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

[smooth]

Just out of curiosity does anyone use the settings the OP posts about in this thread?

I he or she makes some recommendations that I would like know if people are using or if there is some other sweet spot such as maxconnections= in bitcoin.conf?

Unless you have a very fast internet connection (both up and down) without any hard or soft caps I recommend you just block incoming bitcoind connections at your firewall (i.e. don't forward port 8333) and rely on outgoing connections (the default 8 is fine -- no need to increase this). That will avoid a lot of your bandwidth being used up by people wanting to download the blockchain.

That alone should substantially increase the number of people who are able to successfully run a p2pool node.

[Tegija]

Just out of curiosity does anyone use the settings the OP posts about in this thread?

I he or she makes some recommendations that I would like know if people are using or if there is some other sweet spot such as maxconnections= in bitcoin.conf?

Thanks,

those settings are just basics. to find right settings for your node you just have to test a lot. i needed 3weeks to find optimal settings for my node and i am still not really ready. small changes i still have to make.

there are just to many factors which can influence efficiency of your node, so everybody has to test it out.

with mxconnections i was playing around pretty long too, but i did not really see big advantages by changing it as it is described here. many other things the same.

[uteroulin]

Thanks a lot for this guide thread! It has been written so clear and even such newbie as I am could understand it 

[gyverlb]

Thanks a lot for this guide thread! It has been written so clear and even such newbie as I am could understand it 

Glad to read it was understandable for new users, that was one of my main goals.

[silverfern]

Hi guys,

A new miner here. I am currently mining on a p2pool. I have two gaming computers mining to one address. When I check the p2pool hashrate adding the second computer doesn't do anything to my hashrate.

Am I doing something wrong? Are other people finding this as well?

Thank you in advance!

Edit: Second computer is at a different house, if that matters

[gyverlb]

Hi guys,

A new miner here. I am currently mining on a p2pool. I have two gaming computers mining to one address. When I check the p2pool hashrate adding the second computer doesn't do anything to my hashrate.

Am I doing something wrong? Are other people finding this as well?

Thank you in advance!

Edit: Second computer is at a different house, if that matters

That's more a question for the main P2Pool thread (and yes something is wrong):
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=18313.0

[silverfern]

Thank you,

I will post it there!

[BTCNU]

Regarding http://bitcoin.advmapper.com:9332/static/

1: How can I tell if people are using my P2Pool node?
2: If I don't mine, is there any reason to host a P2Pool node?
3: My GetBlockTemplate latency is never under 1 sec, even with just P2Pool and Bitcoind running. Why?
4: How do people find a P2Pool node to use, and what kinds of things helps them make the decision about which is best for them?

[gyverlb]

Regarding http://bitcoin.advmapper.com:9332/static/

1: How can I tell if people are using my P2Pool node?
2: If I don't mine, is there any reason to host a P2Pool node?
3: My GetBlockTemplate latency is never under 1 sec, even with just P2Pool and Bitcoind running. Why?
4: How do people find a P2Pool node to use, and what kinds of things helps them make the decision about which is best for them?

Most of these questions aren't related to this subject, please ask them on the main P2Pool thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=18313.0

For you GetBlockTemplate latency question, please read the original post in this thread. What matters is the efficiency when miners are using your node. You don't have any miner yet on your node so efficiency will be unknown (and later unreliable) unless you mine a good amount of share (100 for a ~1% precision on the efficiency reported).

As you state on your p2pool server that your hardware only costs you $15/month, my first guess is that it is probably lacks power (not enough CPU/RAM/IO capacity/...) to reach the 0.2-0.3s you can easily get on a recent 3+GHz multi-core CPU with default settings for p2pool and bitcoind.

[smooth]

3: My GetBlockTemplate latency is never under 1 sec, even with just P2Pool and Bitcoind running. Why?

It takes that long to process the mempool to construct a block on the hardware you are using.

This may or may not be a problem, you have to see what your efficiency works out to be. If it is a problem you need to get faster hardware (I/O and/or CPU) or reduce your block size.

[BTCNU]

As you state on your p2pool server that your hardware only costs you $15/month, my first guess is that it is probably lacks power (not enough CPU/RAM/IO capacity/...) to reach the 0.2-0.3s you can easily get on a recent 3+GHz multi-core CPU with default settings for p2pool and bitcoind.

I have access to lots of CPU for brief computationally intensive tasks (4 cores, 3+ gHz), but I have maximums on system load. The server has a system load of 0.05. P2Pool never seems to get above 10% CPU. Disk is generally idle, and disks are SSDs, nothing appears to be swapping.

I will take my other off-topic questions to the main thread. Thanks.

[blade87]

Hey everyone I need some help. Is there any way I can easily obtain peer local hash rates over the past 24 hours in simple text format? All I am looking for in a text file is line by line "user, hash rate, dead hash rate" so I can setup a script export it as a csv regularly. Thanks.

The web-static graphs display this information but just aren't in that format I need being an entire webpage mainly in javascript.

[gyverlb]

Hey everyone I need some help. Is there any way I can easily obtain peer local hash rates over the past 24 hours in simple text format? All I am looking for in a text file is line by line "user, hash rate, dead hash rate" so I can setup a script export it as a csv regularly. Thanks.

The web-static graphs display this information but just aren't in that format I need being an entire webpage mainly in javascript.

I keep repeating myself...

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=18313.0

[GhostPlayer]

Quick questions, sorry if it has been addressesed.

1) does it matter what % of p2pool has rate in comparison to total hashrate affects earning in the long run, after ramp-up?

2) Can you point multiple miners from multiple IP's or same LAN, to the same p2pool using the same payout address?

[smooth]

Quick questions, sorry if it has been addressesed.

1) does it matter what % of p2pool has rate in comparison to total hashrate affects earning in the long run, after ramp-up?

It matters because you only get paid out when someone in p2pool finds a block. This doesn't not affect your expected (average) earnings but it does affect the frequency of your payouts and the variance of your earnings.

Happily, p2pool hash rate has increased a lot recently.

2) Can you point multiple miners from multiple IP's or same LAN, to the same p2pool using the same payout address?

Yss!

[Doom4535]

Does anyone know where you can find the default (and possibly max) block size for a coin in the wallet code?

[jonnybravo0311]

Does anyone know where you can find the default (and possibly max) block size for a coin in the wallet code?

While this has nothing to do with p2pool mining...

Look at the main.h for your coin:

static const unsigned int DEFAULT_BLOCK_MAX_SIZE

This can be overridden by passing -blockmaxsize to your *coind on startup, or by putting a value in *coin.conf files.

[Doom4535]

Does anyone know where you can find the default (and possibly max) block size for a coin in the wallet code?

While this has nothing to do with p2pool mining...

Look at the main.h for your coin:

static const unsigned int DEFAULT_BLOCK_MAX_SIZE

This can be overridden by passing -blockmaxsize to your *coind on startup, or by putting a value in *coin.conf files.

Thanks (I was thinking the question was relevant since the OP suggested tweaking the max blocksize to increase the amount of potential fees or to limit bandwidth).

[ScottWilson]

Has the advice at the beginning of this thread been updated to take into account current difficulty and network hashing power, and newer hardware?

Also, what is best practice for tacking "/2000+512" or whatever onto the end of your BTC address to set a higher share quality and manual difficulty?

I'm finding myself on a good network connection with low latency on good hardware and I suddenly have 2TH of miners on my node, but hardly anybody is getting shares.

Thanks In Advance

[zvs]

First off, re: this guide, this was on my DOGE pool, but since it's down now:

Since all the "guides" are wrong, I'll talk a little bit about latency when choosing a p2pool. This DOGE pool setup has 15s shares and 60s blocks, for five interruptions per minute. So assume you have a very high 200ms latency (and no packetloss, packetloss *IS* a big deal)... your system will continue working on an old share for 0.2s and it'll take an additional >0.2s for the server to send you out the new share information (well, plus 1-5ms overhead).... so, basically, 400ms per interruption is your DOA window.  5x400ms = 2s, 2 out of 60 = 3.33% DOA. For other coins it's even less of a factor (bitcoin with the 20s share times and the much longer block periods).  I found it wasn't worth mining on my machine locally since I ended up with tons more orphans.  European nodes in general will get less orphans & orphan rate should be the primary factor in determining the best pool. If you get 50ms latency to pool A and 200ms latency to pool B, then pool A would only be better if the orphan rate was an absolute ~2.5% or so lower than pool B.  If not, pool B is better... regardless of the DOAs looking bad on your miner or not...

Bitcoin share time is 30s, so that's even less interrupts.

Has the advice at the beginning of this thread been updated to take into account current difficulty and network hashing power, and newer hardware?

Also, what is best practice for tacking "/2000+512" or whatever onto the end of your BTC address to set a higher share quality and manual difficulty?

I'm finding myself on a good network connection with low latency on good hardware and I suddenly have 2TH of miners on my node, but hardly anybody is getting shares.

Thanks In Advance

I don't remember what the advice says at the beginning of this thread, but a lot of it has always been wrong.

I don't see a reason to set a higher share difficulty level unless you like gambling (the /2000 part)...  If you are on a pool that is 2TH, then that 512 will be lower than the default.  All it's used for is to calculate your hash rate and display it on the p2pool graphs.  The lower it is, the more data you'll transfer and the more accurate your hash rate graph will be.

Not sure how you can make a blanket statement about low latency, I mean, I'm sure lots of people in Europe have sub 50ms to my Hetzner server, but I don't.  re: 2TH and no shares, that's because the base p2pool code attempts to "equalize" the shares each pool gets.  I guess 2TH isn't a whole lot for bitcoins anymore, I have no clue.  For scrypt, let's say litecoin p2pools are at 5GH/s total, a node mining litecoins at 5MH/s will be at base share difficulty (the amt used to "attempt" to get one share every 30s network-wide), while a node at 200MH/s will have a share difficulty 20x + of the 5MH/s node.