Smartcoin Linux mining administration. [MULTI-MACHINE SUPPORT NOW IN!]

[jondecker76]

echo465:

This is almost always caused by:
- An invalid miner launch string
- An invalid AMD/ATI SDK path
- An invalid phoenix path

to narrow it down:
1) Look in ~/.smartcoin/smartcoin.log
Any information there?  What did it show as the launch string to launch the miners?
2)  Go to the control tab->4) Edit Settings
check the Phoenix installation location and the AMD/ATI SDK installation location
3) Go to the control tab->6) Configure Miners->Edit.  Edit the path and the launch string if needed.

[echo465]

- An invalid miner launch string
- An invalid AMD/ATI SDK path
- An invalid phoenix path

to narrow it down:
1) Look in ~/.smartcoin/smartcoin.log
Any information there?  What did it show as the launch string to launch the miners?
2)  Go to the control tab->4) Edit Settings
check the Phoenix installation location and the AMD/ATI SDK installation location
3) Go to the control tab->6) Configure Miners->Edit.  Edit the path and the launch string if needed.

Miner launch strings are the defaults (fresh install)
Checked and confirmed SDK and phoenix paths are correct

Most recent log:

Code:

ed@n3:~/.smartcoin$ more smartcoin.log
07/07/11 14:48:27       ******************* NEW SMARTCOIN SESSION STARTED *******************
07/07/11 14:48:27       Starting main smartcoin screen session...
07/07/11 14:48:27       Creating tab for each machine...
07/07/11 14:48:27               localhost
07/07/11 14:48:27       Starting status monitor for machine 1
07/07/11 14:49:23       Settings option selected
07/07/11 14:50:34       Settings option selected
07/07/11 14:51:06       Settings option selected
07/07/11 14:51:39       Configure Miners option selected

[jondecker76]

Update r356 now available.
- Fixes problem detecting a change in profiles in some circumstances

echo 465:
Thanks for the report, I found the problem. The fix is in, just do an update, and restart smartcoin.
The bug only affected some users running AutoProfile.  Sorry for the inconvenience!

[elrock]

I am getting an error when I run the Failover profile.  The error flashes quickly on the status screen and I can't read what it says.  I can't find it listed in smartcoin.log, either.  My other profiles are working normally.

[dishwara]

dishwara:
Do you have any other information regarding your problem?  When you did a full reinstall, did you delete the contents of ~/.smartcoin?

Yes i deleted all the contents.
used ur 1st post for uninstall & re install.
sudo rm -r <path/to/your/installation> for this to work, i searched for smartcoin in local folders & files & deleted that too.
After re install i created workers, but even after enough trying by selecting Automatic profile or any other profile, it says selected but if i do ctrl + a , i only see donation running.
So, i am running 6 instances of phoenix directly.
May be i try now with update(11)

[echo465]

No apparent difference on the screen.  What's being overwritten on the third line of the status screen?  (Host: localhoston found.)  And what is it looking for at the end of the screen that's missing in the /tmp directory?  And is it really only trying to launch one miner? (from the logfile)

Code:

smartcoin Management System r356 Thu Jul 7 16:38:45 EDT 2011
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Host: localhoston found.
GPU[0]: Temp: 38.50 load: 0%
GPU[1]: Temp: 40.00 load: 0%
GPU[2]: Temp: 39.00 load: 0%
GPU[3]: Temp: 34.50 load: 0%
CPU Load : 4.61%

Profile: Automatic
--------DeepBit--------
GPU[0]: <<<DOWN>>>
GPU[1]: <<<DOWN>>>
GPU[2]: <<<DOWN>>>
GPU[3]: <<<DOWN>>>
Total : [0 hash/sec] [0 Accepted] [0 Rejected]
--------Bitcoin.cz (slush)--------
GPU[0]: <<<DOWN>>>
GPU[1]: <<<DOWN>>>
GPU[2]: <<<DOWN>>>
GPU[3]: <<<DOWN>>>
Total : [0 hash/sec] [0 Accepted] [0 Rejected]
--------BTCGuild--------
GPU[0]: <<<DOWN>>>
GPU[1]: <<<DOWN>>>
GPU[2]: <<<DOWN>>>
GPU[3]: <<<DOWN>>>
Total : [0 MHash/sec] [0 Accepted] [0 Rejected]

