With all these new cryto-currencies popping up, I just had to try it. I figured I'd try to use all the extra CPU power in my arsenal of extra unused laptops, servers, unused VPS's, ect, to mine some altcoin (alternative cryto-currency coin). What's the worst thing that could happen?
I really wanted to mine Litecoin, because it's the most valuable second to Bitcoin. Well, it did not take long to figure out that the difficulty on the LTC network is just way too high to ever bother with CPU's again. Next I tried Dogecoin, which is one of the newer ones, and is not worth much. It started as a joke and for some reason got popular and is worth like $0.00002 per coin. I put my really powerful 8 core VPS server to work, along with my unused compaq laptop (dual core amd, useless Nvidia card), and a couple 2ghz cheap VPS servers. I mined in a pool for 2 days and accumulated 30 dogecoin, which is approximately equal to $0.00... (10,000 doge is worth about a $1). During that time the plastic on the bottom of my cheap compaq started to melt from heat, so I had to put it next to my window fan. Then I received an angry email from one of my VPS providers complaining that my CPU had been at 100% for 3 days straight, and told me to stop mining. I pulled the plug on that one and installed cpulimit on my other two VPS's, and set it to only use 75% of the CPU so maybe they would not notice. After two more days of this nonsense, I realized I could trade .005 BTC (worth about $2 or $3) for 21,500 dogecoin. I did that, and shut down all my miners. All in all, I mined about 40 dogecoin, and then realized that the pool would only let me cash out at least 150 at a time, and charge a "50 doge 'transaction' fee." ... pointless.
Well, hopefully the price of dogecoin skyrockets (dubious, but possible). What will I do with them in the meantime? Well, they can be used as bounty rewards for getting answers to questions on Reddit! I don't know, I just had to buy them so I could stop compulsively burning out CPU's for nothing.
What next? Well there's this new really interesting coin, Darkcoin, which is supposed to be an anonymous coin, claims it's 'darksend' feauture fixes some of the problems that Bitcoin has with transactions being easily traced on the blockchain. Not to say that you can't be anonymous with bitcoin, you can be with ease, but it does take some effort and knowledge. Anyway, I'm trying to figure out to mine that. It's supposed to be a good CPU candadite, and if darksend is what it's supposed to be, that coin could have a future. Who knows.
Wednesday, August 27, 2014
Wednesday, August 20, 2014
HP Probook Random Shutdown Update
In my last post I talked about a possible fix for the HP Probook 45xx random shut-down issue. Basically, the computer would shut down randomly, and I was unable to determine the cause for some time. I suggest updating the graphics drivers, as Intel now offers open source driver support for Linux users.
Although the driver update did help, it turns out that the issue was not entirely fixed. About a week after that blog, it started happening again, albeit less often. I've probably had about 12-15 random power-off's since then. I realized that it happens when performing resource-intensive tasks, in particular graphics related tasks. So this led to me to back to the graphics drivers. It turns out the Intel driver is tainted:
anon@linuxpc:~$ dmesg | grep taint
[ 2.134771] drm: module verification failed: signature and/or required key missing - tainting kernel
[ 2.135831] drm: module has bad taint, not creating trace events
[ 2.158791] i915: module has bad taint, not creating trace events
I then realized that my computer has been running a lot hotter than it was a couple months ago when I first acquired it, so I started monitoring the temperature while doing different things. As it turns out, when playing high definition video via Adobe Flash, things started to get really hot, with both processor cores running at 80 degrees Celsius, and the power supply running at about 90C. I figured that the computer was probably simply shutting down due to overheating, as every HP computer I've ever owned had that problem at some point.
Since I don't have any duster cans lying around, I grabbed my trusty little Phillips-head and a vacuum cleaner, then got to work. Following standard procedure, and the service manual , I took the computer apart and simply vacuumed all the dust out of the heat-sink, motherboard, and everywhere else I could see dust. If you attempt this, please be careful and be sure to ground yourself to protect your hardware from static electricity. This I accomplish by wrapping a copper speaker wire around a screw and sticking it into an outlet ground, and then wrapping the other end around my wrist.
