Mining Litecoin (LTC) on Google Compute Engine with Windows 8

Thanks to the help of a few sites I have been able to set up the new Google Compute Engine to work with LTC CPU Miner.


If you enjoy this post and are in a giving mood I would welcome some Bitcoins or Litecoins :)

• BTC Address: 1G67tkTzyfoQ9rKay6gRWvWeiiNVBEQWax
• LTC Address: Li9PrmRwLCKV5VkJiHHcL8BLd7Ts28XBSZ

Thanks to these links and a bit of trial and error (1st time user of Cygwin)

1. Set up Cygwin: https://developers.google.com/compute/docs/gcutil/
2. Set up my VM: https://developers.google.com/compute/docs/quickstart
3. Set up CPU Miner: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=55038.0

Troubleshooting Lings

1. Trouble Shooting ssh: http://superuser.com/questions/363141/using-git-through-cygwin-on-windows-8/$privUrl

LTC Pool

You can use any LTC pool your would like. The below instructions are tested with http://give-me-coins.com/. This pool allows you to run on port 80

To help make it a but easier, I pasted the instructions from these page below, but made a few changes to reflect the experience I had

Before you start make sure you sign up for Google Cloud Compute Engine and create a Project ID: https://cloud.google.com/products/compute-engine/

Installing gcutil

This section discusses how to install gcutil on your computer.

gcutil is distributed as part of the Cloud SDK, which contains tools and libraries for managing resources on Google Cloud Platform.

Copy and Paste Tip: When in the Cygwin Terminal window right click for copy and paste functions

Installing on Linux or Mac OS XInstalling on Windows with Cygwin

1. Download and install Cygwin. (32bit Version)
   Cygwin's website contains installation instructions. While installing Cygwin, be sure to select openssh, curl, and the latest 2.6.x or 2.7.x version of python from the package selection screen.
   Caution: Due to a bug in python on 64-bit cygwin, please install the 32-bit version.
2. Here are some screen shots on what I selected for the Cygwin installation packages.
   On the below images it says Reinstall, if it’s your 1^st time installing it should say Install

                                                               i.      Openssh

                                                             ii.      Curl

                                                            iii.      2.7.x version of python

1. Start Cygwin.
   By default, you can launch Cygwin by going to Start -> All Programs -> Cygwin -> Cygwin Terminal.
2. Download the Cloud SDK and install it.
   You can download and install the Cloud SDK by issuing the following commands from Cygwin:

   $ curl https://dl.google.com/dl/cloudsdk/release/install_google_cloud_sdk.bash | bash

   Follow the prompts to complete the setup. When prompted if you would like to update your system path, select y.
3. Restart Cygwin (or logout).

Authenticating to Google Compute Engine

Google Compute Engine uses OAuth2 to authenticate and authorize access. Before you can use gcutil, you must first authorize the Cloud SDK on your behalf to access your project and acquire an auth token. You won't need to repeat these steps unless you delete your stored credentials file or remove Google Compute Engine access to your Google account.

1. Run gcloud auth login --no-launch-browser , the tool will print out a verification code that you can copy and paste into a browser

2. $ gcloud auth login --no-launch-browser
   Go to the following link in your browser:
   
   https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/auth?scope=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.googleapis.co%2Fauth%2Fappengine.admin+https%3A%2F%2Fwww.googleapis.com%2Fauth%2Fbigquery+https%3A%2F%2Fwww.googleapis.com%2Fauth%2Fcompute+https%3A%2F%2Fwww.googleapis.com%Fauth%2Fdevstorage.full_control+https%3A%2F%2Fwww.googleapis.com%2Fauth%2Fuser...
   
   Enter verification code:

3. Grant access.
   In the browser window, review the application permissions and click Accept when you are ready copy and paste the printed code on the next page onto the command line.
4. Next, the tool will prompt you for a project ID to use as your default project. Enter the ID of the project you want to use for Google Compute Engine:

   You can list your projects and create new ones in the Google Cloud
   console at https://cloud.google.com/console. If you have a project
   ready, you can enter it now.
   Enter a cloud project id (or leave blank
   to not set): myproject

   
   

Add a firewall

By default, Google Compute Engine blocks all connections to and from an instance to the Internet. To install Apache and serve web pages, you need to create a firewall rule that permits incoming HTTP traffic on port 80.

Note: Because there may be some delay between creating the rule and the propagation of the rule to your instances, we're creating the firewall rule first to allow it time to fully propagate.

Every project comes with two default firewalls:

• A firewall that allows SSH access to any instance.
• A firewall that allows all communication between instances in the same network.

You must manually create a firewall rule that allows HTTP requests to your instance. For this example, create a new firewall using the following gcutil command:

$ gcutil addfirewall http2 --description="Incoming http allowed." --allowed="tcp:http"
INFO: Waiting for asynchronous operation to complete. Current status: RUNNING. Sleeping for 5s.

+---------------------+------------------------------------------------+
|      property       |                     value                      |
+---------------------+------------------------------------------------+
| name                | operation-1340145141786-4c2dadb1ed2a0-578a4b5e |
| creation time       |                                                |
| status              | DONE                                           |
| progress            | 100                                            |
| statusMessage       |                                                |
| target              | httpstuff                                      |
| target id           | 12918719030692922187                           |
| client operation id |                                                |
| insertTime          | YYYY-MM-DDT22:32:21.786                        |
| startTime           | YYYY-MM-DDT22:32:21.964                        |
| endTime             | YYYY-MM-DDT22:32:22.976                        |
| operationType       | insert                                         |
| error code          |                                                |
| error message       |                                                |
+---------------------+------------------------------------------------+

By performing this command, you have:

• Created a new firewall named http2 that allows tcp:http traffic
• Assigned the firewall to the default network in the project. We didn't specify a network for the firewall rule, so it was automatically applied to the defaultnetwork.
• Allowed all sources inside and outside the network (including over the Internet) to make requests to the server. We didn't specify a permitted source for the firewall, so all sources are allowed to make requests to instances assigned to the default network (source 0.0.0.0/0 is the default setting, meaning all sources are allowed).
• Applied this firewall rule to all instances on the network. Because we did not specify a target for your firewall, the firewall applies this rule to all instances in the network.

