Winter is Coming Miner

Running WIC Miner from a Live Linux

Aquila Systems, November 2021

The Winter is Coming (WIC) Miner is an Ethereum cryto-currency miner that uniquely is designed to run on Intel/AMD based server type computer systems.    

If you have a Server type machine that has been retired and has no drives, is available but it is not running a modern Linux, or you do not wish to touch the installed software, config, and data on the server you can instead boot a live Linux USB Stick and within 10 minutes using these instructions get this server running the WIC Miner in a dedicated manner.    

This also represents a great way of safely making an unused sever into a Crypto-Heater.  

You can be assured as this technique uses a popular Linux distro, Arch Linux, and all the mining is done as a standard user that there is no chance of privilege escalation.  Running as regular user prohibits any hacked software from mounting and accessing other drives on the server and NAS/SAN resources on your network.  

We have tested this with the Arch Linux Installer that is a poor installer but provides a quality live Linux command line experience.    This can be downloaded here with instructions on how to write to a USB stick here.     By default the Live Arch Linux will get needed networking to connect to Ethereum mining pool through DHCP but there are other ways see this page from Arch Linux for details.     

Once running it can just be left alone for months.   Mining away and creating beneficial heat during the winter,  see Crypto Heat page.

1. Boot the Arch Linux USB Stick

2. It will boot to a terminal on the servers screen.

3. At the terminal you must set a root password using passwd

4. Check the IP address that your DHCP server assigned using ip a

The remainder of the steps you can do at this terminal or remotely through ssh (putty in Windows)

         In Linux/Mac: ssh root@ip_address

    Enter the root password you set in step 3    

5.  So that the Miner can run as regular user create an account for a user called miner

         useradd -m miner

6.  Then set a password for the miner account

        passwd miner

7.  Now exit as root and ssh/putty again as miner that is a regular user

       exit

   From Linux/Mac ssh miner@ip_address

8.  Once logged in download the WIC Miner for dedicated server use.

By running the command below and downloading this you agree to the WIC Miner License Agreement

      curl www.aquilasys.com/wad.tar.gz >wad.tar.gz

9.   Extract the files in the downloaded

      tar -xvzf wad.tar.gz

10.  Change to the miner directory

      cd wicminer

11.  Use the nano editor to put in your (copy&paste) public Ethereum mining address from your wallet.

      nano mp

12.  Start the WIC Miner.    It will quickly return and run in the background

      ./startwic

13.  You can now logout at any point by typing exit,  the miner will continue to run

     exit

14.  Periodically you can check the status by logging as you did in step 7 and type

      cd wicminer
 

      ./wicstat

To periodically to see the status  you can repeat step 7 to login and then 14.     As long as the power stays on there is no need to repeat these steps.    When spring arrives you can simply power off the server.    

If you only want the miner generating heat (and mining) at night see the timed operation and pausing page for information on modifying the config using step 11 above to enable/change this.

These steps should work under any recent Live Linux but to date we have only tested this with Arch Linux linked to above.  

Some Live Linux’s do not provide an ssh server.   In this case the screen/kvm that was used for steps 3 and 4 must be used to do all the steps above,  just skip the ssh steps (in blue background).