Grand Total: [0 hash/sec] [0 Accepted] [0 Rejected] [0.00% Rejected]grep: /tmp/smartcoin-Miner.1: No such file or directory
grep: /tmp/smartcoin-Miner.2: No such file or directory
grep: /tmp/smartcoin-Miner.3: No such file or directory
grep: /tmp/smartcoin-Miner.4: No such file or directory
grep: /tmp/smartcoin-Miner.5: No such file or directory
grep: /tmp/smartcoin-Miner.6: No such file or directory
grep: /tmp/smartcoin-Miner.7: No such file or directory
grep: /tmp/smartcoin-Miner.8: No such file or directory
grep: /tmp/smartcoin-Miner.9: No such file or directory
grep: /tmp/smartcoin-Miner.10: No such file or directory
grep: /tmp/smartcoin-Miner.11: No such file or directory

Code:

ed@n3:~/.smartcoin$ cat smartcoin.log
07/07/11 16:33:35       ******************* NEW SMARTCOIN SESSION STARTED *******************
07/07/11 16:33:35       Starting main smartcoin screen session...
07/07/11 16:33:35       Creating tab for each machine...
07/07/11 16:33:35               localhost
07/07/11 16:33:35       Starting status monitor for machine 1
07/07/11 16:33:35       NEW PROFILE DETECTED!
07/07/11 16:33:35               Switching from profile:  to profile: -1
07/07/11 16:33:35       Killing Miners....
07/07/11 16:33:38       Starting miner Miner.1!
07/07/11 16:33:38       Launching miner with launch string: python /home/ed/phoenix-new/phoenix.py -v -u http://redacted@redacted:redacted@deepbit.net:8332/ device=0 worksize=128 vectors aggression=11 bfi_int fastloop=false -k phatk
07/07/11 16:33:40       Starting miner Miner.2!
07/07/11 16:33:40       Starting miner Miner.3!
07/07/11 16:33:40       Starting miner Miner.4!
07/07/11 16:33:40       Starting miner Miner.5!
07/07/11 16:33:40       Starting miner Miner.6!
07/07/11 16:33:40       Starting miner Miner.7!
07/07/11 16:33:40       Starting miner Miner.8!
07/07/11 16:33:40       Starting miner Miner.9!
07/07/11 16:33:40       Starting miner Miner.10!
07/07/11 16:33:40       Starting miner Miner.11!
07/07/11 16:33:40       Starting miner Miner.12!

[dishwara]

update gave problem as usual.
So did a uninstall & re install.
This time also donation(Auto donate) mines but without showing time.
selecting Automatic profile has no use.
Created a new profile & selecting that profile works.

[jondecker76]

Dishwara:

update gave problem as usual.

This isn't helpful at all - this is more of an insult than a bug report.  If you want to see the software get better, please take the time to at least explain what did not work, as I take the time to personally investigate good reports, and it takes up a great deal of my time.  Please remember, the software is in beta stages, and as such, problems are expected to arise. Smartcoin has continually improved, and before long with some good reports and feedback, we won't have to worry about such issues. (Remember, a bug in the software is not only an inconvenience for you, its an inconvenience for both of us, so I understand the frustration of it all)

So did a uninstall & re install.
This time also donation(Auto donate) mines but without showing time.

This is correct, if you read back a few posts you will see that I removed the time remaining display until I can investigate why it returns a bogus number. I don't want it to confuse users, or make them think that the donation will go on longer than was accpeted to.

selecting Automatic profile has no use.

I'm not sure what you mean by this.

Created a new profile & selecting that profile works.

What happens if you again select the AutoProfile once your manual profile is running?




echo465:

What's being overwritten on the third line of the status screen?  (Host: localhoston found.)  And what is it looking for at the end of the screen that's missing in the /tmp directory?

That error is related to the fact that the miner screen session was not successfully started. If the screen session didn't start, then the tmp/ files won't be created.  Though your initial problem was a bug in detecting when profiles changed, it is now back to the point where there is some configuration problem.

