New version: 4.2.0, 18th March 2014Major feature upgrades - main one being low overhead scaleable solo mining to bitcoind, bugfixes and driver improvements.
Human readable changelog:- Low overhead ultra-scaleable solo mining to bitcoind. Quote from the documentation update:
Solo mining can be done efficiently as a single pool entry or a backup to
any other pooled mining and it is recommended everyone have solo mining set up
as their final backup in case all their other pools are DDoSed/down for the
security of the network. To enable solo mining, one must be running a local
bitcoind/bitcoin-qt or have one they have rpc access to. To do this, edit your
bitcoind configuration file (bitcoin.conf) with the following extra lines,
using your choice of username and password:
rpcuser=username
rpcpassword=password
Restart bitcoind, then start cgminer, pointing to the bitcoind and choose a
btc address with the following options, altering to suit their setup:
cgminer -o http://localhost:8332 -u username -p password --btc-address 15qSxP1SQcUX3o4nhkfdbgyoWEFMomJ4rZ
Note that I have NOT had the pleasure of mining a real solo bitcoin block with this latest code, only on various test networks, so you must accept the risks associated with using it on the real network. It rigidly follows bitcoind rules for transaction processing, updating transactions every 60 seconds and checking for block changes every 0.5 seconds. Be aware this involved a great deal of work and I would not have completed it but for the fact it was partially sponsored. However it was something that was going to be needed at some stage as I think it's mandatory everyone can use solo as their final backup. If you do NOT specify a btc address, you WILL be mining solo for me instead.
- Massive improvements to mining efficiency when using pooled GBT mining.
- Stratum low level bugfixes that may have caused random corruption/crashes.
- Miner.php updates
- Drillbit updates
- Antminer S1 updates
- Fix for repeatedly trying to reset a usb device when it has failed.
- Fix for Icarus devices (such as antminer U1 or block erupters) being switched off and not restarting.
- More accurate hashrates on cointerra devices, with a more reliable bitmap of working cores and now a count such as:
Asic0Core0 120:fffefffefffefffefffefffefffefffe
- Per core cointerra hashrates
- Fix for memory leak on hashfast devices.
- Fix for crashes on multiple failed inits on hashfast devices.
- Show what quadrant of a hashfast core has failed if possible
- Fix for hashfast API stats output being invalid json
- Hashfast api stats output names are unique making them more easily parseable
- Inputting URLs without a prefix (such as http:// or stratum+tcp://) will now assume stratum to speed up initial connections.
- On linux we no longer use sysv semaphores to prevent multiple instances of cgminer trying to use the same device, meaning you will no longer run out of semaphore resources or have failures to grab devices on restarting.
- Numerous other low level fixes and improvements.
Full changelog:- Fix missing htobe16 on windows and meaningless >u32 string warning.
- Software ntime roll for all hashfast devices.
- Silence harmless warning.
- Drop a failed restart icarus device to allow it to be rehotplugged if
possible.
- Work with more than one transaction.
- Kill gbt solo pools that don't respond to the gbt request 5 times
sequentially.
- Fix ser_number for no remaining val byte.
- Create a work item and stage it when updating the gbt solo template to allow
new block detection and restart code to work.
- Test block hash as well as block height when solo mining to ensure we haven't
been mining on an orphan branch.
- Fix transaction processing for gbt solo.
- Encode height using integer varint format.
- Make new block detection message not show in gbt solo from test_work_current
- Add block detection via getblockcount polling in gbt solo and update gbt
template every 60 seconds.
- Iterate over transactions twice to malloc only once when copying all the
transaction data.
- Update solo coinbase regularly and submit as gbt work
- Only show merkle hashes for solo mining in debug mode.
- Set correct flag for solo work.
- Generate gbt solo work emulating stratum work construction.
- Set the diff as a double sdiff from gbt solo data.
- Move swork.diff out of the stratum work section to be shared as sdiff.
- Generate a header bin from gbt solo as per the cached stratum one.
- Store strings similar to stratum's when decoding gbt solo
- Avoid allocing and freeing stratum strings that should be fixed length.
- Run parser through detect_stratum after stratum+tcp:// is force added
- Remove unnecessary header length calculation for stratum header binary and
only binary convert the correct length of the header.
