Raspberry Pi / cgminer for your BFL BitForce

[Bigal]

Here is what I found. With cgminer 2.10.4 the comm error shows up. With bfgminer 2.9.4 it works but I believe the system is restarting so it's causing a system crash. bfgminer 2.10.1 is misreporting the hash rate for the bfl singles (at random)

I've been running 2.10.0 on my pi since it was released (with MMQ), and it seems to work fine with BFL (though I only just now moved it from my development system to the pi).
I built 2.9.7, and will let that run for a bit to test. How long does it usually take to reboot your pi?
After that, I can test the latest 2.10.x, but I don't expect any change from 2.10.0...

luke-jr@raspberrypi /opt/vc/bin $ ./vcgencmd version
Nov 22 2012 18:09:58
Copyright (c) 2012 Broadcom
version 352766 (release)
luke-jr@raspberrypi /opt/vc/bin $ uname -a
Linux raspberrypi 3.2.27+ #285 PREEMPT Tue Nov 20 17:49:40 GMT 2012 armv6l GNU/Linux

2.9.7 takes about 2 hours to cause a system reboot. Digging though /var/log/messages shows this:

Dec 30 06:46:22 raspberrypi kernel: [18946.081057] smsc95xx 1-1.1:1.0: eth0: Error reading MII_DATA
Dec 30 06:46:22 raspberrypi kernel: [20868.008194] smsc95xx 1-1.1:1.0: eth0: Failed to read register index 0x00000$
Dec 30 07:36:23 raspberrypi kernel: [20868.008221] smsc95xx 1-1.1:1.0: eth0: Error reading MII_DATA
Dec 30 07:36:23 raspberrypi kernel: [23869.190094] smsc95xx 1-1.1:1.0: eth0: Failed to read register index 0x00000$
Dec 30 07:36:23 raspberrypi kernel: [23869.190144] smsc95xx 1-1.1:1.0: eth0: Error reading MII_ACCESS
Dec 30 09:53:58 raspberrypi kernel: [23869.190163] smsc95xx 1-1.1:1.0: eth0: Timed out reading MII reg 01
Dec 30 09:53:58 raspberrypi kernel: [32124.183193] smsc95xx 1-1.1:1.0: eth0: Failed to read register index 0x00000$
Dec 30 11:30:46 raspberrypi kernel: [32124.183223] smsc95xx 1-1.1:1.0: eth0: Error reading MII_DATA
Dec 30 11:30:46 raspberrypi kernel: [37932.079567] smsc95xx 1-1.1:1.0: eth0: Failed to read register index 0x00000$
Dec 30 12:21:33 raspberrypi kernel: [37932.079597] smsc95xx 1-1.1:1.0: eth0: Error reading MII_DATA
Dec 30 12:21:33 raspberrypi kernel: [40979.609688] smsc95xx 1-1.1:1.0: eth0: Failed to write register index 0x0000$
Dec 30 14:23:10 raspberrypi shutdown[10330]: shutting down for system reboot
Dec 30 14:23:20 raspberrypi kernel: [40979.609716] smsc95xx 1-1.1:1.0: eth0: Error writing MII_ADDR

2.10.2 is now what I'm running (I kept on switching between the two to see which one would result in the most stable results...so far cgminer bfgminer (both version) has caused issues.

The thread starter also reported having COM errors with his BFL units with cgminer (latest build).

I was poking around today and found this on http://elinux.org/R-Pi_Troubleshooting maybe this could help?

Crashes occur with high network load

The USB driver allocates memory from the kernel, and when traffic is very high (e.g. when using torrents/newsgroup downloads) this memory can be exhausted causing crashes/hangs. You should have a line like:

Code:

vm.min_free_kbytes = 8192

in /etc/sysctl.conf. Try increasing that number to 16384 (or higher). If that doesn't work, try adding to /boot/cmdline.txt

Code:

smsc95xx.turbo_mode=N

which will reduce network throughput, but has improved stability issues for some.

[allinvain]

Well time to stop using it at least temporarily until I figure out the cause. It could be the power adapter or the usb hub. Never had any problems with the usb hub though. I still suspect the actual Pi itself. I'm going to see if I can RMA it.

The problem of the rasberry Pi restarting randomly on its own is well known.
I experience it myself from time to time

This little board will provide some alternative to the rasberry
http://cubieboard.org/
Might be worth to have a look for you too.

Neat! If it is more stable than the Pi then I'm all for it.

Thanks for letting me know about it.

I guess it's not available for purchase yet, but at $46 it could be worth the wait.

[allinvain]

Here is what I found. With cgminer 2.10.4 the comm error shows up. With bfgminer 2.9.4 it works but I believe the system is restarting so it's causing a system crash. bfgminer 2.10.1 is misreporting the hash rate for the bfl singles (at random)

I've been running 2.10.0 on my pi since it was released (with MMQ), and it seems to work fine with BFL (though I only just now moved it from my development system to the pi).
I built 2.9.7, and will let that run for a bit to test. How long does it usually take to reboot your pi?
After that, I can test the latest 2.10.x, but I don't expect any change from 2.10.0...

luke-jr@raspberrypi /opt/vc/bin $ ./vcgencmd version
Nov 22 2012 18:09:58
Copyright (c) 2012 Broadcom
version 352766 (release)
luke-jr@raspberrypi /opt/vc/bin $ uname -a
Linux raspberrypi 3.2.27+ #285 PREEMPT Tue Nov 20 17:49:40 GMT 2012 armv6l GNU/Linux

2.9.7 takes about 2 hours to cause a system reboot. Digging though /var/log/messages shows this:

Dec 30 06:46:22 raspberrypi kernel: [18946.081057] smsc95xx 1-1.1:1.0: eth0: Error reading MII_DATA
Dec 30 06:46:22 raspberrypi kernel: [20868.008194] smsc95xx 1-1.1:1.0: eth0: Failed to read register index 0x00000$
Dec 30 07:36:23 raspberrypi kernel: [20868.008221] smsc95xx 1-1.1:1.0: eth0: Error reading MII_DATA
Dec 30 07:36:23 raspberrypi kernel: [23869.190094] smsc95xx 1-1.1:1.0: eth0: Failed to read register index 0x00000$
Dec 30 07:36:23 raspberrypi kernel: [23869.190144] smsc95xx 1-1.1:1.0: eth0: Error reading MII_ACCESS
Dec 30 09:53:58 raspberrypi kernel: [23869.190163] smsc95xx 1-1.1:1.0: eth0: Timed out reading MII reg 01
Dec 30 09:53:58 raspberrypi kernel: [32124.183193] smsc95xx 1-1.1:1.0: eth0: Failed to read register index 0x00000$
Dec 30 11:30:46 raspberrypi kernel: [32124.183223] smsc95xx 1-1.1:1.0: eth0: Error reading MII_DATA
Dec 30 11:30:46 raspberrypi kernel: [37932.079567] smsc95xx 1-1.1:1.0: eth0: Failed to read register index 0x00000$
Dec 30 12:21:33 raspberrypi kernel: [37932.079597] smsc95xx 1-1.1:1.0: eth0: Error reading MII_DATA
Dec 30 12:21:33 raspberrypi kernel: [40979.609688] smsc95xx 1-1.1:1.0: eth0: Failed to write register index 0x0000$
Dec 30 14:23:10 raspberrypi shutdown[10330]: shutting down for system reboot
Dec 30 14:23:20 raspberrypi kernel: [40979.609716] smsc95xx 1-1.1:1.0: eth0: Error writing MII_ADDR

2.10.2 is now what I'm running (I kept on switching between the two to see which one would result in the most stable results...so far cgminer bfgminer (both version) has caused issues.

The thread starter also reported having COM errors with his BFL units with cgminer (latest build).

I was poking around today and found this on http://elinux.org/R-Pi_Troubleshooting maybe this could help?

Crashes occur with high network load

The USB driver allocates memory from the kernel, and when traffic is very high (e.g. when using torrents/newsgroup downloads) this memory can be exhausted causing crashes/hangs. You should have a line like:

Code:

vm.min_free_kbytes = 8192

in /etc/sysctl.conf. Try increasing that number to 16384 (or higher). If that doesn't work, try adding to /boot/cmdline.txt

Code:

smsc95xx.turbo_mode=N

which will reduce network throughput, but has improved stability issues for some.

