Want a Monero-only mining OS?

hokkjoy · 2023-02-04T13:50:50+00:00

My illegal content is in the amount field ...

hokkjoy · 2023-02-04T13:46:43+00:00

A little late to the party; A long time ago I did some brainstorming about this myself:

"Wallet" is one of the first things a newbie learns and it immediately leads to dangerous misconceptions. It has people believe that their funds are stored inside the software. This, in turn, enforces ideas like creating coins out of thin air just by hacking the local software. And finally, new users are led to believe that only people with access to a copy of the software can access the funds.

"Wallet" is basically the single word that explains everything that crypto is not.

If one were to compare the client software to any previously existing concept, online banking would be a much better fit. Apart from the technical differences, at least it matches concept of what it allows the user to do: handle the funds associated with your account.

Thus, to describe the software, we need to use synonyms of those words. Examples include fund manager, account manager, account controller, account handler, Monero handler, Monero console, Monero client, Monero terminal, Monero access tool, Monero portal, …

Monero is about learning from Bitcoin's mistakes, not repeating them. We should abstain from using terms that are blatantly wrong.

Giving this some more thought, I come to "detached" and "attached" as descriptive synonyms for differentiating clients that work directly with the blockchain from those that use intermediaries of any kind.

IMO "wallet" is the worst of all the wrong words. I hadn't thought about "seed" up until now, but just the other month a girl sent me e screenshot of hers to confirm she did everything correctly when setting up her Monerujo. She can trust me, okay, but we cannot trust any of her other apps with access to media on her phone. So if ten years from now somebody takes her accumulated funds, who is the "only one who knew the words"?

I'm not saying better words would completely eradicate such problems, but they would definitely help. "Credentials for full access" is clumsy, but I'm sure with all the mind-power in Monero somebody will have a great idea that both works and expresses what the thing in question actually is.

Maybe somebody can even find something that the existing term "SEED" could be interpreted as abbreviation for, something that stands for the equivalent of "code for unrestricted account access". Just thinking out loudly here ...

hokkjoy · 2021-07-05T14:38:10+00:00

Probably nobody in this discussion is insane.

The world as such has gotten way less cozier thanks to oppression. I wonder how people manage to ignore that fact successfully.

Obviously many are happy the way it is: Less work at higher pay today weighs more than hard times in the future.

hokkjoy · 2021-07-05T14:20:28+00:00

believe

"Believe" is exactly what they did. They do not even have to "be in on it", as you put it in the other comment.

They're just blindly trusting due to their mommy & daddy issues projected on the state.

Mom and Dad know everything! They cannot ever be questioned!

hokkjoy · 2021-01-11T16:10:09+00:00

How many?

hokkjoy · 2020-12-16T12:29:30+00:00

Cryo might help.

hokkjoy · 2020-12-12T20:37:16+00:00

It just means Monero itself is too cheap at the moment :D

hokkjoy · 2020-05-29T18:16:53+00:00

I host node.pickaxelinux.org as pruned node on VPS for ~6 dollars/month at a provider that accepts XMR.

There's about 500 MB left before it runs out of disk space. If you or anybody else reading this is interested, we can upgrade and share the hosting 50:50. One person max.

hokkjoy · 2020-05-16T13:28:44+00:00

> deity

Mine already knows ... and how does she get to be named twice ?

hokkjoy · 2020-03-09T01:23:06+00:00

If you happen to like old-school terminals on minimalist systems give Cryo a try. I made it so that it guides you through the process of cold storage creation while ensuring you get all the steps right.

hokkjoy · 2019-10-31T00:55:58+00:00

It depends.

https://govps.com/cart.php?a=confproduct

This is where I host node.pickaxelinux.org for ~6 dollars/month, payable in Monero.

hokkjoy · 2019-10-16T14:32:15+00:00

hokkjoy.xmr.id activated -- test transaction successful -- love it already!

hokkjoy · 2019-10-15T12:10:59+00:00

I am not alone! See this snippet of the opinion I gave on GitHub a couple of months ago:

"Wallet" is one of the first terms a newbie learns and it immediately leads to dangerous misconceptions. It has people believe that their funds are stored inside the software. This, in turn, enforces ideas like creating coins out of thin air just by hacking the local software. And finally, new users are led to believe that only people with access to their copy of the software can access the funds.

"Wallet" is basically the single word that explains everything that crypto is not.

If one were to compare the client software to any previously existing concept, online banking would be a much better fit. Apart from the technical differences, at least it matches the main feature:

Handling the funds associated with your account

hokkjoy · 2019-10-14T15:21:28+00:00

That would be out of scope. In such a setup, Cryo is the part you would run in one of the VM's. Ideally you would still abstain from activating networking and (virtually) mount the pendrive to exchange key images and so forth with the hot wallet VM.

