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

[MissouriMiner]

If ever the S5 reboots, you'll have to do this process again, since the new cgminer is in volatile memory.

That might be a deal breaker for me.  I appreciate your response, but I don't think this is a reasonable approach for a larger farm.  I will do some testing on my more stable units though thanks to your guide.  I do wish bitmain would open source their firmware so that an easier and more permanent solution could be implemented.

Is that something new with the S5?  I have S3s and replacing the binary is certainly not in volatile memory.  I've heard that changes you make to the init.d scripts might get lost on reboot.

In any case, couldn't you just write a simple script to execute on boot that does these steps?  Or would any script you write also get lost on the reboot?  There's got to be some place that's not lost on a reboot...

From what I can tell, only /config is non-volatile.   I have a "management" Linux host I use to run scripts in /config post reboot, simply by SSH'ing to the S5's.

[MissouriMiner]

My guess is you had this TX in your node unconfirmed TX pool:

https://blockchain.info/tx/860e4e6bc2b846f00a1660dcb49d84a00dcd7b87ba23100e836dfb682249a807

Over 85 BTC in miner fees, AntPool got the block, it was not an intentional fee...

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/33u2id/help_losing_over_85_btc_because_of_bitgos_flawed/

Yep.  Bummer.  Was exciting for a moment.

[Geremia]

Is that something new with the S5?  I have S3s and replacing the binary is certainly not in volatile memory.  I've heard that changes you make to the init.d scripts might get lost on reboot.

Yes, I know at least the init screpts are lost, but perhaps you're right and the binary is not in volatile memory. I personally haven't tested it to be sure.

[Geremia]

Setting the queue to 0 means the miner doesn't have a whole bunch of stale work to complete when p2pool tells it to start fresh.  You are not speeding up p2pool, you are having your miner work on relevant data in a timely fashion.  By default, the Ants set the queue to some absurdly high numbers.

Yes, 8192 by default

The release of cgminer by ck sets it to 1 by default.

I'm not sure why your hash rate would drop by 90%, but the queue setting is not the cause.

I think it had to do with my machine not giving runp2pool.py enough priority at that time. I also had lots of incoming connections, too, which might've slowed things down. I don't think it was the miner's issue.

[MissouriMiner]

Setting the queue to 0 means the miner doesn't have a whole bunch of stale work to complete when p2pool tells it to start fresh.  You are not speeding up p2pool, you are having your miner work on relevant data in a timely fashion.  By default, the Ants set the queue to some absurdly high numbers.

Yes, 8192 by default

The release of cgminer by ck sets it to 1 by default.

I'm not sure why your hash rate would drop by 90%, but the queue setting is not the cause.

I think it had to do with my machine not giving runp2pool.py enough priority at that time. I also had lots of incoming connections, too, which might've slowed things down. I don't think it was the miner's issue.

This may be related, but if not I still want to pass along this info.

2 days ago there was one or more misbehaving p2pool nodes, causing major havoc on my node for about an hour when I finally blocked the IP's at my firewall.  My hashrate was dropping at times and I was seeing a lot of LOST CONTACT WITH BITCOIND, because my p2pool/python process was maxing the CPU with nonstop processing of transaction errors.  I also had to stop the relaynetworkclient connection because it was passing along the same transactions.

I am not sure which node, or nodes, was causing the problem.  All 4 IP's below were banned by p2pool 3 times within a few hours.  I eventually blocked the IP's at firewall, which fixed the issue.
2015-04-23 16:13:02.749344 Bad peer banned: ('61.161.171.210', 51265)
2015-04-23 16:59:10.000062 Bad peer banned: ('221.213.100.225', 58179)
2015-04-23 17:01:05.902169 Bad peer banned: ('117.9.135.126', 29857)
2015-04-23 17:02:25.937494 Bad peer banned: ('116.53.251.126', 58333)

My hashrate dropped because the issue.

