[ANN] Stratum mining protocol - ASIC ready

[beekeeper]

Oh, this! Proxy is working in "compatibility mode" by default, to ensure that all, even very old miners, will work with it with no issues. If you have some modern miner (cgminer, poclbm or so), you can run it with --real-target. Currently the proxy is filtering low-diff shares, so you may see different numbers in the miner and on the pool. Thanks to --real-target, your numbers in miner won't be screwed anymore.

yes, I do that:

user   27107  1.6  1.3  28920 13692 ?        Sl   00:42   1:06 python ./mining_proxy.py -o stratum.btcguild.com -p 9332 -rt

there is no difference, still around 5% missing (I am using some custom miner):

Example vardiff worker:

total_unsolved_gws(superK)=4640(41.46%), total_solved_gws(superK)=6552(58.54%), (solved+unsolved)=11192

Example diff1, DE server worker:

total_solved_workunits_count=30078.00
total_failed_workunits_count=16128.00

If you compute second, total_solved_workunits_count is 65% of (total_solved_workunits_count + total_failed_workunits_count)

So I need a diff1 stratum connection to test if vardiff causes this difference or something else (network, etc.)

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[optimator]

I think this discussion is a simple misunderstanding

Difficulty is not an attribute of job definition, which is clearly true

Difficulty not being an attribute of job definition is as the stratum protocol defines it.

However, this does not preclude a pool from tracking the difficulty associated with a job. It's up to the pool's implementation to determine how it will be handled. I suspect most pools will NOT let the miner lose credit for work created.

Whether to include or separate mining difficulty from the notify transaction may be interesting from an academic perspective, but the real life implementation of the protocol WILL NOT result in miners loosing credit for work.

[dlasher]

Slush, I'm testing the new version of cgminer+stratum behind the proxy and I ran into an interesting question/issue.

BTCGuild returns stratum information in it's header, which the proxy passes through to cgminer. Cgminer then takes that IP and bypasses the proxy.

In theory, shouldn't the proxy be able to relabel the header response to keep itself in the chain? (maybe make that behavior a command-line-switch?)

[kano]

...
Whether to include or separate mining difficulty from the notify transaction may be interesting from an academic perspective, but the real life implementation of the protocol WILL NOT result in miners loosing credit for work.

Ah so you are getting around the problem of the protocol somehow by forcing the two pieces of data to be linked?
(instead of simply having them as one piece of data)

Across an internet connection ... then I presume you are somehow forcing both pieces of data to be in a single packet?
... so it's working around a design problem by ... doing something because it's not part of the notify ...
Why not just fix notify
Oh wait ... then slush's current code would require changes ... and that's out of the question - he's at the top of the curve - though which one?

While on the subject of good code - slush are you ever going to stop prioritising higher rate hashers on LP?
What you do at the moment means that low rate hashers lose a higher % of work on an LP ... the lower the hash rate - the higher the %.
Removing 'random' from that part of the equation has that obvious effect.

[optimator]

Across an internet connection ... then I presume you are somehow forcing both pieces of data to be in a single packet?
... so it's working around a design problem by ... doing something because it's not part of the notify ...

Yes! That's what a good stratum pool will do. Again the effect result of a good implementation is the same to all miners - they don't lose credit for work they have completed.

[slush]

Proxying of Stratum protocol itself isn't finished in the proxy yet. For this reason proxy simply instruct Stratum miners to connect directly to the pool. I'm working on stratum-stratum mode right now and it will be available in version 1.0.0.

Slush, I'm testing the new version of cgminer+stratum behind the proxy and I ran into an interesting question/issue.
BTCGuild returns stratum information in it's header, which the proxy passes through to cgminer. Cgminer then takes that IP and bypasses the proxy.
In theory, shouldn't the proxy be able to relabel the header response to keep itself in the chain? (maybe make that behavior a command-line-switch?)

[slush]

So I need a diff1 stratum connection to test if vardiff causes this difference or something else (network, etc.)

You can test it on my pool, it is still working on diff1. About that losing work - you'll probably need to discuss this with Eleuthria and ask him to check server logs.

[beekeeper]

Ok, I will. TY

[slush]

I just published version 1.0.0 of proxy on github (I'll publish EXE in few days if there won't be any major bug). This version introduces "Stratum subpool" feature: now can proxy serve not only getwork jobs, but also Stratum jobs for native Stratum miners. Thanks to this, you can now point up to 256 Stratum-powered miners to Stratum proxy and it will use just one upstream connection to the pool, keeping network overhead at minimum.

Edit: Version 1.0.0 requires stratum library 0.2.7, so after "git pull" you'll need to re-run "setup.py install" or run "easy_install -U stratum".

In theory, shouldn't the proxy be able to relabel the header response to keep itself in the chain? (maybe make that behavior a command-line-switch?)

[-ck]

Stratum support is now in an official cgminer release, version 2.8.0:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=28402.msg1252632#msg1252632

[slush]

That's excellent news! Btw did you fix that reconnection issue?

[Mobius]

cool

Stratum support is now in an official cgminer release, version 2.8.0:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=28402.msg1252632#msg1252632

Cool

[-ck]

That's excellent news! Btw did you fix that reconnection issue?

Yes it works generically by reconnecting if possible after a clear disconnection, or 2 minutes of no communication from the pool.

[slush]

Perfect!

[Graet]

Stratum support is now in an official cgminer release, version 2.8.0:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=28402.msg1252632#msg1252632

Awesome work ckolivas
I sent a 5btc donation from the pool, I know our miners will appreciate it when we have stratum support
Coming soon^tm

[-ck]

Stratum support is now in an official cgminer release, version 2.8.0:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=28402.msg1252632#msg1252632

Awesome work ckolivas
I sent a 5btc donation from the pool, I know our miners will appreciate it when we have stratum support
Coming soon^tm

Thanks! Glad someone appreciates the effort  It was quite a bit of work...

[eleuthria]

Stratum support is now in an official cgminer release, version 2.8.0:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=28402.msg1252632#msg1252632

Awesome work ckolivas
I sent a 5btc donation from the pool, I know our miners will appreciate it when we have stratum support
Coming soon^tm

Thanks! Glad someone appreciates the effort  It was quite a bit of work...

Thanks for your work ckolivas.  Before I send it, please just confirm that the donation should be sent to the address in your sig: 148KkS2vgVi4VzUi4JcKzM2PMaMVPi3nnq

[Graet]

he is asleep, but it is correct

[-ck]

Stratum support is now in an official cgminer release, version 2.8.0:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=28402.msg1252632#msg1252632

Awesome work ckolivas
I sent a 5btc donation from the pool, I know our miners will appreciate it when we have stratum support
Coming soon^tm

Thanks! Glad someone appreciates the effort  It was quite a bit of work...

Thanks for your work ckolivas.  Before I send it, please just confirm that the donation should be sent to the address in your sig: 148KkS2vgVi4VzUi4JcKzM2PMaMVPi3nnq

Much appreciated, thanks. 

[slush]

I just found a bug in Stratum 1.0.0 + stratum-enabled miner (cgminer/poclbm). I'm working on bugfix right now, but users using Stratum proxy 1.0.0 on my pool should check their miners, because they most likely crashed during pool app restart 10 minutes ago.