[GUIDE] BitFury Miner Support/Tuning

[zurg]

Mining should not need to access the SD card at all. I don't have the image, but is the swap disabled? There is no need of swap with revision 2 available memory.
Another reason could be that chainminer is storing data to often in it's logs on the file system. Not sure which logs are important and how big they get, but turning some of them off or storing all on a small ramdisk, may solve the dead SD problems.

If you can tell me what and how to check it I can. I am just a Linux n00b a bit.
Came to work.., rebooted Pi, it came up with no errors.
I do have a power switch that I can make Pi power cycle remotely by pinging it periodically.
Help@!, lol.

Anybody got any tips for network accessible power switches (EU available) for remotely power cycling the pi, as this sounds like it's worth while?

We use http://www.digital-loggers.com/dli.products.html
They are a very nice and saved me more then once.. lol just not last night..  for some reason the port the Pi was on was not set to be accessed remotely.
Fairly reasonable if you have multiple devices.

[tom99]

well, looks like my mining is dead with  ext4-fs errors again
will be down for another 7 hours until i can get to work and reload the sd card.. again.
ugh!

   try to use sd boot up and usb flash drive for store FS.


ps: I am going to get usb 8GB flash drive  to do it.  I got second time and waste few hrs too.

[KNK]

Mining should not need to access the SD card at all. I don't have the image, but is the swap disabled? There is no need of swap with revision 2 available memory.
Another reason could be that chainminer is storing data to often in it's logs on the file system. Not sure which logs are important and how big they get, but turning some of them off or storing all on a small ramdisk, may solve the dead SD problems.

If you can tell me what and how to check it I can. I am just a Linux n00b a bit.
Came to work.., rebooted Pi, it came up with no errors.
I do have a power switch that I can make Pi power cycle remotely by pinging it periodically.
Help@!, lol.

type free on the command prompt - if swap is used you will see it as the last line returned.
'dphys-swapfile swapoff' to turn it off and 'dphys-swapfile uninstall' to disable it

EDIT: to disable the service on startup use:
sudo update-rc.d -f dphys-swapfile remove

[-Redacted-]

That's very good info.  Thanks...

[Isokivi]

Still some manual work to be done so that autotune can be turned indefinetly off, but Im fairly certain there is not much more to come out of these.
[edit] Oh and thats a stable and constant hashrate. ...and before someone asks, each board is pencil modded individually with trial and error method. Rev. 1 boards as low as 1.15k and rev. 2 at as low as 1.6k.

[KNK]

Has anyone tested my fork? Does it work with all chips?
The problem is i am not sure how are the banks connected and is '#define BITFURY_BANKCHIPS 16' OK or it should be '#define BITFURY_BANKCHIPS 64'
I need to have a working version before i can add some additional options without braking backward compatibility. Hint: channels A-F instead of A-D on single RPi

[jlsminingcorp]

Mining should not need to access the SD card at all. I don't have the image, but is the swap disabled? There is no need of swap with revision 2 available memory.
Another reason could be that chainminer is storing data to often in it's logs on the file system. Not sure which logs are important and how big they get, but turning some of them off or storing all on a small ramdisk, may solve the dead SD problems.

If you can tell me what and how to check it I can. I am just a Linux n00b a bit.
Came to work.., rebooted Pi, it came up with no errors.
I do have a power switch that I can make Pi power cycle remotely by pinging it periodically.
Help@!, lol.

Anybody got any tips for network accessible power switches (EU available) for remotely power cycling the pi, as this sounds like it's worth while?

We use http://www.digital-loggers.com/dli.products.html
They are a very nice and saved me more then once.. lol just not last night..  for some reason the port the Pi was on was not set to be accessed remotely.
Fairly reasonable if you have multiple devices.

Thanks, that's very helpful.

[klondike_bar]

Still some manual work to be done so that autotune can be turned indefinetly off, but Im fairly certain there is not much more to come out of these.
[edit] Oh and thats a stable and constant hashrate. ...and before someone asks, each board is pencil modded individually with trial and error method. Rev. 1 boards as low as 1.15k and rev. 2 at as low as 1.6k.

personally, i measure the voltage across the caps rather then pencil mod resistance, since that can change as the unit heats up and its hard to measure the resistor when running and plugged in.

[darkfriend77]

Can you make a photo where to measure ... the current ... ?

[klondike_bar]

Can you make a photo where to measure ... the current ... ?

beside each chip there is a bank of 8 small capacitors. most of these (seems like half of them in my situation) carry the voltage to the chip (0.73-0.85v = 1.5-2.7GH depending on tuning) and can be easily checked with a multimeter. I usually check at least 2 caps to verify that all chips receive similar voltage and ensure accuracy.

I find that on startup from cold pcb i have around 0.805v, which climbs to 0.825v after the system is running and getting toasty over an hour or so. during this time, error rates decrease slightly and hashrate climbs to optimal speeds of about 40-41GH for the board

ps: current (amperage) is different from voltage  

[jddebug]

Can you make a photo where to measure ... the current ... ?

beside each chip there is a bank of 8 small capacitors. most of these (seems like half of them in my situation) carry the voltage to the chip (0.73-0.85v = 1.5-2.7GH depending on tuning) and can be easily checked with a multimeter. I usually check at least 2 caps to verify that all chips receive similar voltage and ensure accuracy.

