Linux mining distro for the Raspberry PI - MinePeon

[Zelek Uther]

Hi Neil,

Firstly, thanks very much for the excellent MinePeon.  I have been mining using MinePeon since 2013-06-22 with ASICMINER Block Erupter USBs (first 1, then 2, now 9).

I recently upgraded to 0.2.2, and been running for a few days.  For the first time ever I had my miner go down overnight.  Previously it has been very stable, using 0.2.1 (and a couple of earlier versions) - I don't know if the version change is a factor or not.  I'm not sure what happened, but I lost over 5 hours of mining time last night.

I'm on Slush's pool:
Bitcoin block history
All times are in UTC.
#   Block found at   Duration   Total shares   Your shares   Your BTC reward   Block #   Block value   Validity
19249   2013-07-23 01:01:48   0:28:16   9155717   1172   0.00335869   248010   25.16305000    73 confirmations left
19248   2013-07-23 00:33:32   0:11:46   3758514   468   0.00286917   248007   25.00730000    70 confirmations left
19247   2013-07-23 00:21:46   0:26:08   8454348   1118   0.00313178   248003   25.26793713    66 confirmations left
19246   2013-07-22 23:55:38   0:54:42   17599345   2178   0.00291466   248000   25.19543899    63 confirmations left
19245   2013-07-22 23:00:56   0:47:03   15212170   1952   0.00318611   247994   25.27182977    57 confirmations left
19244   2013-07-22 22:13:53   0:46:30   15051706   1982   0.00341309   247990   25.32293647    53 confirmations left
19243   2013-07-22 21:27:23   2:32:24   49847203   4004   0.00198085   247986   25.16356901    49 confirmations left
19242   2013-07-22 18:54:59   0:08:35   2816986   none   none   247975   25.24792746    38 confirmations left
19241   2013-07-22 18:46:24   0:07:58   2610759   none   none   247973   25.14140962    36 confirmations left
19240   2013-07-22 18:38:26   1:25:40   27796387   none   none   247971   25.32890000    34 confirmations left
19239   2013-07-22 17:12:46   1:00:45   19546816   none   none   247964   25.23787218    27 confirmations left
19238   2013-07-22 16:12:01   0:13:13   4189488   none   none   247956   25.07400000    19 confirmations left
19237   2013-07-22 15:58:48   0:27:23   8737123   none   none   247952   25.32545000    15 confirmations left
19236   2013-07-22 15:31:25   0:12:53   4090095   none   none   247946   25.15490003    9 confirmations left
19235   2013-07-22 15:18:32   0:46:05   14708189   none   none   247942   25.35478611    5 confirmations left
19234   2013-07-22 14:32:27   0:35:39   11363125   none   none   247936   25.28740000    confirmed
19233   2013-07-22 13:56:48   1:48:30   34567509   none   none   247933   25.02450000    confirmed
19232   2013-07-22 12:08:18   0:24:58   7692948   726   0.00027871   247922   25.35264070    confirmed
19231   2013-07-22 11:43:20   0:35:27   11167611   1492   0.00361241   247920   25.46990972    confirmed

From above you can see that the miner is down from around 1400 UTC to when I discovered it at around 1930 UTC.  I live in New Zealand (fellow Kiwi!), so it was down from about 2am to 7:30am this morning.

I was in a rush to go to work, so all I had time for was to stop and start the cgminer service from the command line, and that did the trick.  I did notice that the MinePeon web page didn't work - I think that service went down too.  I'm at work now, I'll reboot the whole system when I get home so I get my graphs again.

I have the donate minutes turned on (incidentally, is that why cgminer restarts every day?  The cgminer uptime never seems to be longer than 23 hours or so).  I'm not sure whether this is a factor or not in the outage.  Does cgminer leave a log file somewhere that might show an error message?

Love your work!