And is it really only trying to launch one miner? (from the logfile)

Yes, if the first launch fails, all subsequent launches fail, as there is no screen session to launch a new tab into.


Here are some other possible causes and suggestions:
1)  Can you manually launch phoenix with the launch command shown in the log?
2) Do you have a default miner specified?  The AutoProfile uses the miner flagged as default (If you edit the miner, one of the questions is whether or not to make the miner the default one)  Also, in Edit Settings, the phoenix path there needs to match the path of the default miner. Either of these can be the issue. It would make sense also, as you can specify which miner to use in a manual profile, but the automatic profile always uses the default miner.
3) Aside from that, you could post the result of the following commands here so I can get an idea of your database:

Code:

sqlite3 ~/.smartcoin/smartcoin.db "SELECT * FROM device;"
sqlite3 ~/.smartcoin/smartcoin.db "SELECT * FROM settings;"
sqlite3 ~/.smartcoin/smartcoin.db "SELECT * FROM miner;"

That should give me enough information to find the problem.

[jondecker76]

elrock:
It would be very helpful if you could try to get a peek at that error.
What revision are you running?
Does the failover profile not run at all, or is it just a harmless but annoying error?

[dishwara]

update gave problem as usual.

I update using inbuilt updater. But after update, all my miners are down only. Even after restart & reboot.
So, i go for uninstall & re install & it solves.

selecting Automatic profile has no use.

after starting smartcoin, i saw again donation mining. so i i selected profiles by using (5). There i see 3 profiles.
Donation, Automatic & failover.
I selected automatic & then ctrl + a, still donation is mining.
So i selected option 8 , created a profile & then selected that profile in 5.
That profile works correctly.
I didn't change again to automatic.
I already lost many hours of mining & cant loose some more.

Note to others.
It very hard to know whether mining is going or not by just looking.
Many times for me it happened, that system got frozen & still running for hours wasting electricity.
only way is to know system not froze is to look at the system clock & seeing the numbers change. But with digital clock its very small to look.
I found out cairo clock, it is analog clock big enough to show & also has seconds hand, so that you can be sure that system is not frozen.

[jondecker76]

Dishwara:
It is possible that you saw donation mining because the current time happened to be somewhere between the randomly generated start time and starttime+donation_minutes.  You can verify this by going to 4)Edit Settings, and check the settings for "Hashpower donation minutes per day", and "Time to start hashpower donation each day".  These can also be changed to your liking, but the start time is randomly generated at install time and my best guess was just by pure chance, the donation cycle just happened to be during the time you were first running it. (This would be normal)

In fact, I would appreciate it if you could post both of those settings here, just so I can double-check that there is no issue.
[edit]
I think its likely that your donation minutes per day is set to 3030 instead of 30...  On install, its already defaultly filled out to 30, so if you typed '30' again without backspacing over the 30 that was already there, then it probably got stored as '3030', which would pretty much cause it to be in autoDonate all the time.  Can you confirm this in your settings entries?


Also, ragarding miners that hang. I used to have the problem, but started overclocking just a few mhz less and my miner hasn't hiccupped in over a month.  I would try to make sure that you're not being too aggressive on the overclocking, as it is a very likely cause of the hangs

[elrock]

elrock:
It would be very helpful if you could try to get a peek at that error.
What revision are you running?
Does the failover profile not run at all, or is it just a harmless but annoying error?

Is there a way to freeze the status screen to read the error message?  Otherwise I have no idea if it's harmless or critical.  According to smartcoin my GPU is merrily hashing away and shares are being accepted, but with that error message I'm not entirely confident that it's working.

[jondecker76]

Is there a way to freeze the status screen to read the error message?  Otherwise I have no idea if it's harmless or critical.  According to smartcoin my GPU is merrily hashing away and shares are being accepted, but with that error message I'm not entirely confident that it's working.

If you time a ctrl+c just right, you can stop execution of the script and possibly see the error. (though, this will stop the script also, and you will either have to restart smartcoin again, or press 'o' to open it back up)

If the machine is local, you can use a desktop recording utility like gtkrecordmydesktop and play back in slow motion possibly.

