How to: cgminer (Bitcoin, Litecoin etc.) + AMD Radeon driver install on CentOS

UPDATE 7/7/13: If you want to use Catalyst drivers version 12.8 you will find that X won’t start (error msg: /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/fglrx_drv.so: undefined symbol: noXFree86DRIExtension) if you installed CentOS 6.4. Catalyst > 12.8 will work fine. To fix that, you can downgrade to the Xorg version that ships with CentOS 6.3:

yum --disablerepo=\* --enablerepo=C6.3\* downgrade xorg\*
(You may also need to do: yum remove xorg-x11-drv-modesetting)

Do this before you install Catalyst!
UPDATE END.

Here’s my how-to for cgminer / AMD Radeon drivers under CentOS 6.4,
32bit in this example. You can basically copy & paste every line and
you should end up with a working mining rig.

Install required packages:

yum install wget system-config-firewall-tui openssh-clients
kernel-devel-2.6.32-358.el6.i686 libcurl-devel ncurses-devel
compat-libstdc++-33 screen xterm
yum groupinstall "X Window System" "Development tools"

Download and extract cgminer 3.7.2 – later versions don’t support GPU mining:

cd /root
wget http://ck.kolivas.org/apps/cgminer/3.7/cgminer-3.7.2.tar.bz2
tar xjvf cgminer-3.7.2.tar.bz2

Download AMD APP and ADL SDKs for cgminer compilation from:

AMD APP SDK: http://developer.amd.com/tools-and-sdks/heterogeneous-computing/amd-accelerated-parallel-processing-app-sdk/downloads
AMD ADL SDK: http://developer.amd.com/tools-and-sdks/graphics-development/display-library-adl-sdk

Install AMD APP SDK:

cd /opt
tar xvzf /root/AMD-APP-SDK-v2.8-lnx32.tgz
cd /
tar xvzf /opt/icd-registration.tgz
cd /opt
tar xvzf AMD-APP-SDK-v2.8-RC-lnx32.tgz
ln -s /opt/AMD-APP-SDK-v2.8-RC-lnx32/include/CL /usr/include
ln -s /opt/AMD-APP-SDK-v2.8-RC-lnx32/lib/x86/* /usr/lib/

Install AMD ADL SDK:

cd /root
mkdir ADL
mv ADL_SDK_5.0.zip ADL
cd ADL
unzip ADL_SDK_5.0.zip
cp include/*.h /root/cgminer-3.7.2/ADL_SDK

Build cgminer for Litecoin (with scrypt support):

cd /root/cgminer-3.7.2
CFLAGS="-O2 -Wall -march=native
-I/opt/AMD-APP-SDK-v2.8-RC-lnx32/include"
LDFLAGS="-L/opt/AMD-APP-SDK-v2.8-RC-lnx32/lib/x86" ./configure
--enable-scrypt
make
make install (if you want to run the cgminer binary from everywhere)

Install fglrx AMD graphics card drivers:

AMD Catalyst driver (fglrx) from: http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/linux/Pages/radeon_linux.aspx

(e.g.

cd /root
wget http://www2.ati.com/drivers/linux/amd-catalyst-13.4-linux-x86.x86_64.zip

)

unzip amd-catalyst-13.4-linux-x86.x86_64.zip
chmod 700 amd-catalyst-13.4-linux-x86.x86_64.run
./amd-catalyst-13.4-linux-x86.x86_64.run --buildpkg RedHat/RHEL6
rpm -Uvh fglrx_p_i_c-12.104-1.i386.rpm

reboot

amdconfig --adapter=all --initial

If your mining rig is headless you can start X in a screen session:

screen
xinit

Detach screen session: CTRL+A+D

Create cgminer.sh and put this into the file:

export GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS=1
export GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT=100
export DISPLAY=:0




cgminer --scrypt ...your parameters go here...


Make it executable:

chmod 700 cgminer.sh

Configure cgminer parameters as needed and start mining (./cgminer.sh). Done!

This entry was posted in tech and tagged bitcoin, centos, linux, litecoin on May 15, 2013.

Post navigation

← JunOS: Finding SNMP object identifiers for your Juniper device
Quick copy & paste how-to: Install KVM on CentOS →

20 thoughts on “How to: cgminer (Bitcoin, Litecoin etc.) + AMD Radeon driver install on CentOS”

1. spineless November 27, 2013 at 19:37

   I am getting an error when I install cgminer. I downloaed the
   drivers and the GCminer and was about to start installing GCminer. I
   entered the command ./autogen.sh and I get the following error:

   
configure.ac:39: error: possibly undefined macro: AC_PROG_LIBTOOL
If this token and others are legitimate, please use m4_pattern_allow.
See the Autoconf documentation.
autoreconf: /usr/bin/autoconf failed with exit status: 1
Configuring...
./autogen.sh: line 10: /root/cgminer/configure: No such file or directory


   Not sure where to start with this one. Any ideas?

