Hows it going everyone? Its been a while since I last posted and its been a busy month. The last few weeks I have been dead set on getting my Steem wallet set up using Vessel. If you do not know what Vessel is, I suggest you use it as it allows you to access the Steem blockchain without actually being on Steemit. @jesta is the creator of the program and @bitcoinparadise has a great post on Steemit titled Vessel: A Steem Desktop Wallet that breaks down how to get started. Its been quite the adventure learning about the functioning of the program and implementing it in such a way that it is very secure.
My main computer for the last few months has been a Single Board Computer (SBC's), more specifically an Odroid C2. This type of basic computer is designed on ARM architecture and I prefer them to laptops and towers due to their size. Absolutely small with enough computing power to do most tasks. Ever heard of a Raspberry Pi? Completely transportable and concealable, a very secure way of working. Most SBC's run on Linux so its a lot harder to hack them as the code of the operating system is accessible to the user. I figured this would be a perfect installation medium for the Vessel wallet. I could take my system anywhere with minimal equipment and power needs. I attempted to install Vessel with no success. A friend of mine is more versed with code than I and when viewing @jesta's source code on github he came to the conclusion it was written for i386/x64 architecture and was not compatible with ARM based computers. ARM architecture is new but vastly outpacing most others as mobile devices become more popular. I386 architecture for the layman is essentially the code that runs Intel/AMD chipsets. So unless I had one of those types of processors, Vessel would not be able to work.
I remembered an old computer that was laying around not being used that would be perfect for this endevour. The only issue was it was running on Windows 7. As Windows has advanced through the years, I have noticed the operating system becoming very heavy with useless processes. Not secure what so ever, and Linux has really grown on me the more I used it for Steemit. I decided I would try and see what I could do with it. The Raspberry Pi Foundation recently came out with an operating system that ran soley off a USB and was the same PIXEL operating system their PI's run off. I enjoyed this operating system and attempted to try and run it. I could utilize an Intel chipset without changing anything to the base operating system. Sadly it was not fast enough to really respond and a USB 3.0 connection would truly be needed to utilize a speed capable of running smoothly. I figured if I had a USB operating system with Vessel, it was essentially a hard wallet as it could be removed any time. I moved on to a dual boot. I needed to keep Windows 7 as I have certain very expensive programs that only run on that operating system. Linux Mint was recommended to me as it was very lightweight.
Linux Mint has many "flavors" and I went with XFCE as it is more lightweight than the others. I downloaded the newest "Sylvia" release from the site. To help create a USB boot device, I used a program called Rufus. Rufus is a freeware standalone program that formats USB drives but also creates bootable drives from any image available (using button under pointer in picture below).
I used Rufus to create a USB bootable Linux Mint installer. First though, all the media such as pictures and video was removed from my hard drive so none of it was corrupted during this endeavor. All files were moved to a removable media. I then needed to shrink the drive so that room was available for the Linux operating system. I only had a 150gb hard drive to work with at the moment so I set aside 40 gb for Linux, more than enough really. To shrink the hard drive and create a separate formatted area I used the Administrator Tools folder under the Start button on Windows.
Once administrative tools was opened I clicked computer management
Under computer management, disk management was used. This will display all partitions and drives available.
Now that I cleared the drive of anything that might be near and dear to my heart, I located the largest drive. By left clicking, I shrank the drive by 40GB to load the alternate operating system on. In the photo the process has already been complete and you see many separate partitions.
Once the drive was done shrinking, In the thumb drive went and I restarted the computer. To boot from the USB I had to use the BIOS settings. On this computer, pushing F8 as it boots will bring up the boot menu and I was able to access the USB.
After the installation of Linux Mint, a new menu displayed at boot up. It allowed me to not only select either operating system, it gave me the option to conduct a MEM test, which tests the integrity of the memory.
After updating the new operating system and getting the WIFI issues solved, I installed the latest edition of Vessel using the amd64.deb package. Linux Mint makes it very easy to install packages, no more source code!
Issues arose while working with the latest version of Vessel 0.2.7 and I almost lost hope. The program kept telling me the key entered was wrong and nodes kept dropping like crazy. I uninstalled it, and installed the older 0.2.6 version and BINGO, SUCCESS!!
I scrolled through the various options on the program to make sure that everything was functioning correctly.
I am really happy this program was able to work through all of my various approaches. It truly is an amazing piece of software and I'm glad I have access to nodes when the site may be buggy. Big shout out to @jesta, but the only request I have may be a large one. I'm curious if there is any way the source code can be written to support ARM architecture. I do not write source code so the question goes out to anyone and everyone. It may be only satisfying my needs but it would be nice to have Vessel on a very small computer that can be carried in ones pocket. Also it opens the door to the Vessel Mobile Wallet app. Maybe its a pipe dream but I would be happy if that happened.
Thank you for following along with my installation of Vessel and I hope you learned something from this post. Sorry about my dirty computer screen, I cleaned it after these pictures were taken.
All photos, unless otherwise stated or sourced, were taken by @csusbgeochem1 and may not be reused without permission. Animations and cover photo created by @csusbgeochem1 using GIMP.
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Hello, I see you are not posting that often. What are you up to?
I nominated you for this challenge - thought you should know :)
https://steemit.com/life/@mariannewest/gratitude-day-1
This post was chosen to be featured in this weeks SoCal Spotlight!! Thank you so much for being part of the #socalsteemit community.
Hi! Congrats on getting it all up and running!