Litecoin Mining on Mac OS X – Solving Library Errors

I have FINALLY managed to get an LTC miner running on my Mac. The basic problem was that unless you do a lot of development on a Mac, you’re unlikely to have your machine set up properly for mining, and you’ll get missing library errors from the miner –  libidn.11.dylib and libssl.1.0.0.dylib.

(I generally find that OS X is simply a shiny version of Unix that’s harder to use. Getting a miner running was further confirmation that anyone who is considering a Mac should just get some blazing fast hardware and slap on some Linux distro. But I digress… On to mining Litecoin on a Mac!)

First, upgrade OS X to 10.8 or whatever. Apple never supports anything older than from last week, so might as well get up to date.

Next, install the most recent version of Xcode, which is 4.6.1 at the moment. Why do you need to install development tools to mine litecoin? Because it’s a Mac. That’s why.

Once you’ve got that installed, install MacPorts. You’ll need to install some other things before installing that, but MacPorts walks you through it quite well.

Once you’ve got that done, you’ll need to make certain that you have the right libraries available for the miner. Open a terminal and run the following:

sudo port selfupdate

sudo port clean wget
sudo port install wget

sudo port clean openssl
sudo port install openssl

Otherwise you may end up with errors about missing libraries: libidn.11.dylib and libssl.1.0.0.dylib.

You’re then ready for the miner:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=55038.msg654850#msg654850

Download the Mac OS X binary, unzip it, then follow the directions in the readme file, and you should be up and running real quick.

Hope that helps someone get started with the silver of digital crypto-currencies, LITECOIN!

Cheers,

Ryan

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20 thoughts on “Litecoin Mining on Mac OS X – Solving Library Errors

    1. I’m only mining litecoins on my Mac and in a Windows VM. Both are doing CPU mining. I still need to check into GPU mining for litecoins though. So, I’m not really sure. I think the litecoin or bitcoin talk forums would be better to figure it out.

      What I have noticed is that everyone I know that has tried mining on a Mac gets horrible GPU rates. Mine has a 9400 card, and another friend has a 9400M – neither are worth crap to mine bitcoins. So, we’re mining litecoins on our macs. Another friend won’t even try as his Mac can’t mine BTC either. He did get up and running with mining BTC his Windows machine though.

      Good link there though! That would have helped me figure out some things a bit quicker.

  1. Do you what you are? Do you really know what you just did?

    You are a God send and you just performed a miracle!!

    After hours and hours trying to figure this out you come out of nowhere with the most clear instructions and guide me to the lite…coins! haha

    Thank you so much for your help! You really did a great job with this post!

    Artur

    1. Hahaha! Thanks! 🙂

      It took me a while to get that up and running as I had to install so much and the downloads were close to 10 GB or so.

  2. hi,

    thanks for the wonderful explanation.

    i ran through it all till i came to the cpuminer itself, i did what it says on the read me and it shows this error –

    4 miner threads started, using ‘scrypt’ algorithm.
    [2013-05-02 15:08:00] HTTP request failed: Could not resolve host: ltc.kattare.comport; nodename nor servname provided, or not known
    [2013-05-02 15:08:00] json_rpc_call failed, retry after 30 seconds

    pls advice

    1. I’ve been getting almost the same error for a few days myself, but I’ve been too busy to look into it.

      I didn’t get any error about not being able to resolve a host though… Only the json_rpc_call error.

      I hope to look into it if I have time this weekend.

  3. this is the error msg – HTTP request failed: The requested URL returned error: 403
    [2013-05-02 15:14:25] json_rpc_call failed, retry after 30 seconds

    1. A 403 error is a permissions error. Check to see that you are connecting to the proper URL on the proper port. That could be the problem… But, I’ve not seen that error with this before.

  4. Help Please! cant find any folders or where to put this?

    This is step 4 and I cant find usr/bin/:
    4. Copy the cpuminer executable (minerd) into your /usr/bin/:

    sudo cp minerd /usr/bin/minerd

    so close i can taste it…

  5. Hi Ryan,

    I’ve tried following your instructions on my iMac and just can’t seem to get it. First I tried installing the Xcode, and got the message that my OSX was out of date, however, when I go to “software update” under the little apple icon, it tells me that my software is up to date at OS X 10.6.8.

    My iMac is about 3 years old though. I’ve got an ATI Radeon 4670 graphics card. I’m willing to pay you if you can help me.

    Thanks,
    Mitch

    1. Hi Mitch,

      You need to update your Mac to 10.8.x, then go back and install all the other software – Xcode, openssl, etc. There’s just a huge list of prerequisites, and they all start with coughing up for an OS X upgrade.

      You can update to OS X 10.8.x through the Mac app store. It took me several days to get it done after downloads broke several times, but eventually it worked. So, plan ahead. The app store can be frustrating to deal with. (I can’t believe that I managed to say that without a massive string of profanity! 🙂

      Cheers,
      Ryan

  6. You are a ROCKSTAR for this article! Thank you!!

    Having similar misadventures in getting all this to work on a Mac. I thought I was in the home stretch when… I hit the same problem snag that someone else above said they hit. Getting the following message:

    [2013-05-25 19:04:44] HTTP request failed: couldn’t connect to host
    [2013-05-25 19:04:44] json_rpc_call failed, retry after 30 seconds

    This is regardless of server, pools, ports, usernames, or passwords I try.

    Any ideas?

    Thanks again so much for this article. You got me FAR FAR FAR closer to getting all this to work than any other forum or site.