[1500 TH] p2pool: Decentralized, DoS-resistant, Hop-Proof pool

[bitpop]

You do realize localhost wouldn't use a port forward..

[maqifrnswa]

I need some clarification on how the P2pool Difficulty operates with Litecoin.  I have a P2pool node setup, with my miners connected to it.  I've been mining the node for 1 month now, yet the difficulty/shares/payout still is a bit fuzzy.  I've appended my username with the /+ flags, and tried several difficulty levels.  I've seen examples of usrname/2000+16 or usrname/2+2.  I've made the assumption that the /2000 would be for bitcoin mining and the /2 would be for litecoin.  Can someone explain the difference between the /2000 & /2 and how it relates to Litecoin mining.

I understand the the /2000 is for the pool/share difficulty, and the +2 is for the miner difficulty.

Example Stats:
P2pool version:  11.3
Cgminer version: 3.1.0
P2pool share difficulty: 1.15 (according to the web/static detail)
P2pool share difficulty: 0.232827 (according to P2pool program feed)
P2pool requested difficulty: Difficulty 3.000  (my username/3+3)
P2pool Shares: 8 total (1 orphaned, 0 dead) Efficiency: 113.7%
Cgminer difficulty: 15.3K (according to cgminer)
Cgminer difficulty: 31.6M (according to cgminer)

I've received "accepted" shares in cgminer of 250k/15,300 with a difficulty of username/2+2; however, p2pool does not recognize or "accept" a high share like that.  I've also let the miners run for upwards of 48-72 hours and have odd payouts.  What's the voodoo magic behind p2pool & the difficulty settings?

The difference between /2000 and /2 = bitcoin's algorithm is ~1000x "faster" at finding hashes than LTC's algorithm. Thus the difficulty must be ~1000 lower for the same amount of work.

Also, the /2+2 you are using means your p2pool server and stats are going to have a sparse sampling rate. I'd suggest something like /2+.002 (or .0002) otherwise your p2pool node will show extremely high variance statistics (unless you don't mind it and know your setup is ok).

Something else is suspicious with your setup, since you have so many different difficulties:

Could you post the line from the p2pool program feed that looks like:
New work for worker! Difficulty: 0.000200 Share difficulty: 0.994552 Total block value: 50.210500 LTC including 10 transactions

It should pretty much match the web interface:
Pool rate: 504MH/s (18% DOA+orphan) Share difficulty: 0.993

Notice both share difficulties are the same (+/- the delay it took me to hit refresh)

what version of p2pool are you using? recently they changed the way LTC share difficulty is reported to match what other pools are doing. What are the odd payouts you are getting? Your efficiency is > 100%, so it looks like something is working.

[sdczen]

Could you post the line from the p2pool program feed that looks like:
New work for worker! Difficulty: 0.000200 Share difficulty: 0.994552 Total block value: 50.210500 LTC including 10 transactions

It's still the same as mentioned above:  "New work for worker! Difficulty: 0.232827 Share difficulty: 5.000000 Total block value: 53.123000 LTC including 45 transactions"  This is using: Usrnme/5+5

P2pool version is: 11.3 (I tried 11.4, that seemed to decrease my share rate further)  Cgminer version: 3.1.0.

I'm receiving payouts.  The odd behavior is receiving consistent share/payout per block of .45 LTC for 12+ hours, then it drops to .10 for another 12 + hours.  This happens when the p2pool node has been operating fine, along with all the miners connected.  Smooth & even hashrates.  The overall pool hashrate has a mean score of 580MH/s.  I would anticipate a much lower payout if the pool hashrate jumped to 1,200MH/s, but it stays within 100-150+- MH/s variance of the mean score.  My efficiency is normally between 110%-120%.

Thank you for the reply. 

[Smoovious]

Could you post the line from the p2pool program feed that looks like:
New work for worker! Difficulty: 0.000200 Share difficulty: 0.994552 Total block value: 50.210500 LTC including 10 transactions

It's still the same as mentioned above:  "New work for worker! Difficulty: 0.232827 Share difficulty: 5.000000 Total block value: 53.123000 LTC including 45 transactions"  This is using: Usrnme/5+5

P2pool version is: 11.3 (I tried 11.4, that seemed to decrease my share rate further)  Cgminer version: 3.1.0.

I'm receiving payouts.  The odd behavior is receiving consistent share/payout per block of .45 LTC for 12+ hours, then it drops to .10 for another 12 + hours.  This happens when the p2pool node has been operating fine, along with all the miners connected.  Smooth & even hashrates.  The overall pool hashrate has a mean score of 580MH/s.  I would anticipate a much lower payout if the pool hashrate jumped to 1,200MH/s, but it stays within 100-150+- MH/s variance of the mean score.  My efficiency is normally between 110%-120%.

Thank you for the reply. 

He wants you to paste that requested line, without using any /#+# switches, so the dynamic difficulty values are shown.

Also, +5 is way too high, as shown by the "Difficulty: 0.232827"... that value being used is the upper max p2pool will use based on the current dynamic share diff.

Using +0.0001 would be a better choice than using +5 ... maybe +0.0005 if you have a lot of hashpower behind it.

Your share diff for scrypt is too high too. Even setting it to /1 is probably too high for scrypt.

-- Smoov

[maqifrnswa]

Could you post the line from the p2pool program feed that looks like:
New work for worker! Difficulty: 0.000200 Share difficulty: 0.994552 Total block value: 50.210500 LTC including 10 transactions

It's still the same as mentioned above:  "New work for worker! Difficulty: 0.232827 Share difficulty: 5.000000 Total block value: 53.123000 LTC including 45 transactions"  This is using: Usrnme/5+5

P2pool version is: 11.3 (I tried 11.4, that seemed to decrease my share rate further)  Cgminer version: 3.1.0.