I find that on startup from cold pcb i have around 0.805v, which climbs to 0.825v after the system is running and getting toasty over an hour or so. during this time, error rates decrease slightly and hashrate climbs to optimal speeds of about 40-41GH for the board

ps: current (amperage) is different from voltage  

Does 40GH require you to use heat sinks or just fans blowing across the cards?

[klondike_bar]

Can you make a photo where to measure ... the current ... ?

beside each chip there is a bank of 8 small capacitors. most of these (seems like half of them in my situation) carry the voltage to the chip (0.73-0.85v = 1.5-2.7GH depending on tuning) and can be easily checked with a multimeter. I usually check at least 2 caps to verify that all chips receive similar voltage and ensure accuracy.

I find that on startup from cold pcb i have around 0.805v, which climbs to 0.825v after the system is running and getting toasty over an hour or so. during this time, error rates decrease slightly and hashrate climbs to optimal speeds of about 40-41GH for the board

ps: current (amperage) is different from voltage  

Does 40GH require you to use heat sinks or just fans blowing across the cards?

i have heatsinks in use, and plan to upgrade them to slightly larger ones (35x35x6mm) soon.

however, today i have had some issues in the past 3 hours when i lost hashrate at ghash.io and system reboot and start/stop miner ommands seem to only be temporary fixes where it returns to 40Gh, then slowly drops. error rates are within reason (slightly higher than normal), and chip 1 has 3 miso errors that dont seem to be replicating in any other chips. (typically it had 1 per 5min sample before)

Its hard to troubleshoot without >20min of data, but i might have to check and/or back down the voltage slightly as im unsure whether the issue is the card or the pool (the initial problem seems to correlate with my blockerupters acting similarly, but they recovered and run fine now)

edit: voltage is reading around 0.838V and this seems to be causing the chips to switch off or clock down towards default speeds (how would/does that work?) I think if it does not improve in the next hour i will take the system offline and try to tune down the pencil mod slightly. Ambient room temps are up 2-3 celcius in the last 24hrs now that heat in the building is on, and this may be the cause of lowered resistence=higher voltage

[jddebug]

Can you make a photo where to measure ... the current ... ?

beside each chip there is a bank of 8 small capacitors. most of these (seems like half of them in my situation) carry the voltage to the chip (0.73-0.85v = 1.5-2.7GH depending on tuning) and can be easily checked with a multimeter. I usually check at least 2 caps to verify that all chips receive similar voltage and ensure accuracy.

I find that on startup from cold pcb i have around 0.805v, which climbs to 0.825v after the system is running and getting toasty over an hour or so. during this time, error rates decrease slightly and hashrate climbs to optimal speeds of about 40-41GH for the board

ps: current (amperage) is different from voltage  

Does 40GH require you to use heat sinks or just fans blowing across the cards?

i have heatsinks in use, and plan to upgrade them to slightly larger ones (35x35x6mm) soon.

however, today i have had some issues in the past 3 hours when i lost hashrate at ghash.io and system reboot and start/stop miner ommands seem to only be temporary fixes where it returns to 40Gh, then slowly drops. error rates are within reason (slightly higher than normal), and chip 1 has 3 miso errors that dont seem to be replicating in any other chips. (typically it had 1 per 5min sample before)

Its hard to troubleshoot without >20min of data, but i might have to check and/or back down the voltage slightly as im unsure whether the issue is the card or the pool (the initial problem seems to correlate with my blockerupters acting similarly, but they recovered and run fine now)

edit: voltage is reading around 0.838V and this seems to be causing the chips to switch off or clock down towards default speeds (how would/does that work?) I think if it does not improve in the next hour i will take the system offline and try to tune down the pencil mod slightly. Ambient room temps are up 2-3 celcius in the last 24hrs now that heat in the building is on, and this may be the cause of lowered resistence=higher voltage

Many of my cards are at 20GH. It sounds like I could try to get them to 30 without adding heat sinks?

[tom99]

  Nice heatsink from ebay http://www.ebay.com/itm/100x140x12-7mm-Aluminum-Heatsink-for-Electronic-Computer-Electric-equipment-H157-/181110341808?ssPageName=ADME:L:OU:CA:3160

[klondike_bar]

Can you make a photo where to measure ... the current ... ?

beside each chip there is a bank of 8 small capacitors. most of these (seems like half of them in my situation) carry the voltage to the chip (0.73-0.85v = 1.5-2.7GH depending on tuning) and can be easily checked with a multimeter. I usually check at least 2 caps to verify that all chips receive similar voltage and ensure accuracy.