I'm going to give that a try. Have you had to do this too? (ie are you having stability issues?)

The main question here is can I get the Pi to mine reliably without ANY reboots or hangs?

[HolyScott]

I wanted to chime in on this as I appreciate the project. I am running a modified version of the 12/8 distro, having switched everything from cgminer to bfgminer 2.10.2. I had a 256mb pi that I switched to a 512mb thinking all usb problems would be fixed. On both versions same day comm error problems solved with doing a rpi-update. I am stock on the november firmware is I also have the bug that rpi-update will not upgrade more then once. Been running 2 days without a reboot, but I except a reboot once every 3-4 days is going to have the be the accepted norm on a RPi. I have not had watchdog reboot the system yet automatically, but will watch for it.

[Bigal]

I'm going to give that a try. Have you had to do this too? (ie are you having stability issues?)
The main question here is can I get the Pi to mine reliably without ANY reboots or hangs?

I have no idea if it will help, I have nothing to test it with as of yet, I have a couple of basics ordered but until they get here I'm just toying around with it.

I wanted to chime in on this as I appreciate the project. I am running a modified version of the 12/8 distro, having switched everything from cgminer to bfgminer 2.10.2. I had a 256mb pi that I switched to a 512mb thinking all usb problems would be fixed. On both versions same day comm error problems solved with doing a rpi-update. I am stock on the november firmware is I also have the bug that rpi-update will not upgrade more then once. Been running 2 days without a reboot, but I except a reboot once every 3-4 days is going to have the be the accepted norm on a RPi. I have not had watchdog reboot the system yet automatically, but will watch for it.

I found this on their forums

Code:

sudo rm -rf /root/.rpi-firmware

then running rpi-update should get the latest without the hang

[hardcore-fs]

Well time to stop using it at least temporarily until I figure out the cause. It could be the power adapter or the usb hub. Never had any problems with the usb hub though. I still suspect the actual Pi itself. I'm going to see if I can RMA it.

The problem of the rasberry Pi restarting randomly on its own is well known.
I experience it myself from time to time

This little board will provide some alternative to the rasberry
http://cubieboard.org/
Might be worth to have a look for you too.

Neat! If it is more stable than the Pi then I'm all for it.

Thanks for letting me know about it.

I guess it's not available for purchase yet, but at $46 it could be worth the wait.

1. It is not available.....
2. It is not tested.......
3. There is no software or kernel available for it yet....
4. Its been on going for over 6 months they have had $96k in funding.... and still no product?
Seriously I Know Chinese companies that could bring such a product to market in under 2 months.

[allinvain]

I'm going to give that a try. Have you had to do this too? (ie are you having stability issues?)
The main question here is can I get the Pi to mine reliably without ANY reboots or hangs?

I have no idea if it will help, I have nothing to test it with as of yet, I have a couple of basics ordered but until they get here I'm just toying around with it.

I wanted to chime in on this as I appreciate the project. I am running a modified version of the 12/8 distro, having switched everything from cgminer to bfgminer 2.10.2. I had a 256mb pi that I switched to a 512mb thinking all usb problems would be fixed. On both versions same day comm error problems solved with doing a rpi-update. I am stock on the november firmware is I also have the bug that rpi-update will not upgrade more then once. Been running 2 days without a reboot, but I except a reboot once every 3-4 days is going to have the be the accepted norm on a RPi. I have not had watchdog reboot the system yet automatically, but will watch for it.

I found this on their forums

Code:

sudo rm -rf /root/.rpi-firmware

then running rpi-update should get the latest without the hang

Well, I got it run once and it now using the latest firmware, but that did not help at all with the stability issues. So maybe this weekend I will play around with it and try your suggestion.

[allinvain]

Well time to stop using it at least temporarily until I figure out the cause. It could be the power adapter or the usb hub. Never had any problems with the usb hub though. I still suspect the actual Pi itself. I'm going to see if I can RMA it.

