Where does one create a user/pass to be used in the miner config?
For now just use
rpcuser=username
rpcpassword=password
It doesn’t matter since we are on a test net and solo mining. If you were connected to a pool or another these fields would be important.
ah ok cool. i’m just thinking of how i can build a pxe image, salt-state or something for a mass deployment. as far as “solo” mining goes, does a single username running the client on multiple systems still count as solo or do they need to be pooled?
Right now since we only have a low level RPC client we really don’t have a way to pool yet. I haven’t tred running multiple instances in the same user, I’ve just fired up a separate VM.
As far as rapid deployment you may want to consider a Docker, if you are running Ubuntu as host you can have several containers using the same kernel with lower overhead. There is one guy who has already made a Docker container for the testnet: https://minezcash.com/docker-zcash-install/
Yeah I saw that earlier today. i guess it all comes down to how well the client handles multiple threads. if i can address a 10-22 core Xeon without any overhead i’d just assume run it bare metal. If it starts loosing efficiency after 4 or so threads, then stacking containers would be the way to go.
Yeah, ive mainly been running mutiples for benchmarking but they are working on refining the multithreading so hopefully we won’t have to go through the trouble.
i’m really hesitant to buy up a few Xeon ES of various core counts/clock speeds and mess around with different DDR4 speeds until they give us a better idea of wtf is going on. X99 is a big investment and if they go GPU then it’ll be a total waste.
It will only take someone with modest GPU programming experience to create a Zcash compatible GPU miner. In my opinion, anyone who is willing to spend more than a few thousand dollars on mining equipment suitable for Zcash would probably at least consider paying for proprietary software to give themselves the best possible advantage.
That is not so say that individuals with strong CPU equipment will get nothing but, at this point, it’s very hard to gage how extensive the Zcash mainnet mining network will be and how much success small, individual miners will have.
if that’s the case why wont the devs just commit to release a GPU client and avoid all this shady third-party client business. i was looking into dropping like 50K worth of gear, but i want to make sure i’m backing the right horse (cpu vs gpu)
The developers and everyone else already get their decentralised network with what they’re doing and they don’t owe anyone anything beyond that. If a particular miner(s) want a competitive edge, they can follow their own dream.
it’d just be nice to offer a level playing field striaght from the dev, that’s all i’m saying. i’m new to this whole mining thing and i’m just trying to make sense of it all.
Little bit off topic… With $50000 worth of equipment, do you have some idea of how many coins you expect to mine and what they’ll be worth? How many computers is that and do you have experience managing a cluster of that size?
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i design/manage large kvm and ceph clusters 
until the cpu/gpu thing is sorted, i have no idea how many coins i’ll be able to mine given a fixed amount of money and/or power limit. a cpu rig will be much different than a gpu rig. bit of a catch 22 as i can’t really test either solution to nail down a specific config before launch, unless i want to waste money.
I’m in the same boat, I wish I knew the magic hardware answer, it comes down to your risk tolerance. If you’re willing to bet on a hardware setup that has a 50/50 chance of being correct, you can claim a big stake at the gate, but the rest of the world will eventually catch up. And as soon as a coin starts getting good traction the big investors with hundreds of thousands of dollars to “bet” on a horse will join the game.
I know most of us chatting here on the forums are not the huge investors/market makers so we can only do so much to improve our personal hash power. The best we can do is help each other to improve and share our knowledge and maybe pool together to hedge against the big sharks so we don’t get eaten when they smell blood in the water.
Yup. Worst case scenario, I buy X99 gear and then have to buy 5-6GPUs per system after the fact. i’d loose a few hundred dollars per system vs buying H81/Celeron for the base system. I’d just like to avoid that from happening.
We’ll see what the money guy wants to do, i’m just the hardware guy, i want to make sure i’m providing good advise.