Notes on Gridcoin Mining Using Google Cloud Computing

Gridcoin (GRC) is an altcoin that can be mined through contribution to scientific research (PoR - Proof of Research), more specifically, by doing BOINC (Berkley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing) hosted computing work. It makes cryptocurrency mining a more meaningful thing and is very suitable for mining use a VPS such as Google cloud. Different from other cryptocoin mining, you don't need to worry about the violation of TOS as you're running the BOINC computing software instead a miner on the VPS.

The following steps will guide you to mine Gridcoin on Google cloud, which is based on but much simpler than the official tutorial - http://www.gridresearchcorp.com/gridcoin/?tutorial.

1. First follow the official guide to setup both BIONC and Gridcoin wallet on your own (local) computer. Make sure you use BAM! account manager in the tutorial.

2. Sign up for the Google cloud free trial: https://cloud.google.com/free-trial/

3. Follow the official Steps 2-6 to create your google cloud instance.

4. The official tutorial doesn't use an account manage, to simplify the process, I strongly suggest you to use BAM!, so you can skip the official Steps 7 and 8.

5. For official Step 9 - in the SSH terminal enter the following commands, each "$" indicates a single line (if you're using BAM!):

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install boinc
for each project that you want to run, enter:
$ boinccmd --project_attach PROJECT_URL AUTH_KEY
replacing PROJECT_URL and AUTH_KEY with the values that you gathered in step#8
$ boinccmd --join_acct_mgr http://bam.boincstats.com BAM_ID BAM_Pass
(replacing BAM_ID and BAM_Pass with your BAM! ID and password.)
$ boinccmd --set_run_mode always
$ boinccmd --set_network_mode always

The following commands are useful for monitoring the state of BOINC:

$ boinccmd --get_simple_gui_info
$ boinccmd --get_tasks
$ boinccmd --get_file_transfers

6. Follow the official Steps 10~14.

Other Notes:

1. If you want to change the BIONC projects for Google cloud to run, just manage the projects for Google cloud instance using BAM!, and re-input the command to update the BIONC projects and syncs with BAM!:

$ boinccmd --join_acct_mgr http://bam.boincstats.com BAM_ID BAM_Pass

2. On your personal PC, where your Gridcoin wallet is installed, you should add all the BIONC projects you joined, although you can suspend them locally and only run them on Google cloud for BIONC credits.

References:
http://www.gridresearchcorp.com/gridcoin/?tutorial
https://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/Boinccmd_tool
https://gridcoinstats.eu/faucet.php