[Support] Partition Pixel - Chia


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Overview: Support thread for Partition Pixel/Chia in CA.

Application: Chia - https://github.com/Chia-Network/chia-blockchain

"Docker Hub": https://github.com/orgs/chia-network/packages/container/package/chia

GitHub: https://github.com/Chia-Network/chia-docker

 

This is not my docker, nor my blockchain, and I'm not a developer for them either. I simply did an Unraid template for the already existing docker so that way It will be easier for me and others to install the docker on an existing Unraid Server. I can support any changes required to the xml template and provide assistance on how to use the parameters or how to use the docker itself.

 

Please read on SSD Endurance if you don't know about Chia and you plan on farming it : https://github.com/Chia-Network/chia-blockchain/wiki/SSD-Endurance

 

Instructions:

  1. Install Partition Pixel's Chia via CA.
  2. Create a 'chia' directory inside of your appdata folder. Skip to step 4 if you do not have an existing chia wallet
  3. Inside this new folder, create a new file called 'mnemonic.txt' and copy and paste your 24 words mnemonic from your wallet inside (every word one after another on the same line with 1 space in between like this sentence).
  4. Back on the docker template, choose a location for your plotting if you plan on plotting on your server (preferably a fast SSD here)
  5. Choose a location for storing your plots (this is where they will be used to 'farm', preferably HDD here)
  6. Feel free to click on show more settings and change any other variable or path you would like
  7. Save changes, pull down the container and enjoy !

 

If you have some unassigned or external HDDs that you want to use for farming:

  1. edit /mnt/user/appdata/chia/mainnet/config/config.yaml
  2. Add more plot directories like so :
      plot_directories:
      - /plots
      - /plots2
  3. Create a new path in the docker template like so :
  • config type : Path
  • container path : /plots2
  • host path : /mnt/an_unassigned_hdd/plots/

 

Here are some often used command lines to get you started:

  • Open a console in the docker container, then type : venv/bin/chia farm summary
  • venv/bin/chia wallet show
  • venv/bin/chia show -s -c
  • venv/bin/chia plots check

 

Command to start plotting :

  • venv/bin/chia plots create -b 5000 -r 2 -n 1 -t /plotting/plot1 -d /plots
  1. -b is amount of ram you want to give
  2. -r is the amount of threads 
  3. -n is the number of plots you want to queue
  4. -t is temp dir
  5. -d is the completed directory

 

From user ropes:
 

Quote

 

This is how I monitor my farm.

If you guys install the nerd pack from community applications, then navigate to nerd pack under settings, install tmux.

image.png.1077a3db2f7b56d2b81c8c757248488b.png

Now launch the unraid terminal & run tmux, then you can have multiple (tabbed) terminal windows in one window. I have 1 tab per plot & can jump around them as needed.

 

Also you can close the terminal window & relaunch your session by running tmux again from the terminal. Also works across different devices or applications, so you can ssh in from your phone or putty etc & just run tmux again & you will be able to see those other terminal windows.

 

Hope this helps.

 

 

If you only want to harvest on this docker, then you don't need to create a mnemonic file with your passphrase. Instead you can do the following (more secure imo) :

chia plots create [other plot options] -f <farmer key> -p <pool key> 

 

If you want to run in Parallel just run the command in another terminal window as many times as your rig will allow.

 

Here are all the available CLI commands for chia :

https://github.com/Chia-Network/chia-blockchain/wiki/CLI-Commands-Reference

 

From user tjb_altf4:
 

Quote

 

Out of the box this docker isn't configured optimally for logging, after some research these are two changes I've made to get better logging.

Both changes are made to the config.yaml file that will be in chia's appdata folder:

 

  1. change log_level to INFO (from WARNING) 
  2. change log_stdout to true (from false)

 

Change one adds more useful info to the logs, change two pushes the logs to the standard docker logging mechanism, which means it is visible from the GUI's log button.

 

Happy hunting!

 

 

 

Edited by Partition Pixel
  • Like 8
  • Thanks 1
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32 minutes ago, Steiner49er said:

I'm having difficulty locating this via searching in CA, and my normal method of narrowing results by encasing search terms in quotes doesn't seem to net me less results, or any depending on how I format... how can I find this package in CA's search? 

