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

[sunny day]

I can't get smartcoin to run the miners. on the localhost page all the miners say idle and occasionally a bunch of "aticonfig: no supported adapters are found" messages scroll by. on the log page i try to manually run the phoenix command but it gives me a kernel not found error.

when i run aticonfig manually it works but only when i sudo it.
i normally use cgminer and that works with my cards just fine.
AMDOverdrive also detects the cards fine.
any ideas jondecker?

What linux distro are you running under? What install guide did you use?
You can run smartcoin as root, but that means you will also need to run the installer as root to set things up

I'm running linuxcoin final. i uninstalled the the one that came with it cuz it was outdated and then installed it from the svn. i used the instructions on the wiki.
yeah running as root gives me a bunch of not found errors.

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[Math Man]

I am uploading an update right now that will fix your problem - there was a bug in a couple places where the user and the port were switched. It is now fixed.

Also,  I noticed that you are trying to remotely manage a Linuxcoin machine. See this from the multi-machine release note:

- If a remote machine normally runs smartcoin as root (with sudo - Linuxcoin would be an example of this), then when setting up a remote machine from Configure Machines, you must use the username 'root'.  This also means that the remote machine must have a root password for this to work.  To set up a root password, on the remote machine (before setting up the machine entry on the control screen):
Code:

Code:

sudo su

passwd

then enter a password twice.  You can now set up the remote machine in Smartcoin using the 'root' user

Here is what I would do in your situation to get things right again:
1) Delete the remote linuxcoin machine from Configure Machines->Delete
2) Update smartcoin to latest
3) Exit smartcoin
4) On your linuxcoin machine, make sure you have a root password set (per above instructions)
5) Fire smartcoin back up and add the linuxcoin machine again, and make sure you use the 'root' user.

This should get things working correctly again!  Thanks for the report!

Thanks!  What you suggested worked for both of my remote machines. 

I sent you a donation.  This is a great piece of software.

[jondecker76]

I can't get smartcoin to run the miners. on the localhost page all the miners say idle and occasionally a bunch of "aticonfig: no supported adapters are found" messages scroll by. on the log page i try to manually run the phoenix command but it gives me a kernel not found error.

when i run aticonfig manually it works but only when i sudo it.
i normally use cgminer and that works with my cards just fine.
AMDOverdrive also detects the cards fine.
any ideas jondecker?

What linux distro are you running under? What install guide did you use?
You can run smartcoin as root, but that means you will also need to run the installer as root to set things up

I'm running linuxcoin final. i uninstalled the the one that came with it cuz it was outdated and then installed it from the svn. i used the instructions on the wiki.
yeah running as root gives me a bunch of not found errors.

Smartcoin has to run as root on top of Linuxcoin, as everything else is installed as root on linuxcoin.  You get not found errors because smartcoin has not yet been set up as root (Under linux, applications use hidden folders under the current user's path.  Since 'root' is a valid linux user, that means /root/.smartcoin must exist for it to run as root.  You can accomplish this by either
A) Re-running the installer as root (I.e. sudo smartcoin_install.sh)
or
B) copying the ~/.smartcoin directory from your user home to /root/.smartcoin

and of course, in this case after you have the hidden directory sorted, you'll want to run smartcoin as root (I.e. sudo smartcoin). 

Also,  if LinuxCoin ships with an out-of-date smartcoin,  you can just cd to the smartcoin directory (i think on LinuxCoin its /opt/miners/smartcoin), then run an 'svn update' before running the installer (as root of course).


I know its all a bit confusing, but this is the norm and compliant with Linux standards.

[jondecker76]

I am uploading an update right now that will fix your problem - there was a bug in a couple places where the user and the port were switched. It is now fixed.

