Multi-Node: Can I use the GUI, but NOT as the main node?

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1

Here is the ideal setup:

Internet → port 8444 → rPI farmer that never gets turned off → 2 big USB drives

Now comes along me, with a normal PC (that sometimes gets turned off) that I do my plotting on. I’d like that machine to ALSO farm when a plot is done, because why waste a plot.

I’m assuming the rpi should be my “Main machine (CA)” because it runs 24/7.

A few questions:

  1. Can I use the GUI on the PC? Or will that mean I’m running 2 full nodes, which is bad™️
  2. If I can’t use the GUI (wah!), Is the multi-machine setup really the best way to go? It seems like a big step up in complication from “launch GUI and be happy”
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2

As far as I can tell, you can’t turn off the main node if you run the GUI. What I did was run chia start farmer-only then I opened the GUI. If you don’t run only the farmer in CLI, you’ll end up with 2 nodes on the same machine and this caused a sync issue in my case.

If you take a while to learn the CLI, you’ll realize “launch CLI and be happy” is actually the truth :wink:

3

Does the CLI support parallel plotting delayed-starts, or sequential plotting queue names?

4

You can:

5

I’m not sure what happens with plotting if you have the GUI pointed at a remote full node. I suspect it will plot locally just fine so long as you copy over the right keys. I haven’t used the GUI for plotting since discovering plotman.

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6

(thinking). That is great to know! but I don’t think that is quite the goal.

  • network → LAN with a fwded 8444
    • → 8444 → always on rpi / Main Machine / Farmer
    • → Sometimes on personal PC / Not Main Machine / Plotter / Sometimes Farmer / Wish I could use the GUI here but I can’t.
7

Unless I’m mis-reading, it sounds like that will get you most of the way to your goal.

Step One: get a full node running on your RPI, farming plots in directly-attached storage.

Step Two: Follow the instructions in the doc I linked. “Daemon Host” is your RPI. “UI Host” is your PC.

That gets you Null Node + Farming (on the rpi), and the GUI (on your PC). Then you’ll just need to figure out:

  1. Plotting - you’ll want to pull the farmer and pool keys from the RPI and use them on the plotting machine. You can plot without running any daemons. Just have chia installed, and plot from the command-line. Use plotman for more sanity.

  2. (Sometimes) Farming on the PC. Possibly trickier. I haven’t done anything like this (yet). But my understanding is that you don’t want to farm, you want to harvest. So figure out how to set up chia as a harvester-only (connected to the farmer instance of the RPI) for the plots on the PC. Hopefully running a harvester won’t confuse the GUI running on the same machine, but I don’t think it will. If it does, you might look into running the harvester in a docker container or something.

Edit: if you want the GUI to control both the farmer on the RPI, and manage plotting and harvesting locally, then you’re probably out of luck. If you want to run things on different machines, you’ll need to get comfortable with the CLI interface.

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8

@Salamander - Small update here. What was working for me earlier is no longer working as of 1.1.2. So if you’re banging your head on your desk, you’re not alone. I’ll update here if I make any progress.

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Wonderful, thank you! I haven’t gotten far enough to bang my head on the desk because (shifty look) I haven’t yet taken the dive away from GUI-controlled plotting. But I hope to.

PS: I need to read more docs, I thought until I was this many years old that “farming” = “harvesting” = “the thing that gets you coins once you have plots”

10

i think i have the same problem as you.

farming 24/7 on rPi with all HDD’s attached and create and plots in windows PC.

I think you can make the plots in you PC and save them directly in rPI shared folder ( you need to copy over the LAN, will take some time but will do the work)

i already have the rPI on, with some plots in it. Gonna get PC chia GUI fresh re-installed in PC and login with 24 words, exit and create a plot via CLI.

Also I think I misread the harverster, plotter and farmer concept :rofl:

11

just found this video on youtube and i think it helps alot for what we want

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQZh5K52nyg&t=1s

basically you have your raspPI farming, and you use CLI command to create the plots on windows.

ex:
chia plots create -k 32 -b 4000 -r 2 -u 128 -t TMPSPACE -d FINALDIR -n 30 -p POOLKEY-f PUBLICFARMERKEY

12

Have you read the Chia Github Wiki? That info is all there and more.

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i think my problem was the same as the OP,

what computer is the farmer and what computer is the plotter and harvester

and sometimes seeing it visually, make it more clear :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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14

I’m going to have to give up on using the GUI for plotting if I want to use the rpi as the “always on” main node. I’ve finally accepted that now.

15

Bummer. I did have it working (with my remote full node’s hostname and port in the window title bar, as shown in the docs) with 1.1.1.

But I haven’t tried to get it working again since it broke around 1.1.2. The GUI doesn’t show you much info about remote harvesters (not even a global plot count), which is all I’d really care about anyway.

If I get it working again at some point, I’ll ping you here.