100% hands-off turnkey AWS solo mining and fullnodes

Mining
1

I just dropped a 100% hands-off AMI for AWS to do solo mining and run fullnode wallets at:
http://zcash.mercerweiss.com

AMI IDs for all AWS regions are at that url
A non-mining fullnode should be able to run in the AWS free-tier

5 Likes
2

thank you very much @anon47418038 !
How can I mine to a pool?

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You’d have to use a pool miner, my AMI uses zcashd with the Tromp solver
activated, so solo mining or running a fullnode.

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Ok, thanks!
After zcash launch, will we need to create a new wallet or do anything else?

Excuse my questions, but I am a noob

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S’okay! All of the files for testnet connections are in the ~/.zcash/testnet directory, and everything for mainnet is in ~/.zcash itself, so the same machine (virtual or otherwise!) can have files for both blockchains, live and test, co-existing on it without them interfering with each other. The first time zcashd runs and connects to either network, it automatically creates a wallet, and then loads that wallet.dat file whenever its started up on that net (main or test).

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That’s great !! However I wasn’t able to see the logs in foreground despite using showmetrics.
Do you know how many sol/s on a c3.xlarge ?

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So if I run this from the ~/.zcash I won’t need to change anything else for when the full net is live?

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what should I type in order to backup my wallet? does anybody know?

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Looks like I need to update the images to the final release and add the mainnet to the zcash.conf, their dnsseed isn’t working right :frowning:

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If zcashd is stopped you can backup the wallet.dat file, just like on bitcoin (zcash is a fork!)

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I get like 4 sol/s with an rx3.large do you think it is normal ?

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I don’t know yet, I’m testing right now myself…I’m running on c3.xlarge and c3.2xlarge’s right now, as they have the best CPU per $$, don’t need tons of ram

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If you are running any of these AMI’s, it looks like zcash.conf and the deb that’s installed need to be updated. To do so:

ssh ubuntu@Your_instance_IP
wget https://apt.z.cash/pool/main/z/zcash/zcash-1.0.0-sprout-amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i zcash-1.0.0-sprout-amd64.deb
sudo su - zcash
zcash-cli stop

Then add the following line to ~/.zcash/zcash.conf

addnode=mainnet.z.cash

Then run the following commands:

cd ~/.zcash
rm -rf blocks/ chainstate/ *log *dat    # this resets the blockchain and wallet, but there's not gonna be anything in them yet
zcashd
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I know it’s a fork, but I don’t know what I need to type in order to back it up to my PC.
If the instance is terminated, and then started again (ex. spot instance), will a new wallet be created, and then have to back this up again?

Are you going to update the AMIs, or we will just follow your instructions above in order to update them?

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I’m going to be updating the AMI’s…if you need to backup the wallet from a node, you can copy /home/zcash/.zcash/wallet.dat to another system if there is anything in it (zcash-cli listunspent to check for mined coins).

I’m going to be adding scripts to sweep all the mined coins into a zaddr (a freshly generated one if you don’t edit the config for a specific one) to a future AMI soon.

Regarding spot instances, there is an option IIRC to not delete the root volume of one when the instance terminates, which is what you’d want to do right now until coin sweeping scripts are in place (mine or your own or someone elses).

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Any command to see the process of mining and earning?

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zcash-cli listunspent will show coins if you’ve mined any so far…which is very unlikely with the slow start

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@anon47418038 - Thanks for putting this together?

Do the slow-start mechanics mean there isn’t much sense in running single-instance miners on AWS?

Also, how do I figure out my wallet address… or is there no such concept with zcash?

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yeah, slow start makes it even more of a lottery to solo mine than normal!

If a miner wins a block reward, you can see the coin’s addresses with:
zcash-cli listunspent

If you haven’t mined any coins on a node, you can generate a new wallet address with:
zcash-cli getnewaddress (transparent address, a taddr) or
zcash-cli z_getnewaddress (a shielded zaddr)

To list your spending keys (zaddrs):
zcash-cli z_listaddresses

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Thanks! That question mark before should have been an exclamation point :slight_smile: