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Topic: AntMiner Community Edition Firmware Improvement Project - page 2. (Read 5146 times)

hero member
Activity: 507
Merit: 500
Bitmain, I would like to help you dev.
hero member
Activity: 507
Merit: 500
sr. member
Activity: 261
Merit: 257
-ck
legendary
Activity: 4088
Merit: 1631
Ruu \o/
EDIT: Kano has uploaded binaries for S1-3 here:
https://github.com/kanoi/cgminer-binaries
legendary
Activity: 4592
Merit: 1851
Linux since 1997 RedHat 4
OK - I'm looking at this and seeing a waste of time.
Anyone can mess with the firmware and make it look better or whatever
- my S2 firmware release I'll do soon will be a lot better than the standard S2.

But the problem is what Bitmain has done to cgminer.
They broke the API so it is no longer backward compatible.
They added code in their driver to drop shares, based on stupidity (on p2pool it throws away valid blocks) - the driver is not suppose to do that at all.
They added code in their S2 driver to pass unchecked shares to the pool to get the pool to do the diff checking work rather than cgminer doing it.
They store 6000 work items in the S2 SPI kernel driver for some obscure unknown reason.
Meh it's been over a year since I did this, not sure what else I saw in there.

Basically the problem with Bitmain is their cg*iner driver.
Remove their version and use the fixed master cgminer version - for the S1 and S2 so far.

I've again (today) released another AntS1 cgminer updated to the latest cgminer code.
That is the code they should be using, not their borked version.
They've ignored it since I released it back on 24 Mar 2014
They've ignored the S2 release since I released it 11 months ago.

And then they go and say that you void your warranty if you fix it.
Meh.

I've not looked at the S3 yet ... that's after I do the S2.

Edit: seems my rant made the first post be updated - they will have unsupported builds using the official cgminer ... until further notice.
donator
Activity: 792
Merit: 510
donator
Activity: 792
Merit: 510
donator
Activity: 792
Merit: 510
With Bitmain's recent release of the source code that is needed to build AntMiner firmware images we have decided to start a community project to provide improved and customized firmware builds for all AntMiner products that use an embedded operating system. These builds will currently be built independently from the engineering group in China that releases the official builds.

Disclaimer
These builds are unofficial and WILL NOT be covered by Bitmain's warranty. Anyone using firmware builds from this project should be familiar with the relevant recovery procedures. On the S1 and S3 this means a TTL diag cable is needed and on the S2 S4 S4+ S5 and C1 a SD card and reader is required.

Once fully tested builds based off of this project may be released with warranty support but for the moment no builds here have warranty support.

Project Goals:
Improve security by testing/auditing software applications and keeping software up to date.
Keep software in sync with upstream sources as much as possible.
Improved reliability by having community software testing.
Document the software and build systems used in order to make it easier for others to contribute.
Add features to improve management monitoring and automation of large scale industrial mining farms.
Add features to make it easier for home miners to set up, configure and monitor their miners.

For reference Bitmain uses 2 primary types of controllers.
For the S1 and S3 they use a AR9331 based control card that uses the MIPS architecture with internal flash memory.
The beaglebone based controllers are ARM based and come in 2 variants.
Controllers with internal NAND flash include the S4+ and S5
Controllers that use SD cards include the S2 S4 and C1


Current Status:
S1
Firmware from S3 can be loaded but needs to be modified for compatibility.
S2
Tested but unable to hash
S3
OpenWRT firmware based off of trunk sources compiles and runs reasonably well. Source code needs to be cleaned up and tested more.
Patches need to be submitted upstream to OpenWRT for native AR9331 board support.
S4
Untested but similar to S5
S4+
Untested but similar to S5
S5
Compiles and runs without issues but needs to be brought up to date with mainline Angstrom Linux
C1
Untested but similar to S5

We have started a github repo based off of the released Bitmain source code with some cleanup.
https://github.com/AntMinerCE

Who we are looking for:
Software developers who can make improvements to the firmware.
Testers who can provide detailed bug reports and test new features/changes.

TODO List:
Setup Continuous Integration testing and automated builds.
Download server for nightly builds.
Cleanup and Document sources so that others can more easily join the project.
Bring software components up to date.
Transition to mainline cgminer.
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