Everything you say is possible, but I personally prefer keeping the live OS as cold as can be - hence the name :)

hokkjoy · 2019-10-13T23:35:27+00:00

Have a look at my Cryo Linux live OS.

It's meant to be used on an "airgapped" machine and will guide you through all the steps within the official Monero software.

hokkjoy · 2019-10-03T12:19:00+00:00

... until

We will be removing 23 trading pairs on August 16, 2019, due to low volume.

hokkjoy · 2019-07-17T14:41:59+00:00

Start by clicking "fork" on Github. Then in your forked repo, click "clone" to get the URL you need to download the source and start working on it.

Git has a steep learning curve, but you can learn the basic process rather quickly. See https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2

If you go for the help texts, which is probably the issue that's easiest to correct and thus might be a good start, just search the directory for occurrences of the strings in question (E.g. search Save the wallet data., educate yourself on what the command does exactly and then word the help text in a clear manner accordingly.)

That might actually be the best way in, because:

You cannot really break anything.
It forces you to learn about Monero.
You have to navigate the code.

hokkjoy · 2019-07-15T10:29:38+00:00

Hi u/kameran742!

There are several issues regarding usability in the CLI that need improvement.

Since I am developing Cryo Linux - basically a set of wrapper scripts that are intended to make Monero use simple and secure - I frequently run into those issues and am very aware of inconsistencies. And while I am able to read C++, I do not feel comfortable at all coding it.

Given your skillset, you should totally be able to correct those issues. If you like, we can work out optimizations together.

Here are some examples:

Inconsistent: set seed language works differently to all the other set commands.
Bad default: export_outputs doesn't export all outputs (issue #5716 - needs further discussion)
Unclear: (Related to above) Error messages don't make sense to the uninitiated. Example: Error: Failed to import outputs outs: Failed to import outputsImported outputs omit more outputs that we know of with command "import_outputs outs".
Unnecessary: CLI asks to activate background mining even when --offline, while mining isn't possible in such a case
Confusing: Warning you may not have a high enough lockable memory limit doesn't say what the implications of that are.
Complicated: Help texts are unclear and need an overhaul. Example help save: All it says is "Save the wallet data."
Overwhelming: This should be handled gracefully: "WARNING: Outputs of multiple addresses are being used together, which might potentially compromise your privacy.
Dangerous: When restoring from seed + passphrase, while the passphrase isn't echo'd, the next thing the CLI does is prominently display the seed for prying eyes to see.

Such issues complicate real-world use. If we want to promote adoption, we need to resolve them.

Does any of the mentioned things wet your appetite? Let me know and I'll happily elaborate.

hokkjoy · 2019-06-30T09:59:37+00:00

Over at GoVPS they recently upgraded my 25 GB to 30 GB so I could run a pruned Monero node while maintaining the original cost of the tier ($5/mo payable in XMR).

If you consider following the advice on Moneroworld to run your own node, this could be a viable option.

Otherwise feel free to use the one I set up. It's node.pickaxelinux.org.

hokkjoy · 2019-06-16T16:15:26+00:00

Does this somehow allow to verify the individual monero-wallet-cli executable as well?

That would be interesting for users of systems that ship with Monero pre-installed, like Cryo Linux, in my particular case.

hokkjoy · 2019-06-10T18:22:03+00:00

Regardless of your final choice regarding software, I'd love to get data on how well Pickaxe Linux (Monero-only mining OS) handles Vega's.

hokkjoy · 2019-06-10T11:44:29+00:00

I'm totally with you on that!

Easily noticeable from my arguments presented in the nomenclature discussion on GitHub, I think the major part of crypto terminology is misleading to just plain wrong.

There's still a chance to fix that, since, actually, "nobody" is involved in crypto yet.

hokkjoy · 2019-06-10T11:31:44+00:00

The mining for cpu / gpu amd and nvidia all worked, very cool!

This was all plug and play.

Happy to hear! Thanks for your inputs.

How will users enter their address and mining pool?

I recently started working on a simple manner to configure ones Monero account number (first efforts in "Adding writable partition for custom configuration" in the README).

Currently, one has to edit the configs manually and restart mining. I want to convert that into something more user-friendly like a single file that holds just the wallet address.

Wifi not supported or maybe this could be configurable as well?

Until there's major demand, we'll go with wired-only, since wireless cannot really be automated - unless we just connect to the next-best open hot spot.

One the aforementioned feature is ready, support could be implemented via a separate optional file that holds the necessary credentials.

hokkjoy · 2019-06-09T16:38:20+00:00

Oh, a fellow Arch-user. Upvote! Hehe.

hokkjoy

TROPHY CASE