BTCguild - why am i getting loads of work queue empty errors

[The Koolio]

running on phoenix with phatek flag, agg=13, w=128

I was getting say 1 in every 20 lines being a work queue empty error, miner idle. Now im getting 1 for every 5 lines, even more, whats creating this?

[1713581973]

1713581973

[eleuthria]

This is normally an error from people who are mining from countries with poor connections to a US based server.  The lag between you and the server means sometimes if you finish two work units in quick succession, you have not yet received new work from the server (miners keep 1 unit in queue behind the one they're currently working on).

Try running phoenix with -q 3 or -q 4, which will increase the amount of work the client tries to keep stored locally.  This has solved the issue for some of the people connecting from countries in Africa, or from China, or people that connect by wifi, 3g/4g, or satellite internet.

[fpgaminer]

I had the same problem with BTCGuild, even though I live in California (where their servers are). Very odd. I haven't had any problems with Deepbit or BTC mine.

[The Koolio]

This is normally an error from people who are mining from countries with poor connections to a US based server.  The lag between you and the server means sometimes if you finish two work units in quick succession, you have not yet received new work from the server (miners keep 1 unit in queue behind the one they're currently working on).

Try running phoenix with -q 3 or -q 4, which will increase the amount of work the client tries to keep stored locally.  This has solved the issue for some of the people connecting from countries in Africa, or from China, or people that connect by wifi, 3g/4g, or satellite internet.

Many thanks eleuthria, again you've provided a brilliant answer, that trick worked a treat. Am I right in thinking the BTCguild is yours? If so congratulations on a  very impressive pool! Was wondering if you could put up a small one box calculator so we can work out the 24hr payout at certain average speeds, like deepbits pages have. For instance, i input 400 Mhash and get a figure of 1.1 BTC per 24 hours.

[eleuthria]

I had the same problem with BTCGuild, even though I live in California (where their servers are). Very odd. I haven't had any problems with Deepbit or BTC mine.

When were you having the problem?  The server moved to a dedicated server 4 days ago, which has virtually eliminated the issues the old box was having.

This is normally an error from people who are mining from countries with poor connections to a US based server.  The lag between you and the server means sometimes if you finish two work units in quick succession, you have not yet received new work from the server (miners keep 1 unit in queue behind the one they're currently working on).

Try running phoenix with -q 3 or -q 4, which will increase the amount of work the client tries to keep stored locally.  This has solved the issue for some of the people connecting from countries in Africa, or from China, or people that connect by wifi, 3g/4g, or satellite internet.

Many thanks eleuthria, again you've provided a brilliant answer, that trick worked a treat. Am I right in thinking the BTCguild is yours? If so congratulations on a  very impressive pool! Was wondering if you could put up a small one box calculator so we can work out the 24hr payout at certain average speeds, like deepbits pages have. For instance, i input 400 Mhash and get a figure of 1.1 BTC per 24 hours.

This weekend I'll be adding a 24-hour statistic to the pool for keeping track of that, and an added perk for 2% donators where you'll receive an income statement-like report in your email each day (or week) detailing your earnings, withdrawals, and worker stats for the previous 24 hours worth of blocks.

[The Koolio]

brilliant! keep up the good work!

[fpgaminer]

When were you having the problem?  The server moved to a dedicated server 4 days ago, which has virtually eliminated the issues the old box was having.

I tried out your pool two weeks ago. It sure does have a nice website (except that darn smiley face! ), but yeah I ran into loads of connection problems leading to empty work queues. Thanks for letting me know that you moved servers. Perhaps I will try it again soon.

[The Koolio]

eleuthria have you considered adding a JavaScript miner to your site? of course this would have to be optional for the user to use as they might get annoyed if its secretly running. Reason I ask is it would allow people to carry on mining when away from their main setups, or even use it in the office as I would plan on doing. We have 20 + pc's at our workplace, cpu mining would be slow, but all these together for 12 hours+ over night would equate to something....

[eleuthria]

eleuthria have you considered adding a JavaScript miner to your site? of course this would have to be optional for the user to use as they might get annoyed if its secretly running. Reason I ask is it would allow people to carry on mining when away from their main setups, or even use it in the office as I would plan on doing. We have 20 + pc's at our workplace, cpu mining would be slow, but all these together for 12 hours+ over night would equate to something....

I had not considered it, so I'll look into it down the road.  For additional questions/comments/suggestions in the main BTC Guild thread, to keep the bitcoin.org forum less cluttered .

[ensign_lee]

When were you having the problem?  The server moved to a dedicated server 4 days ago, which has virtually eliminated the issues the old box was having.

I tried out your pool two weeks ago. It sure does have a nice website (except that darn smiley face! ), but yeah I ran into loads of connection problems leading to empty work queues. Thanks for letting me know that you moved servers. Perhaps I will try it again soon.

You can get rid of the smiley face (I assume you mean the crying face) by not being a deadbeat and by donating to the pool...?

[anodyne]

I had timeouts and idle miner as well, so I switched back over to slush to see if it would make a difference but it's the same thing there, even though the latency is ~40ms compared to ~180ms for BTCGuild.

Can't see any routing issues with my ISP so I'm trying deepbit now, and so far it looks good even though that's a transatlantic connection as well.

So, any ideas to see if there could be anything else on my end that could affect the connection to two out of three pools? Mining with poclbm, btw.