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

[Paulizei]

I set TTL (time-to-live) on the DNS entry to just 10 minutes. So after I switched mint.bitminter.com over to point at the new us1.bitminter.com workers should have followed fairly quickly.

But still there are 600 getwork/gbt miners and 2 stratum miners at the old server. These don't currently show up with a hashrate at the website. But if you wait 1 minute and reload the page you should see their accepted proofs of work have gone up. Live hashrates are only gathered from one server. Currently anti DDoS and stable mining has priority over fixing this.

BitMinter client specifically sets the java virtual machine to not cache DNS lookups for long. I suspect there are some (broken) DNS servers out there that ignore TTL settings. Maybe they'll cache for 24 hours no matter what TTL is.

Ok, that clears up some of the mystery here.  What about the workers that are no longer listed on my workers page?  Do I need to re-enter this information?  Also for the one machine that I use with cgminer do I need to change any settings? (It's currently on a backup pool but I would like to return to bitminter with it as it's my most powerful box)

I'm missing some of my workers, too!!

[1713881582]

1713881582

[DrHaribo]

Ok, that clears up some of the mystery here.  What about the workers that are no longer listed on my workers page?  Do I need to re-enter this information?  Also for the one machine that I use with cgminer do I need to change any settings? (It's currently on a backup pool but I would like to return to bitminter with it as it's my most powerful box)

The rest of the mystery: There's been a few small changes on the website. On the worker page there are now pagination buttons at the bottom. You'll need to use those to see the rest of your workers.

Also there's a new iOS (iPhone, iPad, etc.) app for BitMinter called BTC Miner, you'll find that in the "tools" -> "third party apps" menu.

[btceic]

The iphone version is attempting to validate against slushs pool. The app needs to be updated to verify against bitminter.com.

[not.you]

Holy shahmolians we finally got a block.   

[miner49dk]

finally!

[ewibit]

at a slow Internet connection it is not possible to download and/or start bitminter client
I  am now somewhere with a laptop and 15 kB/s and (re-)tried till now ~20 times and it always stopped @~90%
is there another site (e.g. ftp) to download?
edit:

Code:

com.sun.deploy.net.FailedDownloadException: Ressource konnte nicht geladen werden: http://bitminter.com/client/scala-library.jar
	at com.sun.deploy.net.DownloadEngine.actionDownload(Unknown Source)
	at com.sun.deploy.net.DownloadEngine.downloadResource(Unknown Source)
	at com.sun.deploy.cache.ResourceProviderImpl.getResource(Unknown Source)
	at com.sun.deploy.cache.ResourceProviderImpl.getResource(Unknown Source)
	at com.sun.javaws.LaunchDownload$DownloadTask.call(Unknown Source)
	at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerRun(FutureTask.java:334)
	at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:166)
	at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1145)
	at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:615)
	at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:722)

Code:

java.io.EOFException
	at java.util.zip.ZipInputStream.readFully(ZipInputStream.java:426)
	at java.util.zip.ZipInputStream.readLOC(ZipInputStream.java:295)
	at java.util.zip.ZipInputStream.getNextEntry(ZipInputStream.java:121)
	at com.sun.deploy.net.HttpDownloadHelper.decompressWrite(Unknown Source)
	at com.sun.deploy.net.HttpDownloadHelper.download(Unknown Source)
	at com.sun.deploy.cache.Cache.downloadResourceToTempFile(Unknown Source)
	at com.sun.deploy.cache.Cache.downloadResourceToCache(Unknown Source)
	at com.sun.deploy.net.DownloadEngine.actionDownload(Unknown Source)
	at com.sun.deploy.net.DownloadEngine.downloadResource(Unknown Source)
	at com.sun.deploy.cache.ResourceProviderImpl.getResource(Unknown Source)
	at com.sun.deploy.cache.ResourceProviderImpl.getResource(Unknown Source)
	at com.sun.javaws.LaunchDownload$DownloadTask.call(Unknown Source)
	at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerRun(FutureTask.java:334)
	at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:166)
	at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1145)
	at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:615)
	at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:722)

[PCMiner]

Ok, that clears up some of the mystery here.  What about the workers that are no longer listed on my workers page?  Do I need to re-enter this information?  Also for the one machine that I use with cgminer do I need to change any settings? (It's currently on a backup pool but I would like to return to bitminter with it as it's my most powerful box)

The rest of the mystery: There's been a few small changes on the website. On the worker page there are now pagination buttons at the bottom. You'll need to use those to see the rest of your workers.

