I spent many hours this week-end trying to get the blockchain to sync in a linux vm on a mediocre windows PC. I failed numerous times due to memory shortages and i/o contention, but I finally managed to produce proof of work. If all goes well, I'll work my way through the queue and mine my first block since hardfork 16 in about 2 hours. This may be close to the minimum required configuration with the current hard fork and blockchain size. So, in case it will help anyone else, here's my configuration recipe.
Operating System: Windows 10
Hard Drives: C:\ and F:\
RAM: 12 G
CPU: 4 x I5-4570 (3.2GHZ)
Boot disk and page file: Stored on C:\
Oracle Virtual Box VM manager: Stored on drive C:\
Virtual box VM disk image: Ubuntu version 16.04.1 LTS stored on drive F:\
Virtual box swap: Stored on drive F:\
steemd executables: Stored on drive F:\
steemd file system size: 64G (source, binaries, and blockchain data - 20G used)
ubuntu VM RAM: 8G
ubuntu VM swap: 18G
/dev/shm: 16g (8.6G used, see this link for mounting instructions.)
Patched mining code: https://steemit.com/mining/@abit/steem-v0-16-0-brief-mining-guide
Compilation instructions: https://steemit.com/steemhelp/@joseph/mining-steem-for-dummies
Mining command: ./steemd --shared-file-dir /dev/shm --replay
Some reductions/consolidation may still be possible, but this is the first configuration that I was able to get working, so I thought I'd post it. I can't say it won't work with less resources, but I can say that if you configure it this way, it (probably) will.
Thank you very much to @abit for the helpful post hardfork 16 documents and to @joseph for posting the compilation instructions several months ago.
informative post @remlaps bcos linux has many solution compare to windows !!
Hi,
How many core have you dedicated on the VM?
I have all four cores available to the VM.
for best performance you don't allocate all core to VM because it make instable the native os ( Windows ). The same thinks for RAM. On desktop PC the virtualization is not exactly because Windows take a lot of resource. ( in particular if you mining on VM )
Right. I was thinking I'd back off down to 3 or 2 if I started having problems with it, but so far that hasn't been necessary. With the current mining algorithm, after you get the blockchain downloaded, there's not a whole lot of cpu demand.
Are u mining with CPU or GPU?
I'm using CPU. Inside the VM I used these instructions from @abit and @joseph to get the patched version of steemd compiled and running.
Patched mining code: https://steemit.com/mining/@abit/steem-v0-16-0-brief-mining-guide
Compilation instructions: https://steemit.com/steemhelp/@joseph/mining-steem-for-dummies
For setting up the vm, this link might also be helpful for you, although I used virtualbox instead of vmware, and I found that I had performance issues until I put the VM onto a different disk from the windows operating system and swapping.
https://steemit.com/steem/@pfunk/guide-maximize-your-mining-hashrate-in-windows-by-mining-steem-in-a-vm
good writeup. also adding for my comments lookup