After the vacuum treatment, I monitored the temperatures while performing various resource intensive tasks, and the temperatures of either core never got above 60 degrees C, and every other sensor was much lower than it was previously. Here is the current output of sensors:
anon@linuxpc:~$ sensors
acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1: +16.0°C (crit = +108.0°C)
temp2: +54.0°C (crit = +105.0°C)
temp3: +50.0°C (crit = +108.0°C)
temp4: +48.0°C (crit = +105.0°C)
temp5: +26.2°C (crit = +108.0°C)
temp6: +45.0°C (crit = +110.0°C)
coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Core 0: +51.0°C (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 1: +48.0°C (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Definitively in the normal range again! I really hope that this solves the shut-down problem for good. I'll update again in a week or so. By the way, I think it's better to use a vacuum cleaner rather than compressed air, because I once wrecked a computer using duster. All it did was blow the dust further into the internal components, making the problem worse. A vacuum does the opposite. Perhaps this method will become the preferred method for minor dust removal. Happy hacking!
Although the driver update did help, it turns out that the issue was not entirely fixed. About a week after that blog, it started happening again, albeit less often. I've probably had about 12-15 random power-off's since then. I realized that it happens when performing resource-intensive tasks, in particular graphics related tasks. So this led to me to back to the graphics drivers. It turns out the Intel driver is tainted:
anon@linuxpc:~$ dmesg | grep taint
[ 2.134771] drm: module verification failed: signature and/or required key missing - tainting kernel
[ 2.135831] drm: module has bad taint, not creating trace events
[ 2.158791] i915: module has bad taint, not creating trace events
I then realized that my computer has been running a lot hotter than it was a couple months ago when I first acquired it, so I started monitoring the temperature while doing different things. As it turns out, when playing high definition video via Adobe Flash, things started to get really hot, with both processor cores running at 80 degrees Celsius, and the power supply running at about 90C. I figured that the computer was probably simply shutting down due to overheating, as every HP computer I've ever owned had that problem at some point.
Since I don't have any duster cans lying around, I grabbed my trusty little Phillips-head and a vacuum cleaner, then got to work. Following standard procedure, and the service manual , I took the computer apart and simply vacuumed all the dust out of the heat-sink, motherboard, and everywhere else I could see dust. If you attempt this, please be careful and be sure to ground yourself to protect your hardware from static electricity. This I accomplish by wrapping a copper speaker wire around a screw and sticking it into an outlet ground, and then wrapping the other end around my wrist.
After the vacuum treatment, I monitored the temperatures while performing various resource intensive tasks, and the temperatures of either core never got above 60 degrees C, and every other sensor was much lower than it was previously. Here is the current output of sensors:
anon@linuxpc:~$ sensors
acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1: +16.0°C (crit = +108.0°C)
temp2: +54.0°C (crit = +105.0°C)
temp3: +50.0°C (crit = +108.0°C)
temp4: +48.0°C (crit = +105.0°C)
temp5: +26.2°C (crit = +108.0°C)
temp6: +45.0°C (crit = +110.0°C)
coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Core 0: +51.0°C (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 1: +48.0°C (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Definitively in the normal range again! I really hope that this solves the shut-down problem for good. I'll update again in a week or so. By the way, I think it's better to use a vacuum cleaner rather than compressed air, because I once wrecked a computer using duster. All it did was blow the dust further into the internal components, making the problem worse. A vacuum does the opposite. Perhaps this method will become the preferred method for minor dust removal. Happy hacking!
