Pool mining with Google Cloud

Recently I set up a few VM instances for pool mining via the Google Cloud platform, and wanted to share what I’ve learned with the community.

Setting up pool mining is a bit different that setting up solo mining. There’s a solo mining guide which we will be following for a while.

I. Registration and initial setup

Follow this link and follow the guide up to point 6 (opening the SSH console): http://www.gridresearchcorp.com/beta/?tutorial

Mind that the interface of the platform has change since, but you should have no problem figuring it out. Here’s a little help.

When you’re ready to create a VM instance, just follow this link: https://console.cloud.google.com/compute/instances

The instance creation page should look like this:

All of the required settings have been set up in this screenshot. Take into account that the boot disk image, mentioned in the solo mining guide is no longer there anymore, but the default one (Debian GNU/Linux 9 (stretch) ) should work just fine.

II. Picking a project and finalizing the setup

If you haven’t decided which project you’d like to crunch, here’s a guide that might be of use: https://steemit.com/gridcoin/@dutch/hardware-and-project-selection-part-3-cpu-projects

Remember that the VM’s only got CPUs, so we need CPU-friendly projects.

Now that you’re done and you’ve opened the SSH console, start typing the commands:

!notice - after typing a linux command give it time to execute, don’t rush

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install boinc

After BOINC is installed:

boinccmd --set_run_mode always

boinccmd --set_network_mode always

Now we have to connect the client to the pool:

boinccmd --join_acct_mgr URL NAME PASSWORD

Where URL is https://www.grcpool.com/ , NAME and PASSWORD are the ones you use to log in to the pool website.

After this command is executed, you should be able to see the new machines in your profile on the pool’s website.

Now it’s time to go to https://www.grcpool.com/account/index , select our new hosts and enable the projects you intend to run. Also select everything but “No CPU” since you want to run only CPU tasks.
Don’t forget to submit the changes.

Try entering the boinccmd --join_acct_mgr command twice in order to sync with the pool.

Then type this:
boinccmd --get_project_urls

If the console responds with a link it means the client is connected to the pool, and the projects should start downloading to the VM.

Here are some basic commands that will give you a little information about the state of the BOINC client, its task, etc:

boinccmd --get_simple_gui_info

boinccmd --get_tasks

boinccmd --get_file_transfers

boinccmd --get_host_info

If you see tasks after executing the “get_tasks” command, type:

top

To exit the GUI, just press CTRL+C.
This should run the application manager. In it you should be able to see that BOINC is using both of your CPU cores at up to 100%. If that’s the case, congratulations - you’re now pool mining using Google Cloud. Most of the things from the solo mining guide still apply.

III. Installing BOINTUI

You might want to install Boinctui for a crude, yet friendly interface to manage your BOINC projects:

sudo apt-get install boinctui

after installation, just call it: boinctui

To exit the interface, press CTRL+C

IV. Afterword

If you have any suggestions on how to improve this guide - please message me, or edit the guide yourself and post it somewhere. I am by no means a linux expert.

Many thanks to user pepperooo. Without their guidance and extensive knowledge of Linux this little crude guide wouldn’t exist.

If you’d like to thank me for writing this tutorial, send a few gridcoins my way: S2aaxwXTuSEDfkywFRhLnpHzo9XJ5rmG3K
or some BTC:
1NbPtpedqQ2T9u6j8bzMzv4RnjkkQkbNsh
I intend to do guides on Amazon and other cloud platforms that can be used/tried for free once I try them out.

Happy mining, and don’t forget -