Solo Mining Litecoin Tutorial
This tutorial provides instructions for setting up a Litecoin Node and a mining pool. For this tutorial, I used an old Gridseed that I have mining on "lottery" mode with Nice hash.
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Definitions
Litecoin Node: A server running Litecoin Core that maintains it's own blockchain. Litecoin nodes make up the backbone of the Litecoin network. By running your own node, you serve as a peer in the peer-to-peer network that is Litecoin.
Mining Pool: A server running Stratum protocol that can be connected to by mining rigs (e.g. A4+ LTC Master, Antminer L3+, Gridseed) using HTTP(S). The Stratum pool used in this tutorial is UNOMP's Node Merged Pool.
Prerequisites
You should be comfortable working on the command line and using Linux. For this tutorial, we will use a Ubuntu 16 virtual machine (I'm use Google Cloud Engine).
You will need to install and configure the Litecoin daemon running on Ubuntu. You will also need to install and configure Node Merged Pool which uses Node.js.
Understanding networking will help as well. Since you'll be running a few services that heavily depend on a reliable network connection.
You don't need to be a developer but to support this setup and solo mine for a long enough time to actually mine a block, you need system admin skills (might be wise to find a techie friend who can help admin this setup if this is something new to you)
Getting Started
ℹ️ If you're doing this on AWS or GCP, use a large instance with good network connection then after you finish, dial it down to a smaller instance.
First, begin by setting up a Ubuntu server. You will need to have enough disk space for the blockchain. I'm using these specs on Google Cloud Engine:
- Ubuntu 16.04
- 1 vCPU
- 2.5 GB memory
- 100 GB disk
⭐ Once you have your server all setup just do an update before we get going:
sudo apt-get update
Step 1: Installing Litecoin Core
You will need to install and configure Litecoin Core on your server. You will need to be running litecoind (Litecoin Daemon) as well. Litecoin Daemon needs to run 24/7/365 while mining is happening. Here's how I recommend to install it.
- Change to
/optsince that's where software should be install on Linux OSs:
cd /opt
- Get Litecoin Core (double check you're getting the latest, at the time of writing 0.14.2 was the latest):
wget https://download.litecoin.org/litecoin-0.15.1/linux/litecoin-0.15.1-x86_64-linux-gnu.tar.gz
- Uncompress Litecoin Core and remove the compressed file:
tar -xvzf litecoin-0.14.2-x86_64-linux-gnu.tar.gz
rm -rf litecoin-0.14.2-x86_64-linux-gnu.tar.gz
- At this point, you've got Litecoin Core software in
/opt/litecoin-0.14.2. Next, we need to configure the Litecoin Daemon
Step 2: Starting Litecoin Daemon
First we will configure the Litecoin Daemon then we'll start it. Litecoin Daemon looks for a litecoin.conf file. If you go to /opt/litecoin-0.14.2 and try running the daemon without a config you can see where it's looking for you configuration file:
cd /opt/litecoin-0.14.2
bin/litecoin-cli getinfo
This will produce the following message:
error: Could not locate RPC credentials. No authentication cookie could be found, and no rpcpassword is set in the
configuration file (/home/ubuntu/.litecoin/litecoin.conf)
At this point, you can go ahead and create the configuration file in the path the the Deamon is looking (in my case /home/ubuntu/.litecoin/litecoin.conf) or you can choose your only place to put it if your more advanced (maybe /etc).
Once you know where you will put your config file, here's how I recommend configuring your daemon:
- Write the configuration below to
litecoin.conf. In my case I did this like so:
vi /home/ubuntu/.litecoin/litecoin.conf
Then I insert the configuration code: Sample Litecoin Daemon Configuration
rpcuser=litecoinrpc
rpcpassword=pickASecurePassword
rpcport=2300
daemon=1
server=1
gen=1
- Now you can start the Litecoin Daemon:
bin/litecoind
You should see:
Litecoin server starting
- Wait a minute then run:
bin/litecoin-cli getinfo
And look at the output for the "blocks". Run the command again and look at "blocks" again. Confirm the number of block is increasing. This means that the Litecoin Daemon is downloading the blockchain. This will continue until the daemon has downloaded the full blockchain (this is why you needed 100GB of disk).
crontab. Run crontab -e and add:
@reboot /opt/litecoin-0.14.2/bin/litecoind
ℹ️ You DO NOT need to wait to download the full block chain to move onto the next steps.
