Bitcoin Forum

Hi,

Current Setup:

Head node - Windows 2008 R2 64bit. 
                  PC with the Bitcoin Wallet app (SOLO Mode) as the collective
                  hashing target of all the nodes in the group.
                  Also, there are three v3800's running using GUIminer at ~250 Mhashs.

Contributing Node 1 - Windows 7 64bit. 
                              Two ATI 5970's running using GUIminer at ~1300 Mhashs
                              and connecting to the wallet app on the head node.

Contributing Node 2 - Windows 7 64bit.
                              Three ATI 5970's running using GUIminer at ~1950 Mhashs
                              and connecting to the wallet app on the head node.

NOTE:  I hope to make some changes soon to expand the total hashing to 7 ATI 5970's and 5 v3800's
          that should give me ~5GH from 3 PC's without overvolting.  Not certain what the wattage will be. 
          I'm utilizing ComEd's Real Time Pricing for power, so the power costs are ~half what the flat rate is,
          at least during the winter months...

Issues:
1. Bitcoin Wallet App - Doesn't show the collective hashing efforts of all the clients. 
                               Is there any way to centrally monitor all hashing?
2. Client managment - How can I launch the contributing nodes hashing remotely?
3. Is GUIminer still the way to go, or should I explore another method?

Any other suggestions / advice would be appreciated!

Thanks in advance for your help!

P2Pool & cgminer is the best way to "solo" mine

Correct me if I'm wrong, but p2pool is a pool, not solo mining.  What am I missing?

P2Pool is solo mining, against your own instance of bitcoind, generating to your own wallet/address, but with shared rewards and lower variance. That's the best way to describe it.

It is however what is the advantage of solo mining?
Helps to keep bitcoin decentralized?
p2pool is just as decentralized you do your own work and your own block headers.

no fees?
p2pool has no fees.  Actually right now members pay a BONUS to miners so think of it as negative fees.

merged mining?
you can merge mine w/ p2pool (alt-chains aren't pooled)

DDOS proof?
p2pool is equally DDOS proof.

Disadvantages?
None.  If p2pool network ever went down you could always switch to solo or a backup pool.

One thing to keep in mind is that although current difficulty requires ~1.3 million shares per block.  5 millions shares isn't that unsuual and sometimes pools hit 10 million shares.

To put that into perspective if you got unlucky and it took your 5 million shares to solve a block at 3.5GH/s that would take ~70 days.  If it took 10 million shares it would take you 180 days.  Of course during that 180 days you would earn nothing, rack up electrical bills and continually wonder if you have something configured wrong.


Still if you absolutely MUST solo mine then I would recommend running a bitcoind on another machine to acts as a backup instance or use a pool as a failover.  Currently if your bitcoind crashes on 1 machine your entire farm goes down for however long it takes you to notice and fix.  It creates a single point of failure.

Does anyone know how to setup cgminer for solo mining.

Add RPC password, login, and port number to bitcoin.conf configuration file, then launch either Bitcoin client or bitcoind, then run cgminer pointing it to 127.0.0.1 or localhost, instead of a pool, then wait a few months and hope you get lucky.

How do i setup p2pool for nmc merged minin on windows? btc running already

It is like that:
run_p2pool.exe --merged http://nmcUser:nmcPass@127.0.0.1:nmcPort/