What's this about?

Mining on Block Collider's blockchain with LG's CUDA RPC miner in a Docker container.

Prerequisites

1. Linux-capable x86_64 PC with at least 10 GB RAM
   1. It doesn't need a fast CPU but something faster than an Atom/Celeron may be required for low latency rovering.
   2. SSD always helps.
2. At least one CUDA compatible Nvidia GPU.
3. Preferably a low latency Internet connection.
4. Some basic Linux skills.

Installation

In a nutshell:

1. Install Debian 10 Buster as the host OS.
2. Install the appropriate tools like apt-get install -y git wget curl ca-certificates jq
3. Install Docker from https://docs.docker.com/install/linux/docker-ce/debian/
4. Install Nvidia's CUDA Drivers from http://us.download.nvidia.com/tesla/440.33.01/NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-440.33.01.run
   1. It must be this version of the nvidia driver to function!
   2. Do not run the full CUDA installer from nvidia on the host machine unless you really know what you're doing!
5. Install https://github.com/NVIDIA/nvidia-docker
6. This might be a good time for a system reboot.
7. git clone https://github.com/trick77/bcnode-gpu-docker bcnode-gpu-docker && cd $_
8. Build the Docker images locally using ./build-images.sh (grab an 0xc0ffee since this will take a while)
9. Open the ./config file and edit at least your your miner key
10. If the image build was a success, start the containers with the provided ./start.sh in this directory

Unfortunately, we can't use docker-compose for the whole thing yet since it doesn't support the required gpu flag.

Gotchas:

1. Watch for errors if sudo is not installed. While sudo is not required it's contained in some of the manual installation instructions.
2. The provided start script will output if Docker is able to find a compatible GPU on the host. If the output doesn't show any compatible GPU, you have to fix this first.
3. You want to re-run ./build-images.sh whenever a new blockcollider/bcnode image is released or you will mine on an outdated version rather sooner than later.
4. Yes, building the images locally takes some effort. However, do not rely on prebuilt 3rd party docker images. You don't know what code changes were made. You could easily be mining to someone else's wallet.
5. If something doesn't work, don't complain about it. Analyze it, fix it, improve it, submit a pull request.
6. You didn't read this README.

Tips & tricks

• If you want to save time for rebuilding the images, always pass the --nopurge parameter to the build-images.sh script. This will use more diskspace though.
• To see what bcnode is currently doing use docker logs -f bcnode --tail 100, abort the output with CTRL-C (this will not terminate the process)
• From time to time, you may want to run a docker system prune -f to remove old images and free up disk space.
• Use docker volume rm db to get rid of the blockchain database and start syncing from scratch. You obviously want to do this when the bcnode container is not currently running.

Thanks

Kudos go out to all the nerds in our little BC GPU miner tester community for their know-how, tech and moral support.

A message to the Block Collider team

Please support this development with:

1. Create a way to plug in a 3rd party GRPC miner.
   1. Not disabling the Rust miner in officer.es6 would be a start
   2. Make the GRPC miner URL fully customizable via its own environment variable
   3. Don't spawn the GRPC miner within the main process
2. Handle MinerResponseResult.CANCELED and MinerResponseResult.ERROR in officer.es6

And please, stop with the closed source crap. Put all the source code and the build pipeline in a public Github repository so we don't have to dig out the transpiled results from your Docker images. It helps to support your developments and you are required to do so by law since you're using components which are released under GNU GPL:

"The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable."