The official MacMiner thread [BTC/LTC-CPU/GPU/FPGA/ASIC]

[Anonymailer]

I've just downloaded and installed MacMiner beta 1.4.6 but I cannot find any release notes… what's changed?

Hey, thanks for trying the beta, I only post about beta versions here when they're released then when they become stable I add the changes to the release notes and update github. From above:

1.4.6 beta just out is moving towards not needing to be in the Applications folder, I may have missed one or two references in the app but I want to know whether it works properly for everyone.

It also updates bfgminer to the 3.1.3 version i posted before, and BFG Miner and FPGA/ASIC Miner windows now restart automatically if the miner stops unexpectedly. If everything is good the next version will also restart if you have over 100 and over 50% rejected shares. A notification will popup to let you know what happened and when. When that's done I'll release a new 10.6 version.

There are also some minor changes and bugfixes which are not specifically detailed here such as hopefully a fix to the problems some people were having with cpuminer.

[jedimstr]

...snip...
There are also some minor changes and bugfixes which are not specifically detailed here such as hopefully a fix to the problems some people were having with cpuminer.

Just an FYI, the 1.4.6 beta has the 2.3.1 version of CPUminer... Pooler's up to 2.3.2 now

Also, is there a way we can run the different miner windows off of different JSON config files?  Right now they all share the same BTC and LTC manual configs, and it makes it more difficult to use MacMiner's version of all the different miners at the same time (like when mining BTC & LTC split among ASIC/GPU, CPU).  For now, I'm still running a separate version of minerd just so I can specify my own config separate from BFGMiner/ASIC/FPGA settings.  And that goes for cgminer too when I tried to experiment with LTC mining on my GPU (wasn't pretty...no matter what settings I used I kept getting lower Hashrate than my CPUs...but thats a story for another thread ).

[jddebug]

I prefer to see all the information I can from my miner so I took to using the bfgminer stand alone out of the package without the macminer gui. It works great but I can not get the settings to stick, nor can I figure out where it looks for a config file on startup like it does on a pc or linux.

Any help would be appreciated. Always wanted to run bfgminer/cgminer on my macs.

[Anonymailer]

I prefer to see all the information I can from my miner so I took to using the bfgminer stand alone out of the package without the macminer gui. It works great but I can not get the settings to stick, nor can I figure out where it looks for a config file on startup like it does on a pc or linux.

Any help would be appreciated. Always wanted to run bfgminer/cgminer on my macs.

I think bfgminer looks for a file called bfgminer.conf in the same folder as the program so /Applications/MacMiner.app/Contents/Resources/bfgminer/bin/bfgminer.conf but failing that you can use a .sh file to launch or just keep your launch command pasted somewhere and include the path to your .conf file as such:

/Applications/MacMiner.app/Contents/Resources/bfgminer/bin/bfgminer -c ~/Desktop/myconfig.conf

then you can keep that file for all your preferred settings!

...snip...
There are also some minor changes and bugfixes which are not specifically detailed here such as hopefully a fix to the problems some people were having with cpuminer.

Just an FYI, the 1.4.6 beta has the 2.3.1 version of CPUminer... Pooler's up to 2.3.2 now

Also, is there a way we can run the different miner windows off of different JSON config files?  Right now they all share the same BTC and LTC manual configs, and it makes it more difficult to use MacMiner's version of all the different miners at the same time (like when mining BTC & LTC split among ASIC/GPU, CPU).  For now, I'm still running a separate version of minerd just so I can specify my own config separate from BFGMiner/ASIC/FPGA settings.  And that goes for cgminer too when I tried to experiment with LTC mining on my GPU (wasn't pretty...no matter what settings I used I kept getting lower Hashrate than my CPUs...but thats a story for another thread ).

For now the workaround is to launch one miner with one config file, change the config file then launch another, at the moment MacMiner just creates one conf for btc and one for ltc but i'll be changing that very soon!

The issue with ltc gpu mining on a mac i'm aware of, it's very hard to get a good speed and it really needs you to ramp up the intensity to 14+ and find the right settings for your setup. I CPU mine LTC and GPU mine BTC, or at least I did before summer hit hard!

[jedimstr]

Or... jddebug can just run the graphical version in MacMiner and use the API PHP page like I did here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=197110.msg2819154#msg2819154

You get more info and stats with the PHP window open in a browser than even the regular BFGMiner interface shows on the commandline.