Kind regards,
Zelek

[1714107052]

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[Min€r]

Ok so i've got my PI and set it up no problems,, she's not mining yet cus I bought a usb3 hub and it doesn`t work with PI lol.

I was looking at adding a screen

I'm waiting for my Pi, but I was looking at getting this screen for around $30 :

http://coldtearselectronics.wikispaces.com/USB+LCD+-+LCD+System+info

Then writing a python script that pulls the hash rate, accepts, rejects, etc from the cgminer api, then write it to the screen, kind of like this setup :

http://www.gregledet.net/?p=668

... ah ... every time I've seen someone say they want to add a direct hardware device for the screen I've thought USB ... there's got to be a simple USB solution.

OK, this I have to get

... OK ebay ... paid and awaiting delivery!

I did write the whole cgminer API so ...
Expect either a script or a cgminer change soon after it arrives on my doorstep

Edit: actually ... since it will work on ANY computer ... and I also did write the usbutils library in cgminer ... hmmmm ... I think this would be nice to have it hot-pluggable ... as a cgminer display

Edit2: I wonder if there is a common interface how these things work (i.e. others that may exist)

Kano,

Did you get your LCD display yet? I just got mine yesterday, and already hacked up a quick script to display data from the cgminer API.

I was wondering if you completed your script yet, or have added support in cgminer? I'm sure it has more functionality than my simple attempt. lol

BTW, I got the LCD with the v1.3 firmware.  Unfortunately that version does not seem to allow absolute positioning on the display. I guess the v1.4 firmware model is the one to get, if it can be found.

As far as there being a standard interface for these type devices, I haven't seen one. It would be nice...

Got too my ones - had no time to test with it till now. If anybody has a solution it would be awesome :-)

[Malakai]

I am helping someone out on the latest version on the status page it has these fields. I am curious what is the Error and Utility showing. When using a 10 port hub getting 731 errors on one device and 0 Under utility for all devices.

In fact all devices are showing a ton of errors from 2 to 1800 all 9 Asic USB's. Does anyone have any tips to get the Errors down and Accepted up. 3 Accepted 5400 Errors

[Polyatomic]

I am helping someone out on the latest version on the status page it has these fields. I am curious what is the Error and Utility showing. When using a 10 port hub getting 731 errors on one device and 0 Under utility for all devices.

In fact all devices are showing a ton of errors from 2 to 1800 all 9 Asic USB's. Does anyone have any tips to get the Errors down and Accepted up. 3 Accepted 5400 Errors

Sounds like your hub is underpowered. Are you mining BTC ?

Post some specs of the hub.

If you have a desktop PC try plugging an Erupter into one of the USB ports and see if they work that way.

[Malakai]

Thanks for the reply yes it's BTC and I was thinking the same about the HUB so hopefully I am going down the correct path. Is the Error column strictly Hardware Errors then?

[MineForeman.com]

Hi Neil,

Firstly, thanks very much for the excellent MinePeon.  I have been mining using MinePeon since 2013-06-22 with ASICMINER Block Erupter USBs (first 1, then 2, now 9).

I recently upgraded to 0.2.2, and been running for a few days.  For the first time ever I had my miner go down overnight. ....

I had that too last night!  My Peon's never go down... Never!  I am not sure what it is though, I have got verbose logging going on and I am watching it like a hawk.

I need to look at the cgminer diff's to be sure but I think something has happened recently (Kano will be able to fill us in if there is an issue, I am trying to collect data to see if I can confirm a problem).

I live in New Zealand (fellow Kiwi!), so it was down from about 2am to 7:30am this morning.

Earthquake at 2 am?

I was in a rush to go to work, so all I had time for was to stop and start the cgminer service from the command line, and that did the trick.  I did notice that the MinePeon web page didn't work - I think that service went down too.  I'm at work now, I'll reboot the whole system when I get home so I get my graphs again.

Let me know what you see, I had the odd occurrence that kept loosing devices untill there were none, looks very obvious on the graphs.

