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

[Beaflag VonRathburg]

Is there a known issue trying to run 5 or more BFL singles under windows in either 2.4.1 or 2.4.2?  2.3.6 seems to be able to handle 5 singles fine.  But every time I try to run all five under a single instance with 2.4.1 or 2.4.2, I get a crash in libpdcurses.dll.

Faulting application name: cgminer.exe, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x4fcad128
Faulting module name: libpdcurses.dll, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x4f460f95
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x000012fe
Faulting process id: 0xb24
Faulting application start time: 0x01cd419e02e067d8
Faulting application path: C:\Users\miner\Desktop\cgminer-2.4.2-win32\cgminer.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Users\miner\Desktop\cgminer-2.4.2-win32\libpdcurses.dll

I think I saw a thread elsewhere here that said if you increase the size of the command window in windows, it might solve this problem.

Yes, increasing the size of the command window (before starting cgminer) has helped people with similar symptoms.

(EDIT: I've seen you already got it working.)

To set a larger size as a default, hit start->run and type in cmd.exe<enter>; then click the black system icon in the top left corner of the command window that pops up. Choose 'properties'. The important thing here is the 'Layout' tab. Specifically Window Height. Set the Window height to 40 or 50. You can change the font as well to make it fit your monitor better. Click ok. You may then exit the command window. Any command window you open after this will come up with its new size.

There is a difference in how different versions of cgminer behave with Singles. 2.3.6 worked perfectly for me with up to 15 Singles. I since moved to 2.4.1 (and now 2.4.2) and have found that, using the same command line and command window layout size, 15 Singles crashes it. 2.4.1 are happy with 10 Singles, but not 15. 2.3.6 works fine with 15.

I don't know what broke between cgminer 2.3.6 and 2.4.1. It also behaves differently when Singles go offline; 2.3.6 just exited (which was good) but 2.4.1 and 2.4.2 just mark them as 'OFF' and do not exit (bad).

Win 7 x64
9x BFL Singles
10 Port powered USB hub


Issue: Neither 2.4.4 nor 2.3.6 will start more than 6 BFL singles

Troubleshooting:
- Multiple restarts usually resulting in BFL singles receiving different COM numbers than previous reboot
- Powering and unpowering USB hub
- Plugging USB hub into multiple USB 2 ports will cause zero BFL singles to start in cgminer
- Plugging into USB 3 port will allow 6 BFL singles to start in cgminer, but I receive a, "This device can perfom faster when plugged into a USB 2.0 port," message
- Plugging the 3 BFL singles that where not starting in cgminer into another computer directly to the front USB ports. None would start resulting in same COM errors (2.4.3)

At this point I'm trying to figure out if the USB hub, cables from hub --> singles, cgminer, or the singles themselves are the point of error. All singles light up and the fans spin. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I'm pretty sure I've seen this before.  If you resize the window cgminer runs in, it might fix it.

M

Window size is already set to 87x56. I've tried increasing it upto 90x80, but it has no effect.

Pictures:

[1715023291]

1715023291

[1715023291]

1715023291

[1715023291]

1715023291

[wildemagic]

Yay, just compiled my own win32 2.4.4 with icarus support and no ocl adl etc.

Used the instructions here : http://pastebin.com/3pzivj32

Worked first time, happy camper.  Now I can copy the binaries onto my intel integrated devices and not have the usual no-sdk issues.

kind regards

[kano]

Yay, just compiled my own win32 2.4.4 with icarus support and no ocl adl etc.

Used the instructions here : http://pastebin.com/3pzivj32

Worked first time, happy camper.  Now I can copy the binaries onto my intel integrated devices and not have the usual no-sdk issues.

kind regards

Yep those instructions are part of cgminer:
https://github.com/ckolivas/cgminer/blob/master/windows-build.txt

[Beaflag VonRathburg]

Win 7 x64
9x BFL Singles
10 Port powered USB hub


Issue: Neither 2.4.4 nor 2.3.6 will start more than 6 BFL singles

Troubleshooting:
- Multiple restarts usually resulting in BFL singles receiving different COM numbers than previous reboot
- Powering and unpowering USB hub
- Plugging USB hub into multiple USB 2 ports will cause zero BFL singles to start in cgminer
- Plugging into USB 3 port will allow 6 BFL singles to start in cgminer, but I receive a, "This device can perfom faster when plugged into a USB 2.0 port," message
- Plugging the 3 BFL singles that where not starting in cgminer into another computer directly to the front USB ports. None would start resulting in same COM errors (2.4.3)

At this point I'm trying to figure out if the USB hub, cables from hub --> singles, cgminer, or the singles themselves are the point of error. All singles light up and the fans spin. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I'm pretty sure I've seen this before.  If you resize the window cgminer runs in, it might fix it.

