Because 100% from 2 cards and an open case are very loud! At the settings I'm at the cards both hover around 70C more than a safe temp.

I don't think you can mix high power and low power states in linux (at least yet). I never saw any has speed changes or temp changes from my cards when tweaking the memory speed within the boundaries that linux would let me.

EDIT: I have seen Raulo's link before. I haven't tried it yet.

The 5850 BIOS would lock up on mine at 875.
I actually flashed the BIOS to 5870 to get 900 Mhz from http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/61848/ATI.HD5870.1024.091112.html
(My cards are Reference, not DirectCU. Not sure if it matters for the the BIOS)

This is my script for setting the clocks:

export DISPLAY=:0.0
aticonfig --od-enable
aticonfig --odsc 900,1000 --adapter=all

And for fans:

export DISPLAY=:0.0
aticonfig --pplib-cmd "set fanspeed 0 70" (second number is fan speed percentage)
(if using a second card then do)
export DISPLAY=:0.1
aticonfig --pplib-cmd "set fanspeed 0 70"

Currently running at slightly below 70C at 70% fan speed and the case open.

If really want a case that's open air there's the Antec Skeleton.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129056&cm_re=skeleton_antec-_-11-129-056-_-Product

If you want it a little more enclosed but good airflow there's the Antec Lanboy.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129092&cm_re=lanboy-_-11-129-092-_-Product

Core and mem speeds can be tweaked from Linux. If you want to change anything beyond that such as voltage you need the Windows programs that do that since they don't exist on Linux.

Ubuntu is a pretty popular distribution and quite a few people use it here so it would be easy to get help.

There is a thread here with some nice instructions for getting it set up http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3359.msg47174#msg47174

It doesn't look like the ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates repository with the update Radeon drivers is not available anymore, it gives me errors when I try to update. The radeon drivers in Ubuntu 11.04 are newer than those but 11.04 is still beta (which might not be a problem). I haven't tried upgrading yet.

EDIT: It looks like the packages can be downloaded directly here if the apt-source isn't available. https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-x-swat/+archive/x-updates/+sourcepub/1398782/+listing-archive-extra

OR possibly get the updated packages from the 11.04 version.

Ok, that makes sense.

How can you be closer of farther away to the center of a distributed p2p network if there's no central node to connect to? lol

If their client is too far from 'center' how could that be improved? Is there a polling time that can be increased or something?

I think once the nuances of drivers and SDK versions are worked out, the performances on each OS are roughly the same barring anything else. So it comes down to preference and what you intend on doing with it and what you're comfortable with.

If it's a dedicated mining machine then Linux is good for setting up and letting it go.
If it's not a dedicated machine or you want to tweak every little aspect of the card then you need x64 Windows.

If they are working on a block and there are 2 other pools that are 5x and 8x faster than them, then that wouldn't exactly surprise me. One of the other pools comes ripping through and finds the solution right before bitcoinpool doesn't seem that far fetched.

In the interest of being objective, Geebus posted that this is due to blocks being invalid and not passing confirmation. This should also fix the discrepancy in the historical payouts.

http://www.bitcoinpool.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=27


When I was mining there, the speed would fluctuate through out the whole block quite a bit. It looked like people would hop on and request a few getworks, hardly process any, then drop off. A quick check of the user list doesn't show an active user or registered user with that name (subjective as it is) and smells like baiting to me.

Forget these instructions. They were only relevant when I thought your system was debian based instead of .rpm. They are for setting up a system to mine by yourself which you don't want to do. You want to join a pool with your card.


You need to run the bitcoin program somewhere, either on this machine or another one to be joined to the network to be able to receive any bitcoins that you make from a pool. You should delete the .bitcoin/bitcoin.conf file

First things first.

cd  to the poclbm-mod.03.24.2011/sources/
do python ./poclbm-mod with no options

what devices does it show?

It looks like this is the package you're looking for:

nvidia-current-cuda-opencl

I've read posts about both flash and new versions of browsers (Firefox 4, IE9, and I think new versions of Chrome) interfacing with OpenCL to access the graphics cards directly to speed up rendering. Anything using OpenCL is going to eat into your hash rate.

