OFFICIAL CGMINER mining software thread for linux/win/osx/mips/arm/r-pi 4.11.1

[bulanula]

I get your point about it increasing U parameter but would it be best to turn it on or off

Normally it is best off.

If cgminer detects a share is stale it doesn't submit it.  Those shares are marked SS.
Share submitted and designated invalid by pool are marked R.

IF cgminer stale detection is correct then SS + R should be exactly the same w/ submit stale on or off.

Turning submit stale on simply takes all the SS shares, sends them to the server who promptly rejects then.
SS = 0 and R = (SS + R)

There are a few instances where it might make sense
a) merged mining pool which gives seperate credit for NMC & BTC (not just calculate NMC reward based on BTC shares).  In that case an LP doesn't necessarily make both chains stale.  A share could be stale for one chain and not the other.

b) p2pool.  p2pool builds a share chain just like bitcoin builds a blockchain.  Since there can be re-orgs it is often useful to submit a stale share.  If a re-org occurs (and with a 10 sec block time it certainly can) then what cgminer thinks is stale could end up being valid.

TL/DR version: unless you have a specific reason you likely can keep it off.  It can't "hurt" you to turn it on you will just see more rejects at the pool level instead of SS at cgminer level.

Thank you for the detailed reply D&T ! I really appreciate your information.

So if there is no harm in submitting them then I will enable the feature. It does not seem to clogg up the GPUs but rather the network so that is fine for me.

[Rassah]

Cgminer default settings are --worksize 128 and --vectors 2 so you get those free of charge
You might want to see what --worksize 64 or --worksize 256 does for your hash rate.

The stale rate of p2pool isn't comparable to other pools as p2pool uses a much higher difficulty for its shares...
Due to high value or each high-difficulty share, I recommend you use --submit-stale when mining on p2pool.
This will make cgminer submit every share it finds, even if it thinks it is already stale. This won't make a huge difference but might net you an additional share every now and then.

Intensity is a fine tuning parameter and its optimal value is dependent on the card's hash rate.
Intensity influences the size of each uninterruptible batch of calculations the GPU performs - high intensity batches of work are larger, thus taking longer to finish.
This results in occasional situations where the GPU takes a couple of seconds too long and produces a valid but already stale result wasting the computation time.
Try lowering your intensity to 8 - if the hash rate doesn't budge you made the right call and your card didn't benefit from the higher intensity.

My general observations have been that best results are achieved (using the default two threads per gpu):
  + with <200MHash/s cards: intensity 7
  + [200..400] MHash/s : intensity 8
  + >400 MHash.s : intensity 9
Intensities beyond 9 are meant only for the new 7xxx family of cards and won't do any good when used with the old, slower cards.

Lowered intensity to I 8, and got same hash rate, so thanks for the tip. Worksize 64 for some reason made my rejection rate go up. No change between 128 and 256. So I just left that setting out and am using defalut.
I know others have been able to get much higher than 266Mhas/s rates, but sadly if I increase the card's Mh/s, my system becomes unstable. I am guessing it's because I am mining on Windows, and on my main machine that's also doing some other things

[jake262144]

I know others have been able to get much higher than 266Mhas/s rates, but sadly if I increase the card's Mh/s, my system becomes unstable. I am guessing it's because I am mining on Windows, and on my main machine that's also doing some other things

You're probably guessing right. Don't worry, all in all 266 MHash/s isn't that bad for a 1120 SP card employed in a non-dedicated machine.
For a dedicated rig, however, anything lower than 300 MHash/s is inexcusable unless the card is heavily undervolted.

I really doubt it's the worksize that caused the reject rate to go up. A random packet storm seems more plausible. Care to retry?
If you happen to be using a 12.x drivers X 2.6 sdk combo --vectors 4 and --worksize 128 might boost the hash rate somewhat.

[gnar1ta$]

Anyone got a binary copy of linux cgminer 32bit?  BAMT is still using 32bit kernel.  Don't feel like installing all the packages to compile. 

I've compiled 2.2.6 and 2.2.7 on BAMT, how would I get them to you? FYI the API changed slightly in 2.2.x breaking the stop mining command so you have hit q in the miner screen to stop or restart mining or it just sits there and laughs at you.

[kano]

Anyone got a binary copy of linux cgminer 32bit?  BAMT is still using 32bit kernel.  Don't feel like installing all the packages to compile.  

I've compiled 2.2.6 and 2.2.7 on BAMT, how would I get them to you? FYI the API changed slightly in 2.2.x breaking the stop mining command so you have hit q in the miner screen to stop or restart mining or it just sits there and laughs at you.

