Install Chia Plotman on Debian

Installing Plotman for Chia under Debian has nothing to do with black magic, but can be done quite easily. At the end of the tutorial I also show you a version of the configuration file with the most important settings.

To be able to use Plotman at all we should install the appropriate resources directly in advance:

apt-get -y install python-pip

Finally, we change to our chia directory and activate venv:

cd /home/chia-blockchain
. ./activate

Now we can trigger the installation of Plotman:

pip install --force-reinstall git+https://github.com/ericaltendorf/plotman@main

After the installation is complete we still need to generate the configuration, this can be done with the command:

plotman config generate

The output will look something like this and will also show you the path to your configuration file (please remember!):

(venv) root@host:/home/chia-blockchain# plotman config generate

Wrote default plotman.yaml to: /root/.config/plotman/plotman.yaml
(venv) root@host:/home/chia-blockchain#

The Configuration File

We can now edit the plotman.yaml file with a text editor, I’ll try to explain the settings to you directly in the code:

user_interface:

        use_stty_size: True

# Paths for plotting and logs
directories:
        # path for the log files
        log: /home/chia-blockchain/chia/logs

        # Paths to the temporary folders are stored here
        tmp:
                - /ssd/1
                - /ssd/2
                - /ssd/3
                - /ssd/4
                - /ssd/5
                - /ssd/6

        # If some SSDs or NVMEs are larger than others, this setting can be used to override the maximum jobs value (see below) for individual selected disks. In this example, we allow SSD1 up to 5 jobs at a time.
                "/ssd/1":
                        tmpdir_max_jobs: 5

        # Here you can store the paths to your temporary intermediate storage (separate HDDs) on your plotter

        dst:
                - /hdd/1
                - /hdd/2

        # In this area the settings for the automatic transfer to the farm - here also called archives - are made.
        archive:
                rsyncd_module: chia # Name of the module in the rsyncd.conf.
                rsyncd_path: /hdd # main path to the hard disks
                rsyncd_bwlimit: 90000 # bandwidth in KB/s
                rsyncd_host: 192.168.178.67 # IP address of the farmer
                rsyncd_user: chia
                # The index setting is especially interesting when multiple plotters are used. So the index offers an even better load balancing, because always the first disk with free memory (0) or the second (1) or the third (2) is chosen. So if you have two plotters, plotter 1 should have index 0 and plotter 2 index 1.
                   index: 0


# Plotting scheduling parameters
scheduling:
        # This controls the CPU load and temp path utilization a bit better based on the phases.
        tmpdir_stagger_phase_major: 2
        tmpdir_stagger_phase_minor: 1
        # Optional: default is 1
        tmpdir_stagger_phase_limit: 1

        # Do not run more than this number of jobs (can be changed above for individual SSDs)
        tmpdir_max_jobs: 2

        # Do not run more than this number of jobs on the whole machine
        global_max_jobs: 12

        # Minimum time interval in minutes
        global_stagger_m: 30

        # Duration in seconds in which Plotman checks whether a new job should be started or not: 20


# Here still basic Plotting settings of Chia can be specified
        k: 32 # k-type of the plot (minimum 32)
        e: False # switch off bitfield
        n_threads: 2 # Threads per job (only relevant in phase 1)
        n_buckets: 128 # Number of buckets
        job_buffer: 4500 # maximum working buffer per job
        # The private keys should not normally be located on the plotters, so the corresponding farmer public key and the pool public key can or should be stored here.
          farmer_pk: ...
          pool_pk: ...

Now we’re done with the installation and setup – you can do everything else with the command

plotman interactive

client.

Note: This text is copyrighted

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