Friday, August 1, 2014
HP Probook 4510s/Linux-- Random Shutdown Fix
I recently aquired an HP Probook 4510s from a friend. It's a couple years old, but it's pretty solid businesslike style laptop, and in my experience business computers tend to be very reliable, despite that most companies will ditch them after only 3 years. This computer originally came with Vista (yuck), and my friend had been running Ubuntu 12.04. Although this model was offered with OpenSuse Linux as well, it seems that there were intentional bugs in the bios, so it would work almost run perfectly on Linux. I say intentional because that's what I've deduced from examining the ACPI tables that the bios gives Linux, and it collaborates with research I've done as well.
When I first received the computer, I had problems with the machine randomly shutting down on me. (I updated it to Ubuntu 14.04). It was not overheating, and upon examining the dmesg logs I was unable to determine what the cause was, except that I kept seeing messages warning me that the bios was broken, and telling to find an ACPI driver. The random shutdowns are seriously irritating, and eventually the hard disc fried on me, so I had to replace it. I bought a new battery, after doing God knows how many software adjustments, and the issue seemed to have resolved, so I attributed it to a bad battery. However, that is not the case.
I recently reinstalled the OS in order to have an encrypted disk setup with LVM, and to put Ubuntu Gnome on it because Unity sucks and the code is cleaner, the system is less glitchy, and the CPU idles around 5% vs 16% running Gnome over a Unity install. But then the random shutdowns started to happen again! So I set out to figure out which software configuration had fixed the problem. I think I found the solution.
This device has an Intel chipset, with a Core2duo processor and Intel integrated graphics processor. There is now an open source tool available from Intel for identifying and upgrading your graphics driver. This is pretty ground-breaking stuff, because although Intel has always been nicer to the open source community than say, AMD, it's still a rough road when you have driver problems with Linux, as you are often left at the compete mercy of the hardware OEM. But Intel is getting with the times. Anyway, I believe that upgrading the GPU driver fixes this problem! Upgrading the bios did not fix it, and the only drivers I've updated have been the GPU. It's been 7 days since I did the reinstall, and about 4 days since I updated the intel driver's again, and I have been running random shutdown free!
I hope that this helps someone. Please do not go back to Windows because of these issues, leave me a message or check the forums and either I or someone will help you. Going back to Windows is exactly what Microsucks wants people to do. I say f--- that.
When I first received the computer, I had problems with the machine randomly shutting down on me. (I updated it to Ubuntu 14.04). It was not overheating, and upon examining the dmesg logs I was unable to determine what the cause was, except that I kept seeing messages warning me that the bios was broken, and telling to find an ACPI driver. The random shutdowns are seriously irritating, and eventually the hard disc fried on me, so I had to replace it. I bought a new battery, after doing God knows how many software adjustments, and the issue seemed to have resolved, so I attributed it to a bad battery. However, that is not the case.
I recently reinstalled the OS in order to have an encrypted disk setup with LVM, and to put Ubuntu Gnome on it because Unity sucks and the code is cleaner, the system is less glitchy, and the CPU idles around 5% vs 16% running Gnome over a Unity install. But then the random shutdowns started to happen again! So I set out to figure out which software configuration had fixed the problem. I think I found the solution.
This device has an Intel chipset, with a Core2duo processor and Intel integrated graphics processor. There is now an open source tool available from Intel for identifying and upgrading your graphics driver. This is pretty ground-breaking stuff, because although Intel has always been nicer to the open source community than say, AMD, it's still a rough road when you have driver problems with Linux, as you are often left at the compete mercy of the hardware OEM. But Intel is getting with the times. Anyway, I believe that upgrading the GPU driver fixes this problem! Upgrading the bios did not fix it, and the only drivers I've updated have been the GPU. It's been 7 days since I did the reinstall, and about 4 days since I updated the intel driver's again, and I have been running random shutdown free!
I hope that this helps someone. Please do not go back to Windows because of these issues, leave me a message or check the forums and either I or someone will help you. Going back to Windows is exactly what Microsucks wants people to do. I say f--- that.
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