Mining with a SBC

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Last updated 2 years ago

Mining with a SBC

The following guide will show you how to compile a CPU miner (XMRig) for SBCs like the Raspberry Pi.

If you're using a RPi3 or RPi3B+, check out for a more optimized setup.

What are the benefits of compiling XMRig from scratch?

You'll have the most up-to-date version of XMRig
You can optimize XMRig for specific SBCs (improves hash rate)
You can compile XMRig with different releases of GCC (may improve hash rate)
It's possible to disable certain features of XMRig ()

Setup

First we want to make sure your SBC's software is up to date:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

After that's done, we're going to install some tools that are important for the process:

sudo apt-get install git build-essential cmake make libuv1-dev libmicrohttpd-dev gcc g++ automake autoconf pkg-config libcurl4-openssl-dev libjansson-dev libssl-dev libgmp-dev

Compiling XMRig

At this step we'll obtain the latest binaries of XMRig and create a directory called build:

cd ~
git clone https://github.com/xmrig/xmrig.git
cd xmrig && mkdir build && cd build

Now we specify the build flags to optimize XMRig for your SBC in particular. You'll have to only choose one of these:

for any SBC:

cmake ..

for the Raspberry Pi 2:

cmake .. -DCMAKE_C_FLAGS="-mcpu=cortex-a7 -mtune=cortex-a7" -DCMAKE_CXX_FLAGS="-mcpu=cortex-a7 -mtune=cortex-a7"

for the Raspberry Pi 2 if the command above doesn't work:

cmake .. -DARM_TARGET=7

for the Raspberry Pi 3:

cmake .. -DCMAKE_C_FLAGS="-mcpu=cortex-a53 -mtune=cortex-a53" -DCMAKE_CXX_FLAGS="-mcpu=cortex-a53 -mtune=cortex-a53"

for the Raspberry Pi 4:

cmake .. -DCMAKE_C_FLAGS="-mcpu=cortex-a72 -mtune=cortex-a72" -DCMAKE_CXX_FLAGS="-mcpu=cortex-a72 -mtune=cortex-a72"

for the Asus Tinker Board:

cmake .. -DCMAKE_C_FLAGS="-march=armv7-a" -DCMAKE_CXX_FLAGS="-march=armv7-a"

To finish the compilation type:

make

To speed up the compilation you can add -j [amount_of_CPU_cores]. On a Raspberry Pi 2/3 this would be make -j 4 for example.

Configuring and Running XMRig

First we need to copy config.json to the same directory the XMRig executable is located:

cp ~/xmrig/src/config.json config.json

Now we have to edit the configuration file properly. In this guide we'll be using nano, but any other text editor should also work fine:

nano config.json

Your terminal should display the contents of config.json.

In order to mine Kryptokrona, we tell XMRig what algorithm you want to mine. Look out for the "algo": setting and change it to "algo": "cryptonight-pico/trtl",
Instead of "user": "YOUR_WALLET_ADDRESS", simply paste your Kryptokrona wallet address.

When you're done with that, press:

CTRL + O to save, confirm with Enter. And after that, hit CTRL + X to close the file.

Then start the miner:

./xmrig

After entering this command, the miner will start scanning your hardware and begin to mine.

Congratulations! You did it! :)