Anyone using an Avalon 741 with BFGMiner to solo mine?
I was going to try and get one if the price wasn’t too high.

The below log shows a new block being created every minute on the 35 second mark with the fees increasing, until the completed block 502417 arrives in the Core from a peer node at 20:10:12.
A new block is then created that very same second and I assume passed to BFGminer, with a much lower fee than the one created 37 seconds prior.
It seems that all the prior blocks being created, just in case they are needed, are trumped by this new block created just after a completed block arrives.
Why is it such a lower fee? I suspect because when the completed block arrived, the Bitcoin Core removed all the transactions used in that completed block from the Mem pool of available transactions. Pretty much making all prior blocks created for BFGminer invalid as some of those transactions may have been in this newly completed block.

It seems to me that you shouldn’t create a new block until after the current completed block has arrived and the Mem pool has been updated with available transactions.


2018-01-03 20:07:35 CreateNewBlock(): block weight: 3992232 txs: 2203 fees: 378086720 sigops 21168
2018-01-03 20:08:35 CreateNewBlock(): block weight: 3992656 txs: 2419 fees: 410225647 sigops 24184
2018-01-03 20:09:35 CreateNewBlock(): block weight: 3992140 txs: 2480 fees: 471696205 sigops 25236
2018-01-03 20:10:12 UpdateTip: new best=00000000000000000086ed3aef84344e66870d3328bd5debfbbf18a5d4688285 height=502417 version=0x20000000 log2_work=87.79324 tx=288749882 date='2018-01-03 20:10:04' progress=1.000000 cache=112.6MiB(855803txo)
2018-01-03 20:10:12 CreateNewBlock(): block weight: 3992428 txs: 860 fees: 210806676 sigops 6272
2018-01-03 20:11:12 CreateNewBlock(): block weight: 3992460 txs: 1135 fees: 246322036 sigops 9720
2018-01-03 20:12:13 CreateNewBlock(): block weight: 3992348 txs: 1479 fees: 278896141 sigops 12880

I am solo mining with Ubuntu 16, Bitcoin Core 15, BFGminer 5.4.2-29, Antminer S3.
BFGminer is requesting a new block be created by the Bitcoin core every minute like clockwork.
Is this expected behavior?
This seems to be excess work being placed on the core for no reason.
Is there a startup flag for BFGminer to control this?

Bitcoin debug.log
2018-01-03 17:39:32 CreateNewBlock(): block weight: 3992620 txs: 2293 fees: 294454986 sigops 20460
2018-01-03 17:40:32 CreateNewBlock(): block weight: 3992316 txs: 2421 fees: 363545029 sigops 24536
2018-01-03 17:41:33 CreateNewBlock(): block weight: 3992700 txs: 2581 fees: 385087979 sigops 25060
2018-01-03 17:42:33 CreateNewBlock(): block weight: 3992140 txs: 2593 fees: 408387089 sigops 26268
2018-01-03 17:43:33 CreateNewBlock(): block weight: 3992480 txs: 2609 fees: 432487630 sigops 27896
2018-01-03 17:44:33 CreateNewBlock(): block weight: 3992116 txs: 2761 fees: 452136320 sigops 29688

It seems the sequence of events should be...
- A completed block arrives in the Bitcoin core from one of the peers.
- Bitcoin Core notifies BFGminer of this blocks arrival.
- BFGminer sends a request to the core to create a new block from the available transaction in the Mem pool. “CreateNewBlock”
- Bitcoin core passes the new block to BFGminer, who then distributes the header out to the miners.

It seems that a “CreateNewBlock” would only occur when it is needed after a completed block has arrived. Can anyone shed some light on this process? Thanks.

Is BFGMiner 5.4.2 available for Ubuntu 16.04 users?
I have a new install of Ubuntu 16.04.
Bitcoin Core 15.1
BFGMiner 5.2.0
I am trying to upgrade to 5.4.2 to see if will resolve an issue and when I use the command
apt-get install bfgminer
it says I am already at the latest version 5.2.0. I installed it only a week ago.
How do I get upgraded to 5.4.2 if it is available for Ubuntu?

Confession: I am a newly convert to Linux so go easy on me.