Build Ethereum Mining Rig Raspberry Pi Full Node [Python Client]

Index Of Contents
Build Ethereum Mining Rig Raspberry Pi Full Node [Python Client]
PRELIMINARIES
ALTERNATIVES
EQUIPMENT FOR NODE
PURCHASE CHOICES
EQUIPMENT FOR SETUP
ASSEMBLY
INSTALLING THE RASPBIAN OS
RASPBIAN CONFIG CHOICES
EDITING FILES
CONFIGURE USB AND SET AUTOMOUNT (OPTIONAL)
NETWORKING ON THE RASPBERRY PI
DOWNLOADING ETHEREUM PYETH DEPENDENCIES
INSTALLING PYETHAPP
RUN PYETHAPP
CONFIGURE HOME NETWORK TO SET WITH THE ETHEREUM NETWORK

Tiny computers became a awfully hot trend in recent years, due to the Raspberry Pi specially. though
the primary model is dead usable as a media center, the second and third generations of this device
have very upped the ante. Moreover, they're terribly helpful to those who need to support the
cryptocurrency system by running a Node.
For Ethereum enthusiasts, all it takes may be a Raspberry Pi two Associate in Nursingd a 0.5 an hour
of your time to urge things up and running. Once the user has completed all of the steps of this explicit
guide, they're going to have Ethereum Geth v1.3x up and running with none problems. Most of those
steps ought to be applicable to more moderen versions of Geth likewise, though.
Blockchain storage may be a grave concern once employing a Raspberry Pi as a node, though. Bitcoin
users sometimes attach Associate in Nursing external disc for this sort of purpose, however Ethereum
users will store everything on a microSD card. However, to err on the aspect of caution, Associate in
Nursing external USB device may be a much better various within the long-term.