To review information about your firewall at any time, perform a gcutil getfirewall request:

$ gcutil getfirewall http2

+---------------+-------------------------+
|   property    |          value          |
+---------------+-------------------------+
| name          | http2                   |
| description   | Incoming http allowed.  |
| creation time | YYYY-MM-DDT22:32:22.347 |
| network       | default                 |
| source IPs    | 0.0.0.0/0               |
| source tags   |                         |
| target tags   |                         |
| allowed       | tcp: 80                 |
+---------------+-------------------------+

Whenever you create a firewall, you can restrict the sources and targets to specific callers and instances using appropriate addfirewall flags. To see a complete list of supported flags, run gcutil help addfirewall. See Networking and Firewalls for more information about how networking works in Google Compute Engine.

Create an instance

Next, we need to add and start a new virtual machine instance. Adding an instance creates a persistent virtual machine instance running on the Google Compute Engine infrastructure. You can log in to these instances, configure them, install software, run software, create a network, create a server farm, and much more. You can also delete your instances when you no longer need them.

When you create an instance without attaching a disk, Google Compute Engine will also create a root persistent disk for you, with the image that you specified. The root persistent disk will store the root filesystem and OS image that your instance needs to boot.

Here are the steps to creating your first instance:

1. Create and Start Your Instance
   To create an instance, you need to execute the addinstance command:

   gcutil addinstance <instance-name>

   where <instance-name> is a name that you choose. Your instance name must adhere to the restrictions described on the Instance resource page. For this example, name your instance my-first-instance:

   $ gcutil addinstance my-first-instance --wait_until_running

   Using the --wait_until_running flag

   After you run the addinstance command, gcutil will exit the addinstance command even if your instance has not yet started running. You must then check the status of your instance and wait for the status to change to RUNNING before you can use your new instance. To avoid this extra step, we will use the‑‑wait_until_running flag, which will force the addinstance command to wait until the instance is running before it exits, indicating that the instance is ready to us.
   The addinstance command asks you to choose the following settings for your instance:
   1. Select the us-central1-a zone from the list
      Every instance must live in a zone, which represents the physical location where your instance is stored. Typically, you should select the zone closest to where you are serving data.
   2. Select one of the High CPU machine types
      Details here: https://cloud.google.com/products/compute-engine/#pricing 
      Select the image named Debian - debian-7-wheezy.
   3. Select a passphrase for ssh keys
      If this is your first time using gcutil to add an instance, you will be asked to create a passphrase to protect your ssh keys.
   Password Protecting Your gcutil ssh Keys

   The first time you ssh into an instance, gcutil creates an ssh public/private keypair on your local machine, and copies the public key to your project. These keys are needed to log in to your instance using ssh. When creating these keys for the first time, gcutil will ask for an optional passphrase. Although you can leave this passphrase empty, we highly recommend entering a passphrase to protect your SSH keys. You will rarely be asked to enter your passphrase, and if you do not password protect these keys, a malicious user could use them to access your instances as you.

   Learn more about ssh in Google Compute Engine
2. (Optional) Check Instance Status
   After calling gcutil addinstance, Google Compute Engine will launch your instance. Before you can use your instance, however, you must wait for your instance to report its status as RUNNING. If you didn't use the --wait_until_running flag with the addinstance command, you can check on the status of the instance by querying Google Compute Engine. To check the status of your instance, execute the following command:

   $ gcutil getinstance my-first-instance

Change the windows folder permissions for ssh to work

1. Find your .ssh folder
   Default locations is: C:\cygwin\home\username\
2. Access the Properties of the .ssh directory
3. Click Advanced on the Security tab
4. Change the owner to yourself. You can type in your first name or associated email address
5. Remove any unknown users from the list
6. Click Enable Inheritance
7. Check `Replace all child object permission entries with inheritable permission entries from this object
8. Click OK at the bottom and then Yes to the dialog box.

Log in

The gcutil tool has a built-in ssh command that enables you to ssh into an instance using the instance name.

To log in to your instance, execute the following command:

$ gcutil ssh my-first-instance

The SSH keys you created previously will be used to authenticate your SSH session. You should now be at the command prompt in your instance's home directory.

Once you have logged in, you can do anything you could do on any other standard Linux machine, including installing applications. You have root permissions on your instance and full control over everything.

Install and Run CPU Miner

Building instructions
Installing dependencies for building on Debian, Ubuntu and other APT-based distros:

Code:

$ sudo apt-get install build-essential libcurl4-openssl-dev

Code:

$ wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/cpuminer/files/pooler-cpuminer-2.3.2.tar.gz
$ tar xzf pooler-cpuminer-*.tar.gz
$ cd cpuminer-*
$ ./configure CFLAGS="-O3"
$ make

Basic usage examples

CPU Miner users: use "stratum+tcp" on the host configuration.

Code:

$ ./minerd --url=http://myminingpool.com:9332 --userpass=my.worker:password
$ ./minerd --url=stratum+tcp://myminingpool.com:3333 --userpass=my.worker:password