I've never even heard of that one in all my time with Linux, but there are a lot of different distributions.

It looks like it's debian based like Ubuntu.

If you are familiar with the synaptic management tool try searching for python-pyopencl.

Here are instructions for ubuntu. http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2636.0
If PCLinuxOS is debian based, using current packages, and hasn't changed the package names, those instructions could work.

Be aware that your card is quite old. I had a GTS 250 and was only getting about 2.5 Cents a day running at 30 Mh/s. It looks like your card will get in the 20-25 Mh/s range.

I get 318 Mh/s fully overclocked to 900/1300 Core/Mem on Ubuntu Linux with SDK 2.1.

I was also getting right around 250Mh/s stock.

What version of linux are you running first of all?

I think most people here are on Ubuntu 10.10.

Debian based system packages are maintained by volunteers. And just because it has that package dependency doesn't mean that it will only work with Nvidia cards. It just means that it will install some Nvidia packages with it. If you don't like it then send the maintainer an e-mail and find out why it is that way, ask them to change it, or find a way around it. You're complaining about something that is given to you freely. Again, this is about your expectations.


Again, something that is free


EDIT: If I was going to do that I'd use a bootable flash drive and dos.

If you're going to mine part time and can't be separated from your games and Windows then just do it in Windows since linux can't meet your needs and expectations.

My linux rig works just fine, as do many others. You're bringing up 2 different issues at the same time.

1) OpenCL being dependent on nvidia packages.
2) Tweaking the video card in Linux

You options for OpenCL are to install the ubuntu packages and block the nvidia driver from loading if it causes you any problems or to compile the opencl package manually like the example here http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3359.msg47174#msg47174

aticonfig in linux will let you change the CPU and memclock but no, not the voltage. If you're familiar with RBE then you should be familiar with flashing BIOS's in which case you can pick a BIOS that will give you the voltage to allow you to get whatever clock speeds you want.

I don't want or need the option to tweak the voltage or BIOS in linux. I got the BIOS I wanted to get the speed I'm looking for then let it work.

Linux is not Windows and it was never designed to be Windows. It was designed to be a workhorse. Some people have made it more user friendly and some vendors have added support at different levels, but it's not "not good" because of your expectations.

Agreed




No doubt clients started out with someone, or a few people, hacking some code together and came up with a client. There's at least 1 example on here that I've seen of someone creating a from scratch client. Not many people start out writing their software from a security perspective. Most start out just to make something that works, then optimize it. Security is very often an after thought. Once the pools opened and people started using clients it's hard to change that. How many pool operators are willing to upset the status quo and change the security model of their pool and make people upgrade to a "Secure!" client. Mass conversions are hard when you know all the people involved, nevermind a loose association of people such as mining clients. Someone may be able to code a backward compatible security model into the server, but unless you force people to upgrade not all of them will, and as long as the old model still exists the problem will be there.


Unless you write every line of code yourself you are trusting other people to follow those rules to the level that you think they need to be followed, and many people's definitions vary (especially in the free/open source software community). Simple services can have hundreds of lines of code behind them. Even if all the rules and accepted practices are followed it doesn't mean that someone can't find a way to subvert them and create an exploit.

In their case it was a SQL. No matter which SQL server you are using, it's most likely that you wrote little, if any, code that is running on it. SQL query and security issues are constantly being found and addressed for every SQL vendor. SQL is a pretty big software app with a lot of lines of code and marketing is driven on speed. Very few SQL vendors care to advertise their security in depth unless you're Larry Ellison and willing to make a fool of yourself on stage then have Marketing scramble to CYA.

Secure and Security are precesses, not states.

 I have been watching mine like a hawk since I started mining just over a week ago and haven't had any problems with payouts except for when they were frozen due to the attacks, and has been resolved.

 Being an admin. It's not really fair to hold DDOS attacks against them. The only reason it would be justified to hold the recent breach against them is if it was gross neglect (which I don't think it was). Even the best admins can't stop someone if they really want to get into a system.

Every terminal window you open has a different display number. Any window you open you will need to first execute, you will also need to do this before most commands.

export DISPLAY=:0

Run your poclbm after that and see if both (all) your devices show up in that list.