Mac client questions

[coel]

Hi all,

I just installed the Mac client on my iMac, and I have a few questions about it. I'm sorry if they're all answered on the Wiki, but as the Wiki is not accessible, I can't look there. :-/

My questions:

1) Why is the uPnP option in the preferences greyed out? Would have been much easier to use it. Now that I forwarded port 8333 to the iMac, the client quickly jumped from one connection to around 40, and the blocks come in quite fast, but it could have been like this from the beginning. IMHO, uPnP should even be enabled by default—I doubt that a majority of Mac users know how to forward a port in their DSL router, let alone search the forums to find out which port in the first place.

2) And the other greyed-out options? Not implemented yet?

3) I enabled coins generation. Given that it's currently downloading and storing blocks, the client still doesn't use much CPU (about 10-35% on a dual core machine). Does that mean that it automatically uses the GPU or is the binary niced down so much?

4) Will the client automatically download new versions or do I have to look myself if new versions are available?

A very small hint: Please add the standard shortcut "Cmd-," for preferences. At least for me personally, it would make the client feel much more like a "real" Mac application. :-)

That's all for now. I'll add more questions when they arise. :-) Thanks in advance any answers.

[coel]

5) What it does seem to use extremely heavily is disk i/o. Is that due to downloading blocks or will that always be the case when I try to generate coins?

[mewantsbitcoins]

1. My guess is that your System preferences->Security->Firewall tab is locked. I think it should be on by default too, but it's for the individual to decide whether they want a port opened. Bitcoin client can function without incoming connections.
3. Client can not generate coins unless it has up to date blockchain
4. There is no auto update.
5. i/o is heavy because data is being written to the disk - just like copying a file. Once blockchain is up to date it will stop. Generating coins only uses processing power. I don't think it would would require more than few kBs

[coel]

Ah, thanks for your answers.

About 1): Yes, the firewall tab is locked, but the firewall is deactivated (for I'm behind a NAT, anyway). So it should be no problem to just send the uPnP commands to the default gateway. Skype does it, e.g.

About 3): Ah, of course. (Currently reading the paper, so I'm beginning to understand how it all works. :-) ) Will it use the GPU once it actually starts generating coin?

[mewantsbitcoins]

1. The honest answer is I don't know. I just asked my friend who's running bitcoin on a mac - he said it's greyed out as well. So it may be that mac client doesn't have UPnP implemented.

3. Your client has an inbuilt miner that is only capable of using CPU. If you want to try your GPU, you'll have to download a specialized miner. You can find variety of them on the mining board. The one I know that works on OS X is Diablo miner. There's almost no configuration needed.

[coel]

Many thanks for your answers. As soon as I have coin to spend, some will go your direction. :-) (Faucet is down for fixing, so I can't even test, but that wouldn't be enough, anyway, I guess.)

Another question on 3): The client has just started using about all CPU that is there, so it seems to have started to try generating coin. The client says it has 127851 blocks right now, but I think I read somewhere else about 199000+ blocks? How can that be?

[mewantsbitcoins]

127851 sounds about right. You can visit few sites to check this and other stats
http://bitcoinwatch.com/
http://blockexplorer.com/

[coel]

Ah, ok so I'm up to date now. Got Diablo up and running, too, so let's go. :-)

[coel]

More questions:

6) What does the terminal output actually mean?

I get "x/y khash/sec". I think that y is the number of Khashes computed per second, but what is x?

7) I put my Mac to sleep for a few seconds to test if everything would resume if I simply kept the Bitcoin client and Diablo open. Before sleep, I had 117 connections. On wake, the connections slowly went down to 96, then started rising again, then plummeted to 40+. In Diablo output, I had 4000+ for x and 5000+ for y before sleep, after wake I now have often 0 for x, sometimes up to about 3000, and y is more and more decreasing, currently around 1900. What does that mean?

[mewantsbitcoins]

6. x is the speed of hashing at that moment. y is your average speed from the time you started mining
7. When you put your mac to sleep connections are severed and have to be reestablished. x=0 means that your miner is disconnected and stopped hashing. y is decreasing because it's an average value