A guide for mining efficiently on P2Pool, includes FUD repellent and FAQ

[gyverlb]

Just updated the guide as there was a second detailed report in the main P2Pool thread here. Please include cgminer's API output when reporting results with BFL Asics, it might help pinpoint which firmwares and/or configurations work best with P2Pool.

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[gyverlb]

Just updated the guide to account for the new BTC 30 second interval, the current hashrate and the upcoming Avalon fix(es).

TL;DR;:

• more hardware should work efficiently (Avalon is still not working correctly but should be shortly),
• most setup should be good enough on P2Pool now without tuning,
• tuning should still squeeze some extra income.

[Krellan]

Nice guide!

Just read it, glad to see it's been updated for the new fork (30 second share clock, instead of 10 second).

I don't think I have a problem with latency.  Had a big problem with total bandwidth consumption, though.  My cable ISP doesn't like large users of bandwidth.  So, I'm glad I keep a backup DSL line.  Ports 8333 and 9333 now go there.  Works great, my DSL is ideal for continuous P2P background traffic like this: it has a slow top speed, because it's DSL, but it has good response time, and it's unmetered.

Thanks for the tip about tuning the bitcoin.conf settings, so that bitcoind is more generous about the transactions it accepts.  It was worth a Bitcoin restart, so I did that.  Also gave me the chance to test my restart scripts.  I rather like how P2Pool does true mining (your node gets to dictate the contents of the block if you win).

Here's my stats (don't laugh):

Code:

Pool rate: 1.43TH/s (13% DOA+orphan) Share difficulty: 7300
Node uptime: 5.309 days Peers: 11 out, 5 in
Local rate: 308MH/s (9.3% DOA) Expected time to share: 28.3 hours
Shares: 14 total (3 orphaned, 0 dead) Efficiency: 89.92%

Josh

[zvs]

Tune bitcoind and P2Pool
If you can't use the methods above or they aren't enough you can limit the number of connections used by bitcoind and P2Pool.

For bitcoind, use the parameter maxconnections in bitcoin.conf

Code:

maxconnections=10 # 125 is the default, don't go below 8

There's a compromise here: the more connections, the faster your node will be notified of new blocks and avoid wasting work, the faster it can include transactions with fees in the coinbase and the faster it will propagate a P2Pool block minimizing chances it would become orphan.
But the less connections, the less bandwidth used and the lower the latency.

More than 20 for maxconnections is probably overkill: from my experience (trying various values from 6 to 100) it seems there's not much gain to have past this value (and if you don't have enough WAN bandwidth it can hurt your latencies by queuing transfers between P2Pool nodes during peaks).
Note that this may change in the future if the behavior of bitcoind/P2Pool network changes: when in doubt, monitor your interface(s) bandwidth usage and raise this value when most peaks are below your link capacity.

If your orphan rate is fine, don't tempt the devil and try tuning maxconnections below 20: you may reduce your income more than you increase it...

Warning: P2Pool needs one connection to bitcoind and bitcoind tries to fill all the allowed connections after startup. If you start P2Pool just after bitcoind (or before, it will repeatedly try to connect), it shouldn't have problem connecting because bitcoind will still have connection slots available. If you set maxconnections too low P2Pool might not succeed connecting.

For P2Pool, you can do the same by passing parameters to P2Pool:

Code:

--max-conns 8 --outgoing-conns 4

Note: orphans will quickly rise if you have very few connections (they are the means to be notified of other shares after all). I would prefer reducing bitcoind connections before P2Pool's.

In my experience you can get as low as 6 total connections (3 in, 3 out) without noticeable efficiency changes. The default values seem overkill (6 outgoing, 40 incoming). The large number of incoming connections (--max-conns) is designed to help the whole network (some nodes are behind firewalls that don't allow incoming connections). You probably should allow more incoming connections (and check that your network setup allows incoming connections) to do your part in helping the network.

i started local node again about a week ago and haven't had any problems with maxconnections=2, port=(non-standard, or you can just firewall all but the one IP from the bitcoind port).  then i just use connect=5.9.24.81.  the 2nd connection is used by p2pool.  so essentially it just introduces a maximum 175ms delay on new transactions or blocks (the average would be much less).

