How to Mine Beam MimbleWimble on an AMD RX580 Headless Ubuntu GPU miner

Just updated my AMD RX480 and RX580 miners to mine Beam. The mining application is not available on most packaged mining distributions yet, so I created a custom headless Ubuntu 16.04 build, and this guide to remember how to do it again.

Initial Operating System Setup

Install Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Server after downloading it from a torrent or using the Ubuntu network installer
Do a standard install using all the defaults , include OpenSSH on installation
After install, login with your username and password
Get ip address with

ifconfig

Go to your PC, ssh to the Ubuntu machine, and do the rest of the setup from your PC so you can copy and paste the commands. I prefer to SSH from Bash shell, but Putty is a good client also.

If you are using a Bash shell from Windows or a Linux machine, or terminal from a Mac, make your logins easier in the future by creating a key on your own computer, then placing it on the miner. Do this on your own computer, at the shell prompt:

ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096
ssh-copy-id user@server

Type the password for the miner, and that should be it. Now you can login without using a password because your trusted key is installed.

Make things easier

Install some basics

sudo apt update
sudo apt -y install vim wget 

Change colors in the VIM editor. If you don’t like VIM, use nano instead. Just copy and paste this:

cat <<EOF >> ~/.vimrc
:color desert
EOF

Improve the bash shell

cat <<EOF >> ~/.bashrc
force_color_prompt=yes
LS_COLORS=$LS_COLORS:'di=0;36:' ; export LS_COLORS
EOF

Upgrade the operating system:

sudo apt -y upgrade && sudo apt -y autoremove

Fix the network so IP address can be changed from DHCP

Not sure why Ubuntu locks one IP address into itself when it first gets an IP address. But it does. So that needs to be changed.
Step 1: Disable the default Firmware inherited names.
Edit your /etc/default/grub

sudo vim /etc/default/grub

Change the line from
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=””
to

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="text"

Change the line from
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=””
to

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="net.ifnames=0 biosdevname=0"

make it take effect

sudo update-grub

Step 2: Create the persistent file /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules as root and fill them. 

sudo vim /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules

Paste this into the new file you just created:

# PCI device lan Device
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="XX:yy:XX:yy:XX:yy", ATTR{dev_id}=="0x0", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME="ethX"
# PCI device Wlan Device
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="XX:yy:XX:yy:XX:yy", ATTR{dev_id}=="0x0", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME="wlanX"

Edit the network interfaces:

sudo vim  /etc/network/interfaces

Change device names to eth0 so it reads:

# The primary network interface
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

Look up your hardware device name (MAC address) with

ifconfig

example:

HWaddr 4c:cc:6a:67:57:07

Go to your DHCP server and map your preferred IP address to the hardware address. You’re on your own for that one. Note that this is entirely optional! You can leave the IP address that was assigned and not change it if you prefer.

REBOOT the system  

sudo reboot

SSH to box using the new IP address you assigned in your DHCP server! If you didn’t change it, then it should be at the same address as before. If you can’t find it, login to the terminal at the computer, type

ifconfig

if you only have a loopback address of 127.0.0.1 then run the DHCP client to get an ip address you can ssh to

sudo dhclient

and redo the network fix.

Install  X server and Display Manager

Install xorg

sudo apt install xorg xserver-xorg-hwe-16.04 xserver-xorg-dummy-hwe-16.04

Edit the config file for xorg-legacy:

sudo vim /etc/X11/Xwrapper.config

delete the last line:
allowed_users=console
insert at end of file:

allowed_users=anybody
needs_root_rights=yes

Create a new file for operating without a monitor connected to box:

sudo vim /etc/X11/xorg.conf

create new file xorg.conf:

Section "ServerLayout"
	Identifier     "X.org Configured"
	Screen      0  "Screen8" 0 0
EndSection

Section "Files"
	ModulePath   "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/misc"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/cyrillic"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi/:unscaled"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi/:unscaled"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi"
	FontPath     "built-ins"
EndSection