   Reply ↓
   1. univ Post authorNovember 27, 2013 at 20:16

      Hi! Wow, your comment is the 2nd legitimate comment ever in my
      blog. :-) Anyway, it seems like not all development tools required for
      compiling from source were installed. Are you sure you executed the “yum
      install …” line? In particular: yum install “Development tools”
      Let me know if this helps or not.

      Reply ↓
2. homer December 5, 2013 at 16:22

   Wow! a blogger who is arrogant to its readers!
   Wanna be the third:

   Q: What happened to CPU and GPU mining?
   A: Their efficiency makes them irrelevant in the bitcoin mining world today
   and the author has no interest in supporting alternative coins that are better
   mined by these devices.

   So, how could the Radeon Driver make sense?

   Felix

   Reply ↓
   1. univ Post authorDecember 5, 2013 at 19:27

      I think you misunderstood my comment. His comment was the 2nd legitimate comment ever, all other comments were spam so far.

      Reply ↓
3. homer December 5, 2013 at 16:27

   Serious: cgminer after 3.7.2 does not contain gpu mining any more, so do not check out cgminer from git, use http://ck.kolivas.org/apps/cgminer/3.7/cgminer-3.7.2.tar.bz2

   Reply ↓
   1. univ Post authorDecember 5, 2013 at 19:37

      Thanks for the heads-up. I adjusted the instructions.

      Reply ↓

4. Pingback: Help with a Gigabyte GV-R928XOC-3GD REV2 | COINREGIME.COM

5. Portos January 18, 2014 at 09:11

   Ops! Fulfilled your instructions, but starting ./cgminer -n reports:

   FATAL: Module fglrx not found.
   Error! Fail to load fglrx kernel module! Maybe you can switch to root user to load kernel module directly
   FATAL: Module fglrx not found.
   Error! Fail to load fglrx kernel module! Maybe you can switch to root user to load kernel module directly
   [2014-01-18 08:05:22] CL Platform 0 vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
   [2014-01-18 08:05:22] CL Platform 0 name: AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing
   [2014-01-18 08:05:22] CL Platform 0 version: OpenCL 1.2 AMD-APP (1214.3)
   [2014-01-18 08:05:22] Error -1: Getting Device IDs (num)
   [2014-01-18 08:05:22] clDevicesNum returned error, no GPUs usable
   [2014-01-18 08:05:22] 0 GPU devices max detected

   Why?

   Reply ↓
   1. univ Post authorJanuary 18, 2014 at 09:43

      Hm, for some reason the kernel driver fglrx is not being loaded. As root, try

      modprobe fglrx

      and afterwards run

      amdconfig –lsa

      to see if your GPUs are found then.

      Reply ↓
6. Portos January 20, 2014 at 12:55

   Alas, nothing:

   # modprobe fglrx
   # amdconfig –lsa
   # amdconfig: No supported adapters detected

   Reply ↓
   1. univ Post authorJanuary 24, 2014 at 11:53

      Hmm. It could be that either fglrx gets not properly loaded, or
      that fglrx is fine by itself and your GPUs are really not found. Are you
      100% sure the GPUs are working in this box? If you have only GPU and
      that’s the one where you have hooked up your monitor to, then that’s a
      yes. :) I would boot the box, and then check “dmesg” to see what the
      output was when fglrx tried to load. Did it even try to load?

      Reply ↓
   2. univ Post authorJanuary 24, 2014 at 11:55

      PS: The fact that “modprobe fglrx” didn’t produce any output is
      good. Looks like it was loaded then. But make sure it is really there by
      running “lsmod” or “lsmod | grep fglrx”.

      Reply ↓
7. Vital January 24, 2014 at 05:17

   hi. i have this:
   [root@p4-36 cgminer-3.7.2]# CFLAGS=”-O2 -Wall -march=native
   -I/AMD-APP-SDK-v2.8-RC-lnx32/include”
   LDFLAGS=”-L/AMD-APP-SDK-v2.8-RC-lnx32/lib/x86″ ./configure
   –enable-scrypt
   checking build system type… x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
   checking host system type… x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
   checking target system type… x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
   checking for a BSD-compatible install… /usr/bin/install -c
   checking whether build environment is sane… yes
   checking for a thread-safe mkdir -p… /bin/mkdir -p
   checking for gawk… gawk
   checking whether make sets $(MAKE)… yes
   checking whether make supports nested variables… yes
   checking for style of include used by make… GNU
   checking for gcc… gcc
   checking whether the C compiler works… no
   configure: error: in `/root/cgminer-3.7.2′:
   configure: error: C compiler cannot create executables
   See `config.log’ for more details

   before and after this, evrth was good.

   as a result – I cant run cgminer:
   [root@p4-36 cgminer-3.9.0]# ./cgminer.sh
   ./cgminer.sh: line 5: cgminer: command not found

   any suggestions?

   Reply ↓
   1. univ Post authorJanuary 24, 2014 at 12:05

      Strange. “checking whether the C compiler works… no” means gcc is
      there but not working properly. Did you follow my installation
      instructions about the required packages and were all packages
      successfully installed? Double-check whether they were all installed!
      Make sure yum install “Development tools” finishes without problems.