I'm receiving payouts.  The odd behavior is receiving consistent share/payout per block of .45 LTC for 12+ hours, then it drops to .10 for another 12 + hours.  This happens when the p2pool node has been operating fine, along with all the miners connected.  Smooth & even hashrates.  The overall pool hashrate has a mean score of 580MH/s.  I would anticipate a much lower payout if the pool hashrate jumped to 1,200MH/s, but it stays within 100-150+- MH/s variance of the mean score.  My efficiency is normally between 110%-120%.

Thank you for the reply. 

Thanks - I think this shows what's wrong:

1) your +5 difficulty is way to high so p2pool has already reduced it down to .232 (otherwise it would get no statistics)
2) the /5 difficulty is causing 200% higher variance than is typical. The payouts change so much because you are only submitting a rare high difficulty share instead of frequent low difficulty shares. p2pool is not a PPS payout system, but a PPLNS. When you find a share, you will get paid out every time p2pool finds a block for some period of time. If you find shares infrequently, there will be much variance. With a /5 difficulty, you'll find shares infrequently.

Both of those settings won't affect your expected or average payout, just change the variance and frequency of payouts.

i'd try one of these two:
1) don't use /difficulty+difficulty at all and let p2pool tune it for you (especially good if you're a small miner)
2) If you're a bigger miner and want to tune your difficulty, perhaps trying /2+.0002 as a starting point and tune as you see fit. If you're payout variance is too high, get rid of the /2. If you're statistics reporting to p2pool is too much (crashing the server) then increase +.0002 to something higher (or lower if you want more accurate statistics)

[Xenotron]

Can't connect to p2pool. Can't find any peers...

Edit: now I can, but I have tried everything last night and was unable to connect to any peer. Restarted everything I could.

[Searinox]

My getwork latency has been fine for close to a month now. Suddenly a day ago it spiked up from 0.1 to 1 second and my payout was obviously impacted. I restarted p2pool but to no avail. Pinging my router and google also shows I have low latency. Why then has p2pool lag jumped all of a sudden?

EDIT: Okay this was apparently bitcoin-qt's fault. I restarted it and all is well.

[tiktoc]

Can't connect to p2pool. Can't find any peers...

Edit: now I can, but I have tried everything last night and was unable to connect to any peer. Restarted everything I could.

Have you port forwarded the ports that are needed if the machine is behind a router or firewall?

[Searinox]

If I specify an address to mine to instead of a local bitcoin server, can I run p2pool on a machine without having bitcoin installed at all?

[bitpop]

no

If I specify an address to mine to instead of a local bitcoin server, can I run p2pool on a machine without having bitcoin installed at all?

[twmz]

If I specify an address to mine to instead of a local bitcoin server, can I run p2pool on a machine without having bitcoin installed at all?

P2Pool must have a bitcoin instance it can talk to in order to do the actual work of creating blocks / mining.  It doesn't have to be local on the machine, but it needs to be "close" (not over the Internet) in order to get good efficiency.

That said, that bitcoin instance doesn't have to be the one that has your wallet in it.  You can use a bitcoin instance with an empty wallet just fine and specify your payment address (which can live in any bitcoin wallet you want) on the command line.

[centove]

If I specify an address to mine to instead of a local bitcoin server, can I run p2pool on a machine without having bitcoin installed at all?

If you want to run a p2pool node, then you will need p2pool and bitcoin installed on that machine. If you just want to mine in the p2pool pool, pick a public node, using the address you want to be paid at as the username, and whatever you want for a password  in your mining software and you will be mining away...

[PatMan]

Upgraded to p2pool 11.4 and my latency trebled! Also, memory usage graph still does not work on windoze.

Downgraded back to 11.3 and all is good again. Suggest everyone running 11.4 check their latency values......

Sooooo, anyone fancy re-writing p2pool in C yet? Please??

[Schleicher]

Also, memory usage graph still does not work on windoze.

Memory graph only works if there is the WMI thing installed:
http://timgolden.me.uk/python/wmi/index.html
Then it looks like this:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/34410241/p2pool-leak.jpg

[PatMan]

Also, memory usage graph still does not work on windoze.

Memory graph only works if there is the WMI thing installed:
http://timgolden.me.uk/python/wmi/index.html
Then it looks like this:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/34410241/p2pool-leak.jpg

Yeah, saw that.

I prefer having normal latency times than being able to see how much memory I'm wasting.......

[mdude77]

Sooooo, anyone fancy re-writing p2pool in C yet? Please??

I'm contemplating trying it.

M

[furball]

Upgraded to p2pool 11.4 and my latency trebled! Also, memory usage graph still does not work on windoze.

Downgraded back to 11.3 and all is good again. Suggest everyone running 11.4 check their latency values......

Sooooo, anyone fancy re-writing p2pool in C yet? Please??

Thanks for the heads up! Note to self...stay on 11.3!

[PatMan]

Sooooo, anyone fancy re-writing p2pool in C yet? Please??

I'm contemplating trying it.

M

Do it my man. It looks like it's the only way anything will be fixed - I'd do it myself if I had any notion how to......

[wtogami]

Also, memory usage graph still does not work on windoze.

Memory graph only works if there is the WMI thing installed:
http://timgolden.me.uk/python/wmi/index.html
Then it looks like this:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/34410241/p2pool-leak.jpg

Yeah, saw that.

I prefer having normal latency times than being able to see how much memory I'm wasting.......

What measure of latency do you claim becomes worse in 11.4?  It seems fine here.

[PatMan]

A mean average of 0.1 went up to a mean average of over 0.3.....