# Headless Ethereum Miner Setup - NVIDIA
*Reed Slaby, March 2018*

Having grown tired of wasting a perfectly good monitor on my ethereum mining rig, I finally decided to replace the Ubuntu Desktop 16.04 installation with Ubuntu Server 16.04.  Many of the gtutorials available at the time of this writing range from unecessarily complicated to flat-out wrong.  This guide is intended to address many of those shortfalls.

## Prerequisites

To complete this guide, you should already have:
* Basic knowledge of Linux
* An Ethereum wallet

### Hardware Used

* ASUS Z270-P Motherboard
* Intel Celeron G3930 Processor
* 8GB DDR4 RAM
* 128GB HDD
* EVGA SuperNOVA G3 750W ATX PSU
* 2x NVIDIA GTX 1060
* 3x NVIDIA GTX 1070
* Monitor and Keyboard (for initial installation)

## Basic Setup

### Installing the Operating System

I downloaded a copy of Ubuntu Server 16.04 (amd64) and copied it to a USB flash drive using dd.

The hard drive was partitioned as follows:

    Partition 0: 256MB - EFI
    Partition 1:   8GB - swap
    Partition 2:  40GB - /
    Partition 3:  30GB - /home
Note: There is plenty of room for optimization in this partitioning scheme.  Only about ~3GB of the root partition will be used in the end.  Reduce at your own risk!

If you receive an error that a file system could not be created on the EFI partition, try deleting and recreating the partition.  Also ensure that no other EFI hard drives are connected.

### Installing Necessary Utilities

The first order of business after logging in the first time is to update and install SSH:

    sudo apt update
    sudo apt upgrade
    sudo apt install openssh-server

Take note of the IP address:

    ip addr show

At this point, the monitor and keyboard can be disconnected.  I then connected over SSH to ensure that I was not inadvertently relying on a connected monitor in any way while performing the rest of the setup.

These utilities will be required to install and run the NVIDIA driver/utilities:

    sudo apt install build-essential libgtk-3-0 xorg 

### Installing the NVIDIA driver

Go to the [NVIDIA website](http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us) and download the latest Linux 64-bit driver.

Extract the archive and execute the installation script:
    
    gzip -d NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-xxx.xx.tar.gz
    tar -xvf NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-xxx.xx.tar
    chmod +x NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-xxx.xx.run
    sudo ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-xxx.xx.run

Feel free to answer 'Yes' to running nvidia-xconfig, though it will probably only pick up the first card at this time.

Run nvidia-smi to ensure that all the GPUs are visible.  If some or all are missing, stop and troubleshoot.

Reboot the machine:
    
    sudo init 6

Run nvidia-xconfig to enable overclocking and allow things to work without a real monitor connected:
    
    sudo nvidia-xconfig --cool-bits=31 --allow-empty-initial-configuration

Check the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file to ensure all GPUs have been configured.  Each GPU should have a Device, Monitor, and Screen section.  The Screens should show the following options:
    
    Section "Screen"
      Identifier     "ScreenX"
      Device         "DeviceX"
      Monitor        "MonitorX"
      DefaultDepth    24
      **Option         "AllowEmptyInitialConfiguration" "True"
      Option         "Coolbits" "31"**
      SubSection     "Display"
          Depth       24
      EndSubSection
    EndSection

### Miscellaneous Adjustments

Annoyingly enough, you will need to start an X server in order to overclock the GPUs.  Doing this also requires root privileges, so I updated my sudoers file to slightly ease the pain.

Using visudo, I added the following lines to sudoer:
    
    USERNAME HOST = (root) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/xinit
    USERNAME HOST = (root) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/nvidia-smi
Note: replace USERNAME and HOST with your specific info.  For example, joe@glados would use "joe glados =..."

## Overclocking

Start an X server and push it into the background:
    
    sudo xinit &
    export DISPLAY=:0.0

Enable persistence mode on the GPUs:
    
    sudo nvidia-smi -pm 1

Helpful overclocking commands:
    
    // Set GPU 0 power level to 100W
    sudo nvidia-smi -i 0 -pl 100
    // Enable GPU 0 manual fan control and set to 50%
    nvidia-settings -a '[gpu:0]/GPUFanControlState=1' -a '[fan:0]/GPUTargetFanSpeed=50'
    // Increase GPU 0 memory clock by 1000Hz
    nvidia-settings -a '[gpu:0]/GPUMemoryTransferRateOffset[3]=1000'

## Set Up Ethminer
TODO