Section "Device"
        ### Available Driver options are:-
        ### Values: <i>: integer, <f>: float, <bool>: "True"/"False",
        ### <string>: "String", <freq>: "<f> Hz/kHz/MHz",
        ### <percent>: "<f>%"
        ### [arg]: arg optional
        #Option     "ShadowFB"           	# [<bool>]
        #Option     "DefaultRefresh"     	# [<bool>]
        #Option     "ModeSetClearScreen" 	# [<bool>]
	Identifier  "Card8"
	Driver      "dummy"
    VideoRam 16384
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier  "Monitor8"
    HorizSync   15.0-100.0
    VertRefresh 15.0-200.0
    Modeline "1600x900" 33.92 1600 1632 1760 1792 900 921 924 946
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier "Screen8"
	Device     "Card8"
	Monitor    "Monitor8"
    SubSection "Display"
        Viewport 0 0
        Depth 24
        Virtual 1600 900
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Make sure X works for user on login – copy and paste this:

cat <<EOF >> ~/.bashrc
export DISPLAY=:0
EOF

Change /etc/profile to make it work

sudo vim /etc/profile

# add the following at end of /etc/profile:

export XAUTHORITY=~/.Xauthority

Set variables when user calls X by creating new file .xinitrc:

cat <<EOF > ~/.xinitrc
#!/bin/bash
DISPLAY=:0 && xterm -geometry +1+1 -n login
EOF

Install AMD video driver and SDK

Download these two files  from PC to server somehow. I like to use scp, but sftp works also. 

AMDGPU-PRO Driver Version 17.40 for Ubuntu 16.04.3
AMD OpenCL SDK 3.0

Install AMD driver

tar xf amdgpu-pro-17.40-492261.tar.xz
cd amdgpu-pro-17.40-492261/
sudo ./amdgpu-pro-install

Install AMD SDK (optional – some application need this, others don’t)

tar xf AMD-APP-SDKInstaller-v3.0.130.136-GA-linux64.tar.bz2
sudo ./AMD-APP-SDK-v3.0.130.136-GA-linux64.sh

Add user to video group

sudo usermod -a -G video $LOGNAME

Check amdgpu driver status

sudo apt install clinfo
sudo clinfo
sudo clinfo | grep compute

REBOOT

sudo reboot

Install Beam OpenCL GPU Miner

Make a directory to work in

mkdir beam
cd beam

Download the Linux OpenCL GPU miner file from the webpage at https://www.beam.mw/downloads by copying and pasting the link with wget

wget https://builds.beam.mw/mainnet/2019.01.03/Release/linux/opencl-miner-1.0.52.tar.gz

verify the checksum of the file against what is posted on the website

sha256sum opencl-miner-1.0.52.tar.gz

extract it:

tar xf opencl-miner-1.0.52.tar.gz

Create your own mining file – you will need a beam wallet address that does not expire, a rig number, and an alert email address. Copy this text, edit it with your own information, then paste it while in the ~/beam directory. You can use a different beam mining pool also, of course.

cat <<EOF > startbeammining.sh
#!/bin/bash
xinit &
sleep 5
./beam-opencl-miner  --server beam-us.leafpool.com:4444 --key 11e8bd588bc9e9bb0426f8e251f72dceb19f1dd4033d55098c89c2768d861ec995.rig1/blockops@nullblockoperations.com
EOF

Make the file executable by typing

chmod +x startbeammining.sh

run the miner to see if it works

./startbeammining.sh

Watch and see if anything breaks. If there is a problem, troubleshoot it and fix it. I recommend doing that by joining the Beam Discord and asking for help in the #mining thread.

If it goes well, great! Go on to the next step which creates a file to start and run the miner on reboot, and keep it running.

echo \
"[Unit]
Description=Beam daemon

[Service]
User=$USER
Type=simple
WorkingDirectory=$HOME/beam/
ExecStart=$HOME/beam/startbeammining.sh -daemon -pid=$HOME/beam/beam.pid
PIDFile=$HOME/beam/beam.pid
Restart=always
RestartSec=30

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target" | sudo tee /lib/systemd/system/beam.service

Start and enable the service by typing

sudo systemctl start beam
sudo systemctl enable beam

Make sure the service is running properly by watching the logfile (ctrl-c to exit)

journalctl -fu beam

If you need to stop the mining process for some reason, do it with these two commands

sudo systemctl disable beam
sudo systemctl stop beam

That should get things working for you. Best of luck mining beam!

Rolf Versluis