What was the change and how did it break BAMT?
(I have just submitted a pull request that will stop 'quit' from working unless you grant access to that command when you run cgminer - but it's not part of 2.2.7 or even accepted into the git yet)

[DeathAndTaxes]

Anyone got a binary copy of linux cgminer 32bit?  BAMT is still using 32bit kernel.  Don't feel like installing all the packages to compile. 

I've compiled 2.2.6 and 2.2.7 on BAMT, how would I get them to you? FYI the API changed slightly in 2.2.x breaking the stop mining command so you have hit q in the miner screen to stop or restart mining or it just sits there and laughs at you.

Any free file hosting will be fine since cgminer isn't that big

http://www.fileswap.com/  doesn't require an account.  Just upload and get a link.

[BkkCoins]

Just tested, add "copytruncate" in the configuration file, so the old log file will only get truncated and keep growing

Thank You. Trying it out now.

[gnar1ta$]

DAT here you go: http://www.fileswap.com/dl/XeABs0KKAQ/cgminer.html

Kano, I'm sorry I don't know enough about coding.  BAMT has a stop mining script that is run from gpumon on stop or restart mining.  This doesn't work after 2.1.2 so I just go to the cgminer screen session and hit q before restarting.  I'm sure it's an easy fix but the author feels 2.1.2 is the most stable and that is what he currently supports.

EDIT: should mention that's 2.2.7 w/o bitforce or cpu flags.

[lodcrappo]

DAT here you go: http://www.fileswap.com/dl/XeABs0KKAQ/cgminer.html

Kano, I'm sorry I don't know enough about coding.  BAMT has a stop mining script that is run from gpumon on stop or restart mining.  This doesn't work after 2.1.2 so I just go to the cgminer screen session and hit q before restarting.  I'm sure it's an easy fix but the author feels 2.1.2 is the most stable and that is what he currently supports.

EDIT: should mention that's 2.2.7 w/o bitforce or cpu flags.

bamt sends: quit|\n

when cgminer should exit.

I cannot comment on how that works with 2.2.x.  There is no official build of cgminer for BAMT beyond 2.1.2.  Gave up trying to keep track of all the bugs in the 2.2.x series, figured better to wait until things settled down before pushing out an update that could potentially break a large number of working installation.  We tend to be on the conservative side with things.

[kano]

DAT here you go: http://www.fileswap.com/dl/XeABs0KKAQ/cgminer.html

Kano, I'm sorry I don't know enough about coding.  BAMT has a stop mining script that is run from gpumon on stop or restart mining.  This doesn't work after 2.1.2 so I just go to the cgminer screen session and hit q before restarting.  I'm sure it's an easy fix but the author feels 2.1.2 is the most stable and that is what he currently supports.

EDIT: should mention that's 2.2.7 w/o bitforce or cpu flags.

bamt sends: quit|\n

when cgminer should exit.

I cannot comment on how that works with 2.2.x.  There is no official build of cgminer for BAMT beyond 2.1.2.  Gave up trying to keep track of all the bugs in the 2.2.x series, figured better to wait until things settled down before pushing out an update that could potentially break a large number of working installation.  We tend to be on the conservative side with things.

Firstly, the command should be just "quit" but that isn't the actual problem
(since "quit|anything" just ignores from the "|" onwards since quit takes no notice of the parameter it's supplied)

However, yes it's a bug ... seems to have been around for a while now.
(I never use the quit command so I didn't notice the problem when the cgminer shutdown code changed)

But yep ... when you find a bug in something you use ... it's usually a good idea to report it

... now tracking down the cause ...

[lodcrappo]

DAT here you go: http://www.fileswap.com/dl/XeABs0KKAQ/cgminer.html

Kano, I'm sorry I don't know enough about coding.  BAMT has a stop mining script that is run from gpumon on stop or restart mining.  This doesn't work after 2.1.2 so I just go to the cgminer screen session and hit q before restarting.  I'm sure it's an easy fix but the author feels 2.1.2 is the most stable and that is what he currently supports.

EDIT: should mention that's 2.2.7 w/o bitforce or cpu flags.

bamt sends: quit|\n

when cgminer should exit.

I cannot comment on how that works with 2.2.x.  There is no official build of cgminer for BAMT beyond 2.1.2.  Gave up trying to keep track of all the bugs in the 2.2.x series, figured better to wait until things settled down before pushing out an update that could potentially break a large number of working installation.  We tend to be on the conservative side with things.

