I wanted to build kawpowminer from source so I could mine some Ravencoin. I ran into some issues getting it to build, so I’m documenting them here in case anyone else runs into the same problems.

Let’s assume you’ve gotten past the part where you install all of the dev libraries you need (cuda, etc) and are trying to get the kawpowminer source to build (if you miss a library, it’s generally pretty obvious from googling the build error which one you need to add and then try again).

git clone https://github.com/RavenCommunity/kawpowminer
cd kawpowminer
git submodule update --init --recursive
cmake .

It’s at this point that you’re likely to see an error.

CMake Error: The following variables are used in this project, but they are set to NOTFOUND.
Please set them or make sure they are set and tested correctly in the CMake files:
CUDA_cuda_LIBRARY
linked by target "ethash-cuda" in directory /home/xangis/code/kawpowminer/libethash-cuda
CUDA_nvrtc_LIBRARY
linked by target "ethash-cuda" in directory /home/xangis/code/kawpowminer/libethash-cuda

-- Configuring incomplete, errors occurred!

To get past this, you’ll need to find where your libcuda.so and libnvrtc.so files are. I install mlocate on my machines so I can do “locate libcuda.so” to find the file location. Once you’ve found (or installed) them, add the file locations to the cmake command line like so:

cmake . -DETHASHCUDA=ON -DETHASHCL=ON -DCUDA_cuda_LIBRARY=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libcuda.so -DCUDA_nvrtc_LIBRARY=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libnvrtc.so

CMake should run for a while and do a bunch of things. Eventually you’ll be ready to run “make” to create the final build of the app. Except, it doesn’t like the default Ubuntu gcc v9 install. It’s too new:

[ 64%] Building NVCC (Device) object libethash-cuda/CMakeFiles/ethash-cuda.dir/ethash-cuda_generated_CUDAMiner_cuda.cu.o
In file included from /usr/include/cuda_runtime.h:83,
from :
/usr/include/crt/host_config.h:138:2: error: #error -- unsupported GNU version! gcc versions later than 8 are not supported!
138 | #error -- unsupported GNU version! gcc versions later than 8 are not supported!
| ^~~~~
CMake Error at ethash-cuda_generated_CUDAMiner_cuda.cu.o.Release.cmake:220 (message):
Error generating
/home/xangis/code/kawpowminer/libethash-cuda/CMakeFiles/ethash-cuda.dir//./ethash-cuda_generated_CUDAMiner_cuda.cu.o

make[2]: *** [libethash-cuda/CMakeFiles/ethash-cuda.dir/build.make:65: libethash-cuda/CMakeFiles/ethash-cuda.dir/ethash-cuda_generated_CUDAMiner_cuda.cu.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [CMakeFiles/Makefile2:513: libethash-cuda/CMakeFiles/ethash-cuda.dir/all] Error 2
make[1]: *** Waiting for unfinished jobs....
[ 66%] Linking CXX static library libpoolprotocols.a
[ 66%] Built target poolprotocols
make: *** [Makefile:152: all] Error 2
xangis@spica:~/code/kawpowminer$ gcc --version
gcc (Ubuntu 9.3.0-17ubuntu1~20.04) 9.3.0
Copyright (C) 2019 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

To get around this, you’ll need to install an older version of gcc. I went back to version 7 because I didn’t want to worry about installing v8.1 for example, and then being told that it won’t work because it’s a version later than 8.

sudo apt-get install gcc-7 g++-7

Now you have two versions of GCC installed, and your system won’t use the older one. There are a few ways to switch them (including update-alternatives), but the quickest way is to remove the /usr/bin/gcc link to gcc-9 and replace it with one to gcc-7.

sudo rm /usr/bin/gcc
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/gcc-7 /usr/bin/gcc

Now if you run “make”, you won’t get the error message about your gcc being too new. You’ll probably want to reverse this change after you’re done building, unless you want to keep using the older version of GCC, which you might want to do if you’ll be working on the kawpowminer code.

sudo rm /usr/bin/gcc
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/gcc-9 /usr/bin/gcc

If you found this helpful, you can always RVN me at RRWHrajdjJV7kKdZoeRFbKHkEeuh9jBKR4

I have a handful of mostly-idle Ubuntu servers, so I decided to set up a Ravencoin node on one of them.