Step 3: Creating your Stratum Server (aka Mining Pool)
Now that we have Litecoin Daemon running, we can setup out Stratum server where we can connect our mining rig and start working.
First, we will install the OS dependancies needed.
- Install Node.js, NPM, and NVM:
sudo apt-get install nodejs-legacy npm
curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/creationix/nvm/v0.33.6/install.sh | bash
After running curl to install NVM, you should see in your output something like:
=> Appending nvm source string to /home/ubuntu/.bashrc
To use NVM, you'll first need to restart your terminal or reload .bashrc:
source /home/ubuntu/.bashrc
We want to use Node.js 0.10 so run:
nvm install v0.10.25
- Create a space to install UNOMP's Node Merged Pool.
cd /opt
mkdir stratum-server
cd stratum-server
I like putting my software in /opt.
- Next, we need to get the stratum software and install it:
git clone https://github.com/zone117x/node-stratum-pool
cp node-stratum-pool/package.json package.json
npm install
mv node-stratum-pool node_modules/node-stratum-pool
- Now that we have UNOMP's Node.js software, we need to create and configure our own Statrum Server. My example server code lives in
server.js. From the server in/opt/stratum-serverI do:
vi server.js
Then put in the contents of server.js and save the file.
At this point, I can run the stratum server like this:
node server.js
If the server was started successfully, you will start getting log messages on the command line. Since I wasn't done downloading the blockchain, I had these messages. I also remove the part about fees since this is a pool just for myself:
error: [POOL] No rewardRecipients have been setup which means no fees will be taken
error: [POOL] Daemon is still syncing with network (download blockchain) - server will be started once synced
warning: [POOL] Downloaded 95.50% of blockchain from 8 peers
warning: [POOL] Downloaded 95.51% of blockchain from 8 peers
warning: [POOL] Downloaded 95.53% of blockchain from 8 peers
warning: [POOL] Downloaded 95.56% of blockchain from 8 peers
warning: [POOL] Downloaded 95.59% of blockchain from 8 peers
warning: [POOL] Downloaded 95.62% of blockchain from 8 peers
Eventually, you will see this log:
special: [POOL] Stratum Pool Server Started for Litecoin [LTC] {scrypt}
Network Connected: Mainnet
Detected Reward Type: POW
Current Block Height: 1323394
Current Connect Peers: 8
Current Block Diff: 98489231438.12776
Network Difficulty: 31197366290.4415
Network Hash Rate: 11.39 TH
Stratum Port(s): 3256, 3333
Pool Fee Percent: 0%
Block polling every: 1000 ms
And then:
debug: [POOL] Block notification via RPC polling
debug: [POOL] No new blocks for 55 seconds - updating transactions & rebroadcasting work
debug: [POOL] Block notification via RPC polling
Then you're all set!
Step 4: Daemonizing the Stratum Server
I'm a big fan of systemd on Ubuntu so I decided to daemonize my Statrum server using systemd. To do so, you will need to create a file /etc/systemd/system/stratum-server.service. The advantage of this is:
- Logs go to
system.log - You can use
service stratum-server start|stop|restart|status - You can check logs with
journalctl -u statum-server -eor-fto tail To set this up:
- Create the service file by copying the contents of
etc/systemd/system/stratum-server.serviceto your server:
vi /etc/systemd/system/stratum-server.service
Change the ExecStart line to match your setup for Node.
