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

[mb0erman]

mb0erman: It looks like you're setting the same values for all three GPUs, but one of them doesn't like these settings. It may be the voltage as Tigggger said. You can set individual values for each card by separating them with commas. Example setting three GPU clock speeds to three different values:

Code:

--gpu-engine "1500,1400,1300"

Milone, thanks so much for taking the time to help us work with your software. I imagine you're busy enough with new development and the ever present bug hunting, so know it's appreciated

Having said that: I'm losing my mind over the problems I'm having with CGWatcher. No matter what I try, it'll disable at least one GPU and crash the graphics drivers after I start it. Tried reinstalling the drivers to no avail. I've set

Code:

--gpu-engine=1050

and

Code:

--gpu-memclock=1250

in the profile arguments. All forms of voltage settings are removed or set on default. Running these values in CGMiner directly gives a smooth and steady 1,9+ Mh.

Any thoughts are welcome!

[milone]

mb0erman, please start the miner with CGWatcher to reproduce this problem, wait one minute (make sure miner is started and CGWatcher is done waiting for it to start and is connected to it), then go to the Tests tab and click the 'Create Debug Report' button. Send this report to my email (in the readme).

While you're in the Tests tab, go to the drop-down list next to the 'Create Debug Report' button and select 'Show last miner start configuration' from the list and click the Submit button. This will show you the exact settings CGWatcher used when launching the miner last, and will also show the config file/arguments you set in the profile. If you notice something wrong in the settings CGWatcher used, please let me know. You do not need to send this information as it is already included in the debug report.

Thanks.

[rpg]

I am using cgminer and scrypt.
I still don't understand what diff1/4 share means (or rather, what it is; why not diff579 or something) in the slightest. What you described is pretty much what I can see in the tooltip in CGWatcher, but that still doesn't explain it. I mean, I am very new to all this, so is there any "idiot explanation"?

Two hours later, accepted count is still zero in Status tab, but 59 in the bottom "loglike" window in Devices tab.

Share difficulty allows devices with higher hashrates to get work with a higher difficulty instead of a lot of work with low difficulty. For example, let's say a GPU gets diff1 work (the lowest difficulty). It hashes and gets one diff1 accepted share every minute. Now we buy an ASIC that mines 100x faster than the GPU. Instead of sending the ASIC 100x the work, we can just send it diff100 work that it has to solve to get one diff100 accepted share. This saves a lot of overhead. Pools pay in diff1 equivalent, so 100 diff1 shares should be paid the same as one diff100 share.

I just startecd using CGWatcher with cgminer, I've been using cgminer for months and everything was fine.
 Today, I started  CGWatcher, and I've kept running for roughly 30minutes, although cgminer says it's connected, and it's running, coinotron says cgminer isn't running (or it showing 0khs).

What am I doing wrong?
The only thing I've done differently is I added the following arguments:
-o stratum+tcp://coinotron.com:3334 -u [username] -p [password] -I 18 -g 1 -w 256 --thread-concurrency 15232

I answered this in the post you created. I would suggest trying a different pool because I believe the issue is coinotron.

I get not responding a lot in 1.3.4.x..

This seems to occur when its getting data (i/o lock?)? It comes back after a short while but older versions didn't do this. Also it seems to occasionally "wait" to query the API and gets a "not responding" after a few minutes it comes good..

Other than that nice job.

What are you doing (or what is it doing) when this happens? What do you mean by "getting data"? If after it comes back you can create a debug report and send it to me, I'd really appreciate it. That will hopefully show in the log what happened. You can create a debug report by going to the Tests tab and clicking 'Create Debug Report' button, and my email address is in the readme.

Checking the option "Ensure miner stays running..." starts the mining process, which I think shouldn't happen.

I understand that may be unexpected behavior, but it is doing what it says it will do. If you stop the miner using the Stop or Pause Mining button, this option should not start the miner. It only launches the miner when it closes unexpectedly, or when CGWatcher starts - which is by design and was asked for by users.

Checking the option "Ensure miner stays running..." starts the mining process, which I think shouldn't happen.

I'm working on coin stuff for CGRemote right now, and it will probably all make it's way into CGWatcher as well. It's not as simple as combining the data - I either need to give the user an option to select which provider to use for each field, or create scheduling options for both data providers. I'm going with the first one... I just need time to code it.

I too have noticed that the scheduled events have stopped working.

I deleted all of them and recreated them, yet they do not run.  Specifically the "switch profile to most profitable" event that worked fine for me before.

Any help is appreciated.

There are some circumstances where a scheduled action may be ignored. If this occurs the reason is written to the log. If you can email me a debug report (go to Tests tab, click Create Debug Report) and the file called cgwatcher.log in your CGWatcher folder I'll see if I can find a reason they were not triggered.

I second the problem. I'm using the program to mine SHA256 coins. I have the schedule setup to switch profile when the most profitable coin changes with no luck. My guess is that it ignores the coins on the profile and it simply goes after the most (scrypt) profitable coin. The scheduler is running and if I setup the scheduler to restart it, it does restart, just to come back to BTC instead of one of the other SHA256 coins

If you set a scheduled action to trigger when the most profitable coin changes, it will do just that - with no regard for which coins you're mining. The action is triggered, and if set to switch to the most profitable, for example, it will look at all of your profiles and switch to the most profitable.

If you set a scheduled action to trigger when the most profitable profile changes, it will only be triggered when the most profitable coin that you're mining (and is linked to a profile) changes.

I'm not sure if I answered your question. If not, please try to explain a little more and I'll give it another shot. A list of your profiles and their coins would be helpful.

my mistake, had the scheduler switching to the mst profitable coin instead of most profitable profile

[pengoau]

Just starting up/running cgmoner when its locks up (the program not the pc). Will create the report for next time.

[motohead]

This is an awesome tool, just wanted to give my thanks. Happy 2014!

[pengoau]

Not responding:
 - restarting cgminer after saving some settings for a profile.
 - Checking for an update at startup.
 - while mining it seems to intermitantly stop responding.

I also get a blank popup message. I suspect its polling coinchoose is the culprit. Can you put in a checkbox setting to disable the polling of coin profitabilty? I don't use it as I use a multipool. So with the polling for coin profitabilty disabled I believe my not responding issue will go away.


How do I generate a debug report for you?

[milone]

Not responding:
 - restarting cgminer after saving some settings for a profile.
 - Checking for an update at startup.
 - while mining it seems to intermitantly stop responding.

I also get a blank popup message. I suspect its polling coinchoose is the culprit. Can you put in a checkbox setting to disable the polling of coin profitabilty? I don't use it as I use a multipool. So with the polling for coin profitabilty disabled I believe my not responding issue will go away.


How do I generate a debug report for you?

You can disable the automatic updating of coin profitability data in the Coin Manager window (go to Settings tab, click 'Other Tools...' button and select Manage Coins from the popup menu). This data is updated in a background thread so it should not cause the main window to stop responding.

Are you using the most recent version (1.3.4.4)? You can create a debug report by going to the Tests tab and clicking the 'Create Debug Report' button. Please email this to me rather than posting here, because it is quite a bit of data. Also, if you can attach the file called cgwatcher.log to the email, that would also be helpful and appreciated.

[KentIke]

I can't seem to set intensity to 13,13,20.  Any ideas?

I get a message that says the config failed -- Intensity value incorrect.

This is after setting device 0,1,2

[pengoau]

Just a minor request.

For the debug report should have a save as option, otherwise an email option and maybe a checkbox for the log file you want?

I'm using the latest version - 1.3.4.4.

So much for that theory.. I've disabled all the coin profit settings, but still get a not responding (it does come good I just have to wait awhile).

I have emailed you the output of the report.

[milone]

I can't seem to set intensity to 13,13,20.  Any ideas?

I get a message that says the config failed -- Intensity value incorrect.

