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/AntMinerCEWho 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.