Funtoo

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.

Note that we are back on ozco.in - they have expanded their servers and resolved network issues. See our ozco.in stats !

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

CPU Mining

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.

Installation using Portage

This method will use CFLAGS from /etc/portage/make.conf. Note that -O2 seems to work much better than -O3.

# emerge pooler-cpuminer

Set up go.sh

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

#!/bin/bash
threads=$(grep -c "^processor" /proc/cpuinfo)
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.

# ./go.sh

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, when run continually.

Keep those miners running and thanks for supporting Funtoo Linux!

GPU Mining

It is also possible to mine litecoins using a modern video card. AMD (ATI) cards tend to work much better than NVIDIA for litecoin mining. Here's how to do GPU mining:

Install cgminer

# emerge cgminer

Create cgminer script

Create a go.sh script that looks like this:

#!/bin/bash
export GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT=100
export GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS=1
export DISPLAY=:0
cgminer \
-o http://lc.ozco.in:9332/ -u funtoo.public -p p \
-o http://bdfl.funtoo.org:9327/ -u funtoo.public -p p \
--intensity 17 \
--scrypt \
--shaders 1536 --thread-concurrency 8000 -g 1 --worksize 256 \
--auto-fan --temp-target 80 --gpu-powertune 10

This script will start cgminer to connect to lc.ozco.in, but will automatically fall back to the funtoo.org p2pool if ozco.in is down. Intensity ranges from 1-20, with higher settings generally offering better hashrates. But if you get too close to 20, you will notice a slow down in interactive performance when using the X server. ssh performance will be unaffected.

Be sure to properly set the number of shaders on your card -- 1536 is for an unlocked Radeon HD 6950. Consult SCRYPT-README (look for the --shaders description) to view the correct shaders to use for your card.

Start Mining

Now make it executable and start mining:

# chmod +x go.sh
# ./go.sh