M

Window size is already set to 87x56. I've tried increasing it upto 90x80, but it has no effect.

Pictures:

I just went and purchased a 4 port powered USB hub to test out if my 10 port was an issue along with some hardware to reassemble my 10th single. Out of the four singles attached to the new hub zero will start in cgminer. Using multiple rear USB 2/3 ports for the hub has no change. This almost added to the issues as now one of the BFL singles is not being assigned a COM number (Com 38, 39 ,Blank, 41). It should be 40, but that will not work either. With the four port hub added to the system I can now only get 5 singles to start in cgminer. This is pretty much driving me insane.

[Beaflag VonRathburg]

Figured it out:

Win 7 would say it was downloading the BFL driver, but it wasn't actually doing something correct with it. I installed the BFL driver and all of the devices received COM numbers. Using -S COM# would only get six devices running in cgminer. I did some searching and found:

Thanks for your help. They each work individually. I just cant get them all to run.

-S "\\.\COM3" -S "\\.\COM4" -S "\\.\COM5"


Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

With all of the COM numbers put in all 10 devices were found and are now currently hashing.

[kano]

lulz ...
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=28402.msg1011546#msg1011546

[-ck]

New Version: 2.5.0 - 6th July 2012

New version number signifying the updated BFL hardware support. Non-bfl miners have only bugfixes since 2.4.4.

Human readable changelog:

- Bitforce minirig support - including support for use on p2pool through use of the --bfl-range option, provided you have a new enough minirig that supports the nonce-range feature. By default this feature is disabled because it costs ~1% in hashrate, but given the massive loss of hashes you would otherwise have mining on p2pool, this is worth using. Other miners should leave it disabled.
- Huge update to other bitforce device. I've merged all of p_shep's changes into this code (thanks!). These can reenable devices, time out gracefully and mark them sick/overheated and so on.
- I've also created my own workaround for the biggest problem with existing bitforce devices - the can now abort work as soon as a longpoll hits which means literally half as much work on average wasted across longpoll than previously, and a much lower reject rate. Note these devices are still inefficient across longpoll since they don't even have the support the minirig devices have - and they never will according to bfl. This means you should never mine with them on p2pool.
- Fixed the dynamic GPU intensity behaviour which was getting stuck at -10 on faster GPUs.
- Updated API code with lots of changes under the hood courtesy of Kano, and updated miner.php.

Full changelog:

- Fix --benchmark not working since the dynamic addition of pools and pool
stats.
- Make disabling BFL nonce range support a warning since it has to be explicitly
enabled on the command line now.
- miner.php allow renaming table headers
- Make bitforce nonce range support a command line option --bfl-range since
enabling it decrease hashrate by 1%.
- Add sanity checking to make sure we don't make sleep_ms less than 0 in
bitforce.
- The fastest minirig devices need a significantly smaller starting sleep time.
- Use a much shorter initial sleep time to account for faster devices and nonce
range working, and increase it if nonce range fails to work.
- Use nmsleep instead of usleep in bitforce.
- Provide a ms based sleep function that uses nanosleep to avoid the inaccuracy
of usleep on SMP systems.
- delay_time_ms is always set so need not be initialised in bitforce.
- Increase bitforce timeout to 10 seconds.
- Add more hysteresis and poll ~5 times to allow for timer delays in bitforce
devices.
- miner.php allow alternating line colours (off by default)
- Display the actual duration of wait when it is greater than the cutoff.
- Set nonce to maximum once we determine nonce range support is broken.
- Initial wait time is always known so no need to zero it beforehand in
bitforce.
- No point counting wait time until the work is actually sent to bitforce
devices.
- Use string comparison functions instead of explicit comparisons.
- Account for wait_ms time when nonce_range is in use on BFL.
- Split nonces up into 1/5 chunks when nonce range is supported.
- limit clear buffer iterations.
- Ad fd check to clear buffer.
- miner.php remove incorrect 'DATE' error message
- miner.php allow summary header in custom pages
- Disable nonce range support in BFL when broken support is detected.
- Restart_wait is only called with a ms value so incorporate that into the
function.
- Only try to adjust dev width when curses is built in.
- miner.php define custom sum fields as a simple array
- Fix off-by-one error in nonce increment in bfl.
- Use BE when setting nonce in bitforce nonce range work.
- Enable nonce range in the normal init sequence for bfl.
- Queue extra work at 2/3 differently depending on whether we're using nonce
range or not.
- Initially enable support for nonce range support on bfl, splitting nonces up
into 3/4 size and only disable it if it fails on work submit.
- Attempt to detect nonce range support in BFL by sending work requring its
support.
- Limit retrying on busy for up to BITFORCE_TIMEOUT_MS
- Attempt to initialise while bitforce device returns BUSY.
- Extend length of string that can be passed to BFL devices.
- Fix signedness warning.
- Adjust device width column to be consistent.
- Use cgpu-> not gpus[] in watchdog thread.
- Add api stats (sleep time)
- Timing tweaks Added long and short timeouts, short for detecting throttling,
long to give up totally. Reset sleep time when device re-initialised Still check
results after timeout Back up a larger time if result on first poll.
- Add API Notify counter 'Comms Error'
- Style police on api.c
- Do all logging outside of the bitforce mutex locking to avoid deadlocks.
- Remove applog call from bfwrite to prevent grabbing nested mutexes.
- Bitforce style changes.
- Minor style changes.
- Remove needless roundl define.
- Made JSON error message verbose.
- Fine-tune timing adjustment. Also remove old work_restart timing.
- Check for gpu return times of >= 0, not just 0, to fix intensity dropping to
-10.
- Restart is zeroed in the mining thread so no need to do it inside the bitforce
code.
- More improvements to comms. BFL return nothing when throttling, so should not
be considered an error. Instead repeat with a longer delay.
- Polling every 10ms there's not much point checking the pthread_cond_timedwait
as it just adds overhead. Simply check the value of work_restart in the bfl main
polling loop.
- Use a pthread conditional that is broadcast whenever work restarts are
required. Create a generic wait function waiting a specified time on that
conditional that returns if the condition is met or a specified time passed to
it has elapsed. Use this to do smarter polling in bitforce to abort work, queue
more work, and check for results to minimise time spent working needlessly.
- Add busy time to wait time.
- api.c put version up to 1.14
- Add tiny delay after writing to BFL Change BFL errors to something more human
readable Send work busy re-tries after 10ms delay

[-ck]

Alas, it's not like I actually own a minirig, but some generous donating and temporary remote access allowed me to work on the code for it. Note that this was a laptop connected to 2 minirigs, each with 17 devices in it. The silicon quality apparently varies from device to device which is why they're 2 speeds in this example. Note that this machine was generating 50Ghash, with an efficiency over 9000  and the CPU usage was recording 1%.

[mdude77]

Alas, it's not like I actually own a minirig, but some generous donating and temporary remote access allowed me to work on the code for it. Note that this was a laptop connected to 2 minirigs, each with 17 devices in it. The silicon quality apparently varies from device to device which is why they're 2 speeds in this example. Note that this machine was generating 50Ghash, with an efficiency over 9000  and the CPU usage was recording 1%.

<sigh>

M

[jamesg]

Alas, it's not like I actually own a minirig, but some generous donating and temporary remote access allowed me to work on the code for it. Note that this was a laptop connected to 2 minirigs, each with 17 devices in it. The silicon quality apparently varies from device to device which is why they're 2 speeds in this example. Note that this machine was generating 50Ghash, with an efficiency over 9000  and the CPU usage was recording 1%.

Thanks for this work Con. You are the best in the business. I have cgminer 2.5.0 running on 14 singles and 3 mini rigs without issue.

[dave3]

Thanks!

I compiled 2.5.0 for windows and I'm running it for a pair of BFL Singles.  So far so good.

I did try a test by pulling the plug on the Singles to see if they'd recover after being plugged back in, but no luck on that, yet.