      Is this CentOS 32bit? (Show output of “uname -a” and “cat /etc/issue”)

      Did you really extract the AMD APP SDK in / instead of /opt?

      I noticed when you tried to execute cgminer.sh you are in a directory
      called cgminer-3.9.0 instead of before cgminer-3.7.2. cgminer-3.9.0
      does not support GPU mining, so throw it away.

      Reply ↓
8. Alex Barringer October 24, 2014 at 18:36

   For those of you that claim that CGMiner doesn’t support graphics
   boards, you’d be full of it. Anything beyond 3.7.2 and it’s forks don’t
   have GPU support, they have ASIC and FPGA support.

   The CPU mining support was dropped in the CGMiner 3.5 series.

   If you can’t get your graphics cards to be recognized by CGMiner,
   that’s not the fault of the blog owner, you’re not reading the
   instructions carefully and obviously not browsing the CGMiner (README)
   file, if you did, you’d realize your error. Make sure that when you
   install the APP SDK that you reboot your computer, there is a specific
   reason why you should do this.

   in order for you to be able to get it to work with say, ATI based
   cards. You first have to make sure you have a GP-GPU and not an older
   card that doesn’t support OpenCL, otherwise it won’t work.

   You need to install the AMD FGLRX entire package (not just the
   driver, you need Catalyst, too), I’m using the 14.9 stable driver
   currently, then install AMD APP SDK. I don’t recommend using the Release
   Candidates (RCs), they’re really buggy, you can use the verion 2.9 but
   make sure you download the ADL 7.0 SDK they’re paired together for a
   reason.

   When all is said and done and you have all the prerequisites out of
   the way and get all the dependencies downloaded and installed.

   You can use this command line to get the graphics boards to be recognized:

   ./configure –enable-scrypt –enable-opencl

   Those two are required for you to do graphics board mining, even if
   you’re not doing S-Crypt mining and just doing SHA256D, you still need
   to declare S-Crypt to be enabled, otherwise you can’t do mining on the
   cards.

   It’s in the “README”! Do read it, next time!

   You can get the CGMiner 3.7.2 here:

   http://ck.kolivas.org/apps/cgminer/old/3.7/

   Alternately, you can get Kalroth’s version fork of 3.7.2 here:

   https://github.com/Kalroth/cgminer-3.7.2-kalroth

   You must have GIT installed to use the GITHUB version of this.

   Please read the README.md on that site before you go ahead and try to
   use it, it will save a lot of headaches. Do read up on how to use GIT
   correctly, too.

   Note: If you get massive hardware errors and then receive no accepted
   shares on either version of CGMiner or if doing S-Crypt only and use
   SGMiner (a fork of CGMiner) you are more than likely using the wrong
   graphics driver for the ADL and APP SDKs (meaning too old).

   I line up the following installations:

   1. ATI FGLRX full installation including Catalyst, version 14.9
   2. AMD APP SDK version 2.9 (not the RC version)
   3. AMD ADL SDK version 7.0

   This is what I use on Ubuntu and on CentOS and have no trouble at all using CGMiner or CGMiner-Kalroth.

   Many of the problems I see people have with this software is because they don’t read the instructions!

   Note: CGMiner 3.8.x and beyond DO NOT support graphics mining anymore, up to 3.7.2 does.

   Also, don’t install AMD APP SDK directly as root, that’s dangerous, use “sudo” instead.

   There is a script in the installation for the SDK called, “Install-APP-SDK.sh”, I highly suggest you use it.

   sudo ./Install-APP-SDK.sh

   By default, it will install in the /opt directory, which is what you
   want, anyhow. After you install it, reboot your computer normally, it’s
   actually a requirement for the installation to be completed, do this
   before you attempt to compile CGMiner.

   Reply ↓
9. Alex Barringer October 24, 2014 at 18:42

   I should also point out that when you use CGMiner for the first
   time, don’t overclock anything, leave your card the way it is and double
   check your setting for the mining site you’re using. If you have your
   Intensity up too high you can also receive massive hardware errors and
   no accepted shares, same thing can occur when your GP-GPU overheats
   and/or your dedicated memory on the card (which usually has no heatsinks
   on them (design problem).

   Reply ↓
10. J October 28, 2014 at 20:46

    I have a question, If I am not running a GUI on my CentOS system,
    and I have 2 x sapphire toxic r9 270x cards does one still need the
    radeon drivers? Are they only for X of are they needed for cgminer also?

    Reply ↓
    1. J October 28, 2014 at 21:17

       Seems like the post from ‘Alex Barringer’ is pretty helpful.

       Reply ↓
       1. univ Post authorOctober 28, 2014 at 21:20

          Agreed. :)

          Reply ↓
    2. univ Post authorOctober 28, 2014 at 21:18

       Yes, you still need the Radeon drivers. They are needed for cgminer also.