[1050 TH] BitMinter.com [1% PPLNS,Pays TxFees +MergedMining,Stratum,GBT,vardiff]

[abeaulieu]

Yes, increasing PPLNS's N up to 4x Difficulty will definitely reduce variance when you have some downtime. Just like it reduces the variance in the income of a non-24/7 miner, it will also reduce the variance in loss due to downtime for a 24/7 miner. Less chance of a big loss because your miners went down just before we found 3 quick blocks. It would still be a loss, but a smaller one.
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[1714313344]

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[miter_myles]

[WhitePhantom]

I'm happy either way.

[hahahafr]

Yes, increasing PPLNS's N up to 4x Difficulty will definitely reduce variance when you have some downtime. Just like it reduces the variance in the income of a non-24/7 miner, it will also reduce the variance in loss due to downtime for a 24/7 miner. Less chance of a big loss because your miners went down just before we found 3 quick blocks. It would still be a loss, but a smaller one.

It's not possible to pool hop on BitMinter though, and this won't make any difference in that regard. Of course you can move in and out of the pool as you wish, but since you can't predict beforehand whether you get high or low pay you can't "pool hop".

Making pool hopping impossible is really that simple. Just use a fair reward system. It's a shame some pools refuse to do so. And it is outright strange that so many miners still use those pools.

People are dumb, they don't care, mainly. Even the Bitcoin Folks.

[DrHaribo]

Every once in a while a block change is causing very high load and slow response after the long poll signal. Apparently there are still some miners getting confused and DoSing the server. Most block changes seem to go alright though. I'll have some improvements to mitigate the trouble from those miners soon.

Remember if you use an old cgminer or bfgminer (at least if older than v2.7), grab the latest version!

If you are using DiabloMiner of Phoenix, please make sure you have the name and password correct. These miners think it is a good idea to retry the same password many times per second when the server says it is incorrect.

[Digigami]

Maybe a fix for the wrong password retry issue could be to ignore an IP which tries an incorrect user/pass for 1 minute or something? Are you able to tell and maybe contact the miners with the troubled workers? I know I've updated all my cgminers to 2.7.5/6 now so hopefully my rigs aren't causing any issues.

[DrHaribo]

what can I do to stop the reject notice?

. should I rename the worker?

should i give it a new password?  I tired this and it did not help.

By reject notice, do you mean the password dialog popping up and saying the name or password is wrong?

[kano]

I am having trouble with my biggest worker. It had 3x 7970 gpus and room for one more I added the fourth hd7970 gpu I underclock to save some power. so these 4 get me 2100 hash. sometimes one drops. So to get back to the four I have to kill the other 3 and sign back up.
...

Anyone feel free to tell me I'm wrong, but you should get well over 600MH/s for each card.
525MH/s seems awfully slow ... or an incredibly low underclock.
I know if you excessively overclock you can get up to 720MH/s with a 7970

[DrHaribo]

I press engine start the bit coin flashes

 the verifying application pops up then instead of the do you want to run this program bla bla bla a little white page of a core dump pops up the first line says :

A fatal error has been deteced by the java runtime environment.

 a few hundred lines code info follow .  

That's odd. I've never seen a "verifying application" window pop up after the program is already running. Perhaps you can email me a screenshot and/or paste all that text? operator@bitminter.com

It may be worth a shot clearing the java temporary files so that the program's files gets downloaded anew next time you start it. On Windows you get to the place to do this by clicking java in the windows control panel. On any OS you can also run "javaws -viewer" from the commandline.

I may be starting this the wrong way.  somewhere you mention how to start java from a command line not the broswer due to some java security issues.

  How can I do that?

There's been several Java security holes mentioned in the news lately. They could allow someone to hack your computer if you visit the wrong website with the Java plugin enabled in your browser. To protect yourself from this you can disable the Java plugin in the browser.

BitMinter client can still be started from the commandline:

Code:

javaws http://bitminter.com/client/bitminter.jnlp

If on windows you can type this command at the input field of the start menu, or open a command prompt and type it there. On Linux or Mac open a terminal window. After you have used the program once there should be startmenu shortcut you can use to start it.

[DrHaribo]

Please read! Two changes in the mining reward system.

The cost of the prepay perk will increase to 2% (was 1%). Unfortunately 1% is much too cheap. The last month the paying of orphans has eaten up most of the donations, even from those who donate 2% or 3%. It's not fair to the biggest supporters of the pool that their donations go to subsidize miners who donate less. It's also not sustainable for the pool going forward, not having enough income to pay for the (currently single) server.

