Mining on rock64

General Discussion
1

Hey im trying to start a project where i would have many rock64 booting pxe.

My Q is there a way to get a software running and starting when boot like a custom iso but a custom image.

My setup

1 pi/rock64 pxe server with a dietpi image diskless

18 x rock64 2 gb no disk

when my solar power i using more power then a need my rock64 would spin up and mine x coin

and befor you say its a waste a cpu cycle to mine whit them bords

https://coinmarketcap.com/da/currencies/veruscoin/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxqtS1N1I3c
https://verus.io
https://minerstat.com/coin/VRSC

they do a round 2-4 mh today market thats a roi of 12-14 month if the electricity is free and im running it all the time

so back to topic is there a way to make a custom image for dietpi?

kind regards :slight_smile:

2

you could install a normal DietPi system, customize it on your needs and install reqired software. Once done, you could use our image creation tool. This would require to place your SD card on a different system to be able to create the image.

bash -c “$(curl -sSfL ‘https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MichaIng/DietPi/master/.meta/dietpi-imager’)”

3

That is get ting me closer to my goal. And amazing that dietpi have a image tool :slight_smile:


Would that image be able to run in ram?

4

Not sure how PXE is working for rock64. But at least on a Raspberry Pi you are not loading an image file if you boot from PXE. It’s a file server sharing the mounts via NFS. And these NFS mounts are mounted into boot and root file system, where the system is booted from.

5

Hmm so im sharing the same image to the other rock64

From the pxe server.

Is there a way to live boot diet pi.
You know like wheb you want to install Ubuntu you get i to a live enviroment to install the GUI

6

looking to this guide https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=6814

PXE on Rock64 is working same way as on RPi. There you boot from a NFS server and not from an image file

7

So its a copy of the pxe host?

8

On the PXE server you need to store the entire file system per SBC. Usually each device has it’s own directories. They are mounted via NFS on the device during boot. The file system is not copied, it is mounted from a NFS server.

9

Aa ok so lets say i get 11 Rock 64 one is pxe server and each of the rocks use 2gb so i Would need min of 20 GB storage plus what the system on pxe server and have and 10% free disk space and so and so on

10

And when i mount a new Rock 64 it use the same distro as the pxe server its just create a New folder for it?

Would i copy the same cronjob to start mining?

11

Theoretically you could clone data directory on the PXE server into new one. Usually the different devices should be identified by serial numbers. Just ensure not using any Static IPs. otherwise each device will start with same IP causing conflicts

Just do a test with a first device to get a feeling on how it is working.

12

Ok so to recap

Install dietpi on rock64

Setup system with mining

Setup system to pxe server using the guide

Boot New Rock to pxe server shut down New Rock

Copy pasta pxe server to New Rock file system

Turn on New rock and it will start mining without storage

13

Thinking about i think its better just to boot from sd card

is there a way boot from sd to ram?

14

what should be the benefit to boot from SD into Memory?

15

The sd card not dying on you. So minimal load on sd card as possible

16

you could try booting from a micro usb stick.

17

So make the the os as a want it
Use the image tool
Flash to usd?

And thank you for your time!

18

yes basically. But have a look how USB boot is working on a rock64. Personally I did not own a rock64 as I just have RPi devices for testing.

19

Does the Rock64 have EMMC onboard?

This thread on redit says something about having just the /boot directory on an SD card, once booted it then uses USB HD for the rest of the / directory

https://www.reddit.com/r/pine64/comments/6ztghk/can_the_rock64_boot_from_usb/

This is some sort of u-boot generator that might help
https://github.com/ayufan-rock64/linux-u-boot