Also there's a new iOS (iPhone, iPad, etc.) app for BitMinter called BTC Miner, you'll find that in the "tools" -> "third party apps" menu.

Ah, I see.  Any way to change the number of workers displayed to a user pref?  I have 10 machines total and like to be able to see them all at once...  Besides that everything seem to be working fine.

What can you tell us about the DDoS and what changes you have made to mitigate the effects?  Don't give away any secrets here, but I'm interested.

[ewibit]

ok now I have got http://bitminter.com/client/scala-library.jar
with wget
but where to put it in?
in /home/xxx/.java/deployment/cache/6.0/15?
TIA

[DrHaribo]

What can you tell us about the DDoS and what changes you have made to mitigate the effects?  Don't give away any secrets here, but I'm interested.

Many attacks daily that come and go are very disruptive. Probably worse for miners than being completely down, as workers set up with backup pools would jump back and forth. If I had let this go on BitMinter would be completely destroyed. I considered shutting down the pool for a while, but decided against it as BitMinter client still doesn't have backup pool support, some use other miners without backup pool support, and some use a mining client with backup pool support but simply have not set up backups. It would have left many users out in the cold.

The nature of the attack is to send an enormous amount of traffic to the server. As its network connection gets overloaded it becomes unable to communicate. I received many suggestions to install a firewall. Unfortunately one of the difficult things with such attacks is that by the time the traffic reaches your server it is already too late. It must be handled upstream.

I have decided to go with Black Lotus for anti DDoS protection. These guys are expensive, but they are good at what they do. Hopefully this can help ensure a stable service. I also have other ideas to make the service more DDoS resistant, but they will take some time to implement.

There were some hickups while moving servers today. Also the BitMinter software was not prepared for the changes in infrastructure that are happening. I make adjustments as we go. I don't know if we are out of the woods yet, but things are certainly looking a lot better than they did earlier today.

Thanks for all the messages in support of BitMinter, suggestions on how to combat this issue, etc. Much appreciated.

[DrHaribo]

Ah, I see.  Any way to change the number of workers displayed to a user pref?  I have 10 machines total and like to be able to see them all at once...  Besides that everything seem to be working fine.

Maybe in the future. All the various tables will be reworked with options for filtering etc.

at a slow Internet connection it is not possible to download and/or start bitminter client
I  am now somewhere with a laptop and 15 kB/s and (re-)tried till now ~20 times and it always stopped @~90%
is there another site (e.g. ftp) to download?

Unfortunately not. In the future there will be an alternative distribution method, but it's low priority right now.

Note that antivirus and firewall packages sometimes cause the download to stall towards the end. Notorious for this are AVG and McAfee.

ok now I have got http://bitminter.com/client/scala-library.jar
with wget
but where to put it in?
in /home/xxx/.java/deployment/cache/6.0/15?
TIA

I haven't tried putting files manually into the java cache, but you can give it a try.

However, being able to download with wget but not with java is indicative of the antivirus/firewall issue I mention above.

There's a few troubleshooting pointers here: http://www.reddit.com/r/bitminter/comments/1c8oiq/troubleshooting_bitminter_client_startup_problems/

[PCMiner]

Any way to set the default worker display back to 10?  Trying to sort which machine is/isn't running is a pain now clicking around pages...  All my machines are up and down throughout the day and tracking down which one is toast is a pain with multiple pages.  I can't imaging too many users are over 10 workers. It wasn't taking up too much space before.  Just a request.... 8-)

[ewibit]

note that antivirus and firewall packages sometimes cause the download to stall towards the end. Notorious for this are AVG and McAfee.
I haven't tried putting files manually into the java cache, but you can give it a try.

However, being able to download with wget but not with java is indicative of the antivirus/firewall issue I mention above.