 

My bad, the docker is still being added to CA by Squid at the moment, he said it would be added this AM. ( Maybe I should have waited before posting this support thread )

 

EDIT : I'm gonna make it clear in the post that this is not in CA yet

Edited by Partition Pixel
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1 hour ago, Steiner49er said:

I'm having difficulty locating this via searching in CA, and my normal method of narrowing results by encasing search terms in quotes doesn't seem to net me less results, or any depending on how I format... how can I find this package in CA's search? 

 

The docker is now in CA 🎉, simply search for 'chia'

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Nice work boss...I nutted out how to build the docker from reddit the other day and then fix common problems popped up tonight and found an issue because you have put a template up...winning now I can plot away happily and and get auto updates in CA 🍻

 

 

one thing you might want to add is a how to start plotting once docker is up and running I assume from the console it will be 

venv/bin/chia plots create -b 5000 -r 2 -n 1 -t /plotting/plot1 -d /plots 

 

I've always started my from the terminal window using 

 

docker exec -it chia venv/bin/chia plots create -b 5000 -r 2 -n 1 -t /plotting/plot1 -d /plots

 

-b is amount of ram you want to give

-r is the amount of threads 

-n is the number of plots you want to queue

-t is temp dir

-d is the completed directory

 

and if you want to run in Parallel just run the command in another terminal window as many times as your rig will allow

Edited by burgess22
  • Like 1
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1 hour ago, burgess22 said:

Nice work boss...I nutted out how to build the docker from reddit the other day and then fix common problems popped up tonight and found an issue because you have put a template up...winning now I can plot away happily and and get auto updates in CA 🍻

 

 

one thing you might want to add is a how to start plotting once docker is up and running I assume from the console it will be 

venv/bin/chia plots create -b 5000 -r 2 -n 1 -t /plotting/plot1 -d /plots 

 

I've always started my from the terminal window using 

 

docker exec -it chia venv/bin/chia plots create -b 5000 -r 2 -n 1 -t /plotting/plot1 -d /plots

 

-b is amount of ram you want to give

-r is the amount of threads 

-n is the number of plots you want to queue

-t is temp dir

-d is the completed directory

 

and if you want to run in Parallel just run the command in another terminal window as many times as your rig will allow

 

Absolutely, added the command in my first post, thank you 😃

  • Like 1
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how many coins does one get when you "find" what ever they are doing here and get the reward?

 

some online calculators say it takes months to get a reward with like 40TB of space assigned to it so you would have to get like thousands of chia coins to ever recover even the electricity cost of that.

 

Edit: just check there is a reward of 2 XCH per block you find so if you are the chosen one after a few months you get 2 XCH which are currently worth nothing and which is expected to cost like 20 bucks if anything they say holds true and thats already an insanely high estimate.

 

Its basically not worth it to do any of this unless you enjoy burning money.

Edited by Pixel5
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2 hours ago, Pixel5 said:

how many coins does one get when you "find" what ever they are doing here and get the reward?

 

some online calculators say it takes months to get a reward with like 40TB of space assigned to it so you would have to get like thousands of chia coins to ever recover even the electricity cost of that.

 

Edit: just check there is a reward of 2 XCH per block you find so if you are the chosen one after a few months you get 2 XCH which are currently worth nothing and which is expected to cost like 20 bucks if anything they say holds true and thats already an insanely high estimate.

 

Its basically not worth it to do any of this unless you enjoy burning money.

 

Don't take this the wrong way but please don't spread misinformation. At the moment, you can get pretty lucky and get some with 1 plot but it is indeed just pure luck. In about 1-2 weeks, devs are supposed to release the pool protocol which will allow everyone to farm together in a pool. This will give you more consistent rewards and everyone will have to replot to participate in a pool. I personally still think it is worth it if you already have some storage that's doing nothing (which I'm suspecting a lot of unraid users have), but I'm not here to advocate for the blockchain, just providing an easier way to install for those who are insterested by the project.

 

Also you are wrong about the price, chia is currently 550$ USD each and it is now tradeable in a few exchanges. (It was around 1300$ USD at the time of release on exchanges and is slowly stabilizing in the 500-600 range)

 

EDIT: It also takes less space than you think, I have 14 TB right now and I have an estimated time to win of 1 month. Of course, the network is growing very quickly but it's just not in the 40 TB range yet

 

2nd EDIT: Seems like it's back in the 1100$ range lol

 

3rd EDIT: I also suggest you look into the project more in dept. Chia does not take a lot of electricity, especially if you already have a server running, only plotting really takes a bit but farming itself is very green especially compared to other crypto that are using proof of work (like bitcoin)

Edited by Partition Pixel
  • Like 2
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2 hours ago, hgelpke said:

I'd love to know what resources you guys are allocating to this so you don't bring the rest of the server to it's knees.