[Geremia]

2 days ago there was one or more misbehaving p2pool nodes, causing major havoc on my node for about an hour when I finally blocked the IP's at my firewall.  My hashrate was dropping at times and I was seeing a lot of LOST CONTACT WITH BITCOIND, because my p2pool/python process was maxing the CPU with nonstop processing of transaction errors.  I also had to stop the relaynetworkclient connection because it was passing along the same transactions.

I am not sure which node, or nodes, was causing the problem.  All 4 IP's below were banned by p2pool 3 times within a few hours.  I eventually blocked the IP's at firewall, which fixed the issue.
2015-04-23 16:13:02.749344 Bad peer banned: ('61.161.171.210', 51265)
2015-04-23 16:59:10.000062 Bad peer banned: ('221.213.100.225', 58179)
2015-04-23 17:01:05.902169 Bad peer banned: ('117.9.135.126', 29857)
2015-04-23 17:02:25.937494 Bad peer banned: ('116.53.251.126', 58333)

My hashrate dropped because the issue.

Yes, I think this is what I experienced, too. I'll block those IPs, too. thank you

my "bad peers" are:

117.9.135.126 ← This one was the worst, pestering node
211.72.66.229
125.227.225.237

These IPs are from China and Taiwan.

All yours are from China.

(You can lookup their locations here.)


I'm not sure why it says my own local and WAN addresses are banned, too, though.

[Meuh6879]

my "bad peers" are:

117.9.135.126 ← This one was the worst, pestering node
211.72.66.229
125.227.225.237

1)
116.255.241.111 - 116.255.241.111 , 000 , SMSHoax FakeAV Fraud Trojan
117.011.101.172 - 117.011.101.172 , 000 , Detected AP2P on China Unicom

not relevant.


2)
211.072.061.136 - 211.072.061.143 , 000 , Armed Forces Taichung General Hospital
211.072.066.128 - 211.072.066.255 , 000 , Reuters Limited Taiwan Brauch
211.072.083.172 - 211.072.083.175 , 000 , Creative Images Computer Graphic Co., Ltd

Got it.



3)
125.221.046.000 - 125.221.046.255 , 000 , Xunlei Offline
125.232.071.231 - 125.232.071.231 , 000 , datingnearby.com

not relevant.

[Geremia]

not relevant

What do you mean "not revelant"? That it's not really a bad node?

[Meuh6879]

you don't have many on P2Pool to carry 4Th/s ... by default.
how many connexion have you assigned to bitcoin core server and P2Pool node process ?
that can be the 100% CPU ... (check max connexion limit, too)

[-ck]

I don't see why the version wouldn't stick after a restart, but we'll see...

The filesystem you see when S5s are running is in ram only, it is not on the flash storage in the device. It needs to be embedded in the firmware for it to be on the flash storage. One day maybe there will be actual firmware you can use in the regular fashion if we can get coordinated with bitmain. Bitmain USA is more receptive to involving us than their main China group.

[anamichii]

i wait my bitcoin 0.10 sync the network.
i already download the torrent..
i already import that bootstrap.dat, and now going bootstrap.dat
but still 19 week waiting..
i reindexing the block.. still same..
i connect to peer that have high connection, still same..
more than 48hrs, still same..

what i must do?
i using windows 7 to running that bitcoin core.

[Meuh6879]

and when you open the task manager ? 

[jonnybravo0311]

Block!  Too bad we didn't get that one with the 85BTC in transaction fees.  I would have felt bad if we had, though.  The poor guy who sent that never meant to send those coins as transaction fees, but the script he used screwed him.  At least since it was included in a block by AntPool, maybe he might get lucky and be reimbursed.  Good luck that happening here, where the transaction fees would have been distributed to every p2pool miner.

[luthermarcus]

I finally got a node up and running. How do you change the difficulty of your miner? Are there any interfaces i should look into that allow me more control? I saw some people charging for there public nodes. Once you have one set up how would you charge a fee? It would be worth it if the fees helped me pay for extra bradband.