Also,  I noticed that you are trying to remotely manage a Linuxcoin machine. See this from the multi-machine release note:

- If a remote machine normally runs smartcoin as root (with sudo - Linuxcoin would be an example of this), then when setting up a remote machine from Configure Machines, you must use the username 'root'.  This also means that the remote machine must have a root password for this to work.  To set up a root password, on the remote machine (before setting up the machine entry on the control screen):
Code:

Code:

sudo su

passwd

then enter a password twice.  You can now set up the remote machine in Smartcoin using the 'root' user

Here is what I would do in your situation to get things right again:
1) Delete the remote linuxcoin machine from Configure Machines->Delete
2) Update smartcoin to latest
3) Exit smartcoin
4) On your linuxcoin machine, make sure you have a root password set (per above instructions)
5) Fire smartcoin back up and add the linuxcoin machine again, and make sure you use the 'root' user.

This should get things working correctly again!  Thanks for the report!

Thanks!  What you suggested worked for both of my remote machines. 

I sent you a donation.  This is a great piece of software.

Glad to hear it worked well for you, and thanks for the donation!
Please post back if you find any further problems as multi-machine support is still very young and I want to make sure that it is stable and works as it should!

[norulezapply]

@sunny day: try running smartcoin as root (sudo smartcoin)

@jondecker: Well I overclock my cards separately using atitweak because it's a 5770 and 5830 so they have different clocks.
The status screen shows <<DOWN>> for both cards.
It's just happened again now and I can still see the temperatures so aticonfig must still be working.
When I look at the miner screen instances all I see is
"Exporting: /opt/AMD-APP-SDK-v2.4-lnx64/lib/x86_64
LAUNCH: python /opt/miners/phoenix//phoenix.py -v -u http://btcrig:btcrig@localhost:8337/ device=0 worksize=256 vectors aggression=10 bfi_int fastloop=false -k phatk"

Also another thing I noticed is if phoenix fails to connect it will just stop trying after a couple of attempts:
e.g. "Exporting: /opt/AMD-APP-SDK-v2.4-lnx64/lib/x86_64
LAUNCH: python /opt/miners/phoenix//phoenix.py -v -u http://btcrig:btcrig@localhost:8337/ device=0 worksize=256 vectors aggression=10 bfi_int fastloop=false -k phatk
[10/08/2011 22:45:12] Phoenix r111 starting...
[10/08/2011 22:45:22] Failed to connect, retrying...
[10/08/2011 22:45:32] Failed to connect, retrying..."

Even though the server is up and running as I'm mining it on my other PC. It's been sat like that for 25 minutes without attempting to reconnect again now and smartcoin doesn't attempt to restart them either.

If I restart them manually they connect fine.

What distro are you running smartcoin on?  When the miner instance screen shows blank, is it like that when it starts, or after its already been running and then hangs? (Does smartcoin ever work properly, if even just for a little bit?  If/when it is working, do the miner instance screens look normal?)

Regarding phoenix connection issues, there isn't much I can do about phoenix issues, though it appears to me that lockup detection should happen in this instance.  Also, i have gotten reports of r 111 and r112  of phoenix having these types of problems (I run phoenix r107 and never have issues like you are describing, perhaps you could verify?)

Linuxcoin 0.2-final.
I run it 16 hours a day and it only happens a couple of times a week.
It's always after a few hours or so.
When it works it looks normal.
I guess it's just locking up.
Do you recommend just setting the lockup script to restart the machine or set my clocks lower? Since it doesn't happen that often.
Ah, I'm using 1.5 but i'll try those, thanks.

[jondecker76]

@sunny day: try running smartcoin as root (sudo smartcoin)

@jondecker: Well I overclock my cards separately using atitweak because it's a 5770 and 5830 so they have different clocks.
The status screen shows <<DOWN>> for both cards.
It's just happened again now and I can still see the temperatures so aticonfig must still be working.
When I look at the miner screen instances all I see is
"Exporting: /opt/AMD-APP-SDK-v2.4-lnx64/lib/x86_64
LAUNCH: python /opt/miners/phoenix//phoenix.py -v -u http://btcrig:btcrig@localhost:8337/ device=0 worksize=256 vectors aggression=10 bfi_int fastloop=false -k phatk"

Also another thing I noticed is if phoenix fails to connect it will just stop trying after a couple of attempts:
e.g. "Exporting: /opt/AMD-APP-SDK-v2.4-lnx64/lib/x86_64
LAUNCH: python /opt/miners/phoenix//phoenix.py -v -u http://btcrig:btcrig@localhost:8337/ device=0 worksize=256 vectors aggression=10 bfi_int fastloop=false -k phatk
[10/08/2011 22:45:12] Phoenix r111 starting...
[10/08/2011 22:45:22] Failed to connect, retrying...
[10/08/2011 22:45:32] Failed to connect, retrying..."

