Bitcoin Forum

GUI Miner solo. I've let it run for almost 2 weeks now and I haven't generated 50 BTC yet. If it's "running" with the bitcoin client as server how do I verify it'll send me the 50 BTC? Does it just know to credit the client? I don't get it.

I'm thinking it may have solved something but doesn't know how to credit me? I'm confused how it knows how to register the credits in the wallet. I'm running poclbm-gui and launching bitcoin in server mode through the menu interface running solo w/ 2x 6950's

It knows because it will connect to the bitcoin server using the RPC username and password you configured in your bitcoind.conf (I hope you did not forget to do this!)

Use the mining calculator to determine how long it will take you to mine a full 50 BTC block. Bear in mind that solo mining has a much wider variance then pool mining, so sometimes you may get lucky and generate a block or more in a rather short time span and sometimes you can have multiple bad luck runs.

With two 6950s I recommend mining with a pool.

If you created a solo password using "Solo utilities -> Create solo password", it will write the username and password to a bitcoin.conf file. Then the GUI will be able to connect to your bitcoin client and the bitcoin client will send the GUI work to do.

What would happen if you found a block is that the GUI would report to the bitcoin client "hey, I found a solution for the work you gave me!" and then the bitcoin client would report to the network "I found this block, therefore I create 50 bitcoins".

This would be visible in the miner tab's status bar as something like "Blocks: 1" and then you would see it in the bitcoin client as an entry with "Generated: +50".

Hope this helped, maybe I'll write up a detailed README for the next version that doesn't assume that users know how Bitcoin works.

Thanks a lot, your information is very useful.

It can work now. How ever, I think mining solo is a bad idea. The chance to solve the block is really low, it is completely a waste of time to mine solo.

Would you agree with me?

hey Kiv, when mining solo, does guiminer report to the user when it has solved a block?

Yes, you would see that in the miner's tab on the status bar, something like "Blocks: 1". But solo mining has such a low chance now that I haven't heard of anyone actually solving a block with GUIMiner :)

GuiMiner = Miner + GUI + Little overhead.

That "little overhead" wouldn't be significant enough to stop someone from generating a block.

Mining with two 6950 will solve you a block in more or less 10 weeks on average, but it's possible to solve it either earlier or even past these 10 weeks.

In 10 weeks (even if difficulty stays the same), you could earn 140 BTC in pools. I'm on average getting 1.25-1.5 BTC/24hr x 10 weeks == 87.5-105, this is with 1 6950 UL'ed/OCed, and 1 5770 @ 1GHz. This only applies, if the difficulty stays the same (which it won't).

Well the weird thing is i have been seeing 3 times 1 blocks in the time i solo mined with your program
But all this time and even now when i almost closed down mining for the costs i still have not received any +50 coins
I do notice constant new blocks being added to the local pool, does that mean those blocks are solved somewhere else ?
But i also seem to have problems with phoenix and rpcminer-cuda.exe
Phoenix does not connect at all on all my pc/gpu combinations while almost all other programs work fine.

It somehow is not able to connect to any servers local or in pools, now i did test phoenix ouside your program also but could not get it to work either (version 1.6.2 and 3). So it probably is something with phoenix
Or i certainly have no clue how to get it to work on your program >:D
With rpc-miner-cuda i have the following problem with the guiminer it simply does not report anything at all
hashes/ blocks whatever nothing is shown it just shows Mhash/s on the right down under thats it ... nothing more nothing less
So even if a pool block is found nothing is being displayed.
Now i could try out an opencl one but ofcourse that is much and i mean MUCH slower then its cuda counter part on this super slow card we talk about 16 to 17 Mh/s on opencl and 20 to 21 on rpc-cuda
 

To illustrate this.  While the mean time between blocks is 10 weeks the OP has roughly a 25% chance of not seeing a block in 6 months and a 6% chance of not seeing a block in the next year.  There is even a 1% chance the OP won't see a block for 20 months.

Now every noob miners says.  1%.  That won't be me.  Well someone is in the bottom 1 percentile.  Someone is in the bottom 6% too. 

Unless the idea of mining for 20 months and not seeing a single bitcent sounds fun join a pool. 

Hell most people w/ 10GH join pools.  I know I do.  If I had 30GH I would consider solo mining.  30GH is enough to have a high confidence of getting blocks consistantly enough to have solid monthly revenue (to pay that electric bill which comes monthly).

My rule of thumb: average time to find a block should be <= 3 days to solo-mine. Currently this would be the case roughly at >= 20 GHash/s (diff 1.4 million)

Thats a good rule of thumb.  W/ 3 days mean block time you are looking at 10 blocks per month on average.

More importantly (if my math is correct):
Odds of getting 10+ blocks per month ~50%
Odds of getting 5+ blocks per month ~ 72%
Odds of getting 3+ blocks per month ~ 87%
Odds of getting 1+ blocks per month ~ 93%

More consistency in monthly mining revenue and since power bill comes once per month that where you want some consistency especially if you have 20GH/s.

If you're lucky, you'll get a block before 2013. If you're REALLY lucky, you'll get a block before 2012. If you are VERY unlucky, you won't get a block until after 2020.

don't be so pessimistic,  here is the calculations with 700Mhash: ;)

Probability   Time
Average   104 days, 6 hours, 21 minutes
50%           72 days, 6 hours, 30 minutes
95%           312 days, 8 hours, 24 minutes

With my luck i count on the last ;), by that time btc has been disappeared or is worth 100 $  each xD

You will know when you have +50 coins in your wallet!
You probably won't be that lucky, even though the difficulty is dropping.

Good luck!