[tomsanders]

Hey guys

Still struggling to get the node to work on my Linux box, when I leave the installation to download the blockchain I come back a few hours later run the command "bitcoin-cli getblockcount" and find out the server has turned itself off then when looking in "top" its not even in there. I then have to restart the bitcoin server for it to work again?

Any ideas why its doing this?

Thanks

[Geremia]

I then have to restart the bitcoin server for it to work again?

Yes, if bitcoin-qt or bitcoind unexpectedly quit, you need to restart it. P2Pool needs its running.

Any ideas why its doing this?

I had that problem once or twice. It's probably a bug in bitcoin-qt / bitcoind.

[jonnybravo0311]

I finally got a node up and running. How do you change the difficulty of your miner? Are there any interfaces i should look into that allow me more control? I saw some people charging for there public nodes. Once you have one set up how would you charge a fee? It would be worth it if the fees helped me pay for extra bradband.

To change the difficulty of your miner, you use the "/" and "+" arguments after your BTC address.  For example, if you're mining with an S3, you might want to change the difficulty to 500.  In the config screen, you set your worker like this:

1DeVLDoGvkbbB5n3dPvbpDbwiKGjYckCy9+500/500

The +500 sets your pseudo-share difficulty.  The /500 sets you up to use the p2pool minimum share difficulty.  There has been plenty of discussion on the usage of "+" and "/" in this thread.  The short of it is that the "+" makes the graphs look nice.  The "/" will tell p2pool what difficulty share to accept from you to add to the share chain.  If you set "/" less than the current p2pool network share difficulty, it automatically uses the network share difficulty.  If you set it higher than the network difficulty, it uses what you set.

You can add a fee to your node by passing the --fee parameter on startup of your node.  For example:

Code:

./run_p2pool.py --give-author 0.5 --fee 0.5

That will donate 0.5% to the author and will collect 0.5% fee for you.

[roy7]

That will donate 0.5% to the author and will collect 0.5% fee for you.

An important thing to remember is that the way it works is a % of shares founds, not a % of the bitcoin paid by those shares. So each share has a 1% chance of going towards the fee+donation. 99% of the shares are paid totally to you. If you run a public node with 1% in fee+donation, you might not see anything happening at first.

My hope is that one day if there's ever another major p2pool version released with mandatory upgrade, that forrest adds support for the donation (and fee?) to appear right with the share data in the blockchain. Thus if you are 1% donation, and a block is found, 1% of that share's pay goes to forrest and 99% to the share's owner. This smooths it out so you don't randomly lose a share (which you might only be finding once a day as small miner), and provides less variance to miners, pool operators, and forrest himself.

[jonnybravo0311]

That will donate 0.5% to the author and will collect 0.5% fee for you.

An important thing to remember is that the way it works is a % of shares founds, not a % of the bitcoin paid by those shares. So each share has a 1% chance of going towards the fee+donation. 99% of the shares are paid totally to you. If you run a public node with 1% in fee+donation, you might not see anything happening at first.

My hope is that one day if there's ever another major p2pool version released with mandatory upgrade, that forrest adds support for the donation (and fee?) to appear right with the share data in the blockchain. Thus if you are 1% donation, and a block is found, 1% of that share's pay goes to forrest and 99% to the share's owner. This smooths it out so you don't randomly lose a share (which you might only be finding once a day as small miner), and provides less variance to miners, pool operators, and forrest himself.

Great point roy7, and it's worth repeating.  When you charge a fee and/or donate to the author, the percentage you set is translated into a percentage chance that your found share will in fact be credited to the author's BTC address or your node's BTC address.

Imagine you're only finding a share a day, and the share you found was the one the node used for a fee/donation.

[luthermarcus]

I then have to restart the bitcoin server for it to work again?

Yes, if bitcoin-qt or bitcoind unexpectedly quit, you need to restart it. P2Pool needs its running.

Any ideas why its doing this?

I had that problem once or twice. It's probably a bug in bitcoin-qt / bitcoind.

Try downloading the newest bitcoin qt 10.0.1 if you havent yet