Litecoin mining is a fun and easy way that you can help support the Funtoo Linux project.Litecoin is a virtual cryptographic currency that is generated using CPUs and video card GPU computational power, and can be converted into a traditional currency like US dollars.Part of Funtoo is having fun, and part of having fun is being creative, and exploring new ideas and concepts, and not being limited by the expectations of others.These concepts include technology, but also include new community concepts and approaches for supporting a community.Distributed support via CPU and GPU power is certainly a novel way of supporting an open source project, and because of this it is a perfect fit for Funtoo.In many ways, the resource challenges faced by open source projects are more complex than the technical challenges, and deserve to be taken seriously.By exploring the use of Litecoin, we are exploring an innovative way to fund the project.These funds will be used to support Funtoo's operating budget, covering hosting and server equipment expenses and other expenses such as hardware purchases for supporting ongoing development for various developers.

Typically, Litecoins are mined by pools of computers, and funtoo is part of the following pooled litecoin mining efforts: There are lots of different ways to mine Litecoins.You can use any of our pools above.You can also use your CPU or your graphics card.To see what different types of hardware can do, see the Litecoin Mining Hardware Comparison page.Note that many of these systems are overclocked so make note of the CPU and memory frequencies listed here.If you already have Litecoins that you want to donate to Funtoo Linux, you can send them to LgtcMbY5JYTQAGzdfJ9U83CPhspNkbJzym.Here's how to do it with litecoind: Be sure to let Daniel know that you sent some coin so that you can receive proper respect :) Here's how to get started and convert your idle CPU power into a contribution to the Funtoo Linux project.The "miner" is the program that performs the computation to generate litecoins.It receives blocks from a server, which it performs computations on.Miners are designed to run continually in the background, where they use up idle CPU only, and will not impact the speed of your system.

A significant contribution to Funtoo Linux is only realized when miners are run continually for days and weeks -- so running a miner for an hour or so is typically not effective.This method will use CFLAGS from /etc/portage/make.conf.Note that -O2 seems to work much better than -O3.Create the following go.sh script to start the miner: Run go.sh to start the miner.aud bitcoin graphThe cpuminer will only use idle CPU and will not slow down your system.and litecoin rigModern systems will generate somewhere from 15 to 60 KHash/sec total, which will result in $10 to Funtoo Linux per month for a Core i7 system at current exchange rates, when run continually.bitcoin core vs electrumKeep those miners running and thanks for supporting Funtoo Linux!ethereum april announcement

cgminer stopped supporting GPU/Scrypt mining in 3.8 series.3.7.2 version is stable and recommended for GPU mining.Some of the more hardcore individuals in the Funtoo community may want to use their graphics processor to mine litecoins.Modern graphics cards, particularly AMD (ATI) cards, can offer hashrates well above 100Khash/sec, even above 400Khash/sec for some cards.bitcoin gonna crashDaniel Robbins has a few Radeon HD 6950's that can generate in excess of 400Khash/sec each.ethereum aud priceAMD (ATI) cards tend to work much better than NVIDIA for litecoin mining.ethereum chfHere's how to do GPU mining: First, X will need to be installed, and you will need to ensure all your video cards are defined in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.pyopencl bitcoin miner

For AMD cards, ati-drivers 13.1 appears to work well.Ensure that full hardware acceleration is working and that ati OpenGL and amd OpenCL are selected via eselect.(This is probably how things are set up if you simply emerged ati-drivers.)First, enable the scrypt USE variable (important!).durch bitcoin reich werdenNow, emerge cgminer: Create a go.sh script that looks like this: This script will start cgminer to connect to newlc.ozco.in, but will automatically fall back to the kattare pool if ozco.in is down.Intensity ranges from 1-20, with higher settings generally offering better hashrates.But if you get too close to 20, you will notice a slow down in interactive performance when using the X server.ssh performance will be unaffected.Be sure to properly set the number of shaders on your card -- 1536 is for an unlocked Radeon HD 6950.Consult SCRYPT-README (look for the --shaders description) to view the correct shaders to use for your card.

