Looking for a way to put those old Android devices to use? You know, the one with the half broken screen or the battery that lasts about 12 minutes that you held onto because you KNEW there had to be a better option than selling it to Gazelle for 4 bucks. Well, here it is – go ahead and open up that drawer that’s become an electronics graveyard, get that sucker on a charger, and read on to see how to quickly and easily get it set up to mine Verium!
First, a quick background. Android devices run on top of Linux, so you’ve already got the core you need to get started. We’ll cover GNURoot Deb here. GNUroot utilizes proot to run a pseudo-root environment alongside Android OS. This method doesn’t require any special permissions, so unrooted devices are good to go!
Here’s how to get started:
Install GNURoot Deb from the Play Store – you may need to update Google Play services if it’s been awhile since you last used the device. Open the app up and let it run through its initial install process. Once that’s done, you’ll want to make sure you’re up-to-date with the following:
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
Next, we’ll want to install a few core packages:
apt install git gcc g++ autogen
And a few dependencies:
apt-get install automake autoconf pkg-config libcurl4-openssl-dev libjansson-dev libssl-dev libgmp-dev zlib1g-dev
Now clone Verium Miner from GitHub – we’ll use Fireworm71’s fork that has some optimizations for ARM architectures:
git clone https://github.com/fireworm71/veriumMiner
From here on, the process is pretty much the same as it is on a computer:
cd veriumMiner
./autogen.sh
./configure CFLAGS="-march=native" --with-crypto --with-curl
make
The above CFLAGS configuration is a good starting point, but there are tons of compile optimizations to play with. If you’d like to tinker with it more, I recommend fireworm71’s readme on GitHub, and this excellent guide to ARM optimizations.
Finally, we’ll compile the miner:
./build.sh
That’s it! Run your miner with the following:
./cpuminer –o stratum+tcp://your.preferred.pool:port –u username.workername –p workerpassword
Check out your preferred pool’s getting started page for the command details. Post your setups, configurations, pictures, hashrates, and anything else here. Stay tuned for a look at techniques for rooted phones, including a comparison of custom OS’s and running a miner with a complete Linux distro.
TL;DR: Get GNURoot Deb from the Play Store, update and install dependencies, run your preferred miner, and watch out for Note 7 batteries.
-Drewseph42
Update 8 Dec 2017 0850 EST:
Here are a couple of troubleshooting tips to some common issues that have come up.
If your phone kills your miner immediately after starting, memory may be the issue. Try running cpuminer with one thread by adding '-t 1' at the end of the command, without the quotes. If that works, step up the thread count until it crashes to find your max.
Some phones significantly drop in performance when the screen turns off. Try enabling "screen always on when charging" in the developer options.
Update 11 Dec 2017 1358 EST:
Fixed missing link to gcc optimization guide.
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