Mine Litecoin and Novacoin at the same time cgminer

[giantjoezilla]

This might be a stupid question, but I was just wondering if its possible to mine both coins at the same time.  I know that you can set multiple pools in cgminer, and both Litecoin and Novacoin use scrypt.  So I was wondering if I set 2 mining pools, one Litecoin and the other Novacoin, if I could mine both?

[Bakemono]

Multiple pools are for the case a pool fails(gets offline or something) your miner switches to the next pool.
It is not for mining at two pools at the same time.

[giantjoezilla]

from the cgminer readme

MULTIPOOL

FAILOVER STRATEGIES WITH MULTIPOOL:
A number of different strategies for dealing with multipool setups are
available. Each has their advantages and disadvantages so multiple strategies
are available by user choice, as per the following list:

FAILOVER:
The default strategy is failover. This means that if you input a number of
pools, it will try to use them as a priority list, moving away from the 1st
to the 2nd, 2nd to 3rd and so on. If any of the earlier pools recover, it will
move back to the higher priority ones.

ROUND ROBIN:
This strategy only moves from one pool to the next when the current one falls
idle and makes no attempt to move otherwise.

ROTATE:
This strategy moves at user-defined intervals from one active pool to the next,
skipping pools that are idle.

LOAD BALANCE:
This strategy sends work to all the pools to maintain optimum load. The most
efficient pools will tend to get a lot more shares. If any pool falls idle, the
rest will tend to take up the slack keeping the miner busy.

BALANCE:
This strategy monitors the amount of difficulty 1 shares solved for each pool
and uses it to try to end up doing the same amount of work for all pools.

So you can mine multiple pools. 

[Xanthe]

So you can mine multiple pools.  

The answer to your original question about mining Litecoin + Novacoin is no, unfortunately. While you can mine at multiple pools by balancing your submitted shares between them (assuming the pools are all for the same coin, i.e. Litecoin), you will not be mining at full speed at both of the pools as you're essentially splitting your hashing power between them. The ability to specify more than one pool in cgminer is primarily for failover situations (as Bakemono described) where your miner will automatically submit shares to a backup pool if your preferred pool goes offline for whatever reason. Mining two different coins simultaneously, as in your Litecoin + Novacoin example is what would be known as merged mining and is currently not possible for any of the scrypt-based coins (Litecoin, Novacoin, Feathercoin, Worldcoin, etc). Where merged mining is possible, i.e. Bitcoin + Namecoin, it's implemented on the pool side and does not require special configuration of cgminer.

[jomay]

from the cgminer readme

MULTIPOOL

FAILOVER STRATEGIES WITH MULTIPOOL:
A number of different strategies for dealing with multipool setups are
available. Each has their advantages and disadvantages so multiple strategies
are available by user choice, as per the following list:

FAILOVER:
The default strategy is failover. This means that if you input a number of
pools, it will try to use them as a priority list, moving away from the 1st
to the 2nd, 2nd to 3rd and so on. If any of the earlier pools recover, it will
move back to the higher priority ones.

ROUND ROBIN:
This strategy only moves from one pool to the next when the current one falls
idle and makes no attempt to move otherwise.

ROTATE:
This strategy moves at user-defined intervals from one active pool to the next,
skipping pools that are idle.

LOAD BALANCE:
This strategy sends work to all the pools to maintain optimum load. The most
efficient pools will tend to get a lot more shares. If any pool falls idle, the
rest will tend to take up the slack keeping the miner busy.

BALANCE:
This strategy monitors the amount of difficulty 1 shares solved for each pool
and uses it to try to end up doing the same amount of work for all pools.

So you can mine multiple pools. 

Is it really possible to mix pools for different coins?

I know that you can e.g. solo-mine in cgminer and leech the new block info from a pool. But that would assume that the pool config in cgminer refers to a single coin! Otherwise the new block info is bogus.

Does anyone know whether this is a problem and if so how to get around it?

[Xanthe]

Is it really possible to mix pools for different coins?

I know that you can e.g. solo-mine in cgminer and leech the new block info from a pool. But that would assume that the pool config in cgminer refers to a single coin! Otherwise the new block info is bogus.

Does anyone know whether this is a problem and if so how to get around it?

I think you're right. As you described, the behavior wherein cgminer uses stratum/longpoll notifications from backup pools would cause cgminer to erroneously think that blocks have changed over when they haven't. I don't see any way to disable this behavior and in the very start of the cgminer readme there is the message "Do not use on multiple block chains at the same time!" which seems to be an acknowledgement of such issues.

[giantjoezilla]

Cool, thanks!  I was just curious. 

Ever since I stopped mining bitcoin, I've missed getting those extra namecoins.