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

[Subo1977]

That's not something you download but something you configure using Linux, tmpfs, the standard bitcoind v0.8 and your skills as a sysadmin. I didn't do it myself because I don't have enough RAM to store the whole data directory (so it wouldn't work well for me) but I've met someone on IRC who claimed having done so with a getwork latency < 0.01s.

If someone can post instructions, I'll link to them.

Code:

mkdir -p /var/ramdrive
mount -t tmpfs -o size=10G,mode=0744 tmpfs /var/ramdrive

Tune it for you own mount location, desired size, and desired permissions. You may need to run the scone command as root, and if you do you'll need to chown the new mount point:

Code:

sudo chown user:user ~/ramdrive

now copy over your blocks to ~/ramdrive and it will be super fast. Note that you'll need > 7GB for your blockchain, I don't know how many consumer level machines are around with that much (but Sub's 64GB will rock)

You need to remount it every boot, or you can put the following at the end of your /etc/fstab

Code:

tmpfs /var/ramdrive tmpfs size=500M,mode=0777 0 0

it's going to be root owned, so you can tune the permissions as you wish

take from http://kvz.io/blog/2007/07/18/create-turbocharged-storage-using-tmpfs/

Great . I will try it on Monday  and  Report it.

[GernMiester]

Worked just fine but it was far from paying anywhere near what the PPS pool I left was making me even when it had donations out the wazoo. The hashrate is low and blocks are not solved often. You can go 1, 2 or even worse 3 days with zero payout.

I quit many moons ago due to horrible random payouts that never seem to be anywhere ear what any other pool will make you. Maybe I had it setup wrong or maybe it pays like crap.. It certainly paid me less than 1/3rd of what I could have mined at a PPS pool in the same time.  Its a great idea no one seems to care for and it seems mostly because it pays like crap.

[maqifrnswa]

Worked just fine but it was far from paying anywhere near what the PPS pool I left was making me even when it had donations out the wazoo. The hashrate is low and blocks are not solved often. You can go 1, 2 or even worse 3 days with zero payout.

I quit many moons ago due to horrible random payouts that never seem to be anywhere ear what any other pool will make you. Maybe I had it setup wrong or maybe it pays like crap.. It certainly paid me less than 1/3rd of what I could have mined at a PPS pool in the same time.  Its a great idea no one seems to care for and it seems mostly because it pays like crap.

The mathematical fact still remains that a well tuned p2pool will out pay any other pool. In fact, it will approach solo mining. If not enough people are mining on it, it will have huge variance. You were unlucky, but someone else who mined p2pool probably had inverse luck. For example, over the past 7 days, p2pool out paid PPS by 15% (including fees). Last week, people mining on p2pool were underpaid by 15% compared to PPS (including fees). Variance (luck) is a problem for all pools that are underpowered and doesn't mean that it "pays out crap."

If you solo mine for a month and don't find a block, you will think it pays out crap compared to PPS.

[gyverlb]

Worked just fine but it was far from paying anywhere near what the PPS pool I left was making me even when it had donations out the wazoo.

Apparently you didn't read the original post in details. Your post doesn't bring anything useful to the discussion if you:

• don't tell when you tried p2pool (was it before the orphan blocks problem was solved?)
• for how long you tried it: with the current hashrate you can get easily between 80 and 120% PPS for 30 days. If you tried it for less than 3 days you can even get between 0 and 200% PPS.

So nothing new here: you probably experienced variance and didn't like it. That's OK if you are looking for predictable payments and don't want to bet on p2pool's hashrate growing (and thus lowering variance) but I fail to see anything that would deter someone who would want to make the most of its miners in the long run...

[gyverlb]

Added advices for Avalon owners and general advice "Track your income" for everyone.

Edit: new general advice "Patience"

[gyverlb]

Added a TL;DR; chapter

Small precision about the whole network efficiency.

[gyverlb]

Linked makifrnswa's post in the guide for additional information on tmpfs-based bitcoind.

It's not a turnkey solution yet, but I'm not sure this optimization is worth taking the time redacting one: I believe it's a nice hack with some marginal benefits.

[gyverlb]

Added a FAQ entry for the stratum/scrypt problem between cgminer and P2Pool.

[zvs]

use ramfs, and it only needs to be 8GB for at least another couple weeks

you can have getwork be a couple ms, but only if you use a small blocksize.  at 50k, mine was usually around a second (ed: sorry, .01 seconds)

[gyverlb]

Added a link to the Consolidated Litecoin Mining Guide for 5xxx, 6xxx, and 7xxx GPUs, more information about mining with Avalon.

[Subo1977]

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 # 20 is the default

Dont set this to <=8   
Then p2pool cannot connect to the bitcoind.

[gyverlb]

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 # 20 is the default

Dont set this to <=8   
Then p2pool cannot connect to the bitcoind.

Hum, there can be problems with low maxconnections. If I understand correctly, this depends on how fast you start p2pool after bitcoind because once all the connection slots are taken it refuses p2pool's attempt to connect.
bitcoind probably establish the first connections quite fast because it tries a number of "probably good" nodes first and then a slower discovery process begins.

I'll add this to the guide, thanks.

[mdude77]

The mathematical fact still remains that a well tuned p2pool will out pay any other pool. In fact, it will approach solo mining. If not enough people are mining on it, it will have huge variance. You were unlucky, but someone else who mined p2pool probably had inverse luck. For example, over the past 7 days, p2pool out paid PPS by 15% (including fees). Last week, people mining on p2pool were underpaid by 15% compared to PPS (including fees). Variance (luck) is a problem for all pools that are underpowered and doesn't mean that it "pays out crap."