Firstly, the command should be just "quit" but that isn't the actual problem
(since "quit|anything" just ignores from the "|" onwards since quit takes no notice of the parameter it's supplied)

quit without the | did not work in the version I used in creating the BAMT controller for cgminer.  I will retest this the next time we update.

However, yes it's a bug ... seems to have been around for a while now.
(I never use the quit command so I didn't notice the problem when the cgminer shutdown code changed)

But yep ... when you find a bug in something you use ... it's usually a good idea to report it

... now tracking down the cause ...

I do not use cgminer myself, therefore am not in a good place to report bugs, unless you want them secondhand.  I will encourage the folks testing cgminer and reporting trouble to me to report it via the proper channels.

[Ed]

New release: Version 2.2.7 - February 20, 2012
......

reject ratio higher for me, about 3% instead 0,5% at 2.1.2

my conf.
p2pool 462b252 multi merged mining
bitcoind 0.6
atiumdag 8.920.0.0 (Catalyst 11.12) / Win7 64
OpenCL 1.1 AMD-APP-SDK-v2.5 (793.1)

[P4man]

Im not entirely sure this belongs here; a feature requests for the API?

I would like to have password on the API. Its kinda dangerous to leave it open, someone could turn off the fans or whatever, and its extremely useful to have access to the API remotely

I would also like the possibility to manage pools via the API. Add, delete, enabe/disable pools. If thats already possible, then perhaps I misread the documentation.

I someone can make this happen, Ill toss you a coin.

[kano]

Im not entirely sure this belongs here; a feature requests for the API?

I would like to have password on the API. Its kinda dangerous to leave it open, someone could turn off the fans or whatever, and its extremely useful to have access to the API remotely

Yes the RPC API is part of cgminer and requests/discussions about it belong here.

Your 1st request is related to what I put into cgminer yesterday and will be available with the next release.
If you can't wait for the next release, you can download the latest git, compile it and have it already.

My change yesterday means that by default no-one can change anything, they can only view everything.
You must use the --api-allow to be able to grant access to commands that effect cgminer, and only the ip addresses/subnets that are specified with a "W:" on the front are given this extra write/privileged access.
The privileged commands will be: gpu settings, switchpool, save, quit & privileged.
(the last one is just a way to test if you are privileged)

So in the next version "--api-listen" or "--api-listen --api-network" give access to all of the other display commands only.

Aside: "--api-listen" is the same as "--api-listen --api-allow 127.0.0.1"
 and "--api-listen --api-network" is the same as "--api-listen --api-allow 0/0"

In the next version to grant local access to all of the API:
"--api-listen --api-allow W:127.0.0.1"

In the next version to grant only the cgminer computer access to all of the API and read access to your local network:
"--api-listen --api-allow W:127.0.0.1,192.168.1/24"

In the next version to grant cgminer and local network access to all of the API and read access to the rest of the world:
"--api-listen --api-allow W:127.0.0.1,W:192.168.1/24,0/0"

Adding password access would be more that just a small effort for a few reasons:
1) It's pointless adding password access without data encryption since it defeats the purpose of having a password in the first places
2) If I add data encryption then the protocol used would need to be used by anyone wanting password encryption.

Not insurmountable, but also not a quick addition.

I would also like the possibility to manage pools via the API. Add, delete, enable/disable pools. If that's already possible, then perhaps I misread the documentation.

I someone can make this happen, Ill toss you a coin.

From the API you can only switch pools (switchpool|N) at the moment.
That is almost the equivalent of enable/disable if you are using the default "Failover" mode since in that mode it only mines on the pool with priority 0 unless there is trouble with it,
So a switchpool|N command makes that the active pool (and enables it) and thus makes the current active pool no long the active pool (but doesn't disable it)

Add/delete/disable is not currently available and is also I doubt a very quick addition.
You cannot delete a pool as such anyway - it would only be 'disable'
Adding a pool: I'd have to have a look at what issues that creates when cgminer is already running
(I've no idea at the moment)

If a few people were interested ... you'd have a better chance of redirecting my current development away from my multi-rig monitoring/notification standalone java tool I'm working slowly on ...
(yes while working on this I realised the recent changes were needed and would also resolve most all but encrypted/password access to the API)

[P4man]

Adding password access would be more that just a small effort for a few reasons:
1) It's pointless adding password access without data encryption since it defeats the purpose of having a password in the first places
2) If I add data encryption then the protocol used would need to be used by anyone wanting password encryption.

Yeah, that thought crossed my mind, but I dont think its pointless without encryption; its one thing to do a port scan and find vulnerable cgminer instances, its quite another to intercept IP traffic between the miner and its owner. I agree putting a password on it is of course not 100% secure, but far better than nothing (and in my case, better than an IP lockout, since I would be accessing it via 3G on dynamic IP).