[Anonymailer]

Yeah it's automatically on for FPGA/ASIC window or you can add --apiaccess 0/0 in bfgminer window either way just get the api-example.php in your web root so you can get it at localhost:4028

I'll be working on adding a window with this data in a future version!

I should let everyone know that I've upgraded the server for pool.fabulouspanda.co.uk:9332 and pool.fabulouspanda.co.uk:9327 but a couple of miners are still mining away on the old node at
http://94.23.215.27:9332/ so if you can't find your miner on the site check that one! I've got the bitcoin data directory running on a RAM disk now to lower the already low latency thank you everyone who's making use of it!

[spooderman]

Hi there! Some help would be greatly appreciated....

I have just received a 6.5gh jalapeno bfl miner

I am running a mac pro with mountain lion.

I have tried to use the fgpa/asic miner (latest version of mac miner) with every single pool and it doesn't work. I get something like 4Mh? Like it's using my cpu or something...

The only joy that I've had so far is using Bitminter's *shudder* javascript miner. So we know the jalapeno works, and is recognised by my computer.

I don't want to use bitminter, I want to use eligius, but I can't connect using macminer (to any pool).

Some advice would be awesome!

Thanks,

Spooder

[jedimstr]

Hi there! Some help would be greatly appreciated....

I have just received a 6.5gh jalapeno bfl miner

I am running a mac pro with mountain lion.

I have tried to use the fgpa/asic miner (latest version of mac miner) with every single pool and it doesn't work. I get something like 4Mh? Like it's using my cpu or something...

The only joy that I've had so far is using Bitminter's *shudder* javascript miner. So we know the jalapeno works, and is recognised by my computer.

I don't want to use bitminter, I want to use eligius, but I can't connect using macminer (to any pool).

Some advice would be awesome!

Thanks,

Spooder

Try adding -S all to the manual arguments line for the ASIC/FPGA Miner Settings.

[stellan0r]

Hi there! Some help would be greatly appreciated....

I have just received a 6.5gh jalapeno bfl miner

I am running a mac pro with mountain lion.

I have tried to use the fgpa/asic miner (latest version of mac miner) with every single pool and it doesn't work. I get something like 4Mh? Like it's using my cpu or something...

The only joy that I've had so far is using Bitminter's *shudder* javascript miner. So we know the jalapeno works, and is recognised by my computer.

I don't want to use bitminter, I want to use eligius, but I can't connect using macminer (to any pool).

Some advice would be awesome!

Thanks,

Spooder

Try adding -S all to the manual arguments line for the ASIC/FPGA Miner Settings.

When I did that with a USB Block Erupter the miner still wanted to address the CPU.
I had to address the USB Stick with the exact address, in this case it was "-S /dev/cu.SLAB_USBtoUART" - this had to be put in the "Miner Settings" in the bottom in "Manual flags" right under the Advanced Options. Your BFL most likely has another "name".

Maybe you are lucky and S -all does not address the CPU in your Mac

You can use BFG Miner btw!


Another thing, did you install the drivers? If so, go to your Terminal and type "ls /dev/cu.*" - the BFL should be listed now. Use that address in the flags box!

[jedimstr]

The MacMiner FPGA/ASICMiner window is actually BFGMiner with a few UI and settings differences.

-S all in my case didn't enable the CPU... just my GPU and my USB Block Erupters.  Not lucky enough to have my BFL's in hand yet

[Anonymailer]

If you're using 1.4.6 you can use -S all but on 1.3.17 you'll have to specify the devices individually. In Miner settings you can disable the GPU

If you haven't installed the drivers the cg miner window should detect the devices automatically

[spooderman]

Thanks very much guys. Ended up getting BFG to work which is more than I was ever able to do before.

Much love BTCers.

[jedimstr]

Can we get the new BFGMiner 3.1.4 compiled in?  It's got a quite a few bug fixes/optimizations/features including the new -S erupter:all arguments for the Block Erupters and an LED identification feature for each Erupter.

Looks like the generic Icarus chip settings --icarus-options 115200:1:1 --icarus-timing 3.0=100 are deprecated for the Block Erupters now.

See thread and some of the followup discussion regarding the Erupter changes: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=168174.msg2851341#msg2851341

[jedimstr]

So impatient guy that I am, I couldn't wait for BFGMiner 3.1.4 to be incorporated into a new beta of MacMiner, so I decided to roll my own with Homebrew.
Since I was already using a separate build of CPUMiner for LTC because of the separate Config file issues I've previously had, already setup the PHP status browser for BFGMiner, and the seeing feature creep from newer versions of both BFGMiner and CPUMiner that I needed, it just made sense to grab from the source (so to speak).

