NAME¶

minerd - CPU miner for Bitcoin and Litecoin

SYNOPSIS¶

minerd [OPTION]...

DESCRIPTION¶

minerd is a multi-threaded CPU miner for Bitcoin, Litecoin and other cryptocurrencies. It supports the getwork and getblocktemplate (BIP 22) methods, as well as the Stratum mining protocol.

In its normal mode of operation, minerd connects to a mining server (specified with the -o option), receives work from it and starts hashing. As soon as a solution is found, it is submitted to the same mining server, which can accept or reject it. When using getwork or getblocktemplate, minerd can take advantage of long polling, if the server supports it; in any case, fresh work is fetched as needed. When using the Stratum protocol this is not possible, and the server is responsible for sending fresh work at least every minute; if it fails to do so, minerd may drop the connection and try reconnecting again.

By default, minerd writes all its messages to standard error. On systems that have a syslog, the --syslog option can be used to write to it instead.

On start, the nice value of all miner threads is set to 19. On Linux, the scheduling policy is also changed to SCHED_IDLE, or to SCHED_BATCH if that fails. On multiprocessor systems, minerd automatically sets the CPU affinity of miner threads if the number of threads is a multiple of the number of processors.

EXAMPLES¶

To connect to a Litecoin mining pool that provides a Stratum server at example.com on port 3333, authenticating as worker "foo" with password "bar":

minerd -o stratum+tcp://example.com:3333 -O foo:bar

To mine to a local Bitcoin testnet instance running on port 18332, authenticating with username "rpcuser" and password "rpcpass":

minerd -a sha256d -o http://localhost:18332 -O rpcuser:rpcpass \
	--coinbase-addr=mpXwg4jMtRhuSpVq4xS3HFHmCmWp9NyGKt

To connect to a Litecoin P2Pool node running on my.server on port 9327, mining in the background and having output sent to the syslog facility, omitting the per-thread hashmeter output:

minerd -BSq -o http://my.server:9327

OPTIONS¶

-a, --algo=ALGORITHM

Set the hashing algorithm to use. Default is scrypt. Possible values are:

--benchmark

Run in offline benchmark mode.

-B, --background

Run in the background as a daemon.

--cert=FILE

Set an SSL certificate to use with the mining server. Only supported when using the HTTPS protocol.

--coinbase-addr=ADDRESS

Set a payout address for solo mining. This is only used in getblocktemplate mode, and only if the server does not provide a coinbase transaction. It can be either a base-58 address, or a bech32 address (BIP 173).

--coinbase-sig=TEXT

Set a string to be included in the coinbase (if allowed by the server). This is only used in getblocktemplate mode.

-c, --config=FILE

Load options from a configuration file. FILE must contain a JSON object mapping long options to their arguments (as strings), or to true if no argument is required. Sample configuration file:

	{
		"url": "stratum+tcp://example.com:3333",
		"userpass": "foo:bar",
		"retry-pause": "10",
		"quiet": true
	}

-D, --debug

Enable debug output.

-h, --help

Print a help message and exit.

--no-gbt

Do not use the getblocktemplate RPC method.

--no-getwork

Do not use the getwork RPC method.

--no-longpoll

Do not use long polling.

--no-redirect

Ignore requests from the server to switch to a different URL.

--no-stratum

Do not switch to Stratum, even if the server advertises support for it.

-o, --url=[SCHEME://][USERNAME[:PASSWORD]@]HOST:PORT[/PATH]

Set the URL of the mining server to connect to. Supported schemes are http, https, stratum+tcp and stratum+tcps. If no scheme is specified, http is assumed. Specifying a PATH is only supported for HTTP and HTTPS. Specifying credentials has the same effect as using the -O option.

By default, on HTTP and HTTPS, the miner tries to use the getblocktemplate RPC method, and falls back to using getwork if getblocktemplate is unavailable. This behavior can be modified by using the --no-gbt and --no-getwork options.

-O, --userpass=USERNAME:PASSWORD

Set the credentials to use for connecting to the mining server. Any value previously set with -u or -p is discarded.

-p, --pass=PASSWORD

Set the password to use for connecting to the mining server. Any password previously set with -O is discarded.

-P, --protocol-dump

Enable output of all protocol-level activities.

-q, --quiet

Disable per-thread hashmeter output.

-r, --retries=N

Set the maximum number of times to retry if a network call fails. If not specified, the miner will retry indefinitely.

-R, --retry-pause=SECONDS

Set how long to wait between retries. Default is 30 seconds.

-s, --scantime=SECONDS

Set an upper bound on the time the miner can go without fetching fresh work. This setting has no effect in Stratum mode or when long polling is activated. Default is 5 seconds.

-S, --syslog

Log to the syslog facility instead of standard error.

-t, --threads=N

Set the number of miner threads. If not specified, the miner will try to detect the number of available processors and use that.

-T, --timeout=SECONDS

Set a timeout for long polling.

-u, --user=USERNAME

Set the username to use for connecting to the mining server. Any username previously set with -O is discarded.

-V, --version

Display version information and quit.

-x, --proxy=[SCHEME://][USERNAME:PASSWORD@]HOST:PORT

Connect to the mining server through a proxy. Supported schemes are: http, socks4, socks5. Since libcurl 7.18.0, the following are also supported: socks4a, socks5h (SOCKS5 with remote name resolving). If no scheme is specified, the proxy is treated as an HTTP proxy.

ENVIRONMENT¶

The following environment variables can be specified in lower case or upper case; the lower-case version has precedence. http_proxy is an exception as it is only available in lower case.

Using an environment variable to set the proxy has the same effect as using the -x option.

AUTHOR¶

Most of the code in the current version of minerd was written by Pooler <pooler@litecoinpool.org> with contributions from others.

The original minerd was written by Jeff Garzik <jeff@garzik.org>.