2. Start the service:
service stratum-server start
Check the status to make sure it was successful:
service stratum-server status
This should output:
● stratum-server.service - Stratum Server daemon
Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/stratum-server.service; disabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Sat 2017-12-02 20:10:05 UTC; 5min ago
- Check the logs to make sure it's running:
journalctl -u stratum-server -e
Step 5: Connect your rigs
At this point, your pool is all set and you can start working. Connect your miners to your pool as:
stratum+tcp://EXTERNAL_IP:3333
Where the EXTERNAL_IP is the external IP of your machine.
Read the server.js file for more information about how to change pool settings.
Why I Created My Own Pool and This Tutorial
I was participating in a pool and found 2 blocks which would have earn me a 50 LTC reward. As part of the pool however, I only earned a few LTC in that duration since it was a PPS pool.
I looked into solo mining and couldn't find anything about solo mining with Innoslicion equipment. I didn't want to SSH into my controllers and install anything so I looked into creating a pool where I could then connect my rigs to.
More Nodes on the Network, Metcalf's Law
I also realized that creating my own pool meant I would be adding a node to the Litecoin network. More nodes mean more robust network so in a way I'm adding some value to the Litecoin network. This follows Metcalf's Law which values a network as the number of nodes to the power of 2. So by solo mining and running my own node, I'm actually increasing the value of the Litecoin network from n^2 to (n+1)^2
FAQ and Troubleshooting
What is socket flooding?
This means the difficulty is too low for your miner. I experienced this when I was using diff=32 and my A4+ LTCMaster cranks at 620MHs. Bumped the diff to 1024 and the problem went away. If you get socket flooding, you need to adjust your difficulty.
Why can I not reach my node on port 3333?
You probably forgot to open up the port at the VPC level.
Try using telnet to make sure the port is open:
telnet EXTERNAL_IP 3333
Make sure you can ping your instance first:
ping EXTERNAL_IP
Why am I getting a connection error?
I got this when I set this up on AWS:
Dec 12 00:40:44 ip-172-31-22-159 node[11648]: error: [POOL] Could not start pool, error with init batch RPC call: {"type":"offline","message":"connect ECONNREFUSED"}
First, check your password and such in server.js. After I did that...
I did a getinfo to see what's up with Litecoin Daemon:
$ bin/litecoin-cli getinfo
error: couldn't connect to server: unknown (code -1)
(make sure server is running and you are connecting to the correct RPC port)
I did a quick netstat -nlp and saw that the Litecoin Daemon wasn't running. So I started it again:
bin/litecoind
and then did getinfo and saw this:
error code: -28
error message:
Loading block index...
I waited 30 seconds and did getinfo again and then things looked good.
How to I monitor my Stratum Server?
Since we used systemd, you can use a logging agent. On Google Cloud, you can use stackdriver. On AWS, you can use Cloud Watch agent.
You'll want to create the follow role for CloudWatch:
{
"Version": "2012-10-17",
"Statement": [
{
"Effect": "Allow",
"Action": [
"logs:CreateLogGroup",
"logs:CreateLogStream",
"logs:PutLogEvents",
"logs:DescribeLogStreams"
],
"Resource": [
"arn:aws:logs:*:*:*"
]
}
]
}
bignum Error
root@litecoin-node-primary:/opt/stratum-server# node server.js
module.js:328
throw err;
^
Error: Cannot find module 'bignum'
at Function.Module._resolveFilename (module.js:326:15)
at Function.Module._load (module.js:277:25)
at Module.require (module.js:354:17)
at require (internal/module.js:12:17)
at Object.<anonymous> (/opt/stratum-server/node_modules/stratum-pool/lib/alg
oProperties.js:1:76)
at Module._compile (module.js:410:26)
at Object.Module._extensions..js (module.js:417:10)
at Module.load (module.js:344:32)
at Function.Module._load (module.js:301:12)
at Module.require (module.js:354:17)
Odds are you messed up with nvm. Make sure you run Step 3 correctly. You may need to replace ubuntu with a different username.