Even though the server is up and running as I'm mining it on my other PC. It's been sat like that for 25 minutes without attempting to reconnect again now and smartcoin doesn't attempt to restart them either.

If I restart them manually they connect fine.

What distro are you running smartcoin on?  When the miner instance screen shows blank, is it like that when it starts, or after its already been running and then hangs? (Does smartcoin ever work properly, if even just for a little bit?  If/when it is working, do the miner instance screens look normal?)

Regarding phoenix connection issues, there isn't much I can do about phoenix issues, though it appears to me that lockup detection should happen in this instance.  Also, i have gotten reports of r 111 and r112  of phoenix having these types of problems (I run phoenix r107 and never have issues like you are describing, perhaps you could verify?)

Linuxcoin 0.2-final.
I run it 16 hours a day and it only happens a couple of times a week.
It's always after a few hours or so.
When it works it looks normal.
I guess it's just locking up.
Do you recommend just setting the lockup script to restart the machine or set my clocks lower? Since it doesn't happen that often.
Ah, I'm using 1.5 but i'll try those, thanks.

I would recommend both actually - lower your clocks a little bit (2-3 mhz or so) and setup a nice lockup.sh script which reboots the machine and notifies you.

A good example is my own machine.  I kept backing off my overclock by 1mhz until it was stable. Just the other day, for the first time in 0ver 40 days it finally detected a lockup and rebooted.  Thats not enough of a concern for me to reduce clocks more, as I consider that pretty stable - but the lockup.sh script rebooting is a good thing, as otherwise I would have suffered some downtime until I checked on it (I'm known to not check on mine for several days at a time).

[Math Man]

Glad to hear it worked well for you, and thanks for the donation!
Please post back if you find any further problems as multi-machine support is still very young and I want to make sure that it is stable and works as it should!

The remote miner status screen has been freezing on me frequently.  The remote miners keep running though.  Below is my log screen.

Code:

08/14/11 00:20:09       Creating persistent ssh connection to machine 6

08/14/11 00:20:09       DEBUG: sleep 0.2

08/14/11 00:20:15       Creating persistent ssh connection to machine 6

08/14/11 00:20:15       DEBUG: grep 'hash' '/tmp/smartcoin-Miner.12' 2> /dev/null | tail -n 1

Normally, I only see the "DEBUG: sleep 0.2" message.  Tonight was the first time I've seen the "DEBUG: grep 'hash' '/tmp/smartcoin-Miner.12' 2> /dev/null | tail -n 1" message.

I haven't paid close enough attention to see if it's only one of the remote miner's status screen freezing or both freezing.

Killing Smartcoin and restarting it doesn't solve the problem.  Sometimes killing Smartcoin and then killing the screen on the remote miners that was frozen solves the problem, but the status screen sometimes stays frozen even after killing both things.

Edit1: I forgot to mention that I'm using r657s.

Edit2: It's both status screen that freeze on me, not just one of them.

[jondecker76]

Glad to hear it worked well for you, and thanks for the donation!
Please post back if you find any further problems as multi-machine support is still very young and I want to make sure that it is stable and works as it should!

The remote miner status screen has been freezing on me frequently.  The remote miners keep running though.  Below is my log screen.

Code:

08/14/11 00:20:09       Creating persistent ssh connection to machine 6

08/14/11 00:20:09       DEBUG: sleep 0.2

08/14/11 00:20:15       Creating persistent ssh connection to machine 6

08/14/11 00:20:15       DEBUG: grep 'hash' '/tmp/smartcoin-Miner.12' 2> /dev/null | tail -n 1

Normally, I only see the "DEBUG: sleep 0.2" message.  Tonight was the first time I've seen the "DEBUG: grep 'hash' '/tmp/smartcoin-Miner.12' 2> /dev/null | tail -n 1" message.

