CGWatcher 1.4.0, a GUI/monitor for CGMiner & BFGMiner to help minimize downtime

[MooC Tals]

Quite odd, I don't know how I can help you, will have to wait for the dominus to reply. Yet I wonder, if you were to edit your watcher's profiles.dat file, using mine as a guide, saving and starting it, maybe it would work? Mine has two profiles, replaced first one with placeholders, second just wildmarks for sensitive. The file has 4 lines starting with profiles, 0, 1 and space.

PROFILES=2
0|||<profile_name>|||<complete_path_to_exe>||||||<arguments for cgminer>
1|||LTC@wemineltc.com w/ failsafe|||C:\Users\***\Desktop\cgminer-3.1.1-windows\cgminer.exe||||||--scrypt -o stratum+tcp://eu.wemineltc.com:3333 -u *** -p *** -o stratum+tcp://eubackup.wemineltc.com:3333 -u *** -p *** -o stratum+tcp://stratum2.wemineltc.com:3333 -u *** -p *** --gpu-platform 1 -I 19 -w 256 --thread-concurrency 22400 --no-adl --api-listen --api-allow W:127.0.0.1

Mines empty with 0kb sigh*

Did you add that to your file or was it filled automatically by cgwatcher?

[sydameton]

It was filled automatically, I didn't edit anything, all was set up via GUI. I figured if you could use mine for reference, edit it with your paths & settings, put it in the folder and start CGWatcher it would just load it up and work? Dunno why yours is zero, tho I can't remember if the default profile has any data in it whatsoever to begin with, in which case empty file is normal.

[MooC Tals]

It was filled automatically, I didn't edit anything, all was set up via GUI. I figured if you could use mine for reference, edit it with your paths & settings, put it in the folder and start CGWatcher it would just load it up and work? Dunno why yours is zero, tho I can't remember if the default profile has any data in it whatsoever to begin with, in which case empty file is normal.

Here it indicates I have 2 gpu's however in the dropdown box is empty.
I had afterburner running so I shut that down in case that was getting in the way and also did a reboot. cgminer is the most up to date version as well.

[sydameton]

I dunno what to say about the missing devices. Are you able to start the miner via CGWatcher with the modded profiles.dat though (the grey problem) or still no go?

[MooC Tals]

I think I may have found it. I think I need to fill out a couple of profiles. I will update if it works but I think that was the problem. I will let you know.

Sorry for all the trouble in advance.

[sydameton]

Not at all, hope it will work.

[MooC Tals]

Not at all, hope it will work.

Yea sorry to all for the drama. I would like to point out that all profiles need to be filled and the config files need to be imported as well.

I was under the assumption that this was done automatically and it sensed that the gpu's were present by the system when in fact it assumes you have no gpu's unless you have it activated from with in the program itself.

It works however I would like to have it run 2 dedicated miners with 1 gpu each to 2 different pools. I'm presently trying to figure that out now.

but it works and that's only to indicate the level of my stupidity is becoming less everyday! yay!

[sydameton]

Lol.

Anywho, you can run 2 watchers each with a miner at the same time but you need to modify the API ports for one of them, think someone else was trying to do the same thing a few pages back, or just check cgminer's readme for --api-port or something like that, same for the watcher's listener somewhere in the GUI. Too lazy to take a quick look (need to remote in again).

[MooC Tals]

Lol.

Anywho, you can run 2 watchers each with a miner at the same time but you need to modify the API ports for one of them, think someone else was trying to do the same thing a few pages back, or just check cgminer's readme for --api-port or something like that, same for the watcher's listener somewhere in the GUI. Too lazy to take a quick look (need to remote in again).

You got the remote working? nice feature imo

yea not a big thing atm  the api thingy sounds complicated haha

If it can restart my dead miners that would be a better thing.

I was going to set up my bat files with the windows scheduled tasks to see if that can restart my miners but this will do.

[sydameton]

Nah, I meant TeamViewer or whatever else. I'm not the programmer lol!

[MooC Tals]

Oh lol

Ok I think I found a bug, I think it is...

I usually set the gpu threads to 2 as my 7950 does better hash rates with.

So I set it in cgwatcher too. However in cgminer it starts in 1 thread. Weird thing is my 6770 is fine.

Another thing I have noticed is I was unable to set the voltage for the 7950 to 1 as it is pegged to 1.24v from with in cgwatcher. However I know this is an issue with Cgminer as I have seen it discussed on other threads as well.

My guess is maybe the api is considered a thread, I don't know.

[sydameton]

CGMiner's unable to set voltage on my dual 7950s as well, I read something about why somewhere but I can't recall atm, so I do that with Afterburner. As for the threads, I never used that config editor, I just put my variables in the profile editor, which is -g 2 for my cards but I don't have to specify it as that's default. Not sure what to say here, try it the typing way, or even not specifying it at all and see what goes? In my case, I just copied what I had in my .bat file altogether into CGWatcher's profile manager.

[MooC Tals]

Yea me too it's been a while since I have read that somewhere. I'm going to set it aside for now and play with it on an other computer.

[milone]

MooC Tals: Were you able to get CGWatcher to detect a running miner process? It is not yet capable of handling multiple instances with any accuracy (it just picks one and goes with it). I've been working on this but I'm not sure if it will be completely ready in the next update.