I'll keep on watching MacMiner though since I like what you've done so far with it and would love to see a lot of the newer stuff the individual miners support thrown in (especially in terms of stats display).

Thanks for all the fish

[vast568]

Hi Guys,

Help a noob out

I'm using BitMinter + a Jalapeno running on BFG Miner through MacMiner. I keep getting this error:
[2013-08-10 11:48:21] HTTP request failed: Failed connect to 176.31.208.222:9332; Connection refused
[2013-08-10 11:48:21] HTTP request failed: Failed connect to 176.31.208.222:9332; Connection refused
[2013-08-10 11:48:21] Stratum connect failed to pool 2: Failed connect to 176.31.208.222:9332; Connection refused

Everything else is working perfectly, this just seems to be slightly decreasing my hash rate. Does anyone know what could be causing this?

[Anonymailer]

Hi Guys,

Help a noob out

I'm using BitMinter + a Jalapeno running on BFG Miner through MacMiner. I keep getting this error:
[2013-08-10 11:48:21] HTTP request failed: Failed connect to 176.31.208.222:9332; Connection refused
[2013-08-10 11:48:21] HTTP request failed: Failed connect to 176.31.208.222:9332; Connection refused
[2013-08-10 11:48:21] Stratum connect failed to pool 2: Failed connect to 176.31.208.222:9332; Connection refused

Everything else is working perfectly, this just seems to be slightly decreasing my hash rate. Does anyone know what could be causing this?

Hey, sorry about that, it's a notice that one of the auto-configured backup pools are down, I need to change it in the next version! As long as at least two of the pools are working fine (it sets up three by default, if you enter your address for rewards) you shouldn't be losing any hash rate.

To change it for now you can go to miner settings and edit the config file manually - just replace 176.31.208.222:9332 with nogleg.com:9332 then restart the miner - let me know if that does change your hash rate though, and I'll check that out!

The next version will also have a few more summary views including full API output too

[vast568]

Hi Guys,

Help a noob out

I'm using BitMinter + a Jalapeno running on BFG Miner through MacMiner. I keep getting this error:
[2013-08-10 11:48:21] HTTP request failed: Failed connect to 176.31.208.222:9332; Connection refused
[2013-08-10 11:48:21] HTTP request failed: Failed connect to 176.31.208.222:9332; Connection refused
[2013-08-10 11:48:21] Stratum connect failed to pool 2: Failed connect to 176.31.208.222:9332; Connection refused

Everything else is working perfectly, this just seems to be slightly decreasing my hash rate. Does anyone know what could be causing this?

Hey, sorry about that, it's a notice that one of the auto-configured backup pools are down, I need to change it in the next version! As long as at least two of the pools are working fine (it sets up three by default, if you enter your address for rewards) you shouldn't be losing any hash rate.

To change it for now you can go to miner settings and edit the config file manually - just replace 176.31.208.222:9332 with nogleg.com:9332 then restart the miner - let me know if that does change your hash rate though, and I'll check that out!

The next version will also have a few more summary views including full API output too

Alright, awesome that fixed it. Accidentally edited the config inside the application rather than the one in the Application Support file - that was a nightmare for a while. Thanks for your help! Please don't apologize lol you've made an awesome ap. I think I was mistaken about the hash and I'm using BitMinter which takes your work from the last 10 sessions and since I didn't have 10 full sessions yet I was thinking I was under-hashing b/c I'm a noob

[XFox]

It appears that the BTC and LTC MacMiner's P2Pools are down.
Or, at least, the web stats pages don't show any value.

[Anonymailer]

It appears that the BTC and LTC MacMiner's P2Pools are down.
Or, at least, the web stats pages don't show any value.

The pool is still functioning but i'm encountering a 'too many connections' dilemma with the pool pages - the LTC node at least is still showing the graphs page properly but the more popular BTC node web page isn't loading at all anymore - I'll be troubleshooting that this evening and I may just replace with the simple web frontend till then!

[Anonymailer]

Apologies, it seems the BTC node was down for 2 hours, back up now but still encountering some troubles with the web front end. Please make sure that you have at least one working backup p2pool node setup if you're using my pool - which it should be if you entered the address for payouts - in which case all work counts towards the same total. I'll do a more thorough investigation this evening.

Very sorry about this everyone!