I haven't paid close enough attention to see if it's only one of the remote miner's status screen freezing or both freezing.

Killing Smartcoin and restarting it doesn't solve the problem.  Sometimes killing Smartcoin and then killing the screen on the remote miners that was frozen solves the problem, but the status screen sometimes stays frozen even after killing both things.

Edit1: I forgot to mention that I'm using r657s.

Edit2: It's both status screen that freeze on me, not just one of them.

Sorry it took so long to get back to you - i'm in the middle of a remodeling project so the last couple of days have been extremely busy

If you're constantly getting the log message that is creating the persistent ssh connection, that means that the SSH connection is dropping out for some reason (it should only have to create the connection once, and perhaps periodically you may see it.  Can you still manually ssh into the remote machine when t his happens?  Are all machines all on the same LAN? Are all connections hard-wired, or is WIFI involved?
At this point, I'm suspecting some problem at the network level(a flaky ethernet card even?). In the tests that I did here, I had no problem keeping a persistent ssh connection for weeks at a time without issues.  The fact that your connection goes down, and attempts to recreate the connection unsuccessfully points to a network problem as well.

You can check /var/log/syslog and /var/log/messages on the remote machines to see if there are any sshd errors, that should help give as a clue. Try running:

Code:

grep -rin ssh /var/log/*

And see if we can find the problem.  You can even run the above line on the machine running smartcoin as well. Please report back what you find out!

[Crypt_Current]

I'm entering into the mining world with my modest 2x 5830 rig that I pieced together over the last couple months with the extremely limited resources available to me...

I have no extra hard drive, no one I know wants to donate one, and I have no money left to buy one.  So, I thought my only option would be Linuxcoin.  After seeing this thread, I am interested in all the features SMARTcoin provides.

A couple questions:  How much space do I need to install and run SMARTcoin?

and:  Can anyone provide a comparison features list of SMARTcoin versus Linuxcoin?

[hack6500]

I'm entering into the mining world with my modest 2x 5830 rig that I pieced together over the last couple months with the extremely limited resources available to me...

I have no extra hard drive, no one I know wants to donate one, and I have no money left to buy one.  So, I thought my only option would be Linuxcoin.  After seeing this thread, I am interested in all the features SMARTcoin provides.

A couple questions:  How much space do I need to install and run SMARTcoin?

and:  Can anyone provide a comparison features list of SMARTcoin versus Linuxcoin?

crypt: i would strongly discourage using any HD in a miner, the extra heat/pwr consumption is unnecessary. rather, get yourself a 4gb (2gb will suffice) USB flash disk, install linuxcoin onto that usin the unetbootin from the wiki/thread/site and install the distribution onto the flash. most modern bios allow booting to usb and if you want, you can configure 'persistent' booting, which basically means changes are saved onto the usb and used next boot.

a miner needs to be nimble and recoverable. using linuxcoin accomplishes this well allowing the user LOTS of room to play with whatever their particular path requires. ex: apt-get install <<WORLD-OF-AWESOME-STUFF-PREPACKAGED-AND-MOSTLY-FREE>> !!

to become a PROFITABLE miner, one needs to be nimble, recoverable and SMART! this is where smartcoin comes in, making smart choices of where to mine! this is preformed within the linuxcoin enviroment... there is a big distinction.

linuxcoin is a distribution of linux
smartcoin is a application running on linux

hope that helps!

[Crypt_Current]

thanks for that info hack6500!

I got a bit over zealous and hadn't read much of this thread at the point when i posted

I see now that Smartcoin is an application to use in a linux environment.  I'm glad to see at least one person has used it under Linuxcoin, because booting from usb will be my only option until I start getting more cash flow...

[jondecker76]

Yes, as stated, smartcoin runs very well under linuxcoin, but keep a few things in mind:
- Linuxcoin needs to run most everything as root
- This means that you will want to both run smartcoin_install.sh as root, and always start smartcoin as root.
- Smartcoin comes pre-installed in linuxcoin- though it may be a bit out of date. I'd recommend you cd to the smartcoin directory (I believe its /opt/miners/smartcoin) and run 'svn update' before running smartcoin_install.sh. This will make sure you start out at the latest revision.


