Starting pool (possible investment/reward opp.)

[Anonymailer]

I've been making MacMiner for only around 2 months now, and a user recently suggested I set up a pool and auto configuration for it. Having had over 6000 software downloads now, it's too good an idea to pass up, so I'm looking to implement a pool that will auto configure the miner with a BTC address either as a primary or backup pool - with the option not to use the pool at all.

Problems:

Tech requirements - I'm guessing running this on a dedicated ADSL2+ line/spare small server isn't going to satisfy bandwidth/processing requirements not to mention the lack of backup

Software - I want to support stratum and GBT and I'm thinking of using eloipool but I'm not sure whether that's possible without a frontend

Whether I can set up as a 'sub-pool' - for instance have eloipool taking and returning work from eligius.st and taking a 1% cut, until the pool hash rate is high enough to run on it's own

Payout methods (must be no risk to operator), and starting without investing (giving away) BTC before the pool finds it's first block.

Should support BTC and LTC

If anyone can help me with these issues I will reward depending on the return of the pool once set up, and I would consider an offer from an existing pool or someone who can get one set up for me if we can agree on terms but I would most like to retain control of the pool if it's possible without too much investment.

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[KALRONG]

Tech requirements - I'm guessing running this on a dedicated ADSL2+ line/spare small server isn't going to satisfy bandwidth/processing requirements not to mention the lack of backup

That depend of how much traffic do you spect, the OS, you router, and a lot of variable. The usual problem more than the bandwidth is the router being able to support the amount of connections, so I will recommend some investment in a cisco router for example.

The bandwidth you are looking for is more on the uplink than in the download speed, I have 10 mbps of uplink at home and with two webservers, p2pool, DC++ server, and all the crap my family runs with p2p I never had latency problems, again is also a matter of how you configure the connection.

What do you mean with a smal server? I have a Core2Quad at 2.4 Ghz with 8Gb RAM DDR2 800mhz running two virtual servers and mine and play on it, again without latencies.

Backup shouldn't be a problem, you can set a RAID 1 on the server with two disk of around 250 GB for bitcoind and another RAID 1 with a couple of 2TB disks for the database, at the cost of the hard drives today that means around 400 dolars (going high). Then you can have an NFS to run a backup daily of the whole DB or a differential one daily and a whole one weekly so its faster.

Software - I want to support stratum and GBT and I'm thinking of using eloipool but I'm not sure whether that's possible without a frontend

Here you need to diference, one is the software for the pool and another the frontend.

The pool simply gives you a way to manage the miners that connect to your server, the frontend gives you and GUI to manage other aspects like payments, hashrates, etc, etc. They are usually php websites with some cronjobs to be run on the server to do hashrate calculations, block finds, ...

Whether I can set up as a 'sub-pool' - for instance have eloipool taking and returning work from eligius.st and taking a 1% cut, until the pool hash rate is high enough to run on it's own

This could be interesting, as far as I know the pool connects to your bitcoind to get the work, dont seem very likely that it will allow you to set a subpool, but, as I say, Im not really sure about this one.

Payout methods (must be no risk to operator), and starting without investing (giving away) BTC before the pool finds it's first block.

I would recommend PPLNS or Score as slush pool. Last one will encourage people to continue minning till a block is found.

Should support BTC and LTC

Again shouldn't be a problem. As I explained before you have two components the pool app and the frontend. The pool app is not a big deal, you can have two instances running in two pools with bitcoind and litecoind running at the same time, just be carefull that you dont have the same ports for both of them.

Then you have the frontend that would need to be created to support both currencies, usually the frontends you find around are for BTC or LTC, you can always edit them or create your own.

Im having some network stability problems from a few weeks to now that is being investigated by my ISP (after hitting with the router half a dozen technics asking me if restarted it hehe), but if you want I can set a virtual server on my computer for you to do the test with a little bit more of bandwidth ( I have two 100/10mbps connections, still working in the load balancing).

