How to setup Florincoin mining node (Windows/Ubuntu)

Vivek Teega

Published in

RanchiMall

5 min readJun 21, 2017

This is a quick tutorial to help you setup a Florincoin mining node on your Windows/Ubuntu based system.

Overview of the process:

Setting up a Florincoin wallet
Download the Florincoin blockchain
Join a mining pool
Run mining script

1. Setting up a wallet

There are various wallets available in the market, but for this tutorial we will use the official Florincoin wallet.

Windows : Download the wallet from here or the official site and install it. Run florincoin-qt.

Ubuntu : Go here and execute the shell script. To run the wallet

cd /usr/local/bin
./florincoin-qt

2. Download the blockchain

Before downloading the blockchain we’ve got to create a florincoin.conf file in your data directory. Data directory can be found at the following:

Windows :

Press “Windows + R”,
type “%appdata%\florincoin”

Ubuntu : Navigate to .florincoin using the following steps:

cd        #this command navigates to your home folder
cd .florincoin

If its not there yet, create .florincoin folder there. Inside the .florincoin folder create a file named florincoin.conf. This file is where you have your RPC username, password, list of nodes to connect to and various other settings. The following is the content of my florincoin.conf file, you can copy it and makes your own changes:

testnet=0
server=1
daemon=1
txindex=1
gen=1
rpcuser=rpcuserName
rpcpassword=rpcPassword
addnode=193.70.122.58
addnode=69.172.229.163
addnode=146.185.148.114
addnode=192.241.171.45
addnode=188.166.6.99
addnode=176.9.59.110
addnode=162.243.107.112
addnode=128.199.116.119
addnode=207.154.239.148
addnode=192.241.201.19
addnode=sf1.entertheblockchain.com
addnode=am2.entertheblockchain.com
addnode=sgp.entertheblockchain.com
addnode=ind.entertheblockchain.com
addnode=de.entertheblockchain.com

When you run the wallet for the first time it’ll prompt you to download the whole florincoin blockchain data onto your local drive. This is an essential step as you can’t make transactions without having a copy of the whole blockchain.

At the timing of writing, the size of florincoin blockchain is around 20 GB, so use a broadband connection to download it.

Alternatively you could copy the data from a friend or directly download copies of the blockchain maintained by various volunteers over the internet.

I have hosted a copy of the blockchain here. Download it, unzip the file and copy the content in your data directory.

florincoin-qt wallet with the whole blockchain

Once the blockchain data has been downloaded and synced you’ll see a green tick mark on the down-right corner. Now you have a fully functioning florincoin wallet capable of making transactions. This also acts as a full node on the network.

To check if your node is running you can try the following:

florincoin-cli getinfo
netstat -plnt : This will also give you information regarding the ports the node is running on.

3. Join a mining pool

There are two ways you can go when you want to mine for crypto-currencies

Go solo
Join a mining pool

It can be helpful to think of mining pools as joining a lottery syndicate — the pros and cons are exactly the same. Going solo means you get to keep the full rewards of your efforts, but accepting reduced odds of being successful. Conversely, joining a pool means that the members, as a whole, will have a much larger chance of solving a block, but the reward will be split between all pool members, based on the number of ‘shares’ earned.

Setting up a solo miner is a bit more complicated and beginners are better off joining a mining pool. We’ll be joining Supernova’s florincoin pool as it is pretty active, so the chances of getting a reward are increased.

Head over to the pool’s website and register an account.

Once you login you’ll see a dashboard. Navigate to My Account -> My Workers. Create a worker name and password. For the purpose of this tutorial lets assume workername:password are user.worker1:worker1password.

4. Run the mining script

Users have three options to mine :

CPU mining- slowest option, but can be used for coins in their initial stages
GPU mining- much faster than CPU mining as GPUs have multiple cores which can process in parallel
ASIC units- special units specifically made for the purpose of mining. Setting up huge mining farms with ASIC units is becoming very popular

You will need to know the following:

The ‘stratum’ URL of your mining pool server (eg: “stratum+tcp://flo.suprnova.cc”).
The port number of your mining server (eg: “3210”).
Your mining pool username (eg: “user”).
Your worker name or number (eg: “worker1”).
Your worker password (eg: “worker1password”).

CPU mining

cpuminer is a multi-threaded, highly optimized CPU miner for Litecoin, Bitcoin, and other cryptocurrencies. Currently supported algorithms are SHA-256d and scrypt.

Windows

Download the software from here and extract it to a folder. Create a .bat file in the same folder with the following content and run the file.

start “C:\cpu-miner-pooler” minerd.exe — url stratum+tcp://flo.suprnova.cc:3210 -a scrypt — userpass user.worker1:worker1password

Ubuntu

Install pre-requisites

# apt-get update # apt-get install libcurl4-openssl-dev git 
# apt-get install  build-essential 
# apt-get install autotools-dev autoconf 
# apt-get install libcurl3 libcurl4-gnutls-dev
# apt-get checkinstall

Install cpuminer

# git clone https://github.com/pooler/cpuminer 
# cd cpuminer
# ./autogen.sh 
# CFLAGS="-march=native" ./configure 
# make 
# make install 
OR IN SOME CASES
# sudo checkinstall

Start miner

# minerd -o stratum+tcp://flo.suprnova.cc:3210 -a scrypt -u user.worker1 -p worker1password

GPU mining

For those that intend to mine with GPUs cgminer is the program to use. Versions of cgminer following version 3.72 do not support scrypt mining, and support for GPUs was removed in version 3.82. Therefore, the latest version isn’t necessarily the one to download.

Windows

The appropriate version for windows can be downloaded from here. Extract the files to a folder, create a .bat file with the following content and run it

cgminer --scrypt -o stratum+tcp://flo.suprnova.cc:3210 -u user.worker1 -p worker1password

I haven’t figured out the way to setup GPU mining on Ubuntu yet, working on it.

References

Pages which I referred to write this tutorial

Supernova pool’s Getting Started Guide- A comprehensive guide on how to setup the miner and connect to the pool
How to Mine Litecoin- This is a very good article which explains a lot of the theoretical concepts in a simple language. Highly recommend it.
Setup A Full Florincoin Node On A $5 Ubuntu VPS With One Command

Questions? Comments? Suggestions? Leave a note here or email me at vivek.teega@gmail.com. I work with an eCommerce company called RanchiMall.