Great work, by far this looks like the best linux based miner out there.  I tried to get it working on one machine in my farm, and I ran into an issue.  I skimmed the thread here, and I don't see anyone else with the problem so maybe I am doing something wrong. 

I am trying to add a solo pool, using my server's ip address as the host.  When I use 192.168.1.2 I get a sql error "invalid syntax near .1".  When I try using my hostname (server.pedanticstoner.com), I get another syntax error.

There is no guarantee a crash won't result, but it isn't likely either.  The problems with MtGox were not indicative of an inherent problem with bitcoins, but a problem with one site that happened to arbitrate bitcoin trades.  What will probably happen is a lot of people will probably leave mtgox and move their coins to another exchange.  This is far different from converting them to USD, as that would cause a crash. 

Personally, I don't think it is fair to blame Mt Gox.  They are a young company, and they learned the hard way lessons on security.  Always keep the database behind a firewall!  I give them credit, at least the passwords were salted and hashed.  Sure, some can be cracked, but they must be done with individual brute force cracking (not so ironically there is a lot of knowledge on how to do that here in the bitcoin community).  If your password can be cracked, it is your fault, not theirs.

I do think it is a good thing if there is a mass exodus from MtGox.  For one thing it'll make everyone a lot more security conscience - free market in action.  For another, I've considered it a major fault that such a strong pct of the volume was at MtGox.  Competition is important, and now hopefully we'll have USD / BTC trade shared among a few major exchanges and not a single one.

I have a feeling a lot of the people here "investing" in bitcoins have never done real investing in their lives.  Same thing with mining, I doubt they have ever run a real business in their lives.  The concept of investing means to jump in while everyone is jumping out, so kudos to OP for making a wise choice in my opinion.  If I had the money in the right place, I'd put quite a bit into it now, and fully expect an amazing return in the next week to month. 
These markets are subject to the same forces as the stock market.  Granted, it moves more wildly, and has more inherent risks, but the rewards are far greater.  If you follow the masses and sell when it is going down (IE more sellers than buyers) and buy when it is going up (IE more buyers than sellers) you will lose every time, and people like me who time my buys and sells in reverse will gladly take the profits while you lose money.

Removing the variance is the same thing as removing the luck factor, I'd think.  I have one machine running solo, and one running on BTC Guild, where any fees are voluntary donations. 

Personally, I'd think it would be fair for the pool operator to keep the transaction fees from the block, but I don't know how much that totals out to.

Is it possible to run phoenix or any other miner without loading x11?  I tried simply not loading the gui, but then my cards aren't detected.  This is worse than I thought though, because even if I disconnect the mouse so I don't have to worry about it moving off the screen, it still crashes every few minutes

$5?  I don't think so.  I can't imagine the MtGox situation is going to have any real impact.  If people start dumping their BTC, I'll be buying every last one I can get my hands on.  It'll be back up to $20 within days

While that is true now, and will continue to be true in the short term, I doubt it will be long term.  Since there is a cost to producing a block, as the profit goes down miners will drop out.  I expect mining difficulty to even out somewhere around 3,000,000 assuming the price remains around 20$ / BTC.  Either way, supply and demand should be close.  While the difficulty / price ratio is low, I say mine away, as fast as humanly possible.  If it goes much above 3,000,000 then it'll be time to rethink mining profitability.

I see mining as a business, not just some random get rich quick scheme.  As long as the margins are worth it, ie the difficulty / price ratio is under 160,000, I will let these systems mine away.  Right now, it is under 50,000... 


Also, regarding luck, joining a pool or adding significant amount of hardware takes luck out of the equation. 

I reverted to my original xorg.conf file, but I still have the issue with the gui crashing when I move the mouse off the first screen

Hey all, I was having an issue with ubuntu where my mouse moving to the right of my screen caused x11 to crash.  To fix, I edited my xorg.conf file and removed all monitors and screens after the 1st, leaving all the devices.  When I rebooted, I could no longer mine on the 2nd and 3rd card.

I can do aticonfig --list-adapters, and all the adapters appear as expected.  When I run poclbm.py, I see only my first gpu, and my cpu.

I tried to do an aticonfig --initial --adapter=all, and it completed successfully, but I have the same problem.  I also tried reconfiguring, making, and installing pyopencl, to no avail. 