The problem of the rasberry Pi restarting randomly on its own is well known.
I experience it myself from time to time

This little board will provide some alternative to the rasberry
http://cubieboard.org/
Might be worth to have a look for you too.

Neat! If it is more stable than the Pi then I'm all for it.

Thanks for letting me know about it.

I guess it's not available for purchase yet, but at $46 it could be worth the wait.

1. It is not available.....
2. It is not tested.......
3. There is no software or kernel available for it yet....
4. Its been on going for over 6 months they have had $96k in funding.... and still no product?
Seriously I Know Chinese companies that could bring such a product to market in under 2 months.

Hmm, yeah quite disappointing .

I think in the end the best solution would be a mini-ITX case with an Intel ATOM CPU and some el'cheapo case. Time to hunt my local classifieds for one. Oh, btw if any of you have this for sale and are willing to ship it to me (Ontario Canada) please let me know.

[allinvain]

I was poking around today and found this on http://elinux.org/R-Pi_Troubleshooting maybe this could help?

Crashes occur with high network load

The USB driver allocates memory from the kernel, and when traffic is very high (e.g. when using torrents/newsgroup downloads) this memory can be exhausted causing crashes/hangs. You should have a line like:

Code:

vm.min_free_kbytes = 8192

in /etc/sysctl.conf. Try increasing that number to 16384 (or higher). If that doesn't work, try adding to /boot/cmdline.txt

Code:

smsc95xx.turbo_mode=N

which will reduce network throughput, but has improved stability issues for some.

Ok, so I've made both of those changes 2 min ago and rebooted. Let's see how long it will remain stable for. I will report my results here.

Edit: I should also mention that I now have the Pi sitting in front of a fan that blows across my fpga miners as well. I don't know if this will help in any way but I hear that the Pi can run pretty hot (50 C and up?) so keeping it cooler should be at least good for it. Hell who knows it might even make it more stable. If that is the case I think getting one of those heatsink kits for it would be a good idea.

[allinvain]

Well, after about an hour or so I started getting "comms error" from one of my BFL Singles. So fail once again.
I ran rpi-update once again (after removing the .rpi-firmware folder). Let's see if that helps.

I should mention that rpi-update DID work and that I noticed a newer firmware revision # and uname -a shows a newer date  (Tue Jan 1). Cross my fingers and hope it will help in some way.

[allinvain]

I managed to find out what USB Hub I'm using (it's not branded with anything so it's one of those generic types).

lsusb shows the following:

Bus 001 Device 004: ID 1a40:0201 Terminus Technology Inc. FE 2.1 7-port Hub
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 1a40:0101 Terminus Technology Inc. 4-Port HUB

Has anyone else had success using the Pi reliably with this usb hub?

The reason I'm asking is that perhaps this usb hub is problematic or backfeeding power to the Pi therefore causing instability and possible long term damage to the Pi.

I checked out the Raspberry Pi Verified Peripherals page but the hub is not mentioned there.

http://elinux.org/RPi_VerifiedPeripherals#Working_USB_Hubs

[allinvain]

I wanted to chime in on this as I appreciate the project. I am running a modified version of the 12/8 distro, having switched everything from cgminer to bfgminer 2.10.2. I had a 256mb pi that I switched to a 512mb thinking all usb problems would be fixed. On both versions same day comm error problems solved with doing a rpi-update. I am stock on the november firmware is I also have the bug that rpi-update will not upgrade more then once. Been running 2 days without a reboot, but I except a reboot once every 3-4 days is going to have the be the accepted norm on a RPi. I have not had watchdog reboot the system yet automatically, but will watch for it.

Can you post what firmware version you're running.

