python OpenCL bitcoin miner

[[Tycho]]

EDIT: I tried using Deepbit instead of slush's pool, and all of the invalid/stale results are gone. Is this something to do with using slush's pool, or does the deepbit server work differently? They say that "no block confirmation is needed", but does that mean that I'm still submitting invalid blocks, and that they aren't checking them?

You aren't submitting blocks to pool, you are submitting shares (hashes for difficulty 1). Block confirmation is not related to shares.

BTW, what operating system are you using ? If it's Windows, then you need older version of python miner to work with 5970s.

[Cerebrum]

EDIT: I tried using Deepbit instead of slush's pool, and all of the invalid/stale results are gone. Is this something to do with using slush's pool, or does the deepbit server work differently? They say that "no block confirmation is needed", but does that mean that I'm still submitting invalid blocks, and that they aren't checking them?

You aren't submitting blocks to pool, you are submitting shares (hashes for difficulty 1). Block confirmation is not related to shares.

BTW, what operating system are you using ? If it's Windows, then you need older version of python miner to work with 5970s.

I'm using Linux. And there seems to be no problem now that slush's pool is back up and operating correctly, I'm still getting invalid/stale results but now only about 1 in 10 instead of 9 in 10.

[slush]

I'm still getting invalid/stale results but now only about 1 in 10 instead of 9 in 10.

It's still quite high. With the default miner ask rate (5 seconds), the normal ratio of stale shares is around ~1-3%.

I'm watching pool console right now and there are no problems, so the higher-than-expected stale rate should be something on your side.

[molecular]

I've been looking at code and now I'm confused, maybe someone can help me out:

At the end of BitcoinMiner.cl (the kernel) there's a condition for outputting a solution candidate:

if (belowOrEquals(H, targetH, G, targetG))

Now 2 things strike me as odd:

1.) targetH is passed as 0xffff0000 (BitcoinMiner.py around line 293). why not 0? doesn't H have to be 0 even for a difficulty 1 block?

2.) (parts) of the calculation of G is commented out in the kernel code (likely to save some cycles, assuming that G is not going to be needed)...

//W13 = W13 + (rotr(W14, 7) ^ rotr(W14, 18) ^ (W14 >> 3U)) + W6 + (rotr(W11, 17) ^ rotr(W11, 19) ^ (W11 >> 10U));
//C = C + (rotr(H, 6) ^ rotr(H, 11) ^ rotr(H, 25)) + (B ^ (H & (A ^ B))) + K[61] + W13; G = G + C;

//G+=0x1f83d9abU;

...but G is used in the solution condition. So since G is some intermediary value of sha256 and targetG is 0, why does this even work?

I'm clearly missing or misunderstanding something and I would be happy if someone took the time to explain what's going on.

[MessyCoin]

Hi, I've been solo-mining for about a week with an ATI 5770 getting about 150Mhash/s using poclbm. This morning when I woke up I saw "05/03/2011 05:01:13, 0000f4d2, accepted" had appeared in the console window.. It's now going on 8 hours since then with nothing showing in the bitcoin application and I am wondering if I should be expecting 50btc or otherwise would appreciate any advice to understand what the message means. Thanks a lot

[marcus_of_augustus]

The "Invalid or Stale" rejection message should be split out into two error messages if possible,

That way miner side can trouble shoot when receiving a lot of these errors. If it is string of stale then it maybe a comms. problem on miner side (or pool connection possibly down).

Alternately, if it is a string of Invalid blocks then it maybe a computation problem on miner side.

A regular trickle of Stale messages indicates just the bad luck of timing and is situation normal (FUBAR).

Either way splitting the error message would speed troubleshooting and save confusing/conflating the two issues.

[m0mchil]

Now 2 things strike me as odd:

1.) targetH is passed as 0xffff0000 (BitcoinMiner.py around line 293). why not 0? doesn't H have to be 0 even for a difficulty 1 block?

2.) (parts) of the calculation of G is commented out in the kernel code (likely to save some cycles, assuming that G is not going to be needed)...

...but G is used in the solution condition. So since G is some intermediary value of sha256 and targetG is 0, why does this even work?

1.) Excuse me for this mildly obfuscated code. target[0] and [1] are actually A and B of original target - I'm using them just to pass a made up 32 bit target. If you look at kernel parameters you'll see that target[0] (0xFFFF0000) is passed as G.

2.) G is used in belowOrEquals because I didn't managed to understand why this leads to better/faster assembler I left it there wondering when someone will ask this question.

[Raulo]

Hi, I've been solo-mining for about a week with an ATI 5770 getting about 150Mhash/s using poclbm. This morning when I woke up I saw "05/03/2011 05:01:13, 0000f4d2, accepted" had appeared in the console window.. It's now going on 8 hours since then with nothing showing in the bitcoin application and I am wondering if I should be expecting 50btc or otherwise would appreciate any advice to understand what the message means. Thanks a lot

The block has been accepted and everything is OK:
http://blockexplorer.com/block/0000000000f4d21aec6a2097008556d0a8341333355ccdce76a0e5a2df083d0e

It takes 120 confirmations for the block to appear in the balance. It will happen is 23 blocks or about 3 hours from now.

