[Guide] How to Mine FTC / Neoscrypt - Sgminer + Ubuntu 14.04 + AMD

[kris_davison]

Yes this is a great tutorial. :)

[ChristianRiesen]

Any enhancements, please send them my way and I gladly upgrade it. This is really partly almost a year old and just what got me to make it work. I think some parts could use a better setup for certain, just didn’t have the time to make it nicer.

[wrapper]

[Guide] How to Mine crypto-currency with Linux on AMD Graphics cards GPU, install sgminer 5.1.2

This guide is for GPU mining with Sgminer 5.1.2 on GNU/Linux (Ubuntu 14.04.0x LTS). It is set up to mine Feathercoin, which uses the neoscrypt algorythm to encrypt each transaction, but will work with multiple algorithms from other alternate currencies, with an appropriate Sgminer config file set-up.

Sgminer 5.1.2 is the same as version 5.1.1, except it has has some additional neoscrypt kernels which kave been let out in the wild and the option to return to version one, which is better with some cards.

See “forked from” on Github, if you want to use the guide on the sgminer-dev source instead.

In general the performance and complexity of GPU mineing comes down to the AMD drivers and lack of support for all previous cards versions in each release. here are also problems where certain versions of the AMD drivers will not work with versions of linux or sgminer.

In order make a stable install which will work with the neoscrypt algorithm, specific versions are used, 14.04 LTS Ubuntu operating system, 14.9 AMD fglrx, 2.9 AMD application SDK and version 6 of AMD’s ADL SDK.

This guide has been tested on R9 2** cards and is optimised for Neoscrypt on R9 280 in the guides default configuration.

#1. install Ubuntu 14.04.0x
Open a terminal and do an update to Ubuntu
Code:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade -y

Install build essentials and dependencies
Code:
sudo apt-get install -y git curl unzip automake autogen yasm autoconf dh-autoreconf build-essential pkg-config openssh-server screen libtool libcurl4-openssl-dev libtool libncurses5-dev libudev-dev gdebi gedit execstack dh-modaliases lib32gcc1 dkms

sudo apt-get install -y xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-video-ati

#2. Manually Install correct AMD Catalyst drivers (14.9)
Code:
sudo apt-get install linux-headers-generic
sudo apt-get purge ‘fglrx*’
sudo rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf
sudo apt-get install --reinstall -y xserver-xorg-core
sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

Download 14.9 driver from AMD :
http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/desktop/previous/detail?os=Linux x86&rev=14.9
Code:
cd ~/
mkdir fglrx4.9

Extract the AMD driver installer
Extract the files and folders from download of the AMD Catalyst™ 14.9 Proprietary Linux x86 Display Driver zip and copy / extract them into the fglrx4.9 directory

run the install commands, after it finishes press exit, then install on the pop up.
Code:
cd fglrx4.9
sudo sh *.run

Initialise the graphics card, install xorg and dependencies.
Code:
sudo aticonfig --adapter=all --initial
sudo aptitude install -yr boinc-amd-opencl opencl-headers mesa-utils libglu1-mesa libgl1-mesa-glx libgl1-mesa-dri

#3. Reboot

#4. install AMD App SDK
Code:
cd ~/
mkdir amd-app-sdk

Download APP-SDK from AMD :
http://developer.amd.com/tools-and-sdks/opencl-zone/amd-accelerated-parallel-processing-app-sdk/
make sure it is version 2.9 AMD-APP-SDK-v2.9-lnx64.tgz extract it into /amd-app-sdk
Code:
cd amd-app-sdk
chmod a+x *.sh
sudo ./Install-AMD-App.sh
sudo aticonfig --adapter=all --initial

#5. Reboot

#6. Install sgminer 5.1.2
Code
cd ~/
git clone https://github.com/wrapperband/sgminer.git

#Download AMD/ADL_SDK_6.0.zip, extract the 'h files from include to ~/sgminer/adl_sdk
http://developer.amd.com/tools-and-sdks/graphics-development/display-library-adl-sdk/
Make sure it is the version ADL_SDK_6.0
Code:
cd ~/sgminer
git submodule init
git submodule update
autoreconf -i -f
CFLAGS=“-O2 -Wall -march=native -std=gnu99” ./configure
make
(sudo make install : optional install)

Check that the build worked
Code:
./sgminer -n
export DISPLAY=:0
export GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT=100
export GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS=1
./sgminer

#7. Create a sgminer start script
#Create the script file to start sgminer correctly
Code:
nano sgminer.sh

Copy in the script code and customise as required :
#!/bin/bash -
#title :sgminer.sh
#description :Start sgminer
export DISPLAY=:0
export GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT=100
export GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS=1
./sgminer

#Make the bash script runnable
Code:
chmod a+x *.sh

#8. Run the sgminer script
Code:
cd ~/sgminer
./sgminer.sh

The different coin algorithms are stored in the sgminer/kernels directory. The kernels are created in C for AMD cl graphics processing programming interface. Esencially the GPU speeds up over CPU by parallel processing.

