Category Archives: Tutorials and how to’s

Easy to follow how to’s, guides and technical

SSH to your mmpOS rig

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SSH to your mmpOS rig with this guide.

What would you need

1 – An SSH tool, we prefer MobaXterm, because copying files between your Windows machine and mmpOS rig is simple. Or puTTy or similar.

2 – Your rigs internal network IP address

3 – Be on the same internal network as your rig. If you want to remotely SSH to your rig, you will have to enable port forwarding – which opens your rig to all kinds of people with malicious intent. Port forwarding is not recommended.

*all commands can be typed or copied

Find your rigs internal IP address

1 – Log into your minegate.eu dashboard

2 – click on “rigs”

3 – in the rigs window, click on the rig you want to connect to

4 – scroll through the tabs on the top to the last one called “system”

5 – see your IP address – write it down or remember it.

SSH to your rig

Open MobaXterm, and perform the following:

1 – Click on “session”

2 – Click on “SSH”

3 – Enter your rigs IP address which you just found through the dashboard

4 – Click on “okay”

1 – The default username is “miner”, and the default password is “mmpOS”.

2 – Your password won’t show as you type it into the console – just type it carefully and correct and press enter.

3 – It is highly recommended that you change the password by typing passwd, type the current password (mmpOS) and input your new password twice.

When you are logged on successfully, your screen should look like the one below. Take into account that these guys are continuously improving and upgrading their product, so the options might change somewhat.

You can now perform some of the commands that showed up in the “useful commands” listing, or perform the command line tasks that you were instructed to do by the support guys.

Enjoy!

About DragonCrypto

I am definitely not an expert – I am a very passionate miner though! Mirelle Dismenol and myself strive to make mining more accessible, fun and profitable for all, even for the environment. We truly believe in the future of blockchain, and we hope our efforts contribute to the future success of blockchain and it’s technologies.

Overclock and BIOS mods

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BIOS flash and mod within SMOS / Ubuntu

Disclaimer! You do this at your own risk. By typing this guide we do not take any responsibility for your actions, or bricked cards.

Once you’ve started your rig, and you’ve got some AMD RX cards running, you probably want to start overclocking to get the most hashing power out of your cards.

You can try to find a modded bios on the web, there are free ones and some at a cost. Downloading a BIOS from the web is risky though – please make sure that you are 100% convinced it is the correct BIOS. Personally, we won’t do that, unless we know the person who did the mod.

Either way, you will first have to find out what BIOS you need.

For a small donation for our time, we can do the “one click” BIOS mod for you, if you’re a little uneasy. Read the disclaimer,  Contact us here.

We can also have a custom BIOS mod made for you, which will give you the highest hash rate your card can achieve, as well as cut your energy consumption by about 30%. This comes at a cost to be discussed, and NOT included in the below tutorial.

What you would need

  1. An SSH tool, I prefer MobaXterm, because copying files between your Windows machine and SMOS rig is simple. Or puTTy or similar.
  2. SRBPolaris editor or PolarisBiosEditor
  3. A Windows machine on the same internal network

Hard BIOS switch on some hardware

Some cards have a hard bios switch – visually inspect your card carefully to see of there is one. It will be marked. Sapphire RX580s is situated on the hdmi plug side, on the top. The overclock mode is closest to the HDMI plug, silent mode is away from the HDMI plug. You will see the difference in hashrate as you run your rig. Only flick the switch when your rig is powered down.

1 – Set all cards the to the same hard BIOS switch position.

Get BIOS details

1 – Did you read the disclaimer at the top? Go read it again.

2 – SSH into your rig. If you don’t know how, use our how to SSH into your rig guide. We use MobaXterm here, because it is very easy to use, and you can easily download and upload to and from your windows machine and your SMOS rig.

Install and use AMDMEMINFO to find BIOS details (for getting someone elses modded bios)<read disclaimer

*all commands can be typed or copied

*if your rig crashes or freezes during these actions type “killall screen” to stop your miner from mining before you try again.

1 – Type (or copy) “wget http://54.67.59.249/amdmeminfo.tar.gz && tar xvfz amdmeminfo.tar.gz && sudo mv amdmeminfo /usr/local/bin” to download amdmeminfo.

2 – Type “sudo amdmeminfo” to see your cards and their details. These details, like memory type is quite important here if you want to look for a pre-modded bios (against our advice…. lol).

Back up BIOSes

Before you start modding your bios, you have to back up. Because good practice.

The commands for doing this is:

WhatCommand
Backup your biossudo /root/utils/atiflash -s <card number> <rom file name>
Write biossudo /root/utils/atiflash -p <card number> <rom file name>

1 – So, type “sudo /root/utils/atiflash -s 0 gpu0.rom“.