Hope I was of any help, if you need something else from me feel free to give me a shout

[Anonymailer]

I had p2pool running xubuntu on a 2 year old mac mini but at the end of the day my connection was letting me down and I figured I'd host it somewhere with a good reputation rather than get in to ironing out the wrinkles in my setup at home. I have a great connection I don't want to use for this kind of thing and a crappy connection with a static IP which I don't mind using for incoming connections but it's not reliable enough to run a pool through and in terms of backup I was also including connection problems there and I don't really want to route things through my primary connection using dynamic dns even just as a backup.

It's up now though, at

pool.fabulouspanda.co.uk:9332
username a BTC address
password can be anything

with the extended p2pool frontend at the same address I'm going to make a few modifications to.

Right now my only problem is increasing latency between p2pool and bitcoind 8.0.1 but I'm not sure whether that's a hardware issue or a software one… luckily it doesn't seem to be affecting mining.

it was mentioned by luke-jr that setting up a sub pool of eligius was a 'beta' possibility but i've never seen how that would be setup so I went with p2pool in the end. A new pool really needs to be able to connect to some existing network if it's going to be usable!

Thanks for offering all that help! Sounds like you have a pretty awesome setup there. Luckily the only testing I need to do now is with the latency between bitcoind and p2pool and the resource usage of running litecoind alongside that which I can test with the old mac mini.

[KALRONG]

I had p2pool running xubuntu on a 2 year old mac mini but at the end of the day my connection was letting me down and I figured I'd host it somewhere with a good reputation rather than get in to ironing out the wrinkles in my setup at home. I have a great connection I don't want to use for this kind of thing and a crappy connection with a static IP which I don't mind using for incoming connections but it's not reliable enough to run a pool through and in terms of backup I was also including connection problems there and I don't really want to route things through my primary connection using dynamic dns even just as a backup.

It's up now though, at

pool.fabulouspanda.co.uk:9332
username a BTC address
password can be anything

with the extended p2pool frontend at the same address I'm going to make a few modifications to.

Right now my only problem is increasing latency between p2pool and bitcoind 8.0.1 but I'm not sure whether that's a hardware issue or a software one… luckily it doesn't seem to be affecting mining.

it was mentioned by luke-jr that setting up a sub pool of eligius was a 'beta' possibility but i've never seen how that would be setup so I went with p2pool in the end. A new pool really needs to be able to connect to some existing network if it's going to be usable!

Thanks for offering all that help! Sounds like you have a pretty awesome setup there. Luckily the only testing I need to do now is with the latency between bitcoind and p2pool and the resource usage of running litecoind alongside that which I can test with the old mac mini.

I also tested that frontend for the p2pool but it was eating my RAM if I left it open on the browser so I went back to the old and just did some modifications so it looked pretier hehe, as it doesnt do any kind of managment you dont really need something very pretty as longs as the stats are readable enough. One thing Im trying to setup is an option to search your own BTC address so you dont need to go throught the whole list.

For the server storage I know there is a hosting in France that for around 15 euros per month you will quite a good server with 1 tb of hard drive and 5 tb of traffic, then you can update it for more traffice, power, etc ....

About the latency between the p2pool and the bitcoind thats probably a hardware resources problem, bitcoind uses quite a lot of RAM (at least the one Im running in windows 24/7 uses around 500-700 mb) and some disk. I would recommend you to run a light version of Debian (my basic installation of debian only uses 60mb of RAM) to get the best of your hardware. Remenber that using litecoind and bitcoind will take a lot of resources by thenselves. If in the end you go for a normal pool you will also need to get in count the database cpu/RAM usage.

I also switched to p2pool as to get a stand-alone pool you need quite some gigahashes to actually get something. Even p2pool get only one or two or even none blocks per day with 1Ths.

[Anonymailer]

I also tested that frontend for the p2pool but it was eating my RAM if I left it open on the browser so I went back to the old and just did some modifications so it looked pretier hehe, as it doesnt do any kind of managment you dont really need something very pretty as longs as the stats are readable enough. One thing Im trying to setup is an option to search your own BTC address so you dont need to go throught the whole list.

I was thinking the same thing, that's the only shortcoming… I think the extended frontend only eats your RAM if you set it to auto-refresh, but I've not looked in to it, is that what you found?