There are four neoscypts available in the 5.1.2, neoscrypt.cl, neoscrypt.v1 and neoscrypt.v2 are marked as such and version 3 which is “optimised” for R9 280 (default neoscrypt kernel) and marked as neoscrypt.280.

There is also a 79XX kernel version, with some of the 290 code replaced to handle older cards, which is included as a separate file neoscrypt.7690.
It is worth experimenting to see which kernel works best with your setup, copy one of the neoscrypt files then run a recompile…

Recompile sgminer after changing the kernel
Code:
cd ~/sgminer
rm *.bin
autoreconf -i -f && CFLAGS=“-O2 -Wall -march=native -std=gnu99” ./configure && make && ./sgminer.sh

The configuration file sgminer.conf is stored in the .sgminer hidden directory. Use Ctr-H in Gnome / Nautilus or Alt . in KDE / Dolphin, to show the hidden directories in the home directories.

I have experimented and read about xIntensity, it made no difference to adjust that from 3 for neoscrypt. It gave exactly the same results with raw intensity of 5690.

An example sgminer.conf pointing towards p2pools, just replace the address with your own.
Code :
nano ~/sgminer/sgminer.conf

{
“pools”: [
{
“name”: “Neoscrypt Pool2P”,
“url”: “stratum+tcp://p2pool.neoscrypt.de:19327”,
“user”: “ftc address”,
“pass”: “password”,
“no-extranonce”: true
“priority”: “1”
},
{
“name”: “kosmoplovci Pool2P”,
“url”: “stratum+tcp://p2pool.kosmoplovci.org:19327”,
“user”: “ftc address”,
“pass”: “password”,
“no-extranonce”: true,
“priority”: “2”
}
],
“profiles”: [],
“failover-only”: true,
“algorithm”: “neoscrypt”,
“device”: “all”,
“xintensity”: “3”,
“thread-concurrency”: “8192”,
“worksize”: “32”,
“gpu-threads”: “2”,
“temp-cutoff”: “95”,
“temp-overheat”: “85”,
“temp-target”: “75”,
“gpu-memdiff”: “0”,
“shares”: “0”,
“kernel-path”: “/usr/local/bin”,
“api-mcast-port”: “4028”,
“api-port”: “4028”,
“expiry”: “12”,
“failover-switch-delay”: “60”,
“gpu-dyninterval”: “7”,
“gpu-platform”: “-1”,
“hamsi-expand-big”: “4”,
“keccak-unroll”: “0”,
“log”: “5”,
“no-pool-disable”: true,
“no-client-reconnect”: true,
“queue”: “0”,
“scan-time”: “5”,
“tcp-keepalive”: “30”,
“temp-hysteresis”: “3”,
“watchpool-refresh”: “30”
}

[Wellenreiter]

Well done, Wrapper :)

[uncle_muddy]

Ahh now you have gone and done it… I have a machine just sitting here doing nothing with a toxic left in it… I might just have to give this ago and see what i get.

If nothing else with winter in the UK coming I can use it to heat the office :)

[wrapper]

I’m going to put it up on Github, to ease changes.

We could do with a similar thing for the windows version, and a link to the download. I’ll gradually get round to looking at that,
+the windows guide - It’s probably already here somewhere, as I didn’t find the sgminer guide till after I wrote mine and was tidying guides…

My main forum priority is to help do a bit of tidying up of the forum conversion errors, particularly main pages / threads recent history.

1.We need to move guides up to the top level on the forum and

2. go around upping the kudos on guides and up to date threads. My Modes of failure (P.2) is pinned, but is well down the list in support…

[wrapper]

P.S.
Neoscrypt runs pretty low and cool, especially on Linux. The extra memory requirement doesn’t drive the fan so hard as scrypt did. That is perhaps one reason the sgminer choice of intensity is limited to xI 3

[wrapper]

The new forum relies on voting to raise the importance of threads, any chance of “Voting UP” the new Guide to mining Feathercoin on SGMINER . (I can’t vote for my own threads…)

[wrapper]

Just found some Nice stuff, Nice Hash has done, to document and bug fix ALT COIN mining including Neoscrypt

https://www.nicehash.com/?p=multialgo

Updated sgminer for switching - from 5.0.0
https://github.com/nicehash/sgminer

Link to further additional Alt-coin GPU kernels
https://github.com/djm34/sgminer

I’ll gradually test the AMD kernels and see if there is any fixes / links to add to FTC guide

[wrapper]

After Ghostlander did so much new work on it, I’m now recommending NSGminer.

http://forum.feathercoin.com/topic/8235/nsgminer-v0-9-0-the-fastest-neoscrypt-gpu-miner/59