 

It really depends on what exactly you want to do on your server. I'm guessing you would like to farm + harvest on the server. For farming there is not much requirement there in terms of resources.

 

For harvesting it's another story. Personally, I have 24 threads and 64 GB ram on my server. Of these, I reserved around 8 threads and 30 GB of ram for plex. That means pretty much everything I have left is """free""".

Now the other factor you have is SSD space. I only have 2 small SSDs on my server (2 X 500 GB), and since 1 k=32 plot equals to about 310 GB, I only have enough space to do 2 plots at a time. Because of this I give all my resource left divided by 2 to each plotter. So that means about 8 thread each and 10 GB of ram. These numbers are probably way to big for only 1 plot, since default is 2 threads and 4 GB of ram by plot, but in my case I'm limited by my SSDs. 

 

Another thing you can do is to have multiple plotting machines and send the plots to your unraid server for farming once they are finished. This is what I do with my main computer (this one can do 5 plots at a time) and it seems to work great (haven't found chia yet tho lol).

 

Hopefully this gives you an idea, if you have any more questions don't hesitate to ask 😛

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Thank you OP (PARTITION PIXEL) for setting this up.   I have a question.  How can you configure this Docker to only be a plotter?  I already have a full Chia Node setup in a windows 10 VM on another unRAID server.  It's not immediately obvious in the Chia documentation as to how to do this. 

  • Like 1
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2 hours ago, jonathanm said:

Are there any resources to ELI5 for what plotting and farming are in terms of what is being done with the computer resources, and how it compares to proof of work stuff? Something on the level of https://blog.programster.org/bitcoins-mathematical-problem

 

tjb_altf4 beat me to it 😛 

 

1 hour ago, Jim007 said:

Thank you OP (PARTITION PIXEL) for setting this up.   I have a question.  How can you configure this Docker to only be a plotter?  I already have a full Chia Node setup in a windows 10 VM on another unRAID server.  It's not immediately obvious in the Chia documentation as to how to do this. 

 

You can do this with the 'harvester' variable. On the docker template, click on 'see more settings' and you should see a 'harvester_only' variable. Put that to true instead of false and you should be good to go if your other settings are okay !

 

You can verify if this worked via the docker logs of the container, you should only see this after starting daemon

Starting daemon
chia_harvester: started

 

and no other services started. 

 

39 minutes ago, ephy said:

Thank you for this! ...and hang in there. My bingo card won 2 chia after about 200 plots about a week ago.

 

Dang congrats !!! Thanks for the encouragement, I'm definitely going to keep going as long as I can 😃

 

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6 hours ago, andreidelait said:

Is there a way to add multiple plots locations with this container?

 

This container is the official Chia-Docker. Sadly, right now the container only accepts 1 argument for the plotting folder (/plotting). Right now the only thing I can think of is if you can find a way to have your folders inside of your /plotting share on differents ssds and you point to those when plotting. (Not sure we can do this right now tho)

 

2 hours ago, wertical said:

Hi, how do i see whats going on in chia if i close terminalwindow ? :)

 

 

I'm assuming you're talking about plotting, the only way I found to see what's going on when you close a terminal window that's plotting is this :

  1. Open a terminal on your Unraid Server itself (not the chia docker)
  2. Type : htop
  3. If you're plotting, you should see the command you typed (something like venv/bin/chia plots create -b 5000 -r 2 -n 1 -t /plotting/plot1 -d /plots) at the top of the list
1 hour ago, psychotik said:

Wondering if anyone has or planning to build a docker for HPool Chia mining. I have it setup in windows, but love to have something built for UnRaid.

 

I would strongly advise against farming with HPool. HPool is not a true pool since pools are not implemented right now. You are basically betting on their good faith, what they are doing right now is sketchy at best. That being said, when the pool protocol will be released, I'm sure the official Chia-Docker will have variables added to it that can support pooling. I'll update the Unraid template accordingly when that happens.