For the server storage I know there is a hosting in France that for around 15 euros per month you will quite a good server with 1 tb of hard drive and 5 tb of traffic, then you can update it for more traffice, power, etc ....

About the latency between the p2pool and the bitcoind thats probably a hardware resources problem, bitcoind uses quite a lot of RAM (at least the one Im running in windows 24/7 uses around 500-700 mb) and some disk. I would recommend you to run a light version of Debian (my basic installation of debian only uses 60mb of RAM) to get the best of your hardware. Remenber that using litecoind and bitcoind will take a lot of resources by thenselves. If in the end you go for a normal pool you will also need to get in count the database cpu/RAM usage.

I also switched to p2pool as to get a stand-alone pool you need quite some gigahashes to actually get something. Even p2pool get only one or two or even none blocks per day with 1Ths.

Do you know what that host is? And do they use SSDs? If it's a hardware problem it's not the RAM as I'm only using 60% of it, do you know whether the communication between bitcoind/p2pool needs to be written to disk? Because right now if it's not a software problem I think the only thing it could be is an IO disk read/write capacity problem… it's very strange, it seems to add 4s latency all at once every 12 hours. I added a well known node but it hasn't had any effect. I was kinda hoping I could figure some patch for bitcoind to work around that or that 8.0.2 would fix the problem…

[KALRONG]

Im asking a friend who has a server in that hosting as I dont remenber the name right now, hope they still have this low prices.

I think that you are right and the problem is when you set the website in autorefresh, I didn't have time to check the php code so Im not really sure but probably the memory liberation needs to be optimized.

The latency problem is very strange and more when you have everything in the same computer, my guess is the same as you, a problem with the HD, I dont think that the two apps actually share any written files as both works in network level to communicate. Actually as I ran this apps from different HD's (my server has 6) probably thats where you have the problem. What this does your machine have? at least 7200rpm sata2?

[KALRONG]

Looks like they have a .co.uk website:

http://www.ovh.co.uk/dedicated_servers/kimsufi.xml

not very powerfull but the network specifications are very good.

[Anonymailer]

Looks like they have a .co.uk website:

http://www.ovh.co.uk/dedicated_servers/kimsufi.xml

not very powerfull but the network specifications are very good.

Thanks, that actually looks like a much better option, I have a linode 2GB set up which shares resources with I think 16 other accounts and it's on some kind of RAID they upgraded to for better speed. For the same price I can get a dedicated server with 4 times the RAM, 10 times the storage on two dedicated HD in RAID1 and a higher bandwidth allowance? I should have done better research.

I was thinking of trying https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing as for the $40 i'm paying I could get twice the RAM and SSD but it's not clear whether that SSD is shared or raided and the chat room was no help. And the idea of a dedicated server is too good so I think I'll give ovh a shot. I am spending way too much cash on this ^.^

[KALRONG]

hehe I didnt know either about ovh but one day speaking about hostings in a lan party one of my friends spoke about this one and I should say that the prices are the best I have ever seen.

[Anonymailer]

Agreed, I don't know how all the respected names manage to charge so much in light of this! I have to thank you! It's set up already and I'm about to start downloading the block chain
I just hope I keep managing to get enough donations and paid feature requests from MacMiner that I can almost cover all this. I always get too enthusiastic about new projects! I guess I'll just have to make sure it's good enough that people like it!

Don't suppose you've looked in to whether there are any interesting forks of the extended p2pool frontend? I'm kinda tempted to fork it if not, will look in to it, I think a lot of people are thinking the same things we were about the few really necessary improvements for a public p2pool node.

[Anonymailer]

Oh and I just remembered I did offer rewards for helping me out and you've done that! I'll send you a little something and if it ever takes off, a something more!

[KALRONG]

Just received it, thanks!!! hehe

As far as I know there are no forks, the p2pools I have tested so far have the simple frontend a little bit modified and thats all. I think with a little bit of time the frontend can be improved, first of all the memory problem should be a priority, then I would suggest some kind of stats or even a login so the people can see the stats of their minner, one of the problems of a p2pool node is that they dont give away hashrates or any kind of information, i have been surfing the logs of p2pool for a while and I dont think it will be difficult to have a couple of scripts ready to get some information.

