I love trying to mine different cryptocurrencies or just different ways to earn them even if it's not actual mining them. So I figured I would take a stab at mining Zcash. Before we begin I knew next to nothing about Zcash or how to mine it before I began.
I wanted to setup a mining rig so I figured I would document it as I go to share with you all. I am not an expert at Zcash or Linux or cryptocurrencies as a whole. But I am an engineer and can figure things out and I enjoy it. I am following the official Zcash mining guides and will be using their recommendations in this guide.
Note: If you are interested too please read the full article before starting. Once again I didn't do enough research before I started and ran into a pretty big problem along the way.
Note 2: All Debian code in this article I italicized
First thing is first, you will need the following things:
Linux (Debian) x64 OS
- 5GB of free RAM
- 25GB of free HD space
(I am not going to walk through setting up Linux because it would take forever)
Once you are in your Linux OS you will need to setup the dependencies:
su
sudo apt-get install \
build-essential pkg-config libc6-dev m4 g++-multilib \
autoconf libtool ncurses-dev unzip git python python-zmq \
zlib1g-dev wget curl bsdmainutils automake
Now we need to check what versions of gcc, g++ and binutils are installed. (Zcash was built to use gcc/g++ 4.9 through 7.x and binutils 2.22 or later)
g++ --version
gcc --version
as --version
Now we need to download the actual Zcash software.
git clone https://github.com/zcash/zcash.git
cd zcash/
git checkout v2.1.0-1
./zcutil/fetch-params.sh
Next is to verify all the dependencies are installed.
./zcutil/build.sh -j$(nproc)
This steps take a LOOOONNNNGGG time to complete, it took me about 20 minutes so get some coffee.
Now you need to create the directory for data.
mkdir -p ~/.zcash
Next is to create a config file inside that data directory.
echo "addnode=mainnet.z.cash" >~/.zcash/zcash.conf
Now the fun begins to enable the actual CPU mining run the following 2 commands.
echo 'gen=1' > ~/.zcash/zcash.conf
echo "genproclimit=-1" > ~/.zcash/zcash.conf
START Zcash Node
./src/zcashd
As with all my mining rigs I know mining solo is not going to work for me. So I wanted to join a pool and see what is was all about and how much Zcash I could earn. Until I found this little tidbit online. It was linked to by Zcash's website.
"To have a chance to mine any Zcash you will need to join a pool and use 3rd party software!"
https://www.zcashcommunity.com/mining/mining-pools/
So that's cool. Well at least I got the Zcash miner setup and learned a little about Debian along the way. Maybe another day I will take another stab at it. I found a lot of pools that have guides to walk through setting up miner rigs and all so we shall see, but for now I need a break from Linux and Zcash!