For those users not trying to travel through this manual setup method, there area unit various solutions
out there. EthDev offers a Raspberry Pi installation image that uses ArchLinux for Ethereum node
functions. This explicit project uses each Geth and also the regular C++ Eth shopper, giving users the
choice to settle on whichever answer they like.
Last however not least, there's the EthEmbedded project, which may be used with oDroid and
BeagleBone Black likewise. each Eth and Geth install scripts area unit provided in these ARM
builds, creating is simple to deploy them on these small computers boards. In the end, true Ethereum
enthusiasts have plenty of choices to support the system with a Node, and it doesn't need a major
investment either.
PRELIMINARIES
This tutorial is to put in the Ethereum PyEthApp consumer on a Raspberry Pi two. choices are going
to be given to store the blockchain information on the microSD card or on AN external USB device.
EthDev maintains 3 Ethereum clients: Eth (written in C++), Pyeth (written in Python), and Geth
(written in Go). This tutorial is to put in PyEthApp, an easy to run internal representation of the Pyeth
consumer. Ethereum is very innovative and below speedy development, thus expect a rough ride and
a few issues if you dive in at this time.
If you run into any Raspberry Pi issues whereas rummaging these steps, the Raspberry Pi Docs square
measure an honest supply for help:
http://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/
ALTERNATIVES
EthDev features a prebuilt OS image for the Raspberry Pi using ArchLinux. They also have DIY steps
for the ArchLinux OS. It comes with both Geth (the Go client) and Eth (the C++ client) preinstalled.
You'll be able to conjointly transfer and run pre-built ARM binaries of Geth from here:
https://build.ethdev.com/builds/ARM%20Go%20develop%20branch/geth-ARM-latest.tar.bz2
however they're builds from the newest development branch thus don't seem to be absolute to be
stable. however they're going to be up-to-date!
EthEmbedded provides ARM builds for Ethereum for microcomputers like a Raspberry Pi, Odroid,
and BeagleBone Black. They have Eth and Geth Install Scripts on github for the Raspberry Pi, the
Geth script requiring an upgrade to Debian Stretch rather than using the officially supported Debian
Wheezy or Jessie.
EQUIPMENT FOR NODE
Raspberry Pi two
Case fitting Raspberry Pi B+ type
Power provide (micro USB, 5V, a minimum of 2A)
USB LAN adapter -or- coax cable for direct hook up with your router
8GB (or larger) MicroSD card (class 10)
(OPTIONAL) USB Flash drive or USB external Winchester drive
As of Dec five, 2016 the blockchain and information takes up around 8GB of house. Pyeth uses
LevelDB to store the blockchain like Bitcoin, and this technique takes up more room than the
strategies utilized by the Go and C++ purchasers. With an oversized microSD card AN auxiliary
storage device isn't required nonetheless, however it's going to be an honest plan to use one anyway.
PURCHASE CHOICES
You can notice what's required to make AN Ethereum raspnode for fewer than $100.
The CanaKit Raspberry Pi Starter Kit prices $70 (plus tax and shipping) and comes with everything
you would like minus the USB drive and coax cable (if you want to cable on to your router).
With enough exploring, within your means 128GB USB drives is found, some within the $35 to $40
vary. Some 500GB external HDs is found within the $50 to $60 vary.
EQUIPMENT FOR SETUP
HDMI cable
Monitor with HDMI in or adapters to convert HDMI to your monitor
USB keyboard
Router and a affiliation to the web
Separate computer that must be able to browse a microSD card
ASSEMBLY
How to assemble your Raspberry Pi can rely on the case purchased. Once assembled, introduce your
USB stick (optional), HDMI cable to your monitor, USB keyboard, ANd either your USB LAN
adapter or an coax cable reaching to your router.
The device can mechanically power on once you introduce the small USB transmission line.
INSTALLING THE RASPBIAN OS
If your Raspberry Pi came with a microSD card preloaded with NOOBS you'll be able to insert the
microSD card into your Raspberry Pi, introduce your transmission line and it'll walk you thru your
setup. check that you decide on Raspbian as your OS alternative, that ought to be the primary on the
list. it'll take a number of minutes to put in. Once that's finished, revive and jump to Raspbian config
choices.
If you have got a spanking new microSD card, you may have to be compelled to transfer a Raspbian
image to your computer and image your microSD card. This tutorial can assume you're employing a
computer running Microsoft Windows. directions for imaging victimisation mack or UNIX system is
found within the Raspberry Pi documents:
http://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/installation/installing-images/README.md
You can notice the newest on the Raspberry Pi downloads page:
http://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/
Or directly transfer the newest here:
http://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspbian_latest
Once downloaded, unfasten the file. If you do not have AN application put in for unzipping files,
you'll be able to use the open supply 7zip:
http://www.7-zip.org/
The unzipped folder can have an oversized .img file. so as to place this image on your microSD card
we'll have to be compelled to use the open supply Win32DiskImager which might be found on
sourceforge:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/
Or directly transfer the newest here:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/files/latest/download
Once downloaded run the installer, this may install Win32DiskImager.
Insert your microSD card into your computer. Launch Win32DiskImager. choose the Raspbian .img
file because the 'image file' and choose your microSD card as your 'device'. check that what's hand-
picked is your microSD card and zilch else, particularly your Winchester drive. Click 'write'. this
may take a number of minutes.
Once finished, eject your microSD card. Insert your microSD card into your Raspberry Pi and
introduce the facility cable and wait whereas it boots up.
RASPBIAN CONFIG CHOICES
When you 1st boot Raspbian you may be prompted with the raspi-config menu shown below:

If you used NOOBS to put in Raspbian your classification system can already be dilated to fill your
full microSD card. but if you put in a Raspbian image you'll have to expand it currently.
Select “1 Expand File System" which can expand the classification system to fill the cardboard.
OPTIONAL
You will run your OS 'headless' and that we can portion somewhat a lot of RAM to the C.P.U..
Select "8 Advanced Options" then choose "Memory Split"
Change sixty four to sixteen
Select "OK"
If you would like to be able to SSH into your Raspnode, you'll be able to change the SSH server here.
Select "8 Advanced Options" then choose "SSH"
Select "Enable"
Change hostname. The default hostname is ready to "raspberry". We'll amendment ours to "raspnode"
and therefore the remainder of the tutorial can assume this. If you allow yours as "raspberry" or
amendment it to one thing else, anytime you see the hostname mentioned, use that rather than
"raspnode".
Select "8 Advanced Options" then choose "Hostname"
Edit the hostname to “raspnode" while not quotes (or to your required hostname)
Select "OK"
Here you'll be able to conjointly amendment the default user (which is "pi") and positive
identification (which is "raspberry"). We'll leave these as is for the tutorial. If you modify your
username, check that to use that rather than "pi" once it shows up during this tutorial.
You can overclock your Raspberry Pi so as to administer it somewhat a lot of process power. this
could build the initial verification of the blockchain faster, however isn't required for traditional full
node operations.
Select "7 Overclock"
Choose the specified level of overclocking
Select "OK"
To set your timezone:
Select "4 group action Options"
Select "Change Timezone"
Go through the choice method to pick your timezone, then choose "OK"
Once done, choose "Finished" and your Raspberry Pi can revive.
When you get the "login" prompt, enter your username "pi" and it'll prompt you for your positive
identification. Enter your positive identification (which will not show up) and hit <enter> to log
in (the positive identification are going to be "raspberry" if you did not amendment it within the raspi-
config).
EDITING FILES
We'll be victimisation the statement to edit files. If you're not accustomed to a statement this could be
somewhat tough. Raspbian comes with a number of editors. Nano may be a comparatively friendly
editor and this tutorial can use that, however Raspbian conjointly has vi for users preferring it and
might be used instead. If you have got not used vi before, you must stick to nano.
For those not accustomed to UNIX system, some actions we tend to take would require root
privileges. we tend to get that by victimisation the command “sudo" before our desired command. this
may solely work if you're logged in as a user with sudo rights, that the default Raspbian user (“pi" in
our case) has. Sudo is set to need a positive identification, however the default Raspbian user ought
to be set to not would like one.
You may need to vary the default keyboard layout. Edit /etc/default/keyboard
pi@raspnode~$ sudo nano /etc/default/keyboard
Change the line
XKBLAYOUT="gb"
to equal your desired country code, so for US keyboard layout change it to
XKBLAYOUT="us"
Then save and exit. Reboot to have it take effect. Reboot with
pi@raspnode~$ sudo shutdown -r now
CONFIGURE USB AND SET AUTOMOUNT (OPTIONAL)
If you are not mistreatment any auxiliary storage you'll be able to skip this section and visit
networking.
Make sure your USB stick is empty and employing a file format that works natively with Linux (e.g.
not NTFS). FAT32 may be a sensible possibility. you'll be able to try this by plugging your USB stick
into your Windows laptop and checking it's properties. If it is not empty, format it as FAT32. Here
you'll be able to conjointly modification the label. build a note of the label, it'll be useful later (but
not necessary).
Windows might not provide the choice to format a drive that's terribly giant as FAT32, during which
case you'll got to use some third party software package, or format it in Linux. Also, note that
Raspbian can possibly see FAT32 as VFAT that is what we'll see below.
Create a directory which will act as a mount purpose for the USB stick, we'll decision it ethData and
place it within the home directory (full path are going to be /home/pi/ethData/:
pi@raspnode~$ mkdir ~/ethData
Plug your USB stick into your Raspberry Pi and wait a number of seconds. so as to examine wherever
it's settled, issue the command:
pi@raspnode~$ sudo blkid
You can issue the blkid command while not sudo, however if you run it while not root privileges you
will not get any info back. What you must see may be a few lines that look one thing like this:
/dev/mmcblk0p1: LABEL="root" UUID="1460456c-eadd-49a9-e2ab-a0fe18df0d3a" TYPE="ext4"
Which ar specific to your OS. What you're longing for may be a line like:
/dev/sda1: LABEL="<your usb label>" UUID="<some id>" TYPE="vfat"

This is wherever knowing your label will facilitate. the kind ought to be “vfat" and you're wanting to
examine what the /dev/sdxx is (it can be sda1, sdb1, or one thing similar, however most likely sda1).
Write that down. you do not really need the label or uuid written down, simply the situation.
In order to inform your Raspberry Pi to mount your USB stick mechanically in order that something
we have a tendency to place within the ethData directory are going to be going onto the USB and the
other way around we want to edit the /etc/fstab file.
pi@raspnode~$ sudo nano /etc/fstab
It ought to have a number of lines of knowledge, at the tip of the file add this, all united line,
beginning with the situation of your USB drive that you simply wrote down. If it's /dev/sda1, then
what you add would be this:
/dev/sda1 /home/pi/ethData vfat uid=pi,gid=pi,umask=0022,sync,auto,nosuid,rw,nouser 0 0

