HOWTO : BitCoin Mining with nVidia GeForce on Ubuntu Desktop 12.04 LTS and 12.10

What is BitCoin?



Bitcoin is an experimental new digital currency that enables instant payments to anyone, anywhere in the world. Bitcoin uses peer-to-peer technology to operate with no central authority: managing transactions and issuing money are carried out collectively by the network. Bitcoin is also the name of the open source software which enables the use of this currency.



BitCoin Mining Benchmark



I think it is not too late for BitCoin mining. I know that AMD Radeon display card is more faster than nVidia when doing BitCoin mining and hash cracking. There is a benchmark comparsion at here. However, I have two nVidia GeForce GTX590 display card and I have no fund to buy another system for the purpose.



To install Ubuntu Desktop on nVidia system, you need to add "nomodeset" as Linux kernel parameter.



Installation



(A) BitCoin Wallet



sudo add-apt-repository ppa:bitcoin/bitcoin

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install bitcoin-qt bitcoind



(B) OpenCL



sudo apt-get install ocl-icd-libopencl1



Download nvidia-opencl-icd 195.36.31-6squeeze2

http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/nvidia-opencl-icd



Download nvidia-opencl-common 195.36.31-6squeeze2

http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/nvidia-opencl-common



Download libcuda1 195.36.31-6squeeze2

http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/libcuda1



Install them with the following command :



sudo dpkg -i *.deb



sudo apt-get install python-pyopencl python-pyopencl-headers python-wxgtk2.8 python-wxtools wx2.8-i18n python-bumpy python-netifaces



* nvidia-opencl-icd, nvidia-opencl-common and libcuda1 may be fixed in Ubuntu 13.04 and you are not required to download sperately



(C) nVidia driver



sudo apt-get install jockey-common



For Ubuntu 12.10 :



Please refer to here as the Ubuntu 12.10 have a minor bug for nVidia display driver as it lack of kernel headers for building the nvidia module.



(D) GUIMiner



GUIMiner download from https://github.com/Kiv/poclbm



sudo apt-get install git

git clone https://github.com/Kiv/poclbm.git



Edit the file ioutil.py to correct something :



cd poclbm

nano ioutil.py



To make it looking like the following at the beginning of the file :



from glob import glob

#from serial.tools import list_ports

import serial



To run the GUIMiner :



cd poclbm

python guiminer.py



(E) Bonus



(1) GUIMiner for Windows (All-in-One)



GUIMiner Advanced Setup download



(2) AMD APP SDK for AMD Radeon



AMD APP SDK



(3) Ufasoft Miner (bitcoin-miner for CPU)



bitcoin-miner

bitcoin-miner for Windows

bitcoin-miner (Source Code for Linux)



(4) GUIMiner (poclbm.py) Settings



For best performance but higher temperature -

nVidia GTX590 : -v -f0 -w128

nVidia GTX460 : -v -f0 -w128



For lower temperature but lesser performance -

nVidia GTX590 : -s0.01

nVidia GTX460 : -s0.01



e.g. Two GTX590 (a total of 4 CUDA devices) running setting of -s0.01 at room temperature (21 degree) under water cooling. The temperature of each CUDA devices is around 50 degree. The performance of each CUDA device is around 73 Mhash/s. The total performance is about 292 Mhash/s. If this box is running in room temperature in summer here (around 30-33 degree), the maximum temperature of CUDA device will be around 80 degree under water cooling condition.



The performance of BitCoin mining of this box is not good at all with the high price of the GTX590. I do not recommend to use nVidia display card for BitCoin mining and hash cracking.



* each entry for each CUDA device in GUIMiner



(5) BFGMiner for AMD Radeon/CPU/ASIC



Ubuntu PPA



(6) ASIC mining is the most fastest in the world so far



(7) Make sure you have backup your BitCoin (BTC) as it is either stored in the pool server or local machine.



That's all! See you.