Now make it executable, make sure X is running, and start mining: There are other cool things you can do with cgminer, such as overclocking your video card and ramping up the intensity to at or near 20 to dramatically increase hashrates.Happy mining, and if you are mining for Funtoo, thanks :)Missed out on making millions with Bitcoin (what’s Bitcoin, you ask)?Don’t worry – you’ve still got time to jump in on alternative cryptocurrencies, like Litecoin and Feathercoin.Thanks to a different algorithm at the core, those can still be mined by anyone with a graphics card – expensive ASIC Bitcoin miners won’t work.What are you waiting for?!Kannon published a tutorial back in July about getting started with Litecoin Missed Out On The Bitcoin Gold Rush?Get In On The Litecoin Silver Rush Instead Missed Out On The Bitcoin Gold Rush?Get In On The Litecoin Silver Rush Instead If you missed the Bitcoin mining craze and still want to get in on pick-axing a virtual currency, you’re in luck!

In 2011 Litecoin established itself as a major player within the world of electronic... Read More , but the software tools have improved since then, so I thought it would be worth publishing an update.One point to note is that at the time of Kannon’s article, Litecoins were worth less than $3, they’ve now increased to 10 times that value and are significantly more difficult to mine.If you were paying attention, unlike me, then congratulations on your newly acquired fortune – hold onto them!Disclaimer: There are a lot of alternative cryptocurrencies out there, some of which are attempts to get rich quick by the coin’s creator.I’m suggesting Litecoin because it’s the next largest cryptocurrency that’s still possible to mine, but obviously I can’t guarantee the whole cryptocurrency bubble won’t be a complete failure and be banned in every country in a few years.That’s exactly what stopped me mining Bitcoins two years ago now, a decision I clearly regret.Worst case scenario, you’re investing in a nice gaming machine.

If you’re willing to take a gamble on other cryptocurrencies, check CoinWarz for an up-to-date profitability list and limit your search to “Scrypt”-based currencies – those can all still be mined using graphics cards.First, you’re going to need a good graphics card.It is possible to mine using a CPU, but it’s so ridiculously slow it’s just not worth it, even with a top-of-the-range CPU.ASICs designed for Bitcoin mining are also ineffective due to the different algorithm used to mine Litecoins.That’s the thing about ASICs – they’re really good at one dedicated task and useless at anything else.AMD Radeon cards (like this XFX AMD Radeon HD 7750) are overwhelmingly better than equivalently priced NVIDIA cards due to the different architecture (more, slower processors; as opposed to fewer, faster processors), as well as a particular math operation that can be done in one cycle on AMD but requires 3 cycles on NVIDIA cards.Remember, we’re not talking about gaming there, so this certainly doesn’t mean AMD cards are better than NVIDIA at gaming performance; purely in terms of the math required to mine crypto currencies.

Of course, running a high-end graphics card on full load 24/7 requires a lot of power; so much, in fact that unless your graphics card produces more than a certain rate of kilohashes per second, you’ll be making a net loss due to power costs (unless your power is free, in which case, have at it with anything you’ve got).Therefore, it’s important you either invest in a new card, or accurately check what your current card is capable of.Advertisement The easiest way is to check the Litecoin mining hardware comparison chart and see if your card is listed – take the lowest figure there as a realistic estimate of what you can achieve easily, which will give your calculation a little room for error and allow for idling time due to network issues, etc. Plug that number into this calculation tool, along with an estimate of power consumption and power costs for your area; and out will come an idea of how much “profit” you’ll be making – but bear in mind the difficulty will increase rapidly.

For a more realistic approach to Return-On-Investment rather than daily profit, check out this Reddit thread.At this point, it may be painfully obvious that you may even end up making a net loss with your current setup.For this reason, I invested in a new graphics card, a top of the line AMD Sapphire Radeon R9 290.It hits a sweet spot between power consumption, and production rate, even though the purchase cost is quite high.It’s not just the graphics card, of course – the new card required more power than my 350 watt PSU could provide, so that’s another $100 for a new PSU.You could mine solo, but it’s harder, more work to set up, and the rewards aren’t as reliable.Joining a pool means you get paid for all the work do you, whether or not you actually find a block; it’s like a lottery syndicate.Check out the current list of mining pools here.Once you’ve joined a pool, you should find somewhere to “manage workers”.From that page, you’ll find a worker name and password (leave it as x, you don’t need one), and there should be a list of that pools servers somewhere too.

