That is my first thought too.
A big pool, with high share-difficulty and with the bigger miners.
A sub-pool, with its own sharechain, where small miners work. The sub-pool would request work from the big pool, just as the sub-pool would be one of the bigger miners.

That way all miners would have payouts in short timeframes, and the small miners would have fine-grained enough proof-of-their-work too.

The small miners would have one (or double) the hops, with higher latency accordingly.
There might be more centralization with this setup too.

Ente

You have my deepest respect, chsx3. Many people say (or believe) they are ethically integer. Just until they get the chance to prove it..
Hats off to you, chsx3, thank you for being a positive example in a largely rotten world.


No surprises from BS's side, though.

Ente

Ok, its quite clear now that its a problem on the Guiminer (or poclbm) side.
Will try to solve that and update all p2pool instances to the "forrestv-p2pool-0.8.4-1-gadba786" version too.

Thank you for your help!

Ente

It gets more and more strange..

Rig "Miner04" uses forrestv-p2pool-0.8.4-1-gadba786
Rig "Miner03" uses forrestv-p2pool-release-0.8.1-0-gc7feb00

Rig "Miner04" uses Guiminer v2011-06-14
Rig "Miner03" uses Guiminer v2011-06-14

Guiminer "Miner03" --> p2pool "Miner03": finds "minerblocks" and "shareblocks"
Guiminer "Miner04" --> p2pool "Miner04": drops "unexpected error:" in guiminer
Guiminer "Miner03" --> p2pool "Miner04": finds "minerblocks" with 100% in (), finds "shareblocks"
Guiminer "Miner04" --> p2pool "Miner03": finds "minerblocks" with 50% in (), finds no "shareblocks"

So obviously its some problem on Guiminer's (or poclbm) side on "Miner04".

In Guiminer you see for example:
I didnt find out what the number in () means, yet.

All other rigs are like "Miner03" and behave well.

Bah, I'm losing my patience with this windows stuff..

Ente

edits underlined

Good morning,

I tested the "new old" version you linked. It works, connects faster and all, but the (guiminer) error still persists.
Still, the guiminer "console" says "unexpected error:", and thats all it says in its logfile too (in guiminer.log and guiminer.exe.log).

I'll experiment a bit with connecting (different) guiminer instances to (different) p2pool nodes to find out which one causes trouble here..

Ente

Guiminer 2011-06-14
with poclbm "-f 100 -w 128 -v"
I see no obvious way to find out poclbm's version. If you wish to know that I have a second look.

edit:
Oh, I assumed both gid and the tar'ed version would be the same.. Good to know, I'll get the gid version then!
Maybe drop a note on that on the downloadpage? ;-)

Thank you for your help and all the time and energy you put in this!

Ente

Yep, every rig has its own p2pool node.
My friend prefers to not be dependent on one machine's p2pool.

Talking about statistics: the probability that one p2pool from any of the rigs crashes is higher than if there is just one, (locally) centralized p2pool where all rigs connect to.. I'll talk him out of that next week :-)

I rolled back to 0.8.1 and that miner works now again.
The guiminer log only said "unexpected error" too.

I will have a second look next week, and maybe switch to cgminer etc anyway, and hopefully to one p2pool node where all rigs connect to too.

Ente

Now thats strange..
After rebooting all rigs, now all (0.8.1) p2pool instances seem to give/get work to guiminer. The rig with 0.8.3 is the only one with "unexpected error" with guiminer.
All 8 rigs have the same versions, configs, tools, everything is identical (except 0.8.1/0.8.3)

I try to get more info from poclbm/guiminer..

Ente

Hmm..
We have seven rigs running, one of them doesnt seem to work.
No p2pool shares were generated. So I updated from 0.8.1 to the recent forrestv-p2pool-0.8.3-0-g3cfeee9.


Still using GuiMiner, it throws:

Any ideas?

Ente

Well, do a daily cronjob then,


and remove the duplicates with


True, this could be integrated into p2pool as well.. p2pool is in constant development.
For me, a look at my blockexplorer-address is enough, anyway.

Ente

edit:
Not talking to you personally, kano, I guess you know your linux stuff by now ;-)

Very nice, thank you for that!
Could you add the date to each block too?

Additionally, I would like a graph with "blocks per day" or similar, to have a quick overview of our "luck".
I know http://u.forre.st/p2pool/luck.png already, which is nice, but takes a three day average. I would prefer a more finely grained graph, updating whenever a block is found.

These are all just details, I am very happy with p2pool!

Ente

..as long as more money comes in than is withdrawn.. 

Ente

P2Pool is the fourth largest pool! BOOM!
https://blockchain.info/pools

terahash, here we come!

Ente

Yep, pulled out with 2 Bitcoins plus.
Still waiting for the exchange rate to adjust for getting rich with those ;-)

Ente

Awesome, great work!

Once we are in the stickied top10 and in the pie-chart, p2pool will grow even faster.
Once that happens, variability will feel much less, making p2pool grow even more!

We are close to the critical mass, me thinks!

edit:
Oh yeah, stickied top10 ftw! :-)

Ente

Yep, online here too.
Didnt check earlier, now it works anyway.

Ente

04.02.2012 15:09
"Server error! Please contact the admin."

Pleased to meet you, Trent! :-)


With how much BTC invested, approx?
The earned % seems to correlate directly to the invested sum.

Ente

Bad news for everyone who still has money in BS. Now is the time where its not only leads that BS is a scam, but now its fact:

Two days no earnings for people, but the number on the frontpage increases hourly. Then:

Fact:
30.01.2012: 535.4289 BTC scalped
02.02.2012: 618.0377 BTC scalped

Thats a 15.43% increase in those four days.

My account rose:
30.01.2012: 3.5227 BTC
02.02.2012: 3.5545 BTC

Thats a 0.90% increase in the same time.

This is not totally impossible. The only reason for this could be that a lot of people invested in the meantime.
It would work out like this (with a few more days to see the trend):

25.01.2012: 1651.07 BTC
26.01.2012: 1748.83 BTC
28.01.2012: 1908.02 BTC
29.01.2012: 2860.15 BTC
30.01.2012: 5335.84 BTC
02.02.2012: 9151.13 BTC

Thats the total invested sum, calculated under the assumption that everyone earns the same percentage and the number on the frontpage is real.
Before 25.01.2012 it slowly climbed just the way like 25.01. - 28.01., I can provide numbers from 10.01.2012 on if asked.

So the only reason for the numbers would be that invested money skyrocketed last days. Like exponentially rising, after weeks of constant, reasonable, linear increase.

[The invested sum]Uhuhm..

Uhuhm..

So for me its now proven that the first phase of this ponzi is over, the "collect money phase".
I ordered a withdrawal of the remaining 3.5 BTC this morning (thats the sum I "earned", I withdrew my initial fundings much earlier, without a problem)

The withdrawal request is around six hours old. Nada yet.
Oh, wait, I *just* saw the payment in blockexplorer. So at least they still pay out, at least some (small?) orders.



I bet you will, BS, I bet you will.

Ente

..Sehen uns um 19:00, ich bin da!

Ente