[50 BTC total bounty] for Groupcoin development and help

[caston]

Hi everybody
I find this project quite interesting!

Moreover, all went fine:
I downloaded devcoin-qt-*, installed dependencies, compiled with qmake and make, and the qt client was ok and started downloading blocks immediately
I just downloaded devcoin-* too for bitcoind, I compiled it and it works ok
My miners can't connect to bitcoind though

You might not have any connections yet. I could give you my IP but I am going to bed soon and have to shutdown my mining rig.

I have two questions:
Is there a block explorer?

Not that I know of as yet but Abe could easily handle it.

http://abe.john-edwin-tobey.org/

https://github.com/jtobey/bitcoin-abe

What help is needed?

We need more people to mine for one.

[1713281420]

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[jackjack]

I checked that, I have 1 connections, it was even 2 when I posted my first message

I'll take a look at Abe, and I'll mine a bit if I can

[caston]

I checked that, I have 1 connections, it was even 2 when I posted my first message

I'll take a look at Abe, and I'll mine a bit if I can

It is definitely worth while mining.

What error message are you getting when you try to mine?

[jackjack]

Nothing for about 1 minute, then "failed to connect", with Phoenix
I even see the connection in netstat

[markm]

devcoin-qt has mining disabled deliberately because the file-getting code to get the receiver files, or maybe the file-reading code to read them, doesn't seem to play well with qt's threads. devcoind though only uses boost's threads, which seem to work okay so mining should work with devcoind.

You do have to catch up with the initial blocks though I think before mining will actually start.

-MarkM-

[Unthinkingbit]

Hi Unthinkingbit,

Devcoin needs a community forum and knowledge portal. As a suggestion we could use simple machines with a mediawiki bridge.

Good idea to have a forum and portal, vague bounties to that end are mentioned in:
https://github.com/Unthinkingbit/charity/wiki/Devcoin-Bounty

The forum bounties start two rounds of bounties from now.  As we get closer to those bounties they'll be more discussion about what kind of wiki, upload site, forums and portals would be useful for all open source developers.


By the way, thanks for updating receiver_1.csv, that was the last update for your site.

[jackjack]

I finally got Abe working
Currently it is hosted by a friend of mine: http://devcoinblockexplorer.tk/
I know, it's slow as hell

Still can't mine btw

[caston]

Hi Unthinkingbit,

Devcoin needs a community forum and knowledge portal. As a suggestion we could use simple machines with a mediawiki bridge.

Good idea to have a forum and portal, vague bounties to that end are mentioned in:
https://github.com/Unthinkingbit/charity/wiki/Devcoin-Bounty

The forum bounties start two rounds of bounties from now.  As we get closer to those bounties they'll be more discussion about what kind of wiki, upload site, forums and portals would be useful for all open source developers.


By the way, thanks for updating receiver_1.csv, that was the last update for your site.

You're welcome. BTW i'm very excited about the metal and micro fab bounties. Although this isn't my area the Perth rep rap hacker lab may be interested in this.

I will likely update my sig soon to reflect the ability to earn Devcoins through work on Rejuvepedia. In the mean time I would like to convert some of my bitcoins to devcoins. Is there anyone willing to trade?

[markm]

I will likely update my sig soon to reflect the ability to earn Devcoins through work on Rejuvepedia. In the mean time I would like to convert some of my bitcoins to devcoins. Is there anyone willing to trade?

Depends on the quantity and the price you're willing to pay.

(I certainly don't plan to throw devcoin away at some insanely low rate like "200,000 per bitcoin"!)

-MarkM- (Hmm, bitcoin 50 per block, devcoin 50000 per block. 50:50000 = ? )

P.S. Oh waitasec, isn't bitcoin crashing right now and devcoin rallying?

[caston]

I will likely update my sig soon to reflect the ability to earn Devcoins through work on Rejuvepedia. In the mean time I would like to convert some of my bitcoins to devcoins. Is there anyone willing to trade?

Depends on the quantity and the price you're willing to pay.

(I certainly don't plan to throw devcoin away at some insanely low rate like "200,000 per bitcoin"!)

-MarkM- (Hmm, bitcoin 50 per block, devcoin 50000 per block. 50:50000 = ? )

P.S. Oh waitasec, isn't bitcoin crashing right now and devcoin rallying?

I intend to buy more bitcoins to trade for devcoins but I won't be able to do that for at least another 3-4 days. In the mean time I have 60 BTC that I would like to trade. Any offers?

I will be factoring the difficulty of course.

[Unthinkingbit]

I finally got Abe working
Currently it is hosted by a friend of mine: http://devcoinblockexplorer.tk/
I know, it's slow as hell

Still can't mine btw

That's great.  Although I didn't officially announce it yet, I did write up at:
https://github.com/Unthinkingbit/charity/wiki/Devcoin-Bounty

"Finally, there will be a five million devcoin bounty for an open source devcoin block explorer."