If you modified your username to one thing else, replace “pi" therewith username on top of all told
areas it shows up. There aren't any areas in this line, solely one tab between every chunk of
information. There ar alternative choices that you simply might use if you needed additional or less
restrictions on your drive, however this can work. you must solely alter this setup if you recognize
what you're doing. primarily this can mechanically mount the USB drive on boot to our desired
location, enable the pi (or substituted user) to scan and write knowledge to the drive, and a number of
alternative things on the far side the scope of this tutorial.
Save the file and exit and then boot your Raspberry Pi:
pi@raspnode ~ $ sudo shutdown -r now
NETWORKING ON THE RASPBERRY PI
If you're mistreatment associate coax and plugging directly into your router and DHCP is turned on,
you'll be able to plug that in and you must have access to the web. you'll be able to check by pinging
out:
pi@raspnode~$ ping google.com
If you begin to examine pings you're sensible. Hit &lt;ctrl&gt; + c to prevent the pings. If you're
employing a WLAN adapter and have a secret set for your router, there ar a number of additional
steps to require. putting in place and troubleshooting WLAN on the Raspberry Pi is on the far side the
scope of this tutorial, therefore if the fundamental setup shown here does not work, you'll be able to
reference the Raspberry Pi documentation for help:
http://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/configuration/wireless/wireless-cli.md
To setup your wifi connection, edit the file /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf:
pi@raspnode~$ sudo nano /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
Add this code to the bottom of the file:
network={
ssid="<your wifi ssid here>"
psk="<your wifi password here>"
}
For example, if your wifi network is named myHomeWifi and your wifi password is mySuperSecret
then wpa_supplicant.conf should look like this:
ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1

network={
ssid="myHomeWifi"
psk="mySuperSecret"
}
Then restart your wifi interface:
pi@raspnode~$ sudo ifdown wlan0
pi@raspnode~$ sudo ifup wlan0

If you wish to line a static informatics, that's presently out of the scope of this tutorial.
DOWNLOADING ETHEREUM PYETH DEPENDENCIES

First let's certify everything is up to this point and update it if it isn't:

pi@raspnode~$ sudo apt-get update
pi@raspnode~$ sudo apt-get upgrade -y
We need to put in some dependencies together with pip (a python module installer). Running this may
transfer what's needed:
pi@raspnode~$ sudo apt-get install python-pip python-dev -y
INSTALLING PYETHAPP
Unlike the Go or C++ consumer Pyeth is written in Python therefore we do not got to compile any
ASCII text file, creating installation terribly easy:
pi@raspnode~$ sudo pip install pyethapp
PyEthApp conjointly comes with the genesis block, in contrast to the Go consumer therefore we do
not got to transfer that.
RUN PYETHAPP

You can run PyEthApp with none configuration:

pi@raspnode~$ pyethapp run
You will see a bunch of output on the screen, some syncing errors and different peer and network
warnings. this could stop and it should appear to be nothing goes on. If you allow it's, it'll eventually
starts syncing and downloading blocks. This method is far slower than the Go consumer, and it's am
fond of it might take per week or a lot of to set with the network. I counsel downloading the
blockchain exploitation pyethapp on another laptop initial and transfering it over. It took around
twelve hours for my server to set the total blockchain as of December 2015 exploitation PyEthApp.
The default location for the pyethapp blockchain is ~/.config/pyethapp/leveldb.
To have PyEthApp store the blockchain in your drive, run with the information directory option:
pi@raspnode~$ pyethapp --data-dir /home/pi/ethData/ run

PyEthApp comes bundled with the IPython interactive electronic communication, of that i will get in a
trifle a lot of detail successive time I update this tutorial, moreover as basic functions like making
accounts.
CONFIGURE HOME NETWORK TO SET WITH THE ETHEREUM
NETWORK
The Ethereum network uses port 30303 by default. you'll got to forward that port to permit different
nodes to attach to you. to try and do that you simply can got to get your raspnode's native informatics
address with:
pi@raspnode~$ ifconfig
If you're cabled into your router directly the informatics address are underneath "eth0", if you're on
WLAN it'll be underneath "wlan0". the way to forward ports are specific to your router and should
take some exploring if you're not at home with networking.
Thats All. Happy Mining !!