A somewhat clumsy alternative perhaps would be one time passwords, but managing that would likely be a nightmare.

Add/delete/disable is not currently available and is also I doubt a very quick addition.
You cannot delete a pool as such anyway - it would only be 'disable'
Adding a pool: I'd have to have a look at what issues that creates when cgminer is already running
(I've no idea at the moment)

Disable is good enough. As for adding a pool, it works just fine in the CLI while its running, which is why I was slightly surprised the functionality didnt seem to exist in the API. Its about the only thing you cant do through the API (and sadly, one I need lol).

[kano]

Adding password access would be more that just a small effort for a few reasons:
1) It's pointless adding password access without data encryption since it defeats the purpose of having a password in the first places
2) If I add data encryption then the protocol used would need to be used by anyone wanting password encryption.

Yeah, that thought crossed my mind, but I dont think its pointless without encryption; its one thing to do a port scan and find vulnerable cgminer instances, its quite another to intercept IP traffic between the miner and its owner. I agree putting a password on it is of course not 100% secure, but far better than nothing (and in my case, better than an IP lockout, since I would be accessing it via 3G on dynamic IP).

A somewhat clumsy alternative perhaps would be one time passwords, but managing that would likely be a nightmare.

So ... password/encrypted traffic ... some time down the road ...
If you are accessing it via 3G then you must mean a laptop? (VPN solves that
Since from a phone you'd normally be accessing a web page that would have some access control that is not related to cgminer?
Or have you written some android/iphone app that talks to cgminer directly?

Add/delete/disable is not currently available and is also I doubt a very quick addition.
You cannot delete a pool as such anyway - it would only be 'disable'
Adding a pool: I'd have to have a look at what issues that creates when cgminer is already running
(I've no idea at the moment)

...
Disable is good enough. As for adding a pool, it works just fine in the CLI while its running, which is why I was slightly surprised the functionality didnt seem to exist in the API. Its about the only thing you cant do through the API (and sadly, one I need lol).

Well I did say I had no idea about adding
(coz I've never used it from the cgminer screen and didn't even realise it existed)
Just checked - yep there it is
Delete is there also ... but I'm wondering how that works ... deleting a pool would mean you'd lose your pool stats which would be a bad thing in my opinion ... that's why I thought only disable, OK I guess I better check that code also.
OK the pool stuff just became a faster to do change ... sometime ...

[P_Shep]

Just have to say, cgminer is working great right now
Previous version were producing a lot of invalids/rejectes/discarded etc. Now the figure are all looking very good.
Well done Con

[jake262144]

Yeah, that thought crossed my mind, but I dont think its pointless without encryption; its one thing to do a port scan and find vulnerable cgminer instances, its quite another to intercept IP traffic between the miner and its owner. I agree putting a password on it is of course not 100% secure, but far better than nothing (and in my case, better than an IP lockout, since I would be accessing it via 3G on dynamic IP).

If you have a VPS with a statically-assigned IP somewhere, you could tunnel your dynamic-IP 3G traffic through an easy to configure SSH tunnel.
To the miner it will look like the traffic originates at the whitelisted VPS.

If you don't wish to set up a VPS or if you want to be able to use the API with --api-allow W:127.0.0.1,192.168.1/24" configured (LAN access only) while you're off-site you will need to set up a VPN server.
While configuration-intensive and sometimes tricky to get going, a VPN will massively boost the security of your network - no need to even open the miner's ssh port to the general internet population.
If you're using a mid-to-high end router, it might already have a VPN server built in.

Passwords may not the be the best approach when stored in plain-text form in some config file and not encrypted in transit.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Passwords may not the be the best approach when stored in plain-text form in some config file and not encrypted in transit.

Doesn't really matter about being stored in a config file.  If the attacker has access to the config file he has access to your machine (and possibly as admin/root) and can do anything he wants including force your GPU to overheat from the command line.

I guess we won't be getting password protected access which is a shame because I am not comfortable leaving it unprotected and setting up VPN and then providing access to all endpoints (which may change) seems like overkill.

I guess I can stop being lazy and fork my own copy.

[The00Dustin]

I guess we won't be getting password protected access which is a shame because I am not comfortable leaving it unprotected and setting up VPN and then providing access to all endpoints (which may change) seems like overkill.

FYI, Kano wrote and maintains the API...

So ... password/encrypted traffic ... some time down the road ...

<snip>...

OK the pool stuff just became a faster to do change ... sometime ...