This is after setting device 0,1,2

You can disable the validation by clicking the checkbox in Config File Editor. The validation tries to make sure you have the same number of settings as you do GPUs, which could be the problem. For a while there was a problem with the device setting in config files, so I ignored it in Config File Editor. I guess I should go back and take it into account now. If you know the setting is correct, just disable the validation and save anyway.

Just a minor request.

For the debug report should have a save as option, otherwise an email option and maybe a checkbox for the log file you want?

I'm using the latest version - 1.3.4.4.

So much for that theory.. I've disabled all the coin profit settings, but still get a not responding (it does come good I just have to wait awhile).

I have emailed you the output of the report.

I've just finished in-app bug reporting for CGRemote, so that will probably also be added to the next version of CGWatcher. You just type in a description of the problem and click Submit, and it takes care of collecting data and sending it to me.

[pengoau]

You are a really good developer and have created a good tool.

Get to bed

[chickenthr33]

Using latest version, still can't get CGWatcher to open on startup.  Tried both the registry and startup folder setting, have it set to run as administrator.

I disabled all of Kaspersky's extras and set it to disabled and tried numerous restarts, only thing I haven't done is uninstall kaspersky.  Is it working for others?

Also still not detecting my PC as being idle, but that could be something on my system running causing that, can any1 confirm that setting is working for them? (To raise intensity when computer is idle for x minutes)

Other small issue is I use 125% font size, so I can't see buttons in some sections, notably in the Settings tab, Other Tools where you're supposed to be able to turn off the profitability popups, I can't see the buttons at the bottom or read what's there.

[milone]

Checking the option "Ensure miner stays running..." starts the mining process, which I think shouldn't happen.

I understand that may be unexpected behavior, but it is doing what it says it will do. If you stop the miner using the Stop or Pause Mining button, this option should not start the miner. It only launches the miner when it closes unexpectedly, or when CGWatcher starts - which is by design and was asked for by users.

That would make sense, but there is one big IF.
I started CGWatcher and did not start mining at all. Then I went into options and checked that option. That moment mining started. I still think it shouldn't have.

P.S. Did you get my email where I asked for the program's window to automatically alter its contents if I resize it? (it would be really useful for the log tab)

Yeah, I'll be making a lot of things resize with the window in the coming versions. I only recently changed it to allow resizing since some users have Windows set to display text at 125% or 150%, which really messes with everything.

Using latest version, still can't get CGWatcher to open on startup.  Tried both the registry and startup folder setting, have it set to run as administrator.

I disabled all of Kaspersky's extras and set it to disabled and tried numerous restarts, only thing I haven't done is uninstall kaspersky.  Is it working for others?

Also still not detecting my PC as being idle, but that could be something on my system running causing that, can any1 confirm that setting is working for them? (To raise intensity when computer is idle for x minutes)

Other small issue is I use 125% font size, so I can't see buttons in some sections, notably in the Settings tab, Other Tools where you're supposed to be able to turn off the profitability popups, I can't see the buttons at the bottom or read what's there.

Did you check to see if the startup entry was created (check startup folder or registry)? An easy way to tell is to open Run window and type msconfig and press Enter. When the System Configuration window opens, click on the Startup tab. If the entry is being created successfully, then it may be Kaspersky preventing it from running. I did a lot of testing on a Windows 7 computer using the new startup options, and they should work - especially if you're running CGWatcher as Administrator (although if you're only creating entries for the current user you should have no problems even if not running as Administrator).

I have CGWatcher set to log any time idle begins or ends, so check your log to verify it isn't working. The number of seconds the system is idle is provided by Windows, so there is not too much I can do about it if other applications are causing this number to reset (which seems to happen on my own PC because the log will show the computer going idle, then not idle, then back to idle several times throughout the night (nobody touching the computer).

