Setting up a farm with Go Farmer!

Please note: these instructions cover v2 farm creation. We strongly recommend all new farmers start on Grid v3, using these instructions, because support for all v2 tooling has been discontinued.

We are pleased to announce the release of a new tool for farm setup on the ThreeFold Grid. It will no longer be necessary to use a 3Bot for farm creation, saving new farmers from needing to obtain TFT and go through the 3Bot deployment process. Yay!

First, open the gofarmer page on Github. There are releases for Windows, MacOS, and Linux. Download the appropriate archive:

  • Windows - gofarmer.exe.zip
  • MacOS - gofarmer-1.0-a4-osx.zip
  • Linux - gofarmer.tar.gz.

Extract the archive and, if necessary drill down the directory structure to find the executable.

After launching the tool, you’ll see:

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In this case, we’ll need to create a new 3Bot id for our farm. It isn’t possible to reuse the 3Bot id from the ThreeFold Connect app. Enter a 3Bot name, ending with ‘.3bot’ and also your email address. Leave the words field empty to generate.

Hit register, and you should see a note that the new id has been saved locally. It is best to record the words generated, along with the id and email address you used, in a secure place. A password manager or paper copy would be appropriate.

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Next go to the register farm tab. Choose a name for your farm and enter the Stellar wallet address where you want to receive farmed tokens. Using the wallet address from your TF Connect app is a good idea here. If you use another wallet, please be sure that you have a trust line for TFT established.

Hit the button to register your farm. If all goes well, you’ll see that your farm was registered successfully. Take a note of your farm id, as it’s needed for generating the boot image for your nodes:

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It is possible to recover your farm id later using only the farm name. The interface is a little technical, at the explorer API. Hit ‘Try it out’, enter your farm name, and then ‘Execute’. You’ll see the id in the response.

Did it work for you? Have any questions? Drop a reply below :slightly_smiling_face:

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Great direction you guys are taking. It will make people who are starting in blockchain space to start with these projects because right now you dont need to buy TFT. But my question is regarding is it possible to manage farm or just to create ?

Yep, that’s the idea :slightly_smiling_face: For now, only creating farms is supported, but management is the next feature coming soon!

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Something that is unclear here - after setting up with this, are we expected to login with threefold with this newly created account? or just send the TFT to the one we made prior on our phones with the wallet?

This is a great first step though!!, still a bit clunky now ending up with 2 accounts. 1 with your farm and 1 with your wallet.

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That’s a great question, and I agree that ending up with two 3Bot ids is indeed a bit confusing.

I recommend simply using the Stellar/TFT address from your TF Connect app to receive your farmed tokens. Actually, 3Bot ids aren’t necessarily linked to any wallet, so the new id created for your farm won’t have its own wallet by default (versus hosted 3Bots which get a wallet created during initialization).

You could really use any Stellar wallet with a TFT trustline, such as a hardware wallet if that’s your preference.

I used the gofarmer to set up my node today. Now I’ve got 2 questions:

  1. Is the OS still running from the USB? I removed the USB and restarted, and that didn’t go too well… No bootable media or something it said.

  2. Since I can’t use the Farm management yet, is there any point to have my node up 'n running?

My node looks like this:
image

this is such a daft issue, but after I download the gofarmer.exe and extract it, then run it (with and without adminstrator rights) nothing happens. Please can you tell me what I’m missing?

Hi!

Let me try to answer with the info I got from people around here and on the Telegram channel. Hopefully, if I am wrong or unclear, others will come along the discussion.

  1. You need to have the USB in when you reboot/restart the computer so it can log to the Internet and boot zero-OS completely. Also, I’ve been told it’s best to keep the USB key in your computer once the boot is done, so if something happens, like if you lose connection, your zero-OS can restart on its own. If the USB isn’t plugged in, it won’t be able to load zero-os. Also it is very efficient to have the boot mode with UEFI. This way, if for example, you lose power, you simply need to have the power back and to restart the computer. The UEFI will make sure it loads directly to zero-OS. You should do some testing to make sure it works. But one advantage is that you won’t need to use a screen, a mouse and a keyboard once you’ve got the UEFI properly set. Zero-os will simply start when you start the computer while having the USB key in with UEFI.

  2. You don’t need to use the farm management once your farm is running. It will be available on the grid for potentiel customers. Farm management is simply to set up the farm and to adjust things when needed. If your node is up and running and present on explorer.threefold.io, you should be good. Use farm management if you need to adjust settings of your farm.

Welcome to ThreeFold!

1 Like

just to add, this is part where I’m stuck. I’ve downloaded the windows version. Unzipped it and then run the .exe file
After approving the windows security warning, still nothing happens.

Capture

Thanks so much @Mik, for providing very complete and correct information :wink:

@RustyPole, I appreciate your patience and the extra details. Let me look into this and I’ll update you asap

1 Like

Hello Scott. Same problem as @RustyPole here. Gofarmer.exe won’t do anything after starting it, administrator or not.

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Cheers Scott, really appreciate your help and support

Hello @RustyPole. Could you try the linux version until Scott responds? I would, but I never tried Linux before. :stuck_out_tongue:

Hey @RustyPole and @misindril,

So I dusted off my Windows dual boot and tried the latest version of gofarmer. It ran and was functional.

Could you both let me know:

  1. Are you using gofarmer v1.0-a2?
  2. What version of Windows? Is it fully updated?

Helllo @scott
I tried v1.0-a2, then v1.0-a1.
I’m using Windows 10 Pro N, fully updated.
Tried installing and reinstalling everything I could think of…vc_redist x86 and x64 2005-2022, net frameworks, directx,…nothing did the trick.

UPDATE: tried it on another pc…it works. The curious fact is that the Pc has no windows updates and it’s stripped of everything…I use it for Chia Plotting. The only difference is that it’s OS, Win10ProN, is installed in Uefi mode. The laptop I am using doesn’t know Uefi, as it’s old.

Thanks @scott

  1. Are you using gofarmer v1.0-a2? <-- Yes
  2. What version of Windows? Is it fully updated? W10 Pro. see below systeminfo dump
    image

@scott looks like I’m sorted now. .exe doesn’t run within a VM but works fine on the host.
thanks again for your help

What resourceful bunch we have here :blush:

Thanks for the updates @RustyPole and @misindril. Will log this with dev and update docs as needed.

1 Like

Go Farmer for OSX was added to the 1.0-a2 release found here.

It’s pretty straightforward.

  1. Download the: gofarmer-no-debugging-osx.zip
  2. Unzip the folder and double click Go Farmer
  3. You will probably be prompted this message image.

Or your mac will tell you it will not open it due to the fact it comes from an unidentified developer.
You can fix that as well.

Go to: System Preferences > Security & Privacy > General

image

You’ll see a message “Gofarmer” was blocked from opening because it is not from an identified developer. Click on Open Anyway.

From here the Go Farmer process is the same as @scott describes above in the first message.

1 Like

So i ended up with a numeric OwnerID and FarmID then to download the OS it asks for FarmerID is that one of these or something else ?