[travex]

@momchild or anybody

Someone can tell me which command to lower the GPU usage for this miner ? Since my GPU is always load at 99% (which is a good thing) however every time I want to play a movie or youtube(flash player) , my computer will hang up ! So I guess maybe lower the GPU usage will help ? I'm using ATI HD6970 with newest driver.

Thanks!

[Quantumboredom]

The -f parameter should fix that travex. I use -f 120 and don't notice any lag. At -f 60 theres slight lag. On my box the performance difference is less than 10% between -f 120 and -f 15.

[travex]

Thanks mate, I've fixed the lag with the f parameter, however my computer is still locked up when I play any video file ( which only use about 1-10% GPU usage) or youtube ! I'm using SDK2.2 too

[qed]

Thanks mate, I've fixed the lag with the f parameter, however my computer is still locked up when I play any video file ( which only use about 1-10% GPU usage) or youtube ! I'm using SDK2.2 too

Same problem here, but it happens with any opencl application in background.

[travex]

Thanks mate, I've fixed the lag with the f parameter, however my computer is still locked up when I play any video file ( which only use about 1-10% GPU usage) or youtube ! I'm using SDK2.2 too

Same problem here, but it happens with any opencl application in background.

Yeah I think it has something to do with OpenCL applications, but youtube(adobe flash) + video player codec have nothing to do with Opengl then ? Have you tried other miner mate ?


Ps:Just tried diablo miner, same result @.@, computer hanged up !

[Grinder]

Yeah I think it has something to do with OpenCL applications, but youtube(adobe flash) + video player codec have nothing to do with Opengl then ? Have you tried other miner mate ?

Check if it's possible to disable hardware acceleration in the players you use.

[m0mchil]

The "Invalid or Stale" rejection message should be split out into two error messages if possible,

That way miner side can trouble shoot when receiving a lot of these errors. If it is string of stale then it maybe a comms. problem on miner side (or pool connection possibly down).

Computation is checked on CPU and you will see a 'verification failed' message. 'Invalid or stale' is received whenever the server rejected your result. It now is almost 100% 'stale' than 'invalid', but I didn't change the message because it would have caused more questions.

...every time I want to play a movie or youtube(flash player), my computer will hang up!

This is problem with flash itself, if not hanging it at least 'reserves' roughly half of GPU for itself.

[travex]

The "Invalid or Stale" rejection message should be split out into two error messages if possible,

That way miner side can trouble shoot when receiving a lot of these errors. If it is string of stale then it maybe a comms. problem on miner side (or pool connection possibly down).

Computation is checked on CPU and you will see a 'verification failed' message. 'Invalid or stale' is received whenever the server rejected your result. It now is almost 100% 'stale' than 'invalid', but I didn't change the message because it would have caused more questions.

...every time I want to play a movie or youtube(flash player), my computer will hang up!

This is problem with flash itself, if not hanging it at least 'reserves' roughly half of GPU for itself.

Momchild can you explain more clearly , and its not only about the flash, my video codecs are messed up too I think(mkv,divx,xvid files)

@Grinder: I'm using Jet audio and I think its not hardware accelerated !

[Grinder]

@Grinder: I'm using Jet audio and I think its not hardware accelerated !

VLC seems to work with the video files I've tried. I've disabled all features using hardware because I have experienced freezes before.

[molecular]

First, thanks for answering.

Unfortunately, I'm even more confused now ;(

Now 2 things strike me as odd:

1.) targetH is passed as 0xffff0000 (BitcoinMiner.py around line 293). why not 0? doesn't H have to be 0 even for a difficulty 1 block?

2.) (parts) of the calculation of G is commented out in the kernel code (likely to save some cycles, assuming that G is not going to be needed)...

...but G is used in the solution condition. So since G is some intermediary value of sha256 and targetG is 0, why does this even work?

1.) Excuse me for this mildly obfuscated code. target[0] and [1] are actually A and B of original target - I'm using them just to pass a made up 32 bit target.

Why are you passing a made up 32 bit target (0x00000000ffff0000)?

If you look at kernel parameters you'll see that target[0] (0xFFFF0000) is passed as G.

It's passed as Parameter number 16, which is in BitcoinMiner.cl, "targetG", no?
Or what do you mean by "passed as G"?

2.) G is used in belowOrEquals because I didn't managed to understand why this leads to better/faster assembler I left it there wondering when someone will ask this question.

So you're saying that "targetG" is in fact the 2nd-last value of the real target or is it 0xffff0000 or what is it and why does it work at all comparing that to some G that is not even the 2nd-last value of the hash?

[travex]

@Grinder: I'm using Jet audio and I think its not hardware accelerated !

VLC seems to work with the video files I've tried. I've disabled all features using hardware because I have experienced freezes before.

Yeah thanks mate, VLC actually works , but still the youtube(adobe flash) does not work @.@m quite annoying

[Grinder]

Yeah thanks mate, VLC actually works , but still the youtube(adobe flash) does not work @.@m quite annoying

Youtube works for me, but I haven't done anything in particular to make it work. I'm using Opera 11 and 64 bit W7. It works both with and without HW acceleration, but it seems a bit less jumpy without.