What revision are you running?

Can you report back what you get if you run:

Code:

sqlite3 ~/.smartcoin/smartcoin.db ".schema profile"

I'm thinking that you don't have all of the schema updates....

[sojolly]

Jon;

Update from r323 to r350 went fine when i selected tf(thier's full) on the patch.  Others may not intuitively figure that out.

I also noticed a small issue.  When creating profiles, i created an extra erroneous one and deleted it, but on the select profile screen and the failover screen, the deleted profile is still in the list albeit blank.

My failover profile from 1=BTCGuild and 2=Deepbit is working flawlessly on 12 GPUs.

Thanks for all the hard work.  Going to have to find a third pool so i can have double redundancy in these perilous times.

Michael

[jondecker76]

sojolly:

Thanks for the feedback.

Update from r323 to r350 went fine when i selected tf(thier's full) on the patch.  Others may not intuitively figure that out.

Thats kind of strange, I haven't personally seen a conflict on an update yet.  Which file did it ask this on?  Was this using the built-in update system?

I also noticed a small issue.  When creating profiles, i created an extra erroneous one and deleted it, but on the select profile screen and the failover screen, the deleted profile is still in the list albeit blank.

Can you try to delete it again?  I think I know what happened..



Its hard to explain, but there are multiple scripts which all independently use the same database.  If multiple scripts try to change/read the database at the same time, one of them will fail with an error.  This hapens pretty rarely, but its purlely based on timing (I.e. is the status script reading from the database at the same time you're trying to write changes to it from the control script?).
Right now I'm working on a Locking system in which a lock will be placed on the database before accessing it, and removed when finished. All other calls will have to respect the lock until it is cleared, after which the next call gets its turn.  This will keep random errors like this from happening.  I'm hoping to have the lock system done tomorrow!

[elrock]

Can you report back what you get if you run:

Code:

sqlite3 ~/.smartcoin/smartcoin.db ".schema profile"

I'm thinking that you don't have all of the schema updates....

Funny, the error messages seem to have disappeared, but just in case they decide to reappear, here's the output that you asked for:

Code:

CREATE TABLE profile (pk_profile integer primary key autoincrement, fk_machine int, name varchar(30),
auto_allow bool, down bool NOT NULL DEFAULT(0), failover_order int NOT NULL DEFAULT(0));

Thanks for implementing the failover profile so quickly, btw.  Much appreciated!

[jondecker76]

Thanks for posting the output.

It looks like the schema update was only partially successful for you (only 2 out of 3 database alterations occurred). This is definitely related to the database locking I just talked about a few posts back.  To fix it without a reinstall:

Code:

sqlite3 ~/.smartcoin/smartcoin.db "ALTER TABLE profile ADD failover_count int NOT NULL DFAULT(0);"

(Failover won't work completely reliably without this being done. A restart shouldn't be required)


This is the downside of using sqlite3 instead of MySQL.  Though I'm sure these spurrious bugs will disappear after the locking mechanism is complete.  This also explains why for most users, everything works like it should, then for some unknown reason every now and then I get a bug report that makes me scratch my head.  Yep, this explains it all!

[Clipse]

mmm trying new version (since the first beta) and during installer it gets to detecting miners (doesnt detect any) then I cant progress further since it asks to select detected miner(nothing detected) and cant move pass this?

Any work around?

[jondecker76]

I found the problem and will be committing a fix soon.

For now, run

Code:

sudo updatedb

before running the installer. That should let the locate command find the phoenix.py file

[jondecker76]

Update r358 now available
- The database is now locked while in use, this should put an end to random spurious problems caused by multiple scripts trying to access the database at the same time.  This was probably the cause of many bug reports! NOTE: The procmail package must be installed on your machine or you will get a bunch of lockfile errors.   Please make sure to install procmail! [edit] - this should now be patched in with the update

- The installer was cleaned up a bit, and an option to automatically run 'ubdatedb' added.  Options were also added to run autodetection for devices, miners and the AMD/ATI SDK path.  This makes it easier to skip certain sections of the installer if you need to.