Im not really and expert in php so I can't be of much help over there but if you need it I can work with you on the scripts, programming is one of my hobbies so I quite do it for fun hehe

Also, once the pool is ready I will recommend some promotion and actually to think about something different to offer so people choose your pool over the other ones, remenber that right now p2pool is not the best option for people with low hashrates like me (still saving bitcoins to try to get my hands in an asic hehe) one idea could be to have a small percent of the overall winning of the pool per week put on a wallet and once a week or after reaching an specific amount do a lottery or something like that, between the people who used the pool, it could be appealing and shouldn't be difficult to set up.

[Anonymailer]

Just received it, thanks!!! hehe

You deserve it, I always wanted a dedicated server but they were just too expensive. Now with 8GB RAM I'm pretty sure I can run litecoind alonside bitcoind

As far as I know there are no forks, the p2pools I have tested so far have the simple frontend a little bit modified and thats all. I think with a little bit of time the frontend can be improved, first of all the memory problem should be a priority, then I would suggest some kind of stats or even a login so the people can see the stats of their minner, one of the problems of a p2pool node is that they dont give away hashrates or any kind of information, i have been surfing the logs of p2pool for a while and I dont think it will be difficult to have a couple of scripts ready to get some information.

Im not really and expert in php so I can't be of much help over there but if you need it I can work with you on the scripts, programming is one of my hobbies so I quite do it for fun hehe

Well that does it, I have to fork it now. I'll post a thread and link the fork/let you know when I get around to it. Right now I'm updating MacMiner, cursing VMWare for being problematic to force me to actually restart my computer if I want to get it working stably, and setting up the new server, but once I hit a few milestones i'll start the clone. I do have a decent knowledge of php but I'm not expert.

Also, once the pool is ready I will recommend some promotion and actually to think about something different to offer so people choose your pool over the other ones, remenber that right now p2pool is not the best option for people with low hashrates like me (still saving bitcoins to try to get my hands in an asic hehe) one idea could be to have a small percent of the overall winning of the pool per week put on a wallet and once a week or after reaching an specific amount do a lottery or something like that, between the people who used the pool, it could be appealing and shouldn't be difficult to set up.

That's an excellent idea and it would be really easy to do… I just need to stop mining to the default address I had read that p2pool was handing out low difficulty shares to workers and got optimistic but I'm not sure exactly how it works out for small miners, there's someone with a really old mac getting 1/2MH on the pool and it shows about 1 block solved an hour, but doesn't yet indicate what kind of payout they'll get from that. (I am checking up that people are receiving their payouts properly, this one is new so I need to wait for a block to be solved - hopefully it'll be what 1/2MH should get but I haven't looked in to the payout method thoroughly)

I shall guarantee you a prize equal to the first prize given out in the lottery (which hopefully will only be about a week from now, if the next update of MacMiner gets more people using the pool)

[KALRONG]

Lets give you a little crash course in p2pool hehe

1. Once you connect to the node you start receiving shares on your miner (on the logs appear as something like 'got work for miner'). This ones are only for the hash rate calculation.
2. After a while mining this shares p2pool will show your current hashrate and a time. This time is how long you need to wait for an actual profitable share.
3. You get your share. In the logs appear as 'GOT SHARE'. You mine it, and if is not a duple or invalid the it counts.
4. This shares last for around 24h this means that for each block found on that time each share has a reward, if no blocks are found the share is wasted.
5. If you have valid shares and a block is found you will receive a payment in your wallet saying that they are new bitcoins and you will need for the block to be confirmed to get the bitcoins ready to use.

Thats basically how p2pool works. The problem here is that even if you connect to a p2pool node depending on your hashrate you will get the same amount of bitcoins as if you where running it yourself. Thats why the idea of having some kind of extra reward could attract more people. The good things is with more people comes more power if p2pool gets more hashrate the we get more blocks and all of us win hehe.