The change is immediate in that the prepay perk now costs 2%, but if you already have it on it will still be on for a while even if you donate below 2%. To give the users who are actually affected time to decide what they want to do, there will be two weeks before the new cost takes effect fully. If by 20.10.2012 your perk costs are still higher than your actual donation settings, then your prepay perk will be turned off and your donation will be automatically reduced by 1% to compensate for the perk you are no longer getting.

This announcement will be linked to from bitminter.com, twitter, facebook, google+, bitcointalk threads. Users who have prepay costs above their current donation level will also be emailed if they have an email address registered on bitminter.com.

By popular demand we are also changing the N in PPLNS again, from 2x difficulty to 4x difficulty. The size of a shift will be doubled to achieve this. The goal is to reduce the variance in pay for a proof of work. If you are mining 24/7 you won't notice it. But if you mine part-time or your mining rigs occasionally stop working then you will have less variance.

Summary (TL;DR):

• Right now, you must donate 2% (was 1%) to activate the prepay perk if it isn't already active.
• 13.10.2012 we switch PPLNS' N from 2x difficulty to 4x difficulty, to reduce variance for part-time mining
• 20.10.2012 those who have prepay on and donate below the cost of their perks will have prepay automatically switched off and donations reduced by 1%

If your perk costs are now higher than your donations, please make a choice to turn off prepay or raise your donations before 20.10.2012. I would like to force the automatic switch on as few accounts as possible.  And if you haven't already, please register an email at bitminter.com

[DrHaribo]

Version 1 of a BitMinter user data API is now up.

Enable API perk at https://bitminter.com/members/donations (0.5% donation cost)
Create API keys at https://bitminter.com/members/apikeys
Use the API keys to give third party apps access to your BitMinter user data.

For developers the API is documented at https://bitminter.com/api#userdata

Hopefully there will soon be many mining apps adding support for BitMinter.

For now there is only one resource URI per user available and all API keys have the same access (to this one resource).
More will be added in the future - let me know what you would like to see.

[Shermo]

Maybe I'm being stupid but I can't seem to change my donation amount or switch it off every time I click OK it says the following at the top:
"Donations too low - deactivate perks first"

I tried changing from 1% to 2% and also switching off first like it said but to no avail...

[DrHaribo]

I tried changing from 1% to 2% and also switching off first like it said but to no avail...

Sorry, it's a problem when both BTC and NMC are too low.

Also going to make a small change to the API.

Update coming soon!

[DrHaribo]

Quick website update.

You can now adjust the donation upwards even though the other one (BTC/NMC) is still too low.

I also made a quick change to the new API. Workers are now in an array rather than an object.

How it was:
"workers": {"Test": {"hash_rate": 929.4414665553555,"last_work": 1349534805,"alive": true,}}

How it is now:
"workers": [{ "name": "Test","hash_rate": 929.4414665553555,"last_work": 1349534805,"alive": true,}]

I put this in quickly, hopefully noone had time to make an app using the API in the few minutes before it changed.

This was suggested by the author of BTCmon. I agree it makes it a little simpler. Hopefully BTCmon support coming soon!
(it's an iPhone app to monitor worker info ++)

[Shermo]

Thanks for the quick fix DrHaribo Happily updated my donations to 2%, still good value in comparison to 5% on PPS pools.

We've had a lot of bad luck the last few days but averaged over the last 10 or so days we've not done too bad It would be nice if there was a stat on the blocks or luck page that was an average of our luck over the last 7 days, they had something like that on BTCMine which I used previously

[juhakall]

A few suggestions to help users track their rewards (any of these would be fine):

1) Add a column to the Blocks statistics page, showing the users reward for each block. I know this info is buried on the Transaction history page, but the Blocks page is more readable currently (see next alternative).

2) Give the Transaction history page similar filtering options that are available on Blocks page (BTC/NMC/ALL).

3) Show daily rewards (maybe averaged over 7 days) somewhere.

[DrHaribo]

Thanks for the quick fix DrHaribo Happily updated my donations to 2%, still good value in comparison to 5% on PPS pools.

Thank you, sir, much appreciated.

We've had a lot of bad luck the last few days but averaged over the last 10 or so days we've not done too bad It would be nice if there was a stat on the blocks or luck page that was an average of our luck over the last 7 days, they had something like that on BTCMine which I used previously

Yeah, even with the much increased hashrate luck still swings a bit up and down. Already on my TODO list is to add a moving average to the luck graph, something like what they have at Ozcoin (although different graph).