Also, be sure to post if you have questions on how to use smartcoin.  Its a deceivingly complex piece of software if you're new to mining, mining/pool/worker concepts and common terminology used in mining.  If you're at all familiar with relational databases, the overall layout will make a lot of sense, if not, you may find it a little confusing at first.
In the end though, it will definitely make your life much much easier when it comes to administering your system!

[Crypt_Current]

Also, be sure to post if you have questions on how to use smartcoin.  Its a deceivingly complex piece of software if you're new to mining, mining/pool/worker concepts and common terminology used in mining.

I have always been a computer-literate person, and quick to learn.  That said, I have to admit I have never used Linux (aside from a friend's Ubuntu laptop a couple times) -- but I remember DOS quite well!  So a command-line interface is not unfamiliar territory.  I guess all these years I've been looking for a really good personal reason to start learning Linux... what better reason than Bitcoin mining?

Anyway, point is, jondecker:  Thank you for helping out.  You can bet I'll be posting questions like crazy!

If you're at all familiar with relational databases, the overall layout will make a lot of sense, if not, you may find it a little confusing at first.

Ha, this is interesting because I just recently began studying for a BS in IT again, and a couple classes I have this semester are "Intro to Databases using Access" and (ugh...) intro to Crystal Reports (I have no idea what I'm doing in that class)...

I'm stoked!

[jondecker76]

Also, be sure to post if you have questions on how to use smartcoin.  Its a deceivingly complex piece of software if you're new to mining, mining/pool/worker concepts and common terminology used in mining.

I have always been a computer-literate person, and quick to learn.  That said, I have to admit I have never used Linux (aside from a friend's Ubuntu laptop a couple times) -- but I remember DOS quite well!  So a command-line interface is not unfamiliar territory.  I guess all these years I've been looking for a really good personal reason to start learning Linux... what better reason than Bitcoin mining?

Anyway, point is, jondecker:  Thank you for helping out.  You can bet I'll be posting questions like crazy!

If you're at all familiar with relational databases, the overall layout will make a lot of sense, if not, you may find it a little confusing at first.

Ha, this is interesting because I just recently began studying for a BS in IT again, and a couple classes I have this semester are "Intro to Databases using Access" and (ugh...) intro to Crystal Reports (I have no idea what I'm doing in that class)...

I'm stoked!

Be sure to PM me when you get a linux system setup.  I enjoy educating/helping new linux users learn the ropes... I switched from Windows to Linux about 10 years ago and have never looked back.

[sharky112065]

Does it support cgminer or should I just use that instead of Smartcoin?

[gnar1ta$]

Is there a file I can edit to show fan speed and clocks with GPU temp and load on localhost screen?

[jondecker76]

Does it support cgminer or should I just use that instead of Smartcoin?

Yes, smartcoin does support using cgminer

[jondecker76]

Is there a file I can edit to show fan speed and clocks with GPU temp and load on localhost screen?

Not currently, but that's a pretty good idea. I'll add support for this soon

[dime]

So I have a handful of mining rigs running 4 cards each (sempron 140/5850's).

At the current moment, I have a heavily editted linuxcoin that I pxeboot and automatically starts mining with a cascade of screens that report back to the head node and I have a watch window over each miner, etc. The drawback of my approach is that it relies on 1. nfs for loading user/pass database or 2. hard packing it into squashfs. I can see how using smartcoin might be an easier approach assuming it worked the way it advertised. In testing, I've found several bugs/issues and I'd be grateful if you all can confirm whether these are things being worked on or acknowledged.

*) In my testing, latest phoenix, poclbm, and smartcoin was used and tested with ati 11.6 and 11.8 drivers.

1) When handling multiple machines, I constantly have the windows for remote machines not update after a while. This is not a connection problem. It's just smartcoin that does this.

2) I haven't done enough testing yet to see what causes the problem (and this is why I'm reaching out to see if others have similar issues), but CPU usage is inconsistent.