There's a few troubleshooting pointers here: http://www.reddit.com/r/bitminter/comments/1c8oiq/troubleshooting_bitminter_client_startup_problems/

I am on Linux - no antivirus..

[PCMiner]

One other question about some odd behavior.  I don't know if this is tied to the DDoS attacks but I'll ask anyway.  In my worker list page previously it would show all my workers, with a rough hash rate.  These days some workers seem to "go offline" on the worker page for several minutes at a time (sometimes 10+ minutes) reporting 0 work, even though I'm looking at the machine hashing away in front of me the whole time reporting shares.   I know the hash rate on the site is just an approximation and the numbers reported locally in the bitminter client or cgminer is the accurate figure, but before all my machines would at least show on the site reporting something.  These days I get a lot of false positives that a worker has gone offline (checking it over several minutes on the site, it still reports zero) but when I walk over to the machine it's sitting there happily crunching away.  Any ideas what's causing this?  I can assume the shares are still being accepted/counted by bit minter.  I guess this is something that would be mitigated by implementing the long awaited "idle worker" notification.

[Sannyasi]

Heya, instead of explaining what's going on on my end i'll attach a screeny- my miners are showing that I'm mining but the stats are all screwed up. maybe just me or is the pool and/or site down? since my miners seem to be working i'd assume that the pool is fine and the site is just being weird

EDIT: turns out it was just firefox being bitchy that caused the pic below to not show stats where it should- so for future reference it could be a browser thing if this is happening for others- just shut down the browser and reopen

[WhizDome]

Great job at staying on top of the issues here, Doc. Truly impressed at how swiftly and efficiently they're being resolved.

[vekt0r7]

Great job at staying on top of the issues here, Doc. Truly impressed at how swiftly and efficiently they're being resolved.

The pool has lost half of its hashrate and has several thousand workers less than a week ago.

[qwame]

Duration: 15:53  ..the big players have to come back! 

[grosskate]

Hi Doc,

Thanks for fixing the pool and taking bitminter s pool security to the next level !

When exactly will the pool be protected against DDoS ? That would be good to have idea on when we should finally be able  to mine without any attack annoying us all.

Thanks for the investment !

[oroboras]

I have decided to go with Black Lotus for anti DDoS protection. These guys are expensive, but they are good at what they do.

That is serious investment. I think I'll increase my donation percentage in thanks.

It may not be much now, but when my ASICs arrive, it should help a bit more.

Thanks Doc - you really do care about your mint! Time to show I do too.

[loshia]

Doc,

We do appreciate all of your handwork and efforts

I wrote the idea a couple of times but before going with lotus please consider the flowing

The example i will use Google public DNS IP's for simplicity:


Exposed Machine emty Box just Ovpn+Firewal+Nat (ISP One)                   Real Bitminter Server  (ISP TWO)  

--------------------------                                                                -------------------------------

8.8.8.8/OVPN 10.10.10.1                        <---------->              8.8.4.4 (Hidden known only by you and 8.8.8.8 box)/OVPN 10.10.10.2

-------------------------- -                                                             --------------------------------


Bitminter is known/resolved to 8.8.8.8

All requests (web mining or whatever you need)                               10.10.10.2 Is serving the requests+ Policy routing. All requests arrived at
are forwarded to 10.10.10.2 OVPN                                                    10.10.10.2 are forwarded back to 10.10.10.1 Hiding  your IP

All requests coming back from 10.10.10.2 are nated to 8.8.8.8


Doing this you will achive:

1. If the attacks are coming from known IP address - rangers you can easy filter them out on 8.8.8.8 With zero CPU/Network load to your Server 8.8.4.4. I am not aware of the attacks details but believe me Empty Linux box doing nothing just natting one IP can filter a lot    
2. You can use Connection iptables limit - i am not aware if it is a good or bad idea since some miners can be affected also
3. And other fancy stuff

In the end you are the boss and you will decide what to do no doubt about it but i just wanna know you got the idea

Drawbacks some lag will occur (Traffic moving along the ovpn) but it will be not noticed at all especially if you rent second server in a Rack near by
And if you decide to do it pls make sure that nginx (or whatever else is there) will never expose 8.8.4.4 IP via http (other) headers to attackers