I made the bounty so high because we need the devcoin block explorer and I thought it might be difficult.

So you lucked out and got five million devcoins.

Once you get devcoin running and post a receive address I'll send you the coins.  I suggest you split it with your friend who is hosting it.


Caston wrote:

You're welcome. BTW i'm very excited about the metal and micro fab bounties. Although this isn't my area the Perth rep rap hacker lab may be interested in this.

They're the last links in the matter compiler chain.  Once we have those, we can have open source anything.

I will likely update my sig soon to reflect the ability to earn Devcoins through work on Rejuvepedia.

You are in the next generation round:
https://raw.github.com/Unthinkingbit/charity/master/receiver_2.csv

once the block number reaches 8,000 you'll get plenty of devcoins.  So you can start handing out your million plus devcoins now, knowing that you'll get a lot more soon.

By the way you, Mark and I and pursers:
https://github.com/Unthinkingbit/charity/wiki/Devcoin-Description

which means we disburse money for bounties and stuff that comes up.  So of the five receive slots that you see there, one is your Rejuvepedia share, 32 * 10% (administration share) / 3 (3 administrators) = 1.0666.. is your administration share, which gives a total of 2.0666.. shares for you.  The remaining 2.933.. shares are your purser shares, which are to be disbursed.

I made you and Mark pursers because I assumed you would both want that and I was in a hurry to write the receiver_2.csv file.  If either of you don't want to be pursers and/or almoners, please message me and your purser slots won't be in the next receiver file.  Edit: Of course, you would still have your active developer slot and administrator vote and receiver maintainer sub share slot.

Note, receiver_3.csv is just a placeholder in case we get an unexpected huge amount of generation which blows past the receiver_2 round.  We'll discuss what slots to put in receiver_3.csv by block 9,000.

In the mean time I would like to convert some of my bitcoins to devcoins. Is there anyone willing to trade?

I'm asking people not to trade until devcoin is fully tested with many people on different platforms, and we've coordinated at least one more receiver file update.

As long as people haven't traded, if worst comes to worst and we must restart, we can resend the shares and bounties.  However, once coins are traded, people who bought devcoins would be out of luck.  I don't want anyone to feel cheated or lose money they can't afford.

As far as the devcoin price concerned, I pointed at the namecoin starting price as a guide, but in my personal extremely biased speculative opinion, since devcoin pays for its own development, it will grow quickly and so I plan on buying a lot of them if and when a devcoin exchange opens.

[markm]

The block explorer might not be quite as simple as it appears at first glance, because even if the generic explorer doesn't actually "break" on anything in devcoin's blockchain it is possible or maybe even likely (? not sure ?) that some small amount of customising might be worthwhile regarding the things we do differently.

sacarlson apparently ran into some gotchas in applying it to BEER and WEEDS, but maybe those have by now been genericised or were due to things he does that we don't do.

The hosting is a factor too of course; the reason I didn't slap up ABE on my own hosting is one needs the daemon too and my current hosting would not permit that (I'd have to upgrade it).

Still, I expect what you already see running is mostly all there and mostly just needs its hosting upgraded somewhat, which should start being feasible once devcoin exchanges start coming online.

-MarkM-

[caston]

Has anyone tried connecting another miner using the -o option in poclbm. I have added the rcpallow line and connected ok but getting about 10 or so
 "warning: job finished, miner is idle between each block"

I used
sudo ./poclbm.py -o 192.168.x.x -d 0 --u=x --pass=x -v -w 128

[markm]

Has anyone tried connecting another miner using the -o option in poclbm. I have added the rcpallow line and connected ok but getting about 10 or so
 "warning: job finished, miner is idle between each block"

I used
sudo ./poclbm.py -o 192.168.x.x -d 0 --u=x --pass=x -v -w 128

I don't see a port number there, what port number would poclbm.py default to?

And what port did you set devcoind to use for RPC ?

(It might itself have a default, if so probably 52323 or 52332, whatever the normal variation is between networking port and RPC port.)

-MarkM-

[caston]

Has anyone tried connecting another miner using the -o option in poclbm. I have added the rcpallow line and connected ok but getting about 10 or so
 "warning: job finished, miner is idle between each block"

I used
sudo ./poclbm.py -o 192.168.x.x -d 0 --u=x --pass=x -v -w 128

I don't see a port number there, what port number would poclbm.py default to?

And what port did you set devcoind to use for RPC ?

(It might itself have a default, if so probably 52323 or 52332, whatever the normal variation is between networking port and RPC port.)