This isn't entirely true.  The last week has been very good for p2pool.  But the 3 months (not one week) has been awful.

M

[gyverlb]

The mathematical fact still remains that a well tuned p2pool will out pay any other pool. In fact, it will approach solo mining. If not enough people are mining on it, it will have huge variance. You were unlucky, but someone else who mined p2pool probably had inverse luck. For example, over the past 7 days, p2pool out paid PPS by 15% (including fees). Last week, people mining on p2pool were underpaid by 15% compared to PPS (including fees). Variance (luck) is a problem for all pools that are underpowered and doesn't mean that it "pays out crap."

This isn't entirely true.  The last week has been very good for p2pool.  But the 3 months (not one week) has been awful.

M

The very first post explains that this isn't the place to discuss this unless you have solid data showing that there is a bug somewhere: this thread is for discussions on how to optimize a P2Pool miner's setup not gut feelings.

Over the last 3 months I got 98% PPS with P2Pool. If you call that awful I suppose you can only mine on fee-free pools.

When I track my income over the last 6 months I get ~100.5% PPS.

I really wish people would stop with their gut-feeling and track what their real income is (or at least post such nonsense somewhere else).

[mdude77]

The mathematical fact still remains that a well tuned p2pool will out pay any other pool. In fact, it will approach solo mining. If not enough people are mining on it, it will have huge variance. You were unlucky, but someone else who mined p2pool probably had inverse luck. For example, over the past 7 days, p2pool out paid PPS by 15% (including fees). Last week, people mining on p2pool were underpaid by 15% compared to PPS (including fees). Variance (luck) is a problem for all pools that are underpowered and doesn't mean that it "pays out crap."

This isn't entirely true.  The last week has been very good for p2pool.  But the 3 months (not one week) has been awful.

M

The very first post explains that this isn't the place to discuss this unless you have solid data showing that there is a bug somewhere: this thread is for discussions on how to optimize a P2Pool miner's setup not gut feelings.

Over the last 3 months I got 98% PPS with P2Pool. If you call that awful I suppose you can only mine on fee-free pools.

When I track my income over the last 6 months I get ~100.5% PPS.

I really wish people would stop with their gut-feeling and track what their real income is (or at least post such nonsense somewhere else).

Solely looking at p2pool stats, not gut feeling.  You said a week was bad, on what basis do you make that statement? 

M

[gyverlb]

Solely looking at p2pool stats

Which ones? p2pool.info shows 95.9% for 90 days which is already as good as any PPS pool and it doesn't even include yesterday's donation to P2Pool miners from Gavin (for lost income during the fork). "awful" should mean far below standard pools, the numbers don't lie: we aren't far below standard pools. At 98% we are arguably above most of them.

, not gut feeling.  You said a week was bad, on what basis do you make that statement? 

You didn't read the first post or you wouldn't post this kind of question as I explained on what basis I study p2pool's luck.
Even if some weeks are "bad", I never commented on one in particular here.

So your question is bogus and even if it weren't you should already have the answer.

Obviously you aren't here to discuss the subject and instead wish to spread FUD. Please do it elsewhere.

[eleuthria]

Solely looking at p2pool stats

Which ones? p2pool.info shows 95.9% for 90 days which is already as good as any PPS pool and it doesn't even include yesterday's donation to P2Pool miners from Gavin (for lost income during the fork). "awful" should mean far below standard pools, the numbers don't lie: we aren't far below standard pools. At 98% we are arguably above most of them.

To be fair, it only very recently hit 95.9%.  For quite some time it was in the upper 80s/low 90s, which is likely what most recent luck posts were using as their basis.  Yes, that's how luck works, and at p2pool's size it's perfectly within expected variance.  Unfortunately, most miners do not like (or understand) bad luck, especially over a long period of time.  Now we're seeing the opposite.  At p2pool's size, it only takes a week of good luck to completely recover from a bad 90-day downtrend.

[mdude77]

Obviously you aren't here to discuss the subject and instead wish to spread FUD. Please do it elsewhere.

I am not asking a question, or spreading FUD.  Simply correcting your erroneous statement of "last week was bad".  The last 90+ days prior to this week were bad, according to the p2pool stats page.  Now if that stats page is faulty, I sit corrected.

M

[gyverlb]

If you pick the worst 90-day window you can find in p2pool's history, you may get a 85% luck. Which doesn't mean much (all pools with low hashrate exhibit high variance) and isn't the subject we don't study low hashrate and its consequences but how to make the most of P2Pool.

[gyverlb]

Obviously you aren't here to discuss the subject and instead wish to spread FUD. Please do it elsewhere.

I am not asking a question, or spreading FUD.  Simply correcting your erroneous statement of "last week was bad".

You keep referring to something I didn't write. I hate that: you are really trying my patience.

  The last 90+ days prior to this week were bad, according to the p2pool stats page.  Now if that stats page is faulty, I sit corrected.

The stats page is indeed certainly missing a block which was found during the fork so it's faulty. But even then you didn't say that the luck was "slightly bad" (4.1% below average) but you said "awful". This, by definition, is FUD: you are exaggerating the bad luck which is mostly harmless (4% is within the normal fee range on most pools) to make P2Pool look bad.

And worst of all: you keep coming back on this subject on a thread which doesn't address it and explicitly says so in the first post.