I have the donate minutes turned on (incidentally, is that why cgminer restarts every day?  The cgminer uptime never seems to be longer than 23 hours or so).  I'm not sure whether this is a factor or not in the outage.  Does cgminer leave a log file somewhere that might show an error message?

Yep, the new code totally kills off cgminer to reload the configs, that is why you never saw it go past 24 hours.  Very soon though I will be recording all relevant data in a persistent sqlite database so you will be able to compare data over long time periods.

The logging in the 'production' version is very basic and wont tell you much.  I had to turn it off because it just fulls up the SD card.  If you want to turn on verbose logging add --verbose --syslog to /usr/lib/systemd/system/cgminer.service and restart the service (and get ready to have a full SD card).

Neil

[Zelek Uther]

Thanks very much Neil!

Home now, and the Daily graph shows the outage started at 00:00 midnight.  (More accurate than the timings on Slush, since those relate to when the pool finds blocks.)

Z

[MineForeman.com]

Thanks for the reply yes it's BTC and I was thinking the same about the HUB so hopefully I am going down the correct path. Is the Error column strictly Hardware Errors then?

USB Hubs are usually the cause of issues, the Pi is quite sensitive to them and bitcoin mining often exacerbates any problems, it is quite intensive on the bus and timing is critical.

Often a good v1.1 or 2 hub with a grunty power supply is your best bet and USB3 is somewhat of a no go area.

Neil

[BR0KK]

Thanks for the reply yes it's BTC and I was thinking the same about the HUB so hopefully I am going down the correct path. Is the Error column strictly Hardware Errors then?

USB Hubs are usually the cause of issues, the Pi is quite sensitive to them and bitcoin mining often exacerbates any problems, it is quite intensive on the bus and timing is critical.

Often a good v1.1 or 2 hub with a grunty power supply is your best bet and USB3 is somewhat of a no go area.

Neil

Yes the pi hate's USB devices ....

If there is even a tiny amount of feedback power coming from hubs or the devices the pi behaves crazy ....


Until minepeon i couldn't even get my Ztex boards to work with the pi. It constantly froze and was unreliable as hell.

[XZed]

Yes the pi hate's USB devices ....

If there is even a tiny amount of feedback power coming from hubs or the devices the pi behaves crazy ....


Until minepeon i couldn't even get my Ztex boards to work with the pi. It constantly froze and was unreliable as hell.

Do you think BeagleBone behaves better relating to USB hubs ?

"The Anker Hub linked here DOES NOT WORK with the Pi or Beaglebone"

[Malakai]

My opinion it's not the Pi or the BB it's the Hub. Low quality hubs provide low quality and will not be suitable for every application. The statement above the Pi hates USB the device didn't work until Minepeon? It's still the same Pi different OS? Also backfeeding power from a USB Hub really shouldn't happen that's why it's a powered Hub it doesn't need power from the source nor does it need to feed power back to the source. These hubs are intended to be powered or non powered the issue is you won't connect many devices to a hub that is solely powered from the source and not the Outlet.

The Pi is designed for a 1A power supply = Model B consumes upto 700mA the 2 USB Ports provide 140mA each that's 980mA of the 1A . This design accommodated for Keyboard, Mouse or Wireless low power consumption devices. So cheap devices.

You can safely back feed power to the Pi from the USB and make it the only source of power but a HUB that provides 1A back through that connection would be stealing that power from the other devices. I run an Atrix Lapdock and the Pi get's it's power solely from the Lapdock and have no issues. (It is a quality product better be they wanted $500 new luckily the price dropped to around $40 for a while)

If an ASIC needs 500mA typical 4 port Hubs come with a 5v 2A supply 500x4 = 2A that's a risky setup as you may get spikes and down goes reliability. Or just because it says 2A doesn't mean it really outputs that much it could be +/- 5%

The Pi is tricky because devices are assumed to be plug and play and 100% compatible but every device has different components, different chips, etc. I would imagine the BB has just as many quirks with devices as the Pi unfortunately it really is trial and error.