I find that on startup from cold pcb i have around 0.805v, which climbs to 0.825v after the system is running and getting toasty over an hour or so. during this time, error rates decrease slightly and hashrate climbs to optimal speeds of about 40-41GH for the board

ps: current (amperage) is different from voltage  

Does 40GH require you to use heat sinks or just fans blowing across the cards?

i have heatsinks in use, and plan to upgrade them to slightly larger ones (35x35x6mm) soon.

however, today i have had some issues in the past 3 hours when i lost hashrate at ghash.io and system reboot and start/stop miner ommands seem to only be temporary fixes where it returns to 40Gh, then slowly drops. error rates are within reason (slightly higher than normal), and chip 1 has 3 miso errors that dont seem to be replicating in any other chips. (typically it had 1 per 5min sample before)

Its hard to troubleshoot without >20min of data, but i might have to check and/or back down the voltage slightly as im unsure whether the issue is the card or the pool (the initial problem seems to correlate with my blockerupters acting similarly, but they recovered and run fine now)

edit: voltage is reading around 0.838V and this seems to be causing the chips to switch off or clock down towards default speeds (how would/does that work?) I think if it does not improve in the next hour i will take the system offline and try to tune down the pencil mod slightly. Ambient room temps are up 2-3 celcius in the last 24hrs now that heat in the building is on, and this may be the cause of lowered resistence=higher voltage

Many of my cards are at 20GH. It sounds like I could try to get them to 30 without adding heat sinks?

i would say that without adding heatsinks, but having proper airflow (a 120mm or 80mm fan pointed at the board is enough) you should be able to attain 30-35GH on a good board. If yours only runs 20GH by default, it sounds like some chips may be running slow so you may only see 27-30GH. Start at a voltage of 0.77v and see how it runs for 12hours. if it runs well, aim for 0.79v

[klondike_bar]

 Nice heatsink from ebay http://www.ebay.com/itm/100x140x12-7mm-Aluminum-Heatsink-for-Electronic-Computer-Electric-equipment-H157-/181110341808?ssPageName=ADME:L:OU:CA:3160

12.7mm height may be a little large for these boards, and may exceed the availale spacing between boards. 5-7mm would be better

[klondike_bar]

I just took my unit offline and checked the resistance of my pencil mod. immediate resistence was 1050k(ohm). after only 2 minutes it was at 1080k(ohm). I toned back the pencil mod and checked resistance at 1130k(ohm).

bootup voltage: 0.785V
3min voltage: 0.798V    - ~35GH
My ideal voltage is about 0.82-0.83V (~40.5GH)

over 0.835V leads to issues like those experienced today, where hashrate constantly struggles around half speed, with high error rates

[eestimees]

I dont know is it logical or rational, but could not get sleep and got an idea and made some scripts:

1) collect stats

# m h  dom mon dow   command
*/5 * * * * /home/pi/get_stat.sh

Code:

#!/bin/sh

cat /run/shm/.stat.log  | sed -E "s/[[:space:]]+/:/g" | cut -d ":" -f 1,3,4,5,6,7 | head -n 16 >> /home/pi/rw-stat.log

note I'm cutting 1st 16 lines there

then when it has run for some time, made this:

Code:

pi@bitfury ~ $ awk -F':' '{print $1,$4-($6*100/$5/100*$4),$2,$4,$5,$6; }' rw-stat.log | sort -r | uniq -f 3 | uniq -w 2 | sort -n | awk '{ if ( $2 ~ /[0-9]/ ) s+=$2;print $0;} END {printf "total: "s" Ghash/s\n"}'

result:

Code:

1 2.283 55 2.283 145 0
2 2.14944 55 2.177 158 2
3 2.135 55 2.135 169 0
4 2.177 55 2.177 167 0
5 1.97943 55 2.093 129 7
6 1.839 55 1.839 144 0
7 -nan 0 0.000 0 0
8 2.1187 55 2.135 131 1
9 2.315 55 2.315 172 0
10 2.23799 55 2.336 143 6
11 2.209 55 2.209 162 0
12 2.20839 56 2.283 153 5
13 2.072 55 2.072 156 0
14 2.19 55 2.220 148 2
15 2.26272 55 2.357 175 7
16 2.346 55 2.346 180 0
total: 32.5227 Ghash/s

explaning by columns:
1 - chip number
2 - Ghash/sec substracted % of error
3 - chip speed
4 - Ghash/sec from log
5 - Nonces/round
6 - false nonces

Idea was to let autotune to do the tuning for some days and then find the best setting where speed is highest while some errors are allowed. I was thinking that 2Ghash/s with 10% errors is 1.8Ghash/s and it is better that lower speed and 1.7Ghash/sec

maybe someone can get some ideas here or if my sleepy mind was useful (3.51AM at the moment) we can clean up that long and messy shell line.. and format output..

EDIT: added total has sum to the output end (this: 32.5227)

[klondike_bar]

^you should be getting far less than 10% errors if you updated to the newest chainminer (explained earlier in thread, a few pages back). Before i had 7-12% errors. now its about 2-4%

[eestimees]

^you should be getting far less than 10% errors if you updated to the newest chainminer (explained earlier in thread, a few pages back). Before i had 7-12% errors. now its about 2-4%

thanks, will try that