Getting Started with Hive OS — Adding A Custom Miner

Hive OS supports several popular miner algorithms, but not every single one. For this purpose we added a new feature called Custom Miner Integration that allows users to add a miner that’s not “baked” into the distribution image of the OS. You have the option to either install a pre-created package or create one yourself. But in this guide we’ll mostly cover the steps required to install a pre-created package.

Installing A Custom Miner

Start by going to the custom miner download page and simply copy the URL to the file.

Custom miner repository

To install a custom archive manually on the rig you can download it and unpack it to /hive/custom folder. Do note that even though you did copy it locally you will still need the URL for the Flight Sheet to work.

Setting Up The Flight Sheet

We covered the process of creating a Flight Sheets and Wallets, which you will also require, in one of our previous articles, so we won’t go into the details, assuming you already know how to do it.

Got to the Flight Sheets tab in your farm’s Dashboard. In the Add New Flight Sheet section, start filling in the following fields:

• Flight Sheet Name — use a name that will describe the Flight Sheet’s purpose best. For example, ETH on nanopool using claymore; flypool zcash on dstm; etc.
• Coin — this works like a filter, you can see only wallets, pools and miners only for the chosen coin. For example, if you choose ETH the filter will hide all your pre-created wallets and pools that don’t support or aren’t associated with that coin.
• Wallet — choose a wallet for this Flight Sheet. These are the wallets you created in the Wallets tab.
• Pool — select Configure in miner for the Custom miner option in the Miner field to show-up.
• Miner — select Custom and then click the Setup Miner Config for miner specific settings then fill in the necessary fields. Note, each miner can have a different set of parameters and required fields.

Because we’re setting up a Custom miner we need to manually configure these settings via the Setup Miner Config window. Click Setup Miner Config button in Miner and fill in the following fields:

• Miner name — use the same name as the package. For example: if the package name is phoenixminer-3.5_c.tar.gz, then the miner name must be phoenixminer.
• Installation URL — the direct URL to the miner package.
• Hash algorithm — choose the hash algorithm for the miner.
• Wallet and worker template — this will depend on your miner specific configuration
• Pool URL — the pool’s address and also the pool specific settings like passwords, wallets, and ports. Note, we recommend typing the values in the following format: WALLET: %WAL%, WORKER:%WORKER_NAME%. Also all values should be separated by a comma.
• Pass — x a default setting, usually left as is.
• Extra config arguments — these are miner specific and are optional. Note, these may be important in certain cases, so we recommend reading your miner’s documentation for additional details.
• Click Apply Changes and you’re all done

Once you’re done click the Create Flight Sheet button. You can now apply the Flight Sheet you’ve created.

Example: Adding and Setting-up Phoenix Miner

Now that we showed you how to setup a custom miner, let’s put it to practice by setting-up Phoenix Miner 3.5c on Hiveon Pool using the ethash miner algorithm as an example.

Custom miner Flight Sheet

In the Add New Flight Sheet section, start filling in the following fields:

• Coin — ETH
• Wallet — Example ETH wallet we created.
• Pool — select Configure in miner for the Custom miner option in the Miner field to show-up.
• Miner — select Custom and then click the Setup Miner Config for miner specific settings then fill in the necessary fields. Note, each miner can have a different set of parameters and required fields.
• Flight Sheet Name — Phoenix on Hiveon

Custom miner configuration

Now we need to configure the miner. Click Setup Miner Config button in Miner and fill in the following fields:

• Miner name — we’ll call it phoenixminer
• Installation URL — adding the URL of the package http://download.hiveos.farm/custom/phoenixminer-3.5_c.tar.gz
• Hash algorithm — select ethash from the dropdown list.
• Wallet and worker template — type null, as we’re using an ETH wallet we already have.
• Pool URL — we’ll be using Hiveon pool:
  POOL: eu-eth.hiveon.net:4444, WALLET: %WAL%, WORKER:%WORKER_NAME%
POOL: eu-eth.hiveon.net:14444, WALLET: %WAL%, WORKER:%WORKER_NAME%
• Pass — set to x
• Extra config arguments — in our case we leave this field blank.
• Click Apply Changes and you’re all done.

How build your own package?

Hive 2.0 supports custom miners that you can “cook” yourself and you’ll need to implement using several easy scripts in order to get your miner to work and send stats to Hive. We won’t cover the process of creating these scripts in this article though.

If you don’t see a specific miner you’d like to use on our custom miner download page, check the Custom Miner Integration forum thread for more packages that our enthusiasts have created to be used with Hive OS.

Additionally, you can refer to the custom miner integration Readme on GitHub for script templates and examples on how to create and integrate your own miner.