I use Raspbmc on one Pi it has a 4 port good quality D-Link hub but it can only power 2 slim external drives and a Bluetooth dongle for my Keyboard. Before it runs out of power. My laptop can output 1A most only output 500mA I can run 3 Hard Drives because the extra Amp gets the power from 5v 2A to 5v 3A but that Amp comes from the power supply on the Laptop. The solution is to get a 5v 3A power supply for the HUB and then my problem on the Pi is resolved.

The question I have on the Miners are they say 500mA but do they spike past that ever? Even for less than a second.

[kano]

Thanks for the reply yes it's BTC and I was thinking the same about the HUB so hopefully I am going down the correct path. Is the Error column strictly Hardware Errors then?

USB Hubs are usually the cause of issues, the Pi is quite sensitive to them and bitcoin mining often exacerbates any problems, it is quite intensive on the bus and timing is critical.

Often a good v1.1 or 2 hub with a grunty power supply is your best bet and USB3 is somewhat of a no go area.

Neil

Yes the pi hate's USB devices ....

If there is even a tiny amount of feedback power coming from hubs or the devices the pi behaves crazy ....


Until minepeon i couldn't even get my Ztex boards to work with the pi. It constantly froze and was unreliable as hell.

More than likely raspbian's fault, arch (minepeon) seems to have solved some of the more esoteric usb problems
(like I can mine on my powered USB3 hub fine on arch)

[kano]

Hi Neil,

Firstly, thanks very much for the excellent MinePeon.  I have been mining using MinePeon since 2013-06-22 with ASICMINER Block Erupter USBs (first 1, then 2, now 9).

I recently upgraded to 0.2.2, and been running for a few days.  For the first time ever I had my miner go down overnight. ....

I had that too last night!  My Peon's never go down... Never!  I am not sure what it is though, I have got verbose logging going on and I am watching it like a hawk.

I need to look at the cgminer diff's to be sure but I think something has happened recently (Kano will be able to fill us in if there is an issue, I am trying to collect data to see if I can confirm a problem).
...

The only very recent change I've put in git (that's not in 3.3.1) that I can think of that might have any underlying side effect should be the set config change.
In the old code, on intialisation, it would force change the usb config every time to what it wanted.
Apparently that can cause a soft reset of the device that I think might cause problems on rare occasions also.
The new code matches as specified in comments in the libusb code ... it checks the config value first and only changes it if it is different.
This commit: 948f0057

[kano]

...
Kano,

Did you get your LCD display yet? I just got mine yesterday, and already hacked up a quick script to display data from the cgminer API.

I was wondering if you completed your script yet, or have added support in cgminer? I'm sure it has more functionality than my simple attempt. lol

BTW, I got the LCD with the v1.3 firmware.  Unfortunately that version does not seem to allow absolute positioning on the display. I guess the v1.4 firmware model is the one to get, if it can be found.

As far as there being a standard interface for these type devices, I haven't seen one. It would be nice...

Yes I got it.
I then decided to try using my miner.php as an include so it would be a small amount of php code based on what is already done
I then found that php doesn't support direct usb (there is a git addon/project that has it, but I want to avoid adding external code)
I don't like python, so I stopped there, to wait til I have more time.
For now, it sits next to me running clock.py showing me the time
I am still running around in circles looking at these silly USB1.1 mining devices in cgminer, so the direct code will have to wait a little longer.

[XZed]

My opinion it's not the Pi or the BB it's the Hub. Low quality hubs provide low quality and will not be suitable for every application. The statement above the Pi hates USB the device didn't work until Minepeon? It's still the same Pi different OS?

Thank you for sharing your thought.

By the way, to answer your question : the source is :

http://coinninja.com/

Thank you

[Malakai]

My opinion it's not the Pi or the BB it's the Hub. Low quality hubs provide low quality and will not be suitable for every application. The statement above the Pi hates USB the device didn't work until Minepeon? It's still the same Pi different OS?