 

24 minutes ago, PowerShell said:

When I do chia show -s.

I get the following message "Searching for an initial chain" is this normal?
looks like its not syncing/

 

At the beginning when you are not synced at all, this is normal. However after some time you should begin to see something else, if that's not the case report back here we can try to find solutions !

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29 minutes ago, Partition Pixel said:

 

This container is the official Chia-Docker. Sadly, right now the container only accepts 1 argument for the plotting folder (/plotting). Right now the only thing I can think of is if you can find a way to have your folders inside of your /plotting share on differents ssds and you point to those when plotting. (Not sure we can do this right now tho)

 

 

I was referring to /plots not plotting. I found a solution by adding a new directory in the config file

/mnt/user/appdata/chia/mainnet/config/config.yaml

I added another directory named plots2 and mapped it to another HDD where I store more plots

  plot_directories:
  - /plots
  - /plots2

So I guess you can add as many directories as you need if you're using multiple HDDs.

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Thanks for setting this up!  I've got my container set up and running, seems to be plotting properly.  I've run my plotting command and it's currently computing table 2.  Just to be clear I can close that terminal window now and just let it run, right?  I've been running a chia node in a Windows VM with the GUI but hoping to free up those resources and just let this run so I can more effectively use my array drives.  I'm still learning my way through terminal stuff so I don't want to break this lol

Edited by boosting1bar
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1 hour ago, andreidelait said:

 

I was referring to /plots not plotting. I found a solution by adding a new directory in the config file



/mnt/user/appdata/chia/mainnet/config/config.yaml

I added another directory named plots2 and mapped it to another HDD where I store more plots



  plot_directories:
  - /plots
  - /plots2

So I guess you can add as many directories as you need if you're using multiple HDDs.

 

I didn't realise this, thanks for bringing it to my attention. I 'm gonna update my first post to reflect this and I also think I'm going to be able to add more variables in the template !

 

EDIT: Note that In the case of Unraid you can map this to a share that is included in many HDDs instead of creating a share for each HDD

 

1 hour ago, boosting1bar said:

Thanks for setting this up!  I've got my container set up and running, seems to be plotting properly.  I've run my plotting command and it's currently computing table 2.  Just to be clear I can close that terminal window now and just let it run, right?  I've been running a chia node in a Windows VM with the GUI but hoping to free up those resources and just let this run so I can more effectively use my array drives.  I'm still learning my way through terminal stuff so I don't want to break this lol

 

Yes ! You can close the terminal and it will still run. You can check that the process is still running by opening a terminal on unraid (not the docker) and typing 'htop'. You should see a 'chia create plot' in the first things in the list

Edited by Partition Pixel
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14 minutes ago, Partition Pixel said:

 

Yes ! You can close the terminal and it will still run. You can check that the process is still running by opening a terminal on unraid (not the docker) and typing 'htop'. You should see a 'chia create plot' in the first things in the list

 

One last dumb question.  I initially ran your command to start plotting as verbatim above and it was working fine.  It looked like it was plotting onto a slow array drive instead of my ssd cache drive where I'd intended it to go.  I stopped the running command and redid the command above as

venv/bin/chia plots create -b 5000 -r 2 -n 1 -t /mnt/chiaminer/plotting -d /mnt/user/chia/plots

where /mnt/chiaminer is my SSD cache pool set up specifically for this and /mnt/user/chia is the spinny drives in the array where they would settle after plotting.  When I do that I get this error immediately after starting computing "Only wrote 384 of 1048572 bytes at offset 100662912 to "/mnt/chiaminer/plotting/plot-k32-2021-05-08-17-55-938e7086435dc79126efd7780afcf675878038a71141ee6eb2bb80c766687c3d.plot.p1.t1.sort_bucket_054.tmp"with length 100663296. Error 1. Retrying in five minutes."  I also get a popup error of "Alert [servername] - Docker image disk utilization of 100%
Docker utilization of image file /mnt/user/system/docker/docker.img" Do I need to just leave the plotting command verbatim?

 

(I think the answer is verbatim, because the set up of the docker container specifies those directories and the console command doesn't need changed)

 

Answered my own question with more poking around.  It looks like it's putting the plotting drive on the array but when I compute shares I see it's dropping it in the proper location.

Edited by boosting1bar
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