<p>Chances are there is no GPU in the physical host server, servers don't need them. </p>

<p>You could CPU mine, but it would be pointless for Bitcoin, Litecoin and most of the Alt-coins because you just wouldn't have enough processing power to generate anything but dust.</p>

<p>Sorry it's not a helpful answer, but it's better than no answer!</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-11-04T04:50:13.893Z
2014-11-04T04:50:13.893Z
George
<p>My name is Ben and I'm working with a server technician called Fab.</p>
<p>We are using Team-viewer to work together on this question to make it as concise and to the point as possible.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>We have set up a Ubuntu 13.10 VPS server</p>
</li>
<li><p>Next we downloaded <a href="http://www.forked.net/%7Eapex/cgmon/cgmon.tcl" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://www.forked.net/~apex/cgmon/cgmon.tcl</a> (a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tcl" rel="nofollow noreferrer">.Tcl script</a> found on this forum page: <a href="https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=353436.0" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=353436.0</a></p>
</li>
<li><p>(Fab:)We managed to install X Server and Lite KDE Desktop environment, and we can successfully connect via VNC to the VPS desktop.</p>
</li>
</ol>
<p>(Fab:) <strong>So now:</strong> what we would like to understand is whether the host machine where the VPS container is sitting must have a graphics card or if mining using a VPS server could be achieved even without the host server having a physical card, perhaps in a different/emulated way?</p>
<h2>The Theory</h2>
<p>Now we also want to hook this all up to Cairo grahics lib <a href="http://cairographics.org/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://cairographics.org/</a> (this is a pure c++ graphic processing library for pre-generating images on the server side so there should be no need for a graphics card).</p>
<p>My personal line of thought (Ben's) is that a hash has binary data.</p>
<pre><code>UFUYFYF*^R&amp;^R*IYG*R*FUYFUYFUDKYTDLUFU...
</code></pre>
<p>but much longer...</p>
<p>now go and get any image from your desktop and open it with a text editor and you will see some thing like this:</p>
<pre><code>ÿØÿà JFIF  H H  ÿÛ C ...
</code></pre>
<p>The difference is not much (in my opinion) because graphics cards are made to process images such as .jpg / .png/ .gif/ .bmp, etc. They do this very fast because the start of the file or maybe even the extension is telling the graphics card how to decrypt; where as a hash is the same, only the description method is a secret that must be tried with many variations of description (hence the term hashing refers to multiple attempts).</p>
<p>Now If you read the wiki link above it explains that Tcl was originally &quot;born out of frustration&quot; and If you scroll down the Wiki to <strong>Features</strong> one listed is: Extensibility, via C, C++, Java, and Tcl.</p>
<p>So, seen as libcairo is pure c++ and Tcl can run C++ commands, what I would like to know is how can we link the two...</p>

<gpu-mining><mining-software>
Can I emulate a graphics card using software, and use it for mining?
Ben Muircroft
# Can I emulate a graphics card using software, and use it for mining?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2014-03-21)

My name is Ben and I'm working with a server technician called Fab.

We are using Team-viewer to work together on this question to make it as concise and to the point as possible.

1. We have set up a Ubuntu 13.10 VPS server
2. Next we downloaded [http://www.forked.net/~apex/cgmon/cgmon.tcl](http://www.forked.net/%7Eapex/cgmon/cgmon.tcl) (a [.Tcl script](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tcl) found on this forum page: <https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=353436.0>
3. (Fab:)We managed to install X Server and Lite KDE Desktop environment, and we can successfully connect via VNC to the VPS desktop.

(Fab:) **So now:** what we would like to understand is whether the host machine where the VPS container is sitting must have a graphics card or if mining using a VPS server could be achieved even without the host server having a physical card, perhaps in a different/emulated way?

## The Theory

Now we also want to hook this all up to Cairo grahics lib <http://cairographics.org/> (this is a pure c++ graphic processing library for pre-generating images on the server side so there should be no need for a graphics card).

My personal line of thought (Ben's) is that a hash has binary data.

```
UFUYFYF*^R&^R*IYG*R*FUYFUYFUDKYTDLUFU...

```

but much longer...

now go and get any image from your desktop and open it with a text editor and you will see some thing like this:

```
ÿØÿà JFIF  H H  ÿÛ C ...

```

The difference is not much (in my opinion) because graphics cards are made to process images such as .jpg / .png/ .gif/ .bmp, etc. They do this very fast because the start of the file or maybe even the extension is telling the graphics card how to decrypt; where as a hash is the same, only the description method is a secret that must be tried with many variations of description (hence the term hashing refers to multiple attempts).

Now If you read the wiki link above it explains that Tcl was originally "born out of frustration" and If you scroll down the Wiki to **Features** one listed is: Extensibility, via C, C++, Java, and Tcl.

So, seen as libcairo is pure c++ and Tcl can run C++ commands, what I would like to know is how can we link the two...

**Tags:** gpu-mining, mining-software


---

## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2014-11-04. Score: 1 | Accepted answer

Chances are there is no GPU in the physical host server, servers don't need them.

You could CPU mine, but it would be pointless for Bitcoin, Litecoin and most of the Alt-coins because you just wouldn't have enough processing power to generate anything but dust.

Sorry it's not a helpful answer, but it's better than no answer!


---