BTW with 250 mhs i only usually get 4 shares per day, with 1 mhs I dont think they have a block per hour hehe my gues is thats a share to test speed more than anything else.

An idea I just got, Im not sure if you support multiple pools in your GUI, but what you can do is get an option for failovers that if there is no other pool active in case of attack or whatever then they will start mining on this pool, as you dont actually need to access the website to get paid people will still get something.

[Anonymailer]

Thanks! You can check what I'm talking about on the graphs page:
http://pool.fabulouspanda.co.uk:9332/static/graphs.html?Day
the worker 1JctyjhxJibGe94pA88MdvjfKeyK7K6gnk shows 5 accepts since starting to mine around 3pm - are they rewarded for those, but only if the node has valid shares? I didn't think the shares shown on the front end were what the income was based on - I figured it was those shown accepted in the miner?
 I have about 1GH pointed at is so it does have shares and a very good efficiency rating - 119.4% right now - do you know what the efficiency rating is? Is it to do with the DOA shares as I have 1/4 or 1/5 the network average.

Also, if more people join p2pool doesn't that mean the difficulty rises for everyone using it? I'm sure I read that p2pool (as of maybe a month ago) hands out lower difficulty work to low speed workers, for me on one 155MH machine it shows lots of difficulty 1/1 and some going up to diff. 56/1 just like any other pool.

I think the main incentives for people to start using the pool in considerable quantity are being the first option for auto-configuring a pool in MacMiner and supporting development with the 0.5% fee, as well as perhaps a more reliable p2pool node than would be set up at home, or being mac users wanting a neat and clean native gui miner not wanting to have to install a node. Not to mention that it basically requires at least a spare old, but still decent spec'd spare computer to run it on. And I like that it only needs a BTC address to work. Can make auto setup easy for people who just heard about bitcoin and want to see how mining works.

Having said that I still intend to retain the full functionality of the miners it includes, but in an Apple-esque way

[KALRONG]

The graph you point me are just for the shares to calculate the speed I told you before, the shares that are gonna get paid are the ones that appear in the front page, thats are the ones the payment is based on.

And you are right the efficiency rating does to have to the DOA but im not really sure how it is calculated.

Again remenber that you cant trust the shares on the miner as most are for hashrate calculation only the 56/1 get payed.

I agree with you on the incentivement, at least for MAC users hehe and of course with a node you dont have to install bitcoind get the blockchain and p2pool running I also like the idea of just needing the address to mine and the you just need to wait for the payments as you dont even need to go to the website to get paid.

Another note hehe I used the old web version because is quite easy to check on the mobile with just 2G im thinking in working on an android app (sorry but im not gonna pay 200 dolars for a license for iphone lol) that allows you to get the information of your p2pool. And if we get those scripts for the stats it will also be a good way to keep your miners monitored.

Actually i created a bat file for the members of my clan so they can just put their address in a file and connect to the p2pool so they can try mining if they wanted hehe so we have a similar idea

[Anonymailer]

I'm having a hard time getting my head around people only being paid for finding one of the shares on the front page - unfortunately i can't get the info I'd like as it doesn't attribute them to a particular miner - are you sure it doesn't calculate the power each miner has put in and divide the reward for the share based on the work it's done regardless whether it finds those particular shares? I'll have to check with the really slow miner after the next block is found but this address:
http://blockexplorer.com/address/135238oMBom8V7XHDx8sGmuZTqR1c7rG65

mined for just a little bit a couple of times and was paid out twice, but with the time and hash rate it was mining I would have thought it unlikely it found two of them…

Yeah I'm a weird one I really appreciate the 'just work instinctively by some unknown background magic' aspect of using a Mac, very low maintenance in every respect, but then I also navigate by the keyboard and I'm always interested in new things I can do with code. I don't know what Windows development tools are like (I hear good things) but I absolutely love Xcode, it teaches you to code while you're doing it with auto suggestions for the code you might be looking for and reference one click away for whatever the cursor is resting on.