(it's possible now since p2pool doesnt consume nearly as much bandwidth with just 2 works per minute instead of 6)

[DopeLabs]

Known bugs/issues

Q: Why do I get lots of "Worker <name> submitted share with hash > target:" in my P2Pool logs? It seems to put a large CPU load on P2Pool.
A: If you use cgminer, scrypt and stratum, this is because cgminer and p2pool disagree on how to represent difficulty targets on stratum. p2pool seems to use a sane definition of target difficulty, unfortunately most other pools didn't establishing a de-facto standard that cgminer follows. Current solution: use the "--fix-protocol" parameter of cgminer. It will force it to use getwork (instead of stratum) where both agree on how to communicate difficulty targets.

one of my miners is an ASICMiner Eruptor Blade, which i believe uses getwork, but i am still seeing the hash > target msgs on the cli fly by...

any idea as to why it would still be doing this considering its using getwork? and is there anything that can be done to fix?

[gyverlb]

Known bugs/issues

Q: Why do I get lots of "Worker <name> submitted share with hash > target:" in my P2Pool logs? It seems to put a large CPU load on P2Pool.
A: If you use cgminer, scrypt and stratum, this is because cgminer and p2pool disagree on how to represent difficulty targets on stratum. p2pool seems to use a sane definition of target difficulty, unfortunately most other pools didn't establishing a de-facto standard that cgminer follows. Current solution: use the "--fix-protocol" parameter of cgminer. It will force it to use getwork (instead of stratum) where both agree on how to communicate difficulty targets.

one of my miners is an ASICMiner Eruptor Blade, which i believe uses getwork, but i am still seeing the hash > target msgs on the cli fly by...

any idea as to why it would still be doing this considering its using getwork? and is there anything that can be done to fix?

Does the Eruptor Blade support variable difficulty? If not then these messages are normal. You might want to ask ASICMINER about how their miner software reacts with difficulties different than 1.

[-ck]

Known bugs/issues

Q: Why do I get lots of "Worker <name> submitted share with hash > target:" in my P2Pool logs? It seems to put a large CPU load on P2Pool.
A: If you use cgminer, scrypt and stratum, this is because cgminer and p2pool disagree on how to represent difficulty targets on stratum. p2pool seems to use a sane definition of target difficulty, unfortunately most other pools didn't establishing a de-facto standard that cgminer follows. Current solution: use the "--fix-protocol" parameter of cgminer. It will force it to use getwork (instead of stratum) where both agree on how to communicate difficulty targets.

one of my miners is an ASICMiner Eruptor Blade, which i believe uses getwork, but i am still seeing the hash > target msgs on the cli fly by...

any idea as to why it would still be doing this considering its using getwork? and is there anything that can be done to fix?

Notice that says scrypt with cgminer which does not apply to bitcoin. Eruptors don't have any way to set difficulty, they have extremely simple mining software built in that only does diff 1. You could probably use the stratum proxy by slush between the blades and your p2pool software to get rid of the message, but not sure if that really gains you anything but adds another layer ...

[gyverlb]

Notice that says scrypt with cgminer which does not apply to bitcoin. Eruptors don't have any way to set difficulty, they have extremely simple mining software built in that only does diff 1. You could probably use the stratum proxy by slush between the blades and your p2pool software to get rid of the message, but not sure if that really gains you anything but adds another layer ...

And this is a problem which has been solved long ago (p2pool is using the same protocol than other pools for quite some time).

I changed the FAQ entry and suggested using stratum-proxy when it becomes a problem (might help by distributing the load across CPU cores or handling share submissions more efficiently than p2pool).

[DopeLabs]

ive tried using the stratum proxy but for some reason when i have it connected to p2pool the AM Blade just doesnt connect and start hashing... it works on btcguild... but not p2pool for some reason...

[DopeLabs]

so on the wiki it states that setting the username with an appended '+1" will make P2Pool always give your miners work with a difficulty of 1...

will this have any negative effect?

[gyverlb]

The last questions should probably be asked in the main p2pool thread

This guide is for information related to mining efficiently on p2pool, it shouldn't duplicate information on how to use p2pool or stratum-proxy (the guide is already too long to my taste). That said, I've never used stratum-proxy, if someone find out there are specific configuration options to use to make it efficient with p2pool and some hardware, I'd gladly add them to the guide.

[jimsonunique]

when i first tried p2pool all i did was point my miner at p2pool.org. After a while my graph was showing hashrate + payout.

now if i try it my graph shows hashrate but never get payout. i never knew about setting up p2pool before hand i just pointed miner at it.

is it even possible to use p2pool that way? or do you HAVE to run bit coin/p2pool aswell?

[rav3n_pl]

No, when you using "outside" node you not have to run bitcoin nor p2pool, only miner.
How much power you have? BTC share diff is about 22`500 now.