- Share more fields between stratum and gbt
- Share coinbase_len variable b/w stratum and gbt and setup more gbt solo
parameters.
- Generate a valid coinbase and set nonce2offset for gbt solo
- Move scriptsig header bin conversion to setup gbt solo
- Create our own custom scriptsig base.
- Add helper functions for creating script signature templates and beging
building template.
- Do gbt solo decoding under gbt lock.
- Add more gbt variable decoding from gbt solo information.
- Store all the transaction data in binary form when using GBT
- When setting up solo mining, check validity of bitcoin address against
bitcoind
- Make pooled GBT mining use merkle bin optimisations slated for solo mining.
- Abstract out the merkle bin calculation for gbt solo
- Implement efficient merkle tree base from solo GBT information.
- miner.php custom formatting and row counter '#'
- Drillbit: Fix for underestimating hash rate from Bitfury devices
- Send per-core hashrates at regular ~5min intervals back to cta devices.
- Calculate the cta per core hashrate at 5 minute intervals.
- Check the bits of the correct core in cta bit count.
- Display the bit count along with the bitmap for each cta core in the API stats
output.
- Store and display the per core hashrate on cta relative to each work restart.
- Decrease the time we wait for unsetting a core on the cta bitmap to correspond
with the lower max diff of 32.
- Set max diff on cointerra devices to 32 which is still only 11 shares per
second but allows for earlier confirmation of per core hashrates.
- Keep track of when the last restart and work updates were triggered and
provide helper functions for knowing the time since then.
- hashfast make api stats field names unique
- Fix gcc longjmp warning in api.c
- Add a per-core hashrate to the cta API stats.
- miner.php support edevs and estats
- API - put edevstatus where it was supposed to be
- Icarus - allow timing mode to work with ANU and not slow it down
- drillbit - remove warnings
- drillbit - minor code tidy up
- Drillbit: Change language around 'void' to warning about limiter disabled
- Drillbit: Fix accidental over-counting of HW errors
- Drillbit: --drillbit-auto parameter for tweakable custom tuning of ASIC speeds
- Drillbit: Output warning if board reports void warranty
- Drillbit: Add Avalon & drillbit-autotune notes to ASIC-README
- Drillbit: Limit work sent out to 8 units in a single pass, was DoSing a full
double scroll
- Drillbit: Move drillbit_empty_buffer calls to only when errors occur, were
limiting performance on Windows
- Fix Windows bug with libusb_reset_device returning SUCCESS for disconnected
device
- Drillbit: Fix some warnings
- Drillbit: Add --drillbit-autotune option for device to dynamically alter clock
speed
- Drillbit: Fix typo in previous commit
- Drillbit: Remove default config in cgminer, rely on defaults in firmware
- Drillbit: Combine split USB transfer for sending new work, reduce overhead
- Drillbit: Add support for protocol V4, with device-agnostic board
configuration data
- Drillbit driver: Add support for Avalon-based Drillbit miners
- API - add edevs and estats - to only show enabled devices
- Check device data exists on a hfa instance before trying to reinit it.
- Print off what quadrant regulator failed if known in hfa driver.
- Reset all the stats on autovoltage complete in cta driver.
- Use correct diff instead of diffbits in cta driver.
- Whitelist all firmwares <= 0.5 on hfa for software rolling of ntime.
- Avoid a memory leak by reusing the ntime field when rolling stratum work.
- Clear the pipe bitmap on cta only when no share has occurred for 2 hours
instead of 1.
- Cta share_hashes should be added, and we can base it on device wdiff instead
of pool work difficulty for more accurate hashrates.
- Since the device runtime is now reset, the Raw hashrate entry in the cta API
output is no longer meaningful.
- Look for autovoltage returning to zero on cta driver and reset stats at that
point since the hashrate is unreliable till then.
- ants1 - cgminerise applog calls
- Default to stratum+tcp:// on any urls that don't have a prefix instead of
http.
- Trivial cta style changes.
- ants1 - fix/enable temperature checking and remove unneeded temp_old
- ants1 - move local cgpu variables to info structure
- ants1 use a klist to store work and copied work
- Simplify dramatically the cross-process cgminer locking through use of flock
instead of sysv semaphores.
