I am new to mining and experimenting with getting setup.
I installed HiveOS (Ubuntu) in prep for GPU mining.
The CPU is a bit over kill for GPU mining I believe (i7 7700 4/8 CPU/Threads), so I had the idea to put a nvme pcie card in and use it for plotting (maybe 2-4 plots).
HiveOS observations.
even if you set the root passwd, it is reset to default.
system console automatically logs into root
“user” is sudo member and allows the web console to execute root functions.
Chia observations.
I installed the GUI client
the public and private keys are accessible
the parse phase is now available.
Summary,
I have to assume the chia wallet(right term?)/account is now compromised
how/can I set chia plotting up without allowing having the private key accessible on the system (or is it not possible under this use case)
In the event of the 2nd point, risk of use a mining specific wallet for GPU mining machines and transferring funds to exchange account or interim handling wallet
It’s totally possible to plot on a machine without exposing your pvt key on that machine.
On a known good clean machine install chia, create a nft to plot to then you need to find 2 things to plot on another machine.
Pool contract address ( see this by looking at the nft on the Pool tab).
In the cli use the show keys command to see your keys and copy your farmer public key.
On your machine you wish to plot with don’t install chia, but use something like madmax plotter which is alot faster.
To run madmax and create plots that will work on any machines which that pneumonic you created.
You only need those 2 bits of info to create plots.
However your farmer that is connected online will need your pvt key to farm them.
To keep any rewards safe, you can select the payout address in the gui.
If this is an address that has not been exposed online this is your safest option.
We don’t have any online live wallets, so you would need to sync that keypair before you could move your coins on
If I can restate your instructions in idiot-proof mode for confirmation, please.
remove Chia from HiveOS (and delete the keys that were already created for security)
install Chia on the desktop and create new private key
join pool (and add to faucet for mojo)
install madmax on HiveOS
add the pheumonic from the (you mean 24 words?)
if someone has access to the HiveOS,
wont that mean they can still get the pneumonic from it?
install the farmer on another system without outside access to the os e.g. virtual machine i.e. you mean this should be full node or can be farmer only s/w?
receive address form the pool, should be the full node wallet receive address?
Is that correct, or have i missed something? The full node on my desktop is in sync. can i delete the current pheumonic and create a new one without resyncing?
To be honest, I wouldn’t even worry about exposing your keys, I know traditionally with crypto you would, but your pvt key has to be loaded into your farmer to farm the plots anyways.
So if your pvt key is online on your farmer, not much extra risk also having it on a plotter, which doesn’t need to be online.
But my concern is running on hiveos, which seems, on the face of it, could easily have a back door to the system. Isn’t the whole point of a private key…to be private… HiveOS stores the “user” password on their system, has sudo access and allows remote control of the mining box.
In other words, is an open door.
The farmer if on a dedicated box is private save for any firewall holes, etc. no?
I was in a similar situation as you; I have a single PC that acts as my Chia plotter / farmer but also has GPUs that I wanted to mine with ETH.
I considered trying out HiveOS as you suggest but in the end I avoided it for some of the same reasons you mention. For starters, its not a “clean” distro, its got all kinds of stuff modified in it, its not clear what kind of security comprises might exist, also not clear if installing other dependencies could break its software, etc… Of course the draw to HiveOS is mostly in its optimization for GPU mining.
I ended up installing a plan Ubuntu 20.04 distro instead. Downloading and installing mad max is pretty easy and well documented. You do not need to install any Chia software, or load your private key or phrase, in fact both are useless for mad max. All you need is your NFT contract address. From there, I did all my plotting in Ubuntu. I got ETH miners installed however I could not get the GPU drivers properly configured to set voltages and clock speeds, so I ultimately gave up on ETH mining under vanilla Ubuntu and just stuck to finishing my plots as fast as possible.
After I was done plotting in Ubuntu, I switched back over to Windows, where I already had MSI Afterburner + Windows copies of the ETH miners installed so I could properly mine the GPU’s with safe voltages, etc… I keep my Chia farmer running in a VirtualBox VM (Ubuntu) so the private keys are a little bit more “protected” (they were generated inside the VM and never installed on the Windows host), and I have my farming drives and plots all shared inside the VM.
Note that you can also plot with mad max in Windows, but on my system using Linux gave a >250% speed boost (80min NFT plots in Windows, 28min plots in Linux).
So that is my best suggestion to you; plot in either Windows or Linux, whichever is faster, then switch back to Windows where you can easily mine ETH and run the Chia farmer.