Any ideas what else I can try?

If you want to see how long it would take to generate your first block to get those 50 coins (solo mining), see this page:

http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/old_calculator.php

Based on the current difficulty, the average is 64 days.  I'm not great at statistics, and I don't understand the difference between 50% and average.  I'd think the average would be 50th percentile, but whatever I'd rather underestimate than overestimate anyways.

First off, the CPU and memory are irrelevant.  I am running 2 machines full time right now, and I spent $30 on the processor and $25 on the memory.  

Take a look at this page:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison

It will give you a good idea for each graphics card what the hashrate is.  If you aren't overclocking, you can reasonably expect a 340 Mh/s rate for a total of 680 Mh/s.


Then, go to this page:
http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator.php

enter in your hashrate and the exchange rate (I use 20$ / BTC since I won't sell lower than that - but it is always speculation)

You can reasonably expect around $474 / month.  That is at the currently difficulty.

Now, go to this page:
http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/

You can see the next difficulty is estimated at 1114107 and should change later this week in 1082 blocks.  You can divide the blocks till change by the current block / hour rate (9.49) to get the estimated hours until the change (114 hours / 4.75 days).

I like to do my short term calculations on the next difficulty, and I figure that would be a good average for the next month.  Going back to the mining calculator, and putting in 1114107 nets a monthly return of $374.  

Now, you also need to add in electricity costs.  You can estimate it out by calculating the watts your video card uses (see mining comparison) and multiplying it by .72 to get the kilowatt-hours.  Then you use your electricity rate to calculate your electricity costs (mine is 8.1 cents per kwh for comparison, I have heard of people with up to 15 cents per kwh).

If you want, you can also pad it a bit for cooling costs since the machine puts out a lot of heat.  I recommend finding a good solution to minimize that.  I have a thread with my setup, a fan with a garbage bag funneling the heat to a vent and out a window.

The other consideration is solo vs pool mining.  If you solo mine, you won't get your first block for around 8 weeks (though it is completely random, could be first night).  When you do, you'll get 50 BTC, worth about $1,000.  With pool mining, you lose a couple pct and all transaction fees, but you get steady income.  Unless you plan to get a lot more power, I'd recommend pooling.


Edit: redid my calculations when I realized you had 2 video cards

Waste of electricity, no reason to cool air when I can just throw it outside

I live on the 4th floor of a building, while it is a good idea in theory, I can think of 2 major flaws... 

A) first good rain will completely shut down my mining operation

B) I live in Texas, and 100 deg weather is common.  Not a place to run things outside

I am running 2 mining rigs with 3 5830s, 2 5850s and 1 6870.  Needless to say, they are pumping out some serious heat, and I have been struggling trying to find the most efficient way to remove it so it minimizes my electric bill.  Went to home depot, picked up a few things, and after a few different configurations, I ended up with this gem.  It's ghetto, but effective.  The air comes out the back of the PCs where it is pushed in (and sucked in) the air flow of the fan.  The garbage bag funnels the airflow into 3 dryer vents, when go to the window where they are taped with protecto wrap tape to a 30" wide air vent.  The protecto wrap tape not only holds the dryer vent tubes to the air vent, but seal it to minimize outside air from coming in.  

I am working on my 2nd mining rig, this one is a little different than my last with 2 5850s, and 1 6870.  When I first start the rig, all three video cards appear just fine in aticonfig --list-adapters.  When I check with poclbm one of the 5850s doesn't appear, and when I go back to aticonfig only 2 appear.  I'm not sure where to go with this one, any suggestions?

stuck in this forum still, so please bear with me.  I want to jump into mining, and I am trying to spec out a rig for myself.  I would like to run 3 GPUs per box, but it is difficult to find motherboards that have 3 PCI-e slots that can run at 16x.  If I run them at 8x or even 4x, will I take a substantial hit in Mh/s?

I've been doing a lot of research on BTC over the last few days, and I have a question regarding the db...  If every transaction is recorded, and transferred to every bitcoin client, what is stopping the db from growing to astronomical levels?  Right now, bitcoin is in its infancy, and relatively unused, and there are over 130,000 blocks.  At 1k per block, that is 130 mb (math is hard).  So, in a couple years, assuming bitcoin grows and transactions become common place, what is stopping new clients from having to download a 130 gb db and eventually in the tb?