Ethereum mining in a VM or Docker?


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I don't see why this wouldn't work.  I have been able to pass through my GPU on both Windows and Linux VMs.  Haven't tried it on my macOS VM yet, but should also work.

 

I followed the procedure as documented in one of SpaceInvader One's excellent tutorial videos.

 

 

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My kids computer has 2 Windows 10 VMs on it and I am passing through a GTX 1070 to each one. Those cards mine when the VM is idle for more than 10 minutes. I used to mine Ethereum and was able to overclock and get good speeds. I am running EBWF on them now mining Zcash and getting 400-420sol/s on each VM. I am just using PCIE passthrough and they game on it when it isn't idle. 

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On 5-10-2017 at 7:30 PM, TOoSmOotH said:

My kids computer has 2 Windows 10 VMs on it and I am passing through a GTX 1070 to each one. Those cards mine when the VM is idle for more than 10 minutes. I used to mine Ethereum and was able to overclock and get good speeds. I am running EBWF on them now mining Zcash and getting 400-420sol/s on each VM. I am just using PCIE passthrough and they game on it when it isn't idle. 

 

 

Did you set up a script for that or do you manually enable the docker / VM / miner (which one is it?) when the Win10 VMs are shut off?

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I never got around to trying this. Not even sure i can pass GPUs with an i3-4170. heh

 

I ended up just building an 8 GPU rig that is sitting beside the unraid box. However, I would have no problem buying two more cards to fill the slots in my unraid box if it is possible.

 

Has anyone else got it running?

Edited by superderpbro
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I've been GPU mining in a Windows VM with docker 6.3.5 for a few months now. It's not been a 100% success story.

 

Using an AMD FX8150 and an ASUS Sabertooth 990FX R1.0 motherboard, I'm unable to pass through the 'first' GPU (i.e. the one that initialises during boot to display unRAID startup stuff) - even if no display is connected and even if I try to manually load the GPU's vbios from a 'rom' file.

 

Second thing, which is something that plagued me when running Windows Server natively on this same hardware and part of the reason I tried out unRAID in the first place, my motherboard cannot reliably power 2 or more GPU's (i.e., unable to provide 75W to all PCIe slots). This manifested in hard power-off whenever CPU usage hit 100% for more than a few seconds. Solved this by using powered PCIe risers on all except 1 GPU.

 

Passing through my GPU's to a Windows VM has been straightforward. 1 x GTX 1070 and 1 x GTX 1060 6GB.

 

Using the Windows 10 Pro evaluation ISO as an install base, I created a VM using OVMF, 2GB RAM, 4 CPU cores and a 50GB drive. GPU's consisting of the VNC adapter as the first display, then each of the GPU's not forgetting to also add the Nvidia HD Audio (HDMI) devices.

 

Usual Windows install. Left it to auto-update and install some basic Nvidia drivers before installing the drivers from the Nvidia website. Remembered to adjust system standby to 'never' in power properties.

 

MSI Afterburner works and enables the much needed memory clock and power adjustments for each card.

 

'ethminer' works just as it would on native hardware.

 

This has given me a 100% stable system.

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Some BIOS have settings to configure that BIOS should use the integrated video on the motherboard instead of jumping for an installed video card.

 

Most gfx cards today are quite nice with requiring power from the motherboard - they like to get almost all power from dedicated cables directly from the PSU. Intel, Tyan et al quite early on learned the hard way what happens if a motherboard runs for too long with too high current on each PSU connector pin.

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I built an Ubuntu VM and downloaded miner software to it, passed the GPU through to in the basic VM settings page and it's been tits the whole time. Works like a champ.

 

Trying to get some of these pre-built miner OS systems like smOS (simpleminer.net) and nvOC to work. They come in a .img being meant to burn to a USB or SSD though.
 

Started a thread on that issue here:

 

IDEALLY I'd like to be able to schedule these VM's to boot and go down on a schedule, so that I can leave the GPU's available for other uses during regular hours, like hardware transcoding for my Plex docker for example. And then in the wee hours of the night allow the miner to boot up and bring in some coin. Is there a way to schedule the boot of a VM in unraid?

 

 

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Got a Windows VM mining on 2x older GPUs and a few cores. Pleased to see what could be done with existing hardware for no additional capital  outlay. Looks like potentially bringing in > £1,000 p/a of Electroneum  before electricity costs*. Might help fund a new Ryzen server upgrade. Blogging about it here;

 

https://mediaserver8.blogspot.ie/2017/12/so-this-week-i-mined-my-first.htm

 

It turned out to be a lot more straightforward than I anticipated.

 

*Assuming coin value remains static at around 6p

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I have a question in regards to the hash rate. 

I have a radeon rx 580 and when running on the Windows 10 VM im only getting around 15-16 on my hash rate.  When i pull the same card and run it on my desktop running windows 10 I'm able to get 26-27 on my hash rate.  Any clue on what to look at for the slowdown on unraid vm?

 

Thanks,

Big

Edited by Big Wig
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Hi @Big Wig

 

I use an RX570 to mine electroneum/msr (monero coins).Out of the box on vanilla Win10 , this card gets ~400 H/s on those coins but with a few optimisations, it gets up to 900! This is on either a bare-metal PC or an unRAID VM.

 

In summary;

-I flashed the bios to unlock otherwise inaccessible clock speeds on the card

-I optimised Win10 for mining

-I run the drivers in computation mode

-Set up multiple threads for the card (if using XMR-STAK miner)

 

There's a really REALLY excellent guide on everything you need to know and do here;

https://mining.help/2017/12/10/windows-10-mining-guide-for-amd-gpus-12-gpu-supported/

 

(there's A LOT of info and steps there, across multiple pages but it's worth doing every single one of them)

 

On your specific question, I'm not sure why you'd see differences between a VM and a standard PC for the same card , assuming both have the same optimised configurations. (I've been caught out by forgetting to enable compute mode in the AMD driver following a re-configuration before and saw a halving in expected hashrates)

 

Also, check that your mining card is not set as the primary GPU in your VM - that can adversely affect performance.

 

 

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https://github.com/ethereum-mining/ethminer
Hey guys has anyone tried this docker?  I want to try and run it but can't figure out how to install the drivers or something idk...i'm sorry im sooooooo new to all this
long time windows user ;(
Since it requires the GPU drivers to be installed, you're going to be farther ahead running this in a VM with the GPU passed through

Sent via Tapatalk because my wife thinks I spend too much time on the computer

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