first time mining (some questions)

[Ecurb123]

Hi all,

Yesterday I started mining for the first time. My setup below:

-Regular desktop computer
-Intel quad core, 2.5GHz
-4 GB ram
-no hard drive
-OS is ubuntu 13.04 running on an 8GB USB stick
-regular Ethernet cable for DSL internet connection
-no monitor, connected with putty on my windows laptop

I tried using cgminer with my old 4350 GPU but I didn't have any luck with even getting cgminer working, so after a lot of time messing with it I tried using cpuminer. Almost right away cpuminer started working! I let it run over night and during the day while I was at work. During that time I made a total of  .011 something litecoins. Of course thats really slow and not even worth the electricity which it cost to run the computer all that time, but I'm still in the learning phase so I'm happy. So far I have two questions.

1. Can I shutdown the putty ssh session and keep mining? Because as it is I'm actually running two computers
2. A example of my log is below, it is mining but with all these "Stratun connection timed out" messages, is this slowing me down? Is there anything I can do?

[2013-07-30 23:23:51] thread 0: 205828 hashes, 3.75 khash/s
[2013-07-30 23:24:51] thread 1: 224892 hashes, 3.75 khash/s
[2013-07-30 23:24:51] thread 2: 224888 hashes, 3.75 khash/s
[2013-07-30 23:24:51] thread 0: 224904 hashes, 3.75 khash/s
[2013-07-30 23:24:51] thread 3: 224876 hashes, 3.75 khash/s
[2013-07-30 23:25:51] thread 1: 224904 hashes, 3.75 khash/s
[2013-07-30 23:25:51] thread 2: 224892 hashes, 3.75 khash/s
[2013-07-30 23:25:51] thread 0: 224908 hashes, 3.75 khash/s
[2013-07-30 23:25:51] thread 3: 224868 hashes, 3.75 khash/s
[2013-07-30 23:25:51] Stratum connection timed out
[2013-07-30 23:25:51] Stratum connection interrupted
[2013-07-30 23:25:51] Stratum detected new block
[2013-07-30 23:26:52] thread 3: 224860 hashes, 3.75 khash/s
[2013-07-30 23:26:52] thread 1: 224900 hashes, 3.75 khash/s
[2013-07-30 23:26:52] thread 0: 224896 hashes, 3.75 khash/s
[2013-07-30 23:26:52] thread 2: 224884 hashes, 3.75 khash/s
[2013-07-30 23:27:05] Stratum detected new block
[2013-07-30 23:27:05] thread 2: 46660 hashes, 3.75 khash/s
[2013-07-30 23:27:05] thread 0: 46676 hashes, 3.75 khash/s
[2013-07-30 23:27:05] thread 3: 46716 hashes, 3.75 khash/s
[2013-07-30 23:27:05] thread 1: 46680 hashes, 3.75 khash/s
[2013-07-30 23:27:47] Stratum detected new block
[2013-07-30 23:27:47] thread 3: 160704 hashes, 3.75 khash/s
[2013-07-30 23:27:47] thread 1: 160700 hashes, 3.75 khash/s
[2013-07-30 23:27:47] thread 2: 160684 hashes, 3.75 khash/s
[2013-07-30 23:27:47] thread 0: 160700 hashes, 3.75 khash/s
[2013-07-30 23:28:01] thread 3: 50564 hashes, 3.75 khash/s
[2013-07-30 23:28:01] accepted: 12/12 (100.00%), 14.99 khash/s (yay!!!)
[2013-07-30 23:28:47] thread 0: 224892 hashes, 3.75 khash/s
[2013-07-30 23:28:47] thread 2: 224868 hashes, 3.75 khash/s
[2013-07-30 23:28:47] thread 1: 224896 hashes, 3.75 khash/s
[2013-07-30 23:29:01] thread 3: 224896 hashes, 3.75 khash/s
[2013-07-30 23:29:47] thread 0: 224904 hashes, 3.75 khash/s
[2013-07-30 23:29:47] thread 2: 224876 hashes, 3.75 khash/s
[2013-07-30 23:29:47] thread 1: 224888 hashes, 3.75 khash/s
[2013-07-30 23:30:01] thread 3: 224900 hashes, 3.75 khash/s
[2013-07-30 23:30:01] Stratum connection timed out


Thanks,
Ecurb

[CrashX]

Im not an expert and far from it...

Been mining a week, I figure unless you have  big rigs with $300/each video cards (GPU's) its not very cost effective.

But I purchase a ASIC miner which gets 300 mhash/s and only uses 2.5kw, I still haven't set it up, but it going to give 10x more than what my computer was giving, and less energy.



So my NOOB opinion will be get ASIC Miners but not sure it works with Silver. I know it will work for Gold.

[smscotten]

You want

nohup cgminer -o xxxxx -u xxxxxxx -p xxxxxx >> /dev/null &

except that then you won't be able to watch your pretty status/statistics display. You could pipe the output to a file and check it occasionally, I suppose, but be careful that the file doesn't just grow forever. Maybe just a single gt pipe?

[Ecurb123]

Thanks CrashX, you're right this isn't going to make me any money, but right now I just want to learn how some of it works.

smscotten,

nohup cgminer -o xxxxx -u xxxxxxx -p xxxxxx >> /dev/null &

is the reason for this line to make cgminer work with only the CPU? As of right now I had given up on cgminer and am working with cpuminer. But if I can get cgminer working that would be cool.

Bruce

[ra7]

I'm assuming you are initialising mining via a terminal.
If so set-up a start-up script to initialise Screen and the mining software, which you can access via a terminal at any time and leave without exiting the mining software.

[Ecurb123]

ok ra7, yeah I think I remember reading about that in one of the guides. I'll try to get that setup tomorrow. Thanks!

[smscotten]

is the reason for this line to make cgminer work with only the CPU? As of right now I had given up on cgminer and am working with cpuminer. But if I can get cgminer working that would be cool.

Sorry, what I meant to point out was the use of:

nohup [something something something] >> /dev/null &

to answer your question about closing your terminal. Using screen as ra7 suggested is probably more robust.

[ivanlabrie]

Mine primecoin with that cpu of yours. Use www.ypool.net , good luck!