Note these all down.The mining scripts are available for Windows as Kannon described before Missed Out On The Bitcoin Gold Rush?In 2011 Litecoin established itself as a major player within the world of electronic... Read More , but I experienced so many driver problems and variations in performance that it just wasn’t worth the trouble.BAMT is a 2 GB linux distro that boots off USB – it’s dedicate to the task of mining, and it does it well.After two days of thinking I had a dud card — mining would work for a few minutes then any tweaks would kill it and require a complete re-install of Windows (yes, seriously) — I was up and running with a BAMT Live USB in 10 minutes.Seriously, don’t use Windows.At the time of writing, the latest Litecoin enabled BAMT is version 1.2 and it works fine with my R9 290 graphics card, with no driver updates.If you have a newer card, you may need to perform some updates.Download Litecoin BAMT here, and use Win32 Disk Imager to burn it onto a 2 GB USB flash drive.

Boot from it, and presto – you’re mining.Unfortunately, you’re mining for someone else since you haven’t set it up with your own addresses yet.Note: If you’re planning on only using LTC Rabbit, they have their own customised version of BAMT which you might want to look into – the rest of these instructions should still apply.Log in via SSH – the IP address should be shown on the BAMT desktop – as follows: The default password is “live”.Initial configuration needs to be done by editing the /etc/bamt/cgminer.conf Read below for details on what to put in this file, but at the very least adjust it to use your mining pool login credentials.When you’re done, save the file and restart the mining process with: To view the cgminer output and make interactive changes, run: Note the number you find next to the CGMiner process.“Attach” to that screen with the command (replacing 8213 with the number your screen output reported).From there, you can enter interactive mode, or just keep an eye on your card.

The interactive text menu allows you to change settings without permanently adjusting the config file.For exactly, to push the GPU memory clock to 1300, you would press G -> C -> M -> 1300 -> Enter.Before you do anything else, open the cgminer.conf file for editing.Right now it has someone else’s mining pool details in there, so you’ll need to change that as soon as possible and restart.Note that the user entry is a concatenation of your username on that mining pool, a period, and the worker name; the password is usually just x – don’t enter your actual mining pool password – this is just for the worker.If you’ve only joined one pool, delete the details for the additional one, and remove the comma that’s currently separating the two.At some point, you’ll want to join an additional pool as a failover in case the first one is down or does’t have work units available.This file is JSON format, so each property and value must be surrounded by double quotes, and a single colon (:) separates the “property”:”value”.

Between property value pairs, you need a comma.The exact settings you should use will vary by the graphics card – you can search on Google to find something suitable.Here’s some general advice to keep in mind: You should have no trouble finding a suitable configuration for your graphics card, so a quick search on Google will return lots of possibilities to try.Here’s a sample one for R9 series cards.Setting up multiple cards is more difficult, but not impossible.At some point you’ll want to be paid, and for that you’ll need a wallet to “receive” the payments.Your wallet is an application which keeps updated with the network, synchronising transactions.Since your mining machine may be regularly upgrade, reformatted, or otherwise messed around with, it’s a good idea to download the wallet to a more reliable machine that you keep backed up. and download one suitable for your OS.Alternatively, you can store your currencies in an online currency exchange wallet such as BTCe.

The first few hours your wallet will be out of sync, meaning it’s still catching up on all the previous transactions.You can check the Help -> Debug window menu to see the block chain information.When the “Last block time” is roughly the current date, you’ll be in sync again.While out of sync, none of your transactions will show correctly, so if you’ve transferred some in already you’ll need to wait.Cryptocurrency theft has made malware and hacking even more viable than ever – now there’s actual money sitting on your computer, and not just personal information.In some cases, people have lost thousands of coins.For this reason, you’ll want to encrypt your wallet from Settings -> Encrypt Wallet.Absolutely don’t forget your passphrase, obviously – that would be like losing your real life wallet with cash in it.I’m probably not going to make a huge amount of money mining Litecoins; but my ageing GeForce 7800GT was due an upgrade anyway to get ready for the VR revolution 5 Signs The Oculus Rift is Going To Be A Storming Success 5 Signs The Oculus Rift is Going To Be A Storming Success Oculus Rift is going to change gaming, forever - the hype hasn't just fizzled it, it's been sustained for the past year and only growing.