2 – Do the same for GPU1 and however many you have.
For example, type “sudo /root/utils/atiflash -s 1 gpu1.rom“.

3 – Type “ls -l” to verify that all your bioses are saved and backed up.

4 – Verify that your backed up bioses have a file size – 0 is not good. If this happened to you, type “killall screen” and try again.

5 – Now, transfer these backups to your Windows machine by using the “download selected files” option on the left hand side of your screen.

Mod BIOSes

1 – On your Windows box, open GPU0.rom with SRBPolaris editor.

2 – Depending on the program you are using, find the “pimp my bios” or “pimp my straps” button and click it.

That’s all you do. You don’t have to click twice, or do anything else. Just accept the messages that pop up.

3 – Save the bios file with a new name, like GPU0mod.rom.

4 – Do the same for however many bioses you have.

5 – Upload your modded bioses to your rig with SSH/MobaXterm

 

6 – Now, flash your bios with your modded bios.

The command is “sudo /root/utils/atiflash -p <card number> <rom file name>“

So, type “sudo /root/utils/atiflash -p 0 GPU0mod.rom“

You should get a confirmation that it was successful.

7 – Do this for each of your BIOSes

8 – Restart your miner by rebooting at the miner or console, or “sudo reboot“

Stare at your hashrate in amazement, tell us your hash improvements in the comments, and send us coinz, tell your friends.

About DragonCrypto

I am definitely not an expert – I am a very passionate miner though! Mirelle Dismenol and myself strive to make mining more accessible, fun and profitable for all, even for the environment. We truly believe in the future of blockchain, and we hope our efforts contribute to the future success of blockchain and it’s technologies.

Mining: Where to start

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You will need:

1 – Hardware – a rig

2 – An operating system

3 – A wallet to receive coins

1 – Hardware

You can build your own rig, or buy a rig from someone, or buy an ASIC miner. 

I would suggest something really simple.

  • Look for a mining motherboard with around 6 PCI slots. For some instances riser-less motherboards are better. Go for the simple motherboard and PCIe risers at first, until you get comfortable with your cards temperatures and temperaments.
  • A very low spec CPU that works with your motherboard
  • Find a few RX580 8GB or Nvidia 1060/1070/1080(ti) cards
    • RX580s are cheaper than Nvidia – grab what you can afford and get going.
    • It is a good idea to buy the same cards for one rig, i.e. 6 x RX580 or 4 x 1070ti, for uniformity and ease of management (as a noob).
    • Read up on power supplies, and buy a proper 1600Watt power supply, according to your cards requirements. Search for “mining PSU”, you’ll find many suitables.
    • Buy PCIe risers for your cards (if you didn’t go riser-less)
    • Wait for all of your stuff to arrive, and hope you have everything, and put it together. Search for your motherboard number, like “GA-H110-D3A” to find a tutorial to assemble your rig

2 – Operating System

Most people like to use windows, because they know how it works.

Windows has pro’s and con’s.

Pro’s:

  • “easy” to manage, we’re used to it
  • lots of overclocking software and other helpful software available

Con’s

  • Reboot time is long – every 5 minutes count when you are mining
  • the mountain of extras supplied by Microsoft interfere in your mining and rig stability, like patches and crashes, information gathering, downloading stuff that you didn’t want, etc. (there are quite a few articles and how to’s available to disable these windows functions).
  • Bluescreens and crashes….

We suggest mmpOS (https://app.minegate.eu), which is a magnificent, mining specific, lightweight, Ubuntu based system, which runs from a USB flash stick.

You can find it here – it includes, management, remote access and monitoring, your first 8 GPUs are free, and you pay for the rest. It works out very cheap. We can help you with it, and take you through the basics.

3 – Wallet

You will need a wallet to receive your coins and gainz.

You will have to put your wallets receive string into your miner so it knows where to send your payouts.

Which wallet to choose?

You could have hardware wallets – which are safer than app wallets, but cost money, or you could choose an app wallet, or a web wallet.

We prefer Jaxx, because it houses and receives quite a few different coins, you can exchange coins in it with shapeshift (i.e. ETH > BTC), and it lives on your device (smartphone).

Uber important! Each wallet has a specific encryption key and backup sequence. Please make sure that you keep your keys and recovery instructions and information in a safe place. If you lose this info, and your wallet crashes, you lose it all and nobody can recover it for you, ever again.

For each coin that you decide to mine, you will probably need a wallet address (unless you mine on a pool that converts coins for you – in which case you will need a wallet address anyway). A wallet address is the long “receive” string which you will find in your wallet.

About DragonCrypto

I am definitely not an expert – I am a very passionate miner though! Mirelle Dismenol and myself strive to make mining more accessible, fun and profitable for all, even for the environment. We truly believe in the future of blockchain, and we hope our efforts contribute to the future success of blockchain and it’s technologies.