About Chia

Due to the huge consumption of global computing resources and energy and the continuous price increase of computing hardware caused by the cryptocurrency represented by Bitcoin, some emerging cryptocurrency projects in recent years have begun to use cheaper hardware resources with lower energy consumption--hard disk. Chia, the recently exploded cryptocurrency, was created by Bram Cohen, the writer of BitTorrent. It is a way to obtain blocks with existing spare hard disk space distributed on global nodes. Chia blockchain version 1.0 was officially launched on March 19, 2021.

The principle of hard disk farming is that the user installs software, that is, uses the CPU or graphics card, and writes the hard disk with hash data through the corresponding algorithm to achieve plots of the unused space on the hard disk. This process is called "Plotting", which requires the use of a faster read and write speed SSD as a temporary storage disk. After completing a plot file, the Plotting software will transfer it to the hard disk used for farming. After the Plotting process is over, the farming program will scan the hash data on the hard disk, and then submit it to the main network for verification, and then the farming program will look for the best answer in the drawn Plotting files (farmer process) , and then send out rewards.

Someone vividly compares the principle of POC hard disk "farming" as "sending lottery tickets." To put it simply, the program is filled with lottery numbers on your hard disk, and the server will randomly draw a lottery from time to time. The larger allocated hard disk space and the longer online time is, the greater the probability of winning.

How to choose Chia farming device?

There are several ways to plant Chia, because Chia highly relies on flash memory and large-capacity HDD storage rather than high-end GPUs and CPUs. After a long time study, I finally made up my mind to experience this trend and chose a NAS device as the farming device considering the limited budget. That is TerraMaster F5-422:

PS: TerraMaster F8-422 with a larger capacity is also very suitable if you are rich and have lots of hard disks.

1. This is a 5-bay NAS, equipped with a 4-core 1.5 GHz CPU and 4 GB RAM. You can also add a DDR by yourself to have a total of 8 GB RAM. It supports HDD and SSD which will largely increase the efficiency of drawing.

2. I can easily and quickly install the Ubuntu operating system through USB to run Chia software on TerraMaster NAS. While on some of other brand NAS, it’s needed to install the Ubuntu system in NAS virtual machine before running Chia software. By comparison, the direct utilization efficiency of TerraMaster hardware should be the highest.

3. With the same price, the hardware configuration is much stronger and the cost performance is higher. The whole product is made of aluminum alloy shell, which looks relatively solid and reliable and with 2 large fans, heat dissipation won’t be a problem so the work can be done uninterruptedly.

Now, let me show you the process of installing the Chia software with TerraMaster NAS.

Chia Software Installation Guide

The Chia program can be installed and run in Windows, Linux, and MacOS. If you are running on a TerraMaster NAS device, you need to install the Ubuntu operating system to get a better experience. Please refer to the following steps to install the Ubuntu operating system directly on the TerraMaster NAS device.

1. TerraMaster X86 NAS device, recommended F5-422 or F8-422, and the memory should be expanded to at least 8GB.

2. Need to disassemble the device to remove the built-in Initboot USB.

3. Prepare a USB no less than 4GB to make Ubuntu USB boot media.

4. Prepare a 512GB or larger SSD for the cache of the Chia program

5. Prepare several HDDs, one of which is used to install the Ubunut operating system and you can also use a SSD with a capacity larger than 256GB. The core indicator of the Chia program is the hard disk capacity, so it is recommended to prepare an enterprise-level hard disk/NAS hard disk with a capacity of 8TB or above, and delete the hard disk partition in advance.

Make Ubuntu USB boot media

1. Download the Ubuntu18.04 installation package, download address: https://releases.ubuntu.com/18.04.5/ubuntu-18.04.5-desktop-amd64.iso

2. Use a USB to make boot media, the following is the steps to make USB boot media for Windows system

(1) Download and install the USB boot media creation tool, download address:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/files/latest/download

(2) Insert the USB to a Windows computer and open the installed creation tool.

(3) Write the Ubuntu 18.04 operating system to the USB.

(4) Click the "Write" button and wait for the writing to be completed

Install Ubuntu in TerraMaster NAS

1. Insert the prepared USB to the USB3.0 interface of the TerraMaster NAS, and install a hard disk in bay 1 of the TerraMaster NAS. The hard disk is only used to install the Ubuntu operating system, and the TerraMaster NAS is connected to a monitor and a keyboard.

2. Turn on the TerraMaster NAS, enter the BOOT interface by pressing the key ‘F7’ on the keyboard, and select the USB to start.

3. After successful startup, the installation procedure of Ubuntu is shown as below.

4. Select the language on the left side of the page, click "Install Ubuntu", then select the keyboard layout and click "Continue"

5. Select ‘Normal installation’

6. Select ‘Erase disk and install Ubuntu’ and then click ‘Install Now’. This operation will format the hard disk data. If it has something important, be sure to back up the data in advance.

7. Click ‘Continue’, then select the time zone and set the user name and password. After the setting is completed, the installation will start.

Configure SSD cache and set HDD in JBOD

1. When the installation is complete, turn off the TerraMaster NAS, pull out the USB, and insert the SSD in bay 2.

2. Turn on the TerraMaster NAS, enter the BOOT interface by pressing key ‘F7’ on the keyboard, and select the hard disk installed with Ubuntu to start

3. After successfully logging in to the Ubuntu system, right-click on the desktop and select ‘Open Terminal’.

4. Execute the following command:

sudo –i

apt-get update

apt install mdadm

ll /sys/block

(This command is used to query the hard disk number, if you are looking for the second disk, find the corresponding identifier ata2)

5. Start configuring the SSD cache, find the drive letter corresponding to the SSD through the identifier of the above command, such as sdb, and execute the command:

mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdb

mkdir /mnt/md0

mount /dev/sdb /mnt/md0

6. Set the other hard disks in JBOD mode, the command is as follow:

mdadm -C /dev/md1 -l linear -c 128 -n 2 /dev/sd[cd]

mkfs.ext4 /dev/md1

mkdir /mnt/md1

mount /dev/md1 /mnt/md1

(The digit ‘2’ after the parameter -n represents the participation of two disks.

[cd] is the drive letter corresponding to the two disks, which can be adjusted according to the actual number of hard disks.)

Install Chia program

1. Open the Firefox browser and download the ‘chia-blockchain_1.1.5_amd64.deb’ version. Download address: https://github.com/Chia-Network/chia-blockchain/releases

2. Right-click the downloaded file chia-blockchain_1.1.5_amd64.deb, select ‘Open With Software Install’, and then select ‘Install’

3. Start the installation. After the installation is complete, click the program menu in the lower left corner, and enter ‘chia’ in the search bar to search for the chia program

4. Open the chia program

5. After creating the key, click ‘ADD A PLOT’

6. After configuring the temporary directory and the final directory, click ‘CREATE PLOT’

7. The configuration is complete.

8. Please refer to: https://hpool.com/tools for opening a farming pool, binding data, farming settings, etc.

With all the preparations get done, you can start hard working as a ‘farmer' and wait for a good harvest. If you have enough disk space, you can try Chia farming, and Chia has many farming pools. Chia official website has a calculator that can calculate how many Chia you can farm per day based on your hard disk space. Welcome to exchange and share your valuable Chia farming experience and skills and look forward to hearing your good news!

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