Code:

[2012-07-06 19:38:09] Accepted a8d83928.6635d436 BFL 0 pool 0
[2012-07-06 19:38:11] Accepted ea99b76e.33143e03 BFL 1 pool 0
[2012-07-06 19:38:24] BFL0: took 15015ms - longer than 10000ms
[2012-07-06 19:38:24] BFL0: Error: Send work reports: ░?kLA
[2012-07-06 19:38:25] BFL1: took 15015ms - longer than 10000ms
[2012-07-06 19:38:26] Pool 0 not providing work fast enough
[2012-07-06 19:38:29] BFL0: Comms error
[2012-07-06 19:38:29] BFL0: Error: Send work reports: ╚?╒î┴v£öy|■   ╓┬└v?IA
[2012-07-06 19:38:34] BFL0: Comms error
[2012-07-06 19:38:34] BFL0: Error: Send work reports: ╚?╒î┴v£öy|■   ╓┬└v?IA

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

2012-07-06 19:40:07] BFL1: Comms error
2012-07-06 19:40:07] BFL1: Error: Send work reports: ╚?╒î┴v£öy|^P
2012-07-06 19:40:07] BFL0: Idle for more than 60 seconds, declaring SICK!
2012-07-06 19:40:07] BFL0: Attempting to restart
2012-07-06 19:40:07] BFL0: Re-initalizing
2012-07-06 19:40:07] BFL0: Comms error
2012-07-06 19:40:12] BFL1: Comms error
2012-07-06 19:40:12] BFL1: Error: Send work reports: ╚?╒î┴v£öy|■   ╓┬└v?IA
2012-07-06 19:40:12] BFL0: Comms error
2012-07-06 19:40:17] BFL1: Comms error
2012-07-06 19:40:17] BFL1: Error: Send work reports: ╚?╒î┴v£öy|■   ╓┬└v?IA

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

[2012-07-06 19:49:21] BFL1: Re-initalizing
[2012-07-06 19:50:10] BFL0: Re-initalizing
[2012-07-06 19:50:59] BFL0: Not responded for more than 10 minutes, declaring DEAD!
[2012-07-06 19:50:59] BFL1: Re-initalizing
[2012-07-06 19:52:01] BFL0: Re-initalizing

I added some exit(1)'s after some of those error messages in driver-bitforce.c as a hack so it can stop & restart.  Maybe not applicable for most people, though.

[Vorksholk]

Anyone else having a problem of cgminer saying their BFL is over the heat threshold when it's only at 45C and stopping work on it?

[-ck]

Anyone else having a problem of cgminer saying their BFL is over the heat threshold when it's only at 45C and stopping work on it?

Check your configuration file or command line doesn't have temperature parameters for GPU(s), and that zero is being used for the BFL.

[P_Shep]

Anyone else having a problem of cgminer saying their BFL is over the heat threshold when it's only at 45C and stopping work on it?

Check your configuration file or command line doesn't have temperature parameters for GPU(s), and that zero is being used for the BFL.

I found this too. My config file had 95 set for my two GPUs, then nothing more specified. by default, it should set any remaining devices to 95, but it didn't. I'm thinking it set it to 0. Anyway, I removed the conf. line and it worked fine.

[P_Shep]

Thanks!

I compiled 2.5.0 for windows and I'm running it for a pair of BFL Singles.  So far so good.

I did try a test by pulling the plug on the Singles to see if they'd recover after being plugged back in, but no luck on that, yet.

Code:

[2012-07-06 19:38:09] Accepted a8d83928.6635d436 BFL 0 pool 0
[2012-07-06 19:38:11] Accepted ea99b76e.33143e03 BFL 1 pool 0
[2012-07-06 19:38:24] BFL0: took 15015ms - longer than 10000ms
[2012-07-06 19:38:24] BFL0: Error: Send work reports: ░?kLA
[2012-07-06 19:38:25] BFL1: took 15015ms - longer than 10000ms
[2012-07-06 19:38:26] Pool 0 not providing work fast enough
[2012-07-06 19:38:29] BFL0: Comms error
[2012-07-06 19:38:29] BFL0: Error: Send work reports: ╚?╒î┴v£öy|■   ╓┬└v?IA
[2012-07-06 19:38:34] BFL0: Comms error
[2012-07-06 19:38:34] BFL0: Error: Send work reports: ╚?╒î┴v£öy|■   ╓┬└v?IA