[HolyScott]

Linux RPiCoin 3.6.11+ #348 PREEMPT Tue Jan 1 16:33:22 GMT 2013 armv6l GNU/Linux

Jan  2 2013 23:40:34
Copyright (c) 2012 Broadcom
version 360331 (release)


Currently running RPiCoin which I have renamed this software in my mind, with 4x BFL singles. I built BFGMiner to only be able to run Bitforce and disabled everything else. I do almost daily sudo apt-get update / upgrade / dist-upgrade and clean. Was able to fix rpi-update after deleting the config file mentioned. I am using a good quality power supply being an official iphone white charger. My main difference may be I did alot of research and bought a good / expensive powered usb hub, the 12 port satechi which is $30ish on amazon, which is know not to have any power feed back problems. My plan is to upgrade to 6x Single SC on 1 RPi with the same hub. Also, how many singles are people trying to run off a RPi? I never had problems with 1-2 singles, when I got my 3rd and 4th units in the mail was when I started to see Comm errors for the first time. I would say rpi-update is the best way to solve comm errors. Hope this helps.

[allinvain]

Linux RPiCoin 3.6.11+ #348 PREEMPT Tue Jan 1 16:33:22 GMT 2013 armv6l GNU/Linux

Jan  2 2013 23:40:34
Copyright (c) 2012 Broadcom
version 360331 (release)


Currently running RPiCoin which I have renamed this software in my mind, with 4x BFL singles. I built BFGMiner to only be able to run Bitforce and disabled everything else. I do almost daily sudo apt-get update / upgrade / dist-upgrade and clean. Was able to fix rpi-update after deleting the config file mentioned. I am using a good quality power supply being an official iphone white charger. My main difference may be I did alot of research and bought a good / expensive powered usb hub, the 12 port satechi which is $30ish on amazon, which is know not to have any power feed back problems. My plan is to upgrade to 6x Single SC on 1 RPi with the same hub. Also, how many singles are people trying to run off a RPi? I never had problems with 1-2 singles, when I got my 3rd and 4th units in the mail was when I started to see Comm errors for the first time. I would say rpi-update is the best way to solve comm errors. Hope this helps.

Scott

Hmm, well, I'm running the same firmware version as you now (latest as of today) and I still get the comm errors. So now I think the next item down the troubleshooting list is to try a new USB hub. I'll drop by my local BestBuy and see if I can get one of those Belkin hubs from the Raspberry Pi official hardware supported list.

Thanks for the info Scott!

[hardcore-fs]

Well time to stop using it at least temporarily until I figure out the cause. It could be the power adapter or the usb hub. Never had any problems with the usb hub though. I still suspect the actual Pi itself. I'm going to see if I can RMA it.

The problem of the rasberry Pi restarting randomly on its own is well known.
I experience it myself from time to time

This little board will provide some alternative to the rasberry
http://cubieboard.org/
Might be worth to have a look for you too.

Neat! If it is more stable than the Pi then I'm all for it.

Thanks for letting me know about it.



I guess it's not available for purchase yet, but at $46 it could be worth the wait.

1. It is not available.....
2. It is not tested.......
3. There is no software or kernel available for it yet....
4. Its been on going for over 6 months they have had $96k in funding.... and still no product?
Seriously I Know Chinese companies that could bring such a product to market in under 2 months.

Hmm, yeah quite disappointing .

I think in the end the best solution would be a mini-ITX case with an Intel ATOM CPU and some el'cheapo case. Time to hunt my local classifieds for one. Oh, btw if any of you have this for sale and are willing to ship it to me (Ontario Canada) please let me know.

Ahhh, it seems they did not update the site.....

http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/cubieboard-1GB-2012-9-9-revision/511685_721644583.html

But then I took a look at the schematics......

They are using a shitty little realtek chip RTL8201(I really hate Realtek shit... just F*** off)
1. NO hardware offload
2. NO internal ram.. the CPU has to deal with each & every byte from the network
3. ONLY ONE ethernet connection port allowed!!! (stratum only & NO external SSL whilst mining!!)

The only way I would guess it to disable the ethernet then use an Arduino  W5100 network board, at least it has upto 4 connections at a time.
The only other option is to go back to the korean PCB
http://www.hardkernel.com/renewal_2011/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G135341359084

Because at least it is using an SMC chip with 13kb ram & 64 ethernet ports, but the shipping is like $30usd!! Almost 50% of the board cost.

[kano]

I'd like to get an rpi
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=138921.0

[allinvain]

After a recent firmware update and cgminer 3.1.1 my pi has been rock solid! Lovin it.