Thank you for sharing your thought.

By the way, to answer your question : the source is :

http://coinninja.com/

Thank you

Thanks for the link looks good and eventually I will start playing with the BB. I just think the Pi gets a bad rap it has quirks and is slow but is perfect for Bitcoins. Lowered costs = better ROI @ an exchange of $65 for the BeagleBone and it still needs just as much hardware as the Pi - One other upside to the Pi vs any other platform is the force updating it keeping it current. Fixing the bugs. They posted the other day some of the issues with Raspbian USB are worked out and a push will get that code out. But ultimately for Mining Arch is the way to go. Low overhead = less power consumption not much but it helps, very fast boot time, and with MinePeon I am finding the support is unrivaled. It comes down to if it really isn't broke why fix it or reinvent it. And since it just sits there mining it doesn't have to be fancier or more powerful than the Pi.

[XZed]

Thanks for the link looks good and eventually I will start playing with the BB. I just think the Pi gets a bad rap it has quirks and is slow but is perfect for Bitcoins. Lowered costs = better ROI @ an exchange of $65 for the BeagleBone and it still needs just as much hardware as the Pi - One other upside to the Pi vs any other platform is the force updating it keeping it current. Fixing the bugs. They posted the other day some of the issues with Raspbian USB are worked out and a push will get that code out. But ultimately for Mining Arch is the way to go. Low overhead = less power consumption not much but it helps, very fast boot time, and with MinePeon I am finding the support is unrivaled. It comes down to if it really isn't broke why fix it or reinvent it. And since it just sits there mining it doesn't have to be fancier or more powerful than the Pi.

Thank you, will think about RPi / BB

[MineForeman.com]

The only very recent change I've put in git (that's not in 3.3.1) that I can think of that might have any underlying side effect should be the set config change.
In the old code, on intialisation, it would force change the usb config every time to what it wanted.
Apparently that can cause a soft reset of the device that I think might cause problems on rare occasions also.
The new code matches as specified in comments in the libusb code ... it checks the config value first and only changes it if it is different.
This commit: 948f0057

I have ruled out cgminer as the culprit overnight through tests, I am now thinking I have either a Hub or Block Eruptor going bad.  I am going through a slow methodical process of changing hubs and devices to see if I can catch the one that is causing the issues.

Once I find the culprit I will have an excellent testing tool!  If I ever want to test anything as far as stability goes I will just have to plug it in .

Neil

[Zelek Uther]

FYI my MinePeon miner died at 00:00 again last night.  I fixed it this morning by stopping and starting cgminer.

Possibly related: I started having USB hub issues.

I have three powered hubs:
Targus 7-Port USB Powered Hub (bought from Noel Leeming) - Output 5V, 3A, so can only connect 6 ASICMINER Block Erupters to it, which I was doing.
2x Dick Smith 7-Port USB Powered Hub - Output 5V, 2A, so can only connect 4 Erupters to a hub, I'm only connecting 3.

I wanted to move one of the Erupters plugged into the Targus hub to another slot on the same hub, and when I did that, the greens lights lit up on 3 Erupters.  Turns out four ports had "blown" - they now no longer work!  Is it dangerous to hot plug Erupters?  I'm so used to just plugging and unplugging USB devices, and I've never blown a USB port before.
Then I hooked up my second Dick Smith 7-Port hub, which up until now was brand-new and unused... and three of the ports on that don't work!  All the ports on my first Dick Smith 7-Port hub still work fine.

Can someone please recommend a high-quality powered USB hub for use with MinePeon / Raspberry Pi?  Something that I can either buy in New Zealand, or can ship to NZ?

[coblee]

Does anyone know how many fpga/asic miners can MinePeon (or Raspberry Pi) support before CPU becomes a bottleneck?