Any help for a mac noob would be appreciated

Mining
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I’m an absolute mining noob and computer retard. I have a 3 year old iMac. Is there anyway I could set up mining or should I just forget it? I need really simple youtube type guide to do anything on a computer.

3 Likes
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yes, sure you can. follow the build guide from grin-tech website…

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And if you don’t want to run it on your own computer with your own IP and stuff, you can spin up a node on Google Cloud fairly easily:

The tutorial is a little out of date from when I explored it a few weeks ago, but happy to respond to any questions or walk you through it if I can :slight_smile:

2 Likes
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Hey, thanks for the share! What part of this article is outdated?

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Spin up and sync a Grin node in < 10min:

Create a Google Account

  • Visit http://cloud.google.com and set up an account as an individual.
  • This will require a debit or credit card, they do a $1 reserve charge on your card to ensure it’s valid.
  • As part of signing up you also get $300 in free trial credits to spend within 12 months.

Create a VM

  • Using the GUI, go to Compute Engine / VM Instances. In the menu on that page you should see a “New VM Instance” button. Click that. If the GUI menus or links change, just figure out how to spin up a new VM instance.
  • Configure the VM to your preferences. I chose Debian GNU/Linux 9 (stretch) amd64 with 8vCPUs, 30gb memory, and 100gb storage. This is overkill just to run a node, but I’m impatient and this downloads and syncs in ~10min. The f1-micro in the Always Free tier with 5gb storage will work too, but it takes ~60min to setup.
  • When the VM is read you’ll see a green check mark next to the name of the VM. Click on the SSH drop-down menu, then ctrl click to open an SSH shell in a new browser tab.

Download and Update Stuff

sudo apt-get install build-essential
sudo apt install git nano tmux zlib1g-dev libncursesw5-dev libssl-dev clang cmake libncurses5-dev libncursesw5-dev zlib1g-dev pkg-config
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

curl https://sh.rustup.rs -sSf | sh; source $HOME/.cargo/env
# choose option 1)
rustup update

git clone https://github.com/mimblewimble/grin.git
cd grin
cargo build --release

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

PATH=$PATH:$HOME/grin/target/release:/home/YOUR_USERNAME/.cargo/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/local/games:/usr/games

$ grin
# should open up the command line app and start syncing

Good luck! :slight_smile:

3 Likes
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I got to the point when I try to move grin.toml to the release directory, but I get the error saying “mv: cannot stat ‘grin.toml’: No such file or directory”

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@y3v63n Sorry! I should’ve been more clear. The process I posted above is ALL I did. If you want to do it fast, most of the stuff in the docs can be ignored. I just did it in ~10min using a faster VM. Just updated the instructions for this process end-to-end.

Also, if you really care about the “always free” thing from Google, then you might want to investigate how that works, but I just use the credits Google provides with new accounts. I’ve never run out of credits, but your mileage may vary.

2 Likes
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@jimmy regarding mining on an old iMac, you might want to check the discussions in the mining section. The process is evolving fairly rapidly and I think that GPUs are going to be your main competitors, but I’m not an expert. Better to ask @tromp

  • If you want to mine Grin but don’t have a GPU there are various pools and cloud options that are emerging. There’s a list of them somewhere in the Docs, but I don’t remember where. Hopefully they’ll be more organized before the main net launch though.
  • If you’re set on using your old iMac, there’s sites like WhatToMine - Crypto coins mining profit calculator compared to Ethereum that can help you choose a blockchain that’s friendly towards CPUs and has a low hash power that you could contribute to :slight_smile:
1 Like
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CPUs are at least 10x less efficient than GPUs, so CPU mining is not going to be profitable. You’ll just have to get very lucky to mine a block with your old iMac…

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Hi @burrrata,
Thanks for this post. I followed the steps and it perfectly worked.
Could you please also explain how to set up the mining ?

Thanks

1 Like
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I don’t mine. My interest was in learning about the architecture of the blockchain and the crypto behind it. Best of luck tho :slight_smile:

2 Likes
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Love the “How to: Run a Grin node on Google Cloud for free” explainer. I got as far as… “You’re now ready to receive grins. Try asking the GrinGod faucet for some. In a new terminal window on grin-node1 whilst your node is still running:”

But when I enter: “curl gringod.info” I get the following response: “curl: (7) Failed to connect to gringod.info port 80: Connection refused”

I’m a total noob so it wouldn’t surprise me if I’ve done something stupid while following the tutorial. Any help you guys can offer would be much appreciated. Thank you.

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Sorry, I think the gringod.info faucet is empty for now.

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I’m new to mining so apologies in advance for being useless! I got the following when I span up a google cloud VM and ran the code:

Debian GNU/Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent
permitted by applicable law.
alexanderbeasant7@abgrin:~ sudo apt-get install build-essential Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following additional packages will be installed: binutils bzip2 cpp cpp-6 dpkg-dev fakeroot g++ g++-6 gcc gcc-6 libalgorithm-diff-perl libalgorithm-diff-xs-perl libalgorithm-merge-perl libasan3 libatomic1 libc-dev-bin libc6-dev libcc1-0 libcilkrts5 libdpkg-perl libfakeroot libfile-fcntllock-perl libgcc-6-dev libgomp1 libisl15 libitm1 liblsan0 libmpc3 libmpfr4 libmpx2 libperl5.24 libquadmath0 libstdc++-6-dev libtsan0 libubsan0 linux-libc-dev make manpages manpages-dev patch perl perl-modules-5.24 rename Suggested packages: binutils-doc bzip2-doc cpp-doc gcc-6-locales debian-keyring g++-multilib g++-6-multilib gcc-6-doc libstdc++6-6-dbg gcc-multilib autoconf automake libtool flex bison gdb gcc-doc gcc-6-multilib libgcc1-dbg libgomp1-dbg libitm1-dbg libatomic1-dbg libasan3-dbg liblsan0-dbg libtsan0-dbg libubsan0-dbg libcilkrts5-dbg libmpx2-dbg libquadmath0-dbg glibc-doc libstdc++-6-doc make-doc ed diffutils-doc perl-doc libterm-readline-gnu-perl | libterm-readline-perl-perl The following NEW packages will be installed: binutils build-essential bzip2 cpp cpp-6 dpkg-dev fakeroot g++ g++-6 gcc gcc-6 libalgorithm-diff-perl libalgorithm-diff-xs-perl libalgorithm-merge-perl libasan3 libatomic1 libc-dev-bin libc6-dev libcc1-0 libcilkrts5 libdpkg-perl libfakeroot libfile-fcntllock-perl libgcc-6-dev libgomp1 libisl15 libitm1 liblsan0 libmpc3 libmpfr4 libmpx2 libperl5.24 libquadmath0 libstdc++-6-dev libtsan0 libubsan0 linux-libc-dev make manpages manpages-dev patch perl perl-modules-5.24 rename 0 upgraded, 44 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. Need to get 47.8 MB of archives. After this operation, 206 MB of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y Abort. alexanderbeasant7@abgrin:~