This was one of those events that I’ve pushed aside for a while because: A) I had easy access to Windows OS’es, B) 16 years of Windows OS experience that made it easy for me to troubleshoot things most of the time, and C) Windows Software is easily available as it is the most well known OS used in the world and has traditionally been the most utilized OS if it still isn’t currently.
While I have very little (maybe a week’s worth of experience now) experience in linux command line language and using it for the most part. I have gotten a little experience from my KNC Mercury and Bitfury Full Kits, but never felt the need to ever switch over my OS for my mining computer. However, my Windows 7 Pro installation wasnt exactly playing nice either. I kept finding myself needing to reset the computer and when I did it would go into a BSOD loop, UNLESS I turned my Block Erupters off. From there I had thought all things had been smooth, but then I would start BFG Miner and it would work sometimes and not other times. I would have it running then 10 minutes in 5-6 of my Erupters (bear in mind I’m running 1 just shy of 70) would stay on. After a few times of turning off and back on, would run back into the BSOD issues. First the BFGminer software would be unresponsive, then 6 minutes later, with a BSOD screen that flashes across the screen and proceeds to force you to turn off your Block erupters yet again to proceed to repeat.
I ignored this problem for a little while and eventually, I lost a whole day from just trying to get things working like normal but couldnt. After a talk with Luke-Jr over IRC, it was clear from him and from the others before him that I should just take the plunge and try out linux.
It wasn’t an easy transition. Luckily, this PC had been pretty barren beforehand so it wasn’t a hard decision to run a clean install, formatting the hard drive. However I first tried to go about it the easy way and to utilize a small-footprint version of debian. I made the presumption that it had the toolbox of everything i needed such as python (I am also planning to do some bot trading from this PC too so it makes sense to make this move now (had the PC with Windows been working well still, I would have moved forward with a virtual machine solution instead).
Debian didn’t work out as well as I liked and so I ended up moving forward with Ubuntu instead. This version (precise) was very feature rich and ended up being what I was looking for. Ultimately, I spent an additional day installing through many attempts of trial and error, the USB device drivers and learning how to get BFGminer detect all erupters with a scanning command (for some odd reason I cannot at all get the BFGminer software to detect the Block Erupters and start mining with them. I have to press M, then the + key then type: erupter:all and from there it takes a turns my Erupters and they’re running! I learned, now through two different OS, DO NOT PLUG IN HUBS to OTHER HUBS like daisy chaining. I have only had problems with things shutting off and not behaving properly by having a combination of hubs connecting to spare ports on other hubs that are running Erupters. They all work properly when connected to a root hub on the PC. I ended up using a compiled version of bfgminer 3.6.0 that was found from https://launchpad.net/~unit3/+archive/bfgminer
Now All that is left is to get my FPGAs up and running (maybe, its .8 GH, I know money is money I need to get them up and running, sigh) I’m going to probably instead update the dimensions on the decals here, until next time readers!