[zvs]

when i first tried p2pool all i did was point my miner at p2pool.org. After a while my graph was showing hashrate + payout.

now if i try it my graph shows hashrate but never get payout. i never knew about setting up p2pool before hand i just pointed miner at it.

is it even possible to use p2pool that way? or do you HAVE to run bit coin/p2pool aswell?

p2pool.org was on the wrong chain for several weeks, but it's been v13 for at least the last 10 days

1ghash averages a share every 24hrs or so at current hash rate

and don't use p2pool.org,

go to http://p2pool-nodes.info/ or http://p2pool.hostv.pl/     and find something better

[jimsonunique]

when i first tried p2pool all i did was point my miner at p2pool.org. After a while my graph was showing hashrate + payout.

now if i try it my graph shows hashrate but never get payout. i never knew about setting up p2pool before hand i just pointed miner at it.

is it even possible to use p2pool that way? or do you HAVE to run bit coin/p2pool aswell?

p2pool.org was on the wrong chain for several weeks, but it's been v13 for at least the last 10 days

1ghash averages a share every 24hrs or so at current hash rate

and don't use p2pool.org,

go to http://p2pool-nodes.info/ or http://p2pool.hostv.pl/     and find something better

why do the graphs never show any payout, even if i left it on for over 24 hours. But the first time i ever used p2pool it was showing payout within a couple of hours ?!

[notme]

when i first tried p2pool all i did was point my miner at p2pool.org. After a while my graph was showing hashrate + payout.

now if i try it my graph shows hashrate but never get payout. i never knew about setting up p2pool before hand i just pointed miner at it.

is it even possible to use p2pool that way? or do you HAVE to run bit coin/p2pool aswell?

p2pool.org was on the wrong chain for several weeks, but it's been v13 for at least the last 10 days

1ghash averages a share every 24hrs or so at current hash rate

and don't use p2pool.org,

go to http://p2pool-nodes.info/ or http://p2pool.hostv.pl/     and find something better

why do the graphs never show any payout, even if i left it on for over 24 hours. But the first time i ever used p2pool it was showing payout within a couple of hours ?!

Share difficulty has increased dramatically in the last few months.  Also, 24 hours for 1gh/s is an average.  Variance can potentially widen the window before you hit for you first share to 2 days, but over time it will average out.

[nibor]

Just to say I followed this advice and have a Bitforce-SC 60Ghash running perfectly.

See cross post https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=18313.msg3007436#msg3007436 for details.

Thanks for the great advice.

[ylame]

I'm trying to use ASICMiner erupter blade, which only supports getwork with p2pool. I can't get it to work.

When I have the blade connected directly to p2pool, I see lot's of
Worker <name> submitted share with hash > target:" in my P2Pool logs

So I setup a stratum proxy which work fine with 50btc.com but when I use it with the p2pool, the blades get no work. It sit's ideal.

What am I missing? Are there any specific version's that should be using?

[DopeLabs]

I'm trying to use ASICMiner erupter blade, which only supports getwork with p2pool. I can't get it to work.

When I have the blade connected directly to p2pool, I see lot's of
Worker <name> submitted share with hash > target:" in my P2Pool logs

So I setup a stratum proxy which work fine with 50btc.com but when I use it with the p2pool, the blades get no work. It sit's ideal.

What am I missing? Are there any specific version's that should be using?

this is a normal message when using blades. what you want to do is add: +1 to the end of your username on the blade web interface. this will force p2pool to always give the blade diff1 work, since it only knows diff 1 anyways. this will stop those log messages. you might see one or two here or there..... also the blades dont seem to work with p2pool via stratum mining proxy.

[ylame]

I'm trying to use ASICMiner erupter blade, which only supports getwork with p2pool. I can't get it to work.

When I have the blade connected directly to p2pool, I see lot's of
Worker <name> submitted share with hash > target:" in my P2Pool logs

So I setup a stratum proxy which work fine with 50btc.com but when I use it with the p2pool, the blades get no work. It sit's ideal.

What am I missing? Are there any specific version's that should be using?

this is a normal message when using blades. what you want to do is add: +1 to the end of your username on the blade web interface. this will force p2pool to always give the blade diff1 work, since it only knows diff 1 anyways. this will stop those log messages. you might see one or two here or there..... also the blades dont seem to work with p2pool via stratum mining proxy.

Thank you, this seems to have reduced the number of errors in the log. I still see couple of them, but much less. I don't have QoS set on my network but the p2pool and the blade are on the same LAN. Would it be of any help to setup QoS?

Thank you