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

2012-07-06 19:40:07] BFL1: Comms error
2012-07-06 19:40:07] BFL1: Error: Send work reports: ╚?╒î┴v£öy|^P
2012-07-06 19:40:07] BFL0: Idle for more than 60 seconds, declaring SICK!
2012-07-06 19:40:07] BFL0: Attempting to restart
2012-07-06 19:40:07] BFL0: Re-initalizing
2012-07-06 19:40:07] BFL0: Comms error
2012-07-06 19:40:12] BFL1: Comms error
2012-07-06 19:40:12] BFL1: Error: Send work reports: ╚?╒î┴v£öy|■   ╓┬└v?IA
2012-07-06 19:40:12] BFL0: Comms error
2012-07-06 19:40:17] BFL1: Comms error
2012-07-06 19:40:17] BFL1: Error: Send work reports: ╚?╒î┴v£öy|■   ╓┬└v?IA

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

[2012-07-06 19:49:21] BFL1: Re-initalizing
[2012-07-06 19:50:10] BFL0: Re-initalizing
[2012-07-06 19:50:59] BFL0: Not responded for more than 10 minutes, declaring DEAD!
[2012-07-06 19:50:59] BFL1: Re-initalizing
[2012-07-06 19:52:01] BFL0: Re-initalizing

I added some exit(1)'s after some of those error messages in driver-bitforce.c as a hack so it can stop & restart.  Maybe not applicable for most people, though.

When you unplug a device then plug it back in it enumerates to a different port. Cgminer doesn't scan ports (yet) so it can't work out where it's gone.

Edit:
One thing you could try... in bitforce_init, remove the clear_buffer and add a sleep(5) between the BFclose and BFopen. See if that does anything

[kano]

... and anyone looking for an Xubuntu 11.04 compile of 2.5.0
-> cgminer-2.5.0a at the top of https://github.com/kanoi/cgminer/downloads
(I'm running this executable at the moment on both my rigs)

[dave3]

When you unplug a device then plug it back in it enumerates to a different port. Cgminer doesn't scan ports (yet) so it can't work out where it's gone.

For what it's worth, I'm pulling the plug on the power (the laptop that's running cgminer keeps running on batteries).  When I restart cgminer, it's still using the same serial ports (specified on the command line with -S).

[P_Shep]

When you unplug a device then plug it back in it enumerates to a different port. Cgminer doesn't scan ports (yet) so it can't work out where it's gone.

For what it's worth, I'm pulling the plug on the power (the laptop that's running cgminer keeps running on batteries).  When I restart cgminer, it's still using the same serial ports (specified on the command line with -S).

In that case I'm thinking windows isn't closing / reopening the port properly.

Edit:
Yeah, a quick look suggests that a wait between closing and reopening may help.

[The00Dustin]

When you unplug a device then plug it back in it enumerates to a different port. Cgminer doesn't scan ports (yet) so it can't work out where it's gone.

For what it's worth, I'm pulling the plug on the power (the laptop that's running cgminer keeps running on batteries).  When I restart cgminer, it's still using the same serial ports (specified on the command line with -S).

In that case I'm thinking windows isn't closing / reopening the port properly.

Edit:
Yeah, a quick look suggests that a wait between closing and reopening may help.

I'm confused as to why the port would change.  My experience with various removable serial ports (USB and otherwise, spanning at least 4 or 5 different device drivers) in Windows is that the enumerate the same consistently so long as they are plugged in the exact same port.  IOW, as long as any hubs are connected/initialized in the same order (so that the USB ports are still addressed the same) and the same singles are connected to the same USB ports, the same serial port numbers should be used.  Unless something is different about the controller BFL uses, the serial port numbers shouldn't change (Windows would need to think the same controller was plugged into a different port or a different controller was plugged into the same port when that hadn't happened).  I could see a mini-rig having a problem with address consistency if the chained hubs get detected in a different order, but I've never seen that happen with built-in ports or single hubs on a desktop or laptop.  Am I missing something?

[P_Shep]

It does in Linux, and that's what I'm mainly using