It appears that the method in CGWatcher for finding miner processes is causing an exception, which is causing it to bail before it finds them. In version 1.1.5, this method has been completely rewritten so it should correct this problem, or at least provide more info for finding the exact issue.

Also, if a miner is running the first time CGWatcher is ran, it sets that miner to the default profile it creates. If a miner is not running, you'll need to set the profile miner settings yourself. I'm not sure yet how I want to handle what it does if multiple miners are running.

For all versions of CGWatcher prior to 1.1.5, it was completely dependent on the miner to get all GPU information... so if it couldn't connect find a miner (because of an error) or the miner's API was disabled, it would not be able to display any GPUs. With 1.1.5, CGWatcher gets GPU data itself and any GPU data from the miner will supplement it. This will allow for some overheat protection in CGWatcher for GPUs that cgminer doesn't get information on - specifically Nvidia and possibly Intel GPUs. If it is an AMD card that cgminer can get data for, it leaves overheat protection to cgminer which can provide more fine-tuned management by adjusting fan and clock speeds. CGWatcher's overheat protection, at least for now, is limited to automatically adjusting a GPU's intensity and in cases where its temperature exceeds the temp-cutoff setting, the GPU will be disabled until its temperature returns to the temp-target range.

The new version uses OpenHardwareMonitorLib, which should be better tested than anything I could write in the similar time it took to implement. If you've used OpenHardwareMonitor and your GPU data is reported, it should also be reported in CGWatcher.


sydameton: I'm not sure if the the new version will be able to report your GPU voltage. Even if it can, I don't know if CGMiner will let you modify them. However, the voltage would at least be displayed.


I am hoping to have 1.1.5 ready this week. It has a lot of improvements to the monitor, and all known bugs have been fixed. Hopefully no new ones are introduced, but I am going to spend the next few days testing. The GPU handling is completely changed, and while it's worked perfectly on every miner I've tested, I can't say for certain it won't have problems with different hardware setups.

Thanks for the feedback. I'm working on getting any CGWatcher issues resolved in the next update and getting CGRemote released.

[MooC Tals]

Yes I did get it to work and I also posted some screenshots of what the problem was. I had to import the conf file and only after the miner started by cgwatcher  it reported what types of gpu's I was working with along with pool info. I had them running as i started the program before from my bat files. I hope that makes sense.

Cgwatcher is a great idea and quite the program. I think its going to be use by everyone. A lot of hard work went into it. This will make things a lot easier.

Now I'm no programer but how I set mine up was like this and maybe it could be a simple solution to running multiple instances with dedicated miners for different pools.

Main folder
  sub folder 1: Contains cgminer.exe along with the conf with #1 pool info
  sub folder 2: Contains cgminer.exe along with the conf with #2 pool info

both conf files are the same with the only difference between them is there is only one pool but different

then I have two bat files pointing to the cgminer.exe of each folder. However in each bat file where the command for cgminer.exe is I place a -d0 or -d1 depending on which gpu I wanted dedicated to run in that instance of the cgminer folder.

Now I know its a great deal of duplication of the cgminer program folder but maybe you can get around something like that with your api functions and use only one instance of the cgminer but with different conf files.

[NaHoW]

There are some bugs in the latest version. On all my miners why I restart the computer, the config file ending in .ini gets corrupted and I have to fill all the settings over again.
Therefor, downgraded to 1.1.3.

[QueenB]

Thanks milone..so far looks good, just running this since 24 hours...no issues so far...looking forward to 1.1.5

[pengoau]

Ok to fix the problem of cgminer not closing until you hit "close" when the application crashes to desktop... add the "DontShowUI" key to your registry... Refer here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb513638.aspx.

So the program crashed and i wasn't prompted to close it, thanks to that registry setting but cgwatcher did not restart it... how come?

It knows its not running as it said so in the lower right corner..

Hey dude, thanks for making the change as per the above. I've downloaded the latest and tested it and while testing o/c settings the cgminer program crashed with the windows error (that program has terminated unexpectantly) dialog box sitting on the screen still, preventing cgwatcher from being able to action a restart of the cgminer program. Basically the error dialog box seems to halt all system tasks until you hit close on the dialog box...

I've since manually added the required registry entry in the registry so this box doesn't get displayed. Otherwise I've found cgwatcher restarts cgminer if it finds its not running.  

Did I need to make a change to the INI as you mentioned in your reply to me to have cgwatcher make the required registry change?

If its not clear the registry key you need is:

Regkey: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Error Reporting

Key: DontShowUI
Type: REG_DWORD
Value: 1
0 = UI (Default)
1 = No UI

[milone]

Sorry, I didn't say that clearly. I did add that the the program, but haven't released the update yet. Because of the changes with how it handles GPUs, I have some things to work out but I've been making good progress so I'm expecting to have it ready this weekend.

I've also been adding support for multiple miners running, although each will need their own CGWatcher and a different api-port set in the config file or arguments so there is no cross-communication. CGWatcher will allow multiple instances of itself in 1.1.5 as well to accommodate this.

[18RATTT]

am i the only one that keeps checking CGwatcher website for the new release every day here???
cant wait for the new release.

and about CGremote.... get them out already :p