1) Add a column to the Blocks statistics page, showing the users reward for each block. I know this info is buried on the Transaction history page, but the Blocks page is more readable currently (see next alternative).

Good idea, added to TODO list.

2) Give the Transaction history page similar filtering options that are available on Blocks page (BTC/NMC/ALL).

Yes, this is on my TODO list. The transaction history actually has some info it isn't showing yet, like a category on each transaction. So it would be possible to show only payout from BTC blocks, filtering out NMC, donations and whatever else is in the history.

3) Show daily rewards (maybe averaged over 7 days) somewhere.

Yes, this has been requested before. I may add it. But before that I will add "export to cvs" so you can download your transaction history and make whatever graphs you want in an office-type application. Maybe importing into financial software would be possible too?

I donated all my name coins and upped my bit  coin donation from 1 to 2 percent.

Thank you kindly, sir.

I am a bit busy but will send a full set of screen shots describing the problem with the 4x 7970 gpu worker.

 as I said it was fine with 3x 7970 gpus and the problem started when i added the 4th gpu. Two days ago.
Today I just added a 1x 7970 gpu worker. yesterday I upgraded a 1 gpu unit pc from a 7750 to a 7970.

Hmm. I have experienced when going from 1 AMD card to 2 AMD cards that the drivers started crashing. I had to wipe out the drivers and install them fresh, having both cards in the computer when I installed the drivers. Could be worth a shot. AMD makes great hardware but their software is a little wonky.

I did this because I was lucky and was able to get 3x 7970 gpus for about 900 usd this week.  they should have been 1300 usd so I grabbed them and upgraded my bitcoin setup.  my total hash rate is now around 4000 it was about 2500. with the weather getting colder the units are great space heaters which lowers the overall cost of running them.  as long as the price stays stable for the coins and the asics are slow coming online I am going to do well.

Yeah, if you can make a profit, go for it. If profits drop you can still use the machine as a heater for a while. Take a look at the scheduling in BitMinter client - you could mine only at the time of day and day of week when you need heating.

[SgtMoth]

have you tried switching cards around to see if its the 4th card, or the pci slot.  i didnt see you post about if the cards are new or used, im thinking their used, judging by the price you paid.  is this a mining only rig? fresh install? 

[drekk]

Great news! This is why I love this pool: constant improvements, fast support, helpful innovation and very good communications.

Also, I've made my first BTC with the pool this week. Yay! But it's probably the last one, too. My NVIDIA keeps choking (had to stop overclocking) and the diff increase will sooner or later kill it for me, since I'm already mining at a loss.

That's why I'm not donating/using perks, but I try to make up for it by recommending BitMinter to whoever comes by asking.


TL;DR DrHaribo...



Cheers!
  ~drekk~

[Mobius]

Code:

I donated all my name coins and upped my bit  coin donation from 1 to 2 percent.

Thank you kindly, sir.

I am a bit busy but will send a full set of screen shots describing the problem with the 4x 7970 gpu worker.

 as I said it was fine with 3x 7970 gpus and the problem started when i added the 4th gpu. Two days ago.
Today I just added a 1x 7970 gpu worker. yesterday I upgraded a 1 gpu unit pc from a 7750 to a 7970.

Hmm. I have experienced when going from 1 AMD card to 2 AMD cards that the drivers started crashing. I had to wipe out the drivers and install them fresh, having both cards in the computer when I installed the drivers. Could be worth a shot. AMD makes great hardware but their software is a little wonky.

I did this because I was lucky and was able to get 3x 7970 gpus for about 900 usd this week.  they should have been 1300 usd so I grabbed them and upgraded my bitcoin setup.  my total hash rate is now around 4000 it was about 2500. with the weather getting colder the units are great space heaters which lowers the overall cost of running them.  as long as the price stays stable for the coins and the asics are slow coming online I am going to do well.

Yeah, if you can make a profit, go for it. If profits drop you can still use the machine as a heater for a while. Take a look at the scheduling in BitMinter client - you could mine only at the time of day and day of week when you need heating.

  yeah all in all this has ben a bit of fun.  I think I may need to fully reinstall the 4x hd7970 setup.  amd drivers were crazy when I jumped up from 3 to 4 which may have confused everything

Always make sure you update the ATI config

in linux:

Code:

sudo aticonfig --initial -f --adapter=all
sudo aticonfig --input=/etc/X11/xorg.conf --tls=1 --adapter=all 
sudo aticonfig --lsa

and see if all the cards are showing

then reboot