On the other hand (and I bet it runs way better on any other system), but I loathed the eclipse dev environment and the android SDK… it's been since before honeycomb since I looked in to it but it is horribly slow and ugly next to Xcode on a Mac.
With that in mind, if you pick this project up off the ground you can take the lead on the android version and I'll port it to iOS for you! Already licensed and i'm a lucky B with contract work that provided me both an iPhone and a Galaxy Nexus for free

the old web version must be a lot faster on 2G but i'll bet it could be made a lot more readable without doubling the load size with some creative css… a mobile version (auto redirecting) should probably go on the list for the extended p2pool front end fork…

Does your bat file install a miner for your clan and set it up? I guess Windows users have had native clients a lot longer than Mac users, so you've got more creative uses of the clients… Now I'm wondering whether I should write Applescript to download and unstuff the app and write the default account details for when it opens or whether that's overkill given auto config in app… it's probably a good way to get people using your pool though

[KALRONG]

Im almost positively that is what I said, just coz I tested in a lan party with a guy with three 7890 on crossfire just for fun and he got shares and payed and I didnt hehe but lets wait just to be sure.



Im the complete oposite to you, give me a console with vi or nano and I will work my magic hehehe well I dont usually create gui's im more of a terminal addict (like all linux fans hehe).

If you have an spare nexus remenber me hehe Im bored of my ARC S hehehe

I agree about the mobile version with a redirect, it also could be quite easy to implement.

the bat file actually only reads the file with the address and if doesnt exist uses mine, the it lunches a miner with some generic (and a little refined by me hehe) settings. Mostly is for the people who dont exactly know what they are doing an easy way to begin.

And about the auto-config, if you set a default account put a big red message saying that they will give all the bitcoins to you hehehehe

[Anonymailer]

Im almost positively that is what I said, just coz I tested in a lan party with a guy with three 7890 on crossfire just for fun and he got shares and payed and I didnt hehe but lets wait just to be sure.

How long ago was that though? I haven't read up as much as I should but I think payout changed somehow about a month ago to benefit smaller miners. source some other thread i've forgotten :/

Im the complete oposite to you, give me a console with vi or nano and I will work my magic hehehe well I dont usually create gui's im more of a terminal addict (like all linux fans hehe).

If you have an spare nexus remenber me hehe Im bored of my ARC S hehehe

I agree about the mobile version with a redirect, it also could be quite easy to implement.

but surely you'd agree vi is what you want for editing conf files while gedit et al. would be what you want for say writing a novel? I navigate around the Finder (GUI) faster than the terminal cos you just start typing the name of the file you're looking for in a Finder window then cmd-downarrow to open it. What I'm really a fan of is the most efficient method. In other words, I'm incredibly inpatient

I gotta keep that Nexus, I use it for people I don't want to speak to and the iPhone for people i do! Still got an old G1 I wish I could convince myself to use for the keyboard but I can stand the slothfulness of it…

the bat file actually only reads the file with the address and if doesnt exist uses mine, the it lunches a miner with some generic (and a little refined by me hehe) settings. Mostly is for the people who dont exactly know what they are doing an easy way to begin.

And about the auto-config, if you set a default account put a big red message saying that they will give all the bitcoins to you hehehehe

Haha, that sounds like a little secret something 'refined by you' that would prevent a project from being open source But hey if it helps people start off…

I'd thought about the 'mine on my behalf' option, but I think I'll make it a little more subtle. Something like a bit in the preferences where you can set how much of each day to mine on my behalf or launch the process and decide for yourself when to stop it. I really just want the app to be the undisputed best mac miner app and become properly open source (in that other people fork and continue to develop it)

[KALRONG]

Just a couple of weeks ago but I will investigate what you comment, just to be on the safe side hehe

Well that depends hehe you always have the almightty TAB to autocomplete for you, and i found faster to work using only terminals with the keyboard, I dont even use the mouse when Im working just for the web browser

I was kidding about the nexus hahaha but as we say in Spain "if it works, it works"

That was just a joke hehe you can open the file and see all the parameters, nothing something who has spent a couple of hours tunning out cgminer wouldnt know

The typical option of donating a % for the developer is the best idea in this cases with an option to disable it, I like you idea of doing the best mac miner keep it up!