strategist922 / chiacoinfarmingsetupaws

How to create a Chia Crypto Coin Farming Setup on AWS

How to get Started Farming for Chia Coin in AWS

This is a detailed how-to guide that will clearly outline every step involved with creating your farming setup.

AWS offerings used: EC2 instance, S3 bucket, IAM

Steps:

1. Setup AWS account

2. Launch EC2 instance

   • Choose Amazon Linux Image and then select i3.xlarge
   • Specify root volume as 30 GB (You can do this on Step 4:Add Storage)
   • Make sure when you get to Step 6:Configure Security Group, you select My IP under the Source tab for SSH protocol.
   • Request to generate a .pem key pair and store it in Downloads of local computer
   • Click Launch Instance

3. Navigate to your instance in AWS console and once it's ready, select your instance and hit Connect. Copy the SSH example command under the SSH Client tab. Go to Downloads directory via terminal and paste that command in.

Note: If you get Unprotected Key File Warning, then open terminal at Downloads directory and run:
chmod 400 nameOfFile.pem (This should be where your .pem key-pair file is located)

4. Now you are logged into EC2 instance.

5. Run sudo fdisk /dev/nvme0n1

6. This will launch the fdisk utility program. Type p to see existing partition table. Now, type n to create a new partition. Choose primary. Then, click enter thru the next steps till it says Last sector. For Last sector, type +880G to give this partition 880 GB space.

7. Continue to click enter through the rest of the steps till it's done.

8. Now hit p. This should show a list of partitions.

Device         Boot Start        End    Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/nvme0n1p1       2048 1845495807 1845493760  880G 83 Linux

9. Now type w to save changes and q to exit the fdisk program.

10. Format the partition to the xfs filesystem.
    

sudo mkfs -t xfs /dev/nvme0n1p1

11. Now create a mount point for the partition.
    

sudo mkdir -p /tmp1

12. Now mount the partition.
    

sudo mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /tmp1

13. Type df -hT and check that you see the /dev/nvme0n1p1 partition mounted on /tmp1

Output should have:

Filesystem      Type      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/nvme0n1p1 xfs       880G  930M  879G   1% /tmp1

14. Now modify the permissions of the mount point to ec2-user:
    

sudo chown -R ec2-user.ec2-user /tmp1

15. Now go to your AWS Console and create an S3 Bucket. (Note down the name you give to the bucket)

16. Install goofys on EC2 host.
    

wget https://github.com/kahing/goofys/releases/latest/download/goofys 

chmod u+x goofys

mkdir /home/ec2-user/chia

17. Now go back to AWS Console. And go to IAM. Click on Policies and create new policy. Paste in this JSON:

Note: Change nameOfS3Bucket to the name of your S3 Bucket.

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": "s3:ListBucket",
            "Resource": [
                "arn:aws:s3:::nameOfS3Bucket"
            ]
        },
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "s3:PutObject",
                "s3:GetObject",
                "s3:DeleteObject"
            ],
            "Resource": [
                "arn:aws:s3:::nameOfS3Bucket/*"
            ]
        }
    ]
}

18. Click thru the default options and finally create the policy. Now go to Users. And hit Add User.

19. Click on attach existing policies directly. Filter for Customer managed policies and select the one you just created. Now click thru the options to create a new user.

20. Upon successful completion, you will see the created user's Access key ID and Secret Access Key. Note these down in a notepad.

21. Go back to your terminal that's still logged into your EC2 instance.

22. Switch to root and create AWS credentials file.
    

sudo su - root

mkdir ~/.aws

vi ~/.aws/credentials

Click I key on your keyboard to start writing in this text file. Paste ALL this in:

[default]
aws_access_key_id = AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID
aws_secret_access_key = AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY

Note: Replace the capitalized stuff with your actual credentials from step 20.

When finished editing the file, exit and save by doing:
Hit Escape key on keyboard once. Type :wq and hit Enter on keyboard.

At this point switch from root user to regular by typing:

sudo su - ec2-user

23. Now we create a mount point.
    

sudo mkdir -p /home/ec2-user/chia

24. Run:
    

sudo ./goofys --uid 1000 --gid 1000 -o allow_other nameOfS3Bucket /home/ec2-user/chia

Make sure to replace nameOfS3Bucket with the name of your S3 Bucket.

25. Type df -h and make sure your output has this:
    

Filesystem      Type      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/nvme0n1p1   880G   52G  829G   6% /tmp1
nameOfS3Bucket   1.0P    0   1.0P   0% /home/ec2-user/chia

26. Install Chia code
    

sudo yum update -y

sudo yum install python3 git -y 

git clone https://github.com/Chia-Network/chia-blockchain.git -b latest --recurse-submodules

27. Set up Chia
    

cd chia-blockchain

chmod +x ./install.sh

sh install.sh

. ./activate`

28. Install and execute the initialization command for the first time:
    

chia init

29. If this is your first time, run this to generate a new wallet address:
    

chia keys generate

Note: If you already have a wallet, you can type chia keys add and paste in your generated mnemonic.

Make sure you note the output of this command safely.

30. Start the Chia process.
    

chia start farmer

31. Start farming
    

nohup chia plots create -k 32 -b 6000 -r 2 -n 2 -t /tmp1 -2 /tmp1 -d /home/ec2-user/chia>>plots1.log 2>&1 &

You are now on your way to farming!

32. Run this to see stats about your farm:
    

chia farm summary

Note: The first time you run it, you may see some Exception. The second time, this will go away. Run chia wallet show and type S. Then run chia farm summary and the Exception should be gone.

Basically, you are not farming yet. The system will say Farming status: Syncing, because it is syncing with the Chia blockchain. It needs to become a serviceable node on the blockchain before it can start plotting. After a while, the status will change to Farming.

Expected Output:

Farming status: Syncing
Total chia farmed: 0.0
User transaction fees: 0.0
Block rewards: 0.0
Last height farmed: 0
Plot count: 0
Total size of plots: 0.000 GiB
Estimated network space: 0.000 TiB
Expected time to win: Now
Note: log into your key using 'chia wallet show' to see rewards for each key

33. That's it! You are done setting up! You can close your terminal, if you'd like.
    

How to Quickly Check in on your Farm:

If you would like to see the status of your farming setup, you can go to Downloads via the terminal. And paste in the SSH command you got in Step 3. Once logged into the server, type:

cd chia-blockchain

. ./activate

chia farm summary

To see the status of your Chia wallet, run:

chia wallet show

To exit the AWS EC2 instance from your terminal, simply type:

exit

Now you're back home. Enjoy! Be sure to check Billing in the AWS Console to learn about your usage costs. You've successfully just set up a Chia farming station. Awesome!

References:

Setup:
https://newdaycrypto.com/how-to-mine-chia-cryptocurrency-on-amazon-aws-tutorial/

S3 Bucket and IAM User & Policy:
https://m.blog.daum.net/techtip/12415315?tp_nil_a=2

Linux Knowledge:
https://phoenixnap.com/kb/linux-create-partition
https://linuxize.com/post/fdisk-command-in-linux/

Debugging:
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1096849/cant-make-new-dir-with-mkdir
https://99robots.com/how-to-fix-permission-error-ssh-amazon-ec2-instance/

Questions? Comments?

Email me at [email protected] and I'll try my best to answer your questions/issues. Thank you!

Learn about Chia Coin

https://www.chia.net/