On my local machines (not dedicated mining rigs), I run a 4 window screen with phoenix instances with low aggression in each. They each use .3% cpu and the computers are usable.
When I set these machines up as remote machines from the dedicated smartcoin machine however, they run only 3 phoenix instances (exact same path, also with low aggression) and phoenix takes up 33% cpu.
With 2 pheonix instances, it uses up 50% each. Both of these cause my local machines to lag out the gui and make them unusable by the housemates.

On dedicated mining rigs, I have them running 4 phoenix instances (on 4 cards) and it eats up .7% cpu, so again, negligible.
When I set up smartcoin however, I ideally wanted them to each run 3 instances, so I set it up to run 12 phoenix instances. Each instance took up max % available cpu and 1 of the instances was always killed. When it was killed, it resulted in skewed numbers in the summary window because it did not show it was killed. For instance:
miner00: [133 mh/s] (not really running but still showing 133.3 mh/s)
miner01: [133 mh/s]
miner02: [133 mh/s]
miner03: [133 mh/s]
miner04: [200 mh/s]
miner05: [133 mh/s]
miner06: [133 mh/s]
miner07: [133 mh/s]
miner08: [200 mh/s]
miner09: [133 mh/s]
miner10: [133 mh/s]
miner11: [133 mh/s]

The total then showed 1733 mh/s instead of the correct 1600 mh/s because it couldn't tell what was going on. When I load up the miner screen, I can press o to reload that window and have it relaunch the miner. As soon as I do this, another window (usually 1 or 2 windows after that one) gets killed. It's not hung. It says Killed on the window so it's smartcoin killing the processes.

So:
a. Summary window needs work on updating. And also detecting when miners are killed (especially when smartcoin is the one doing it).
b. Why is the cpu being eaten up? Because it works properly when I launch it from my scripts, but when smartcoin launches it (with the exact same parameters), it eats up more cpu.
c. Does anyone have any experience running smartcoin with 4+ cards and 3+ workers? (12+ phoenix instances) on a single sempron?

Thanks for your time, it's pretty impressive work, but so far, my custom image that I whipped up over a weekend does a far better job with less bloat: 0.0? load averages as opposed to 1.5+ consistent. SmartCoin will be great if it gets to where it needs to be but it still needs a bit to get there.

[dime]

I was looking over a small part of the code, specifically the status window and I think there's lots of things that can be trimmed to make smartcoin be a bit faster.

A good example is this part:

Code:

    for device in $R
    do 
        deviceName=$(Field 1 "$device")
        deviceID=$(Field 2 "$device")
        deviceType=$(Field 3 "$device")
        if [[ "$deviceType" == "gpu" ]]; then
            Launch $G_MACHINE_INFO "sleep 0.2" # aticonfig seems to get upset sometimes if it is called very quickly in succession
                temperature=$(Launch $G_MACHINE_INFO "DISPLAY=:0 aticonfig --adapter=$deviceID --odgt | awk '/Temperature/ { print \$5 }';")
            Launch $G_MACHINE_INFO "sleep 0.2" # aticonfig seems to get upset sometimes if it is called very quickly in succession
                usage=$(Launch $G_MACHINE_INFO "DISPLAY=:0 aticonfig --adapter=$deviceID --odgc | awk '/GPU\ load/ { print \$4 }';")
            status=$status"$deviceName: Temp: $temperature load: $usage\n"
        fi
    done

could easily be done without 2*(# of adapters) aticonfig calls.

Code:

aticonfig --adapter=all --odgc > /tmp/odgc
aticonfig --adapter=all --odgt > /tmp/odgt
awk '
    $1 ~ /Adapter/ {
        adapter=$2
        for (i=0;i<5;i++) {getline}
        print substr($NF,1,match($NF,/%/)-1) > "/tmp/odgc."adapter
    }
' /tmp/odgc

awk '
    $1 ~ /Adapter/ {
        adapter=$2
        getline
        print substr($(NF-1),1,match($(NF-1),/\./)-1) > "/tmp/odgt."adapter
    }
' /tmp/odgt

This could easily spit out core and temps to the files which can be read much quicker (less load on ati drivers or querying gpus).