As far as font size, Windows really makes a mess of things with this and I haven't found a way to override this setting yet. So what I did was created two utilities in the Tests tab - one will decrease all text in the main window by 1 font size, and the other will increase all text in the main window by 1 font size. You can run these as many times as you want, but for 125% you should only need to decrease text size once. This feature is still experimental so if it resolves this issue I will apply it to other windows and save the font size so it is applied automatically when CGWatcher starts (right now you have to run the utility each time you launch CGWatcher). You can find the utility in the Tests tab, about halfway down the window is a drop-down list with various reports and utilities. Select the one that says "decrease text size" and click Submit. Please let me know how this works for you.

[Tigggger]

Got a few suggestions for you (loving cgremote btw)

1. Made this one a while ago, but just in case it got forgotten as I think it would be useful. Allow an option to prevent coin switch if the difference is within a defined percentage. So if you are mining a coin at 4,500% profit and a new coin goes to the top with 4,550% it's probably not worth switching as some pools take a while to get going.

2. Would like an option to disable/ignore a coin whilst retaining all it's settings. The reasoning behind this is that sometimes there may be a problem, say a chain fork so you may not want to use it until the problem is fixed. I know you can simply remove the coin assignment to achieve this but it ties in with the next suggestion.

3. Add a notes field for each coin profile. So I could disable the coin and leave a note why, once the problem is fixed, can just re-enable a coin. Also handy as some coins (as there are so many) I forget the reasons, eg "takes 4 days to confirm"

4. An option to retrieve coin data from a specified url. Someone mentioned this earlier but currently I have switching off as both coinwarz and coinchoose are missing several of the most profitable coins. I could knock up some php on my server to provide the json for cgwatcher. eg http://mydomain/earthcoin.php obviously would need to figure out a standard format for the files.

Keep up the great work

[chickenthr33]

Sorry I tried quoting but it's a real mess with all these quotes lol:

Not detecting idle *fixed*: Ok, apparently it is something running on my system preventing it from being considered idle because I did a cold boot, didn't load Steam or any of my usual apps I leave open and it did have it set to high intensity when I came back.  So cross that one off, I'll have to figure out what is causing that myself.

CGWatcher not opening on startup: it's listed Twice actually, but neither start up. (I'm on Windows 8.1 Pro x64)

Text Size: The text size in Test works, but it's only changing the size of some text (the tabs on top and in other sections are all changed as well as most of the Status page text, but most of the other buttons and text are still the same and I can't see the buttons on the button of coin profitability)  Also I tried increasing it back to where it was and it just kept decreasing it (and actually decreased ALL the text when using Increase from what I can see except the coin profitability is still normal size)  Restarting CGWatcher returned it to normal.

Edit: If others can confirm that the startup works properly for them on windows 8/8.1 I will volunteer to uninstall Kaspersky and report whether that fixes it but I have tried completely disabling it (at least that's what it says) thru a reboot and didn't fix.

[duz]

I may be missing something, but is there a way of 'zero'ing statistics without using cgminer?

[MineRock]

Yeah, I'll be making a lot of things resize with the window in the coming versions. I only recently changed it to allow resizing since some users have Windows set to display text at 125% or 150%, which really messes with everything.

Any chance you can slip in an option to turn off confirmations when restarting a config etc... ?   Turning them off everywhere would suite me just fine.

Love the tool... thanks for all of the hard work.

[unknown18]

thanks this is what i been trying to find :}

[TheUniporn]

Great program, I started using it a couple of weeks ago and I'm considering CGRemote but I have a problem right now with it. CGWatcher freezes my PC after reopening cgminer, there is a video drivers crash followed by a PC freeze. It's a newly installed win 7 64bit (up to date) and I tried CGWatcher 1.3.2.1 and 1.3.4.4, ATI drivers 13.11beta and 13.12, AMD SDK 2.8 and 2.9. I found this problem when closing cgminer intentionally to see if CGWatcher restarts it and after the video drivers crash I can't send a report because the system freezes.

[MineRock]

Is there a definition of "efficiency" somewhere?  What is the formula for calculating this?

I ask because in my recent testing I've been able to increase my hash rate and my W/U but the efficiency % has gone down.

Thank you in advance....

Rock