-MarkM-

I didn't set any port but I tried connecting poclbm with 52333 and that got an rpc error. You see I did do one block though which makes me think my command line was ok. Maybe I need more connections to get enough work to keep two miners going? I am already running two instances of poclbm on my mining rig which has 2 6870s. The other one is booted into linux coin because I seem to get faster hash rates with it than I did when I setup opencl stuff myself. I do remember getting very similar problems when mining in pools but not as bad. I'm keen to get the other machine working as it has a 6950 but alas I have to get ready for work again soon ):

[markm]

52333 is the client to client p2p networking port.

It should not even be possible to assign that as RPC port as it should already be open automatically for the p2p networking.

Aha, 8332 is hard-coded multiple times as default RPC port. So if you aren't telling devcoin any different it will be on 8332 and if you aren't telling the miner program different likely it too uses 8332 so did connect.

Is your disk access particularly slow compared to your mining speed? Every time it starts trying to construct a block, in each thread it is doing that in, it looks up who to contribute to. It would probably be a lot better for it to load the entire receiver_*.csv into a cache in memory if it doesn't do so already. (I didn't look what receiver.h actually does, I just made calls from main.cpp that naively look as if they might well be being satisfied by means of going to disk over and over and over again. (Oh wait, also going to disk was not threadsafe in Qt too so I'd see four errors when four threads tried to mine, so at least back then it sure did not seem as if receiver.h was using a cache...)

-MarkM-

[caston]

52333 is the client to client p2p networking port.

It should not even be possible to assign that as RPC port as it should already be open automatically for the p2p networking.

Aha, 8332 is hard-coded multiple times as default RPC port. So if you aren't telling devcoin any different it will be on 8332 and if you aren't telling the miner program different likely it too uses 8332 so did connect.

Is your disk access particularly slow compared to your mining speed? Every time it starts trying to construct a block, in each thread it is doing that in, it looks up who to contribute to. It would probably be a lot better for it to load the entire receiver_*.csv into a cache in memory if it doesn't do so already. (I didn't look what receiver.h actually does, I just made calls from main.cpp that naively look as if they might well be being satisfied by means of going to disk over and over and over again. (Oh wait, also going to disk was not threadsafe in Qt too so I'd see four errors when four threads tried to mine, so at least back then it sure did not seem as if receiver.h was using a cache...)

-MarkM-

Yeah i'm not really sure. Would I have less issues if I installed groupcoind locally? I'm going to need to look at this tomorrow because I have to get ready for work now.

Otherwise would running nmap help? when I try it only checks the first 1000 points and that syntax for checking higher ranges seems to escape me.

[markm]

I actually only run miners against daemons running on the same machine as the miner, and referring to it as being at 127.0.0.1 (which corresponds to "localhost").

Early on I did try to have my GPU machines mine against the daemons on other machines, or even simply on each other's daemons, and it didn't work and i did not pursue why it did not work.

My Fedora Linux firewalls on the machines themselves are turned off completely so it should not be a firewall thing.

I have each of my other machines specified in -rpcallowip command-line arguments in each machine's daemon-startup scripts.

I basically shrugged and used 127.0.0.1 and didn't worry about it further.

I still have no aha moment as to "wft" could be the problem and for me using 127.0.0.1 obviates the problem, so until an aha moment strikes out of the blue it is likely that even if I feel I really really need lots of mined coins on one of my no-GPU boxes I'll just do wallet to wallet manipulation or moving of wallets to accomplish it until that aha moment comes along.

-MarkM-

[caston]

I might have some spare time tonight to hit a few more bounties. I hope to get more miners on or make hardware share and co-lo deals with others because the cost of electricity in my state is high.

[markm]

I might have some spare time tonight to hit a few more bounties. I hope to get more miners on or make hardware share and co-lo deals with others because the cost of electricity in my state is high.

I started mining because winters here are cold and I hoped to be able to live in my country house for the winter, which would involve electrically heating it at least until I can afford to re-do the whole wood-heat situation out there.

So although electricity isn't super cheap at least until I can use enough of it to get industrial rates, I was thinking of it as free electrical heating rather than as a mining expense.

The FPGA hardware project however seems to be coming along well enough that I am dubious of the utility of investing in many GPUs other than as electrical heat, and the amount of hashes one could get by heating with FPGAs this winter planning to heat with ASICs next winter might yet turn out to be a better way to go. Maybew along with picking up cheap "obsolete" REadeon electrical heaters from people who don't want to heat their houses electrically maybe.

Maybe we can work something out, possibly even involving GMC (General Mining Corp) which is currently mobilising to obtain groupcoins and devcoins for its treasury with which to back its "GMC" blockchain coinage...

I also just pulled out one of my 5870s that seems to maybe have burned out so what to do as next hardware step has suddenly become more urgent than I had hoped it would be.

-MarkM-