I used this tutorial by Tron Black for the setup. (Warning: Medium is now a paywall site)

At the risk of repeating, this is how I set up a node on my Ubuntu 20.04 server (from my user home directory):

wget https://github.com/RavenProject/Ravencoin/releases/download/v4.3.2.1/raven-4.3.2.1-x86_64-linux-gnu.zip
unzip raven-4.3.2.1-x86_64-linux-gnu.zip
cd linux
gunzip raven-4.3.2.1-x86_64-linux-gnu.tar.gz
tar xf raven-4.3.2.1-x86_64-linux-gnu.tar

Yes, we have a gzipped file inside of a zip file. That’s a little odd, but not a big deal.

cd raven-4.3.2.1/
sudo ln -s ~/raven-4.3.2.1/bin/raven-cli /usr/bin/raven-cli
sudo ln -s ~/raven-4.3.2.1/bin/ravend /usr/bin/ravend
ravend -daemon -maxconnections=10000

Wait a few seconds.

ps aux|grep ravend

The process should show up if the daemon started successfully. Running it manually like that means it’ll have to be restarted if the machine restarts, but this one has an uptime of 181 days, so that’s not a frequent occurrence.

Now to check status:

raven-cli getnetworkinfo

Outputs:

{
"version": 4030201,
"subversion": "/Ravencoin:4.3.2.1/",
"protocolversion": 70028,
...
"connections": 25,
...
"localaddresses": [
{
"address": "216.151.2.51",
"port": 8767,
"score": 1472
}
],
}

I trimmed out a bunch of extra stuff for the sake of space (thus “…”), but the important things to see are that it’s using the right IP address and that there’s a positive number of connections (25). It’s working! I’m very curious what the “score” is for, though. It’s not always the same.

I waited a day or so to see whether it shows up on the raven nodes site, and it does.

As far as I know, you don’t actually get any direct benefit from running a raven node (transaction fees, etc), it just keeps things running smoothly on the Raven network.

Essentially, you’ve left water out for the birds, but they’re not going to bring you shiny things. But, it never hurts to have some goodwill from the ravens.

You can always RVN me at RRWHrajdjJV7kKdZoeRFbKHkEeuh9jBKR4

I don’t have a gaming rig. I don’t even have a desktop computer. So, how am I going to be able to mine any kind of cryptocurrency? Fat chance.

Well, it turns out that if you have a fairly powerful laptop video card, you can mine Ravencoin. I have a GeForce 1650 Max-Q, which gets about 5.6 MH/s with the KAWPoW algorithm used for Ravencoin. I used kawpowminer on Windows, but there are plenty of other options for both Windows and Linux.

How did I decide what mining pool to use?

Well, I checked MiningPoolStats to find the most popular ones. 2Miners and Flypool were at the top of the list, but I checked out their websites and I didn’t care for the look and feel of them. After checking a few more, I settled on miningpoolhub. Their website has a clean look, it’s easy to set up payouts, and they have a nice view of your stats with the important info up front.

I’ve been running for a few days and so far I’ve been getting about 5 RVN per day. It’s not a lot — only 60 cents worth — but it’s enough to make it feel like I’m making progress. The computer was going to be on anyway, so I might as well get some use out of it.

Don’t be afraid to try a few different mining pools. The interfaces, fees, payout frequency, coin conversion, and other features vary considerably.

You can always RVN me at RRWHrajdjJV7kKdZoeRFbKHkEeuh9jBKR4

It’s been about seven years since I’ve paid any attention to the world of cryptocurrency. A lot has changed since then. There are now THOUSANDS of coins in the world. How do you figure out which ones to pay attention to?

I started by checking the coin ratings at isthiscoinascam.com. I only gave serious attention to coins rated at least 6.0 (Good), which at the time of this writing is 67 coins. I also looked at some of the coins rated between 5.0 and 6.0 (Above Average), but only if they had names that sounded interesting. For the most part there wasn’t much worth looking at below 6.0.

For each of those coins, I took a look at the profile and statistics at coinmarketcap.com. I eliminated anything that had a focus that didn’t seem very interesting to me, anything that looked like it had peaked and was on the decline, or anything that had numbers that didn’t look right to me.

That left a handful of coins that seemed like they were worth holding as investments (to me). I’m not looking for insane 10x+ returns, but rather some solid growth over the next few years. In other words, I’m looking for assets rather than lottery tickets.

The ones I decided that I wanted to hold some of are:

Algorand (ALGO)
Bitcoin (BTC)
Cardano (ADA)
Cosmos (ATOM)
Dash (DASH)
Ethereum (ETH)
Litecoin (LTC)
Monero (XMR)
Polkadot (DOT)
Ravencoin (RVN)
Stellar (XLM)
Tezos (XTZ)
ZCash (ZEC)

Honorable mentions (things I’ll consider getting) are:

Aave (AAVE)
Chainlink (LINK)
Polygon (MATIC)
Solana (SOL)

Of the good choices, the one that seems to have the most potential is Ravencoin. I’ll have to look into that in more detail.

With 13 coins in the list of things I want to hold on to, it should be pretty easy to build a diversified portfolio. Some things will do well, and some won’t, but I think cryptocurrency is still on the rise and chances are good that there will be a significant positive return.