[Bounty 0.1 BTC] MinePeon stability issues

[LogicalUnit]

Hi all,

I've been using MinePeon 0.2.3a for a few days, and have fixed one stability issue related to the system clock not synchronising over wifi. See this post: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=224015.msg3086667#msg3086667

However, both MinePeon and cgminer seem to be restarting frequently, giving me only a few hours of uptime between cycles.

I know that the first step would be to check the MinePeon logs, but I don't know where they are saved.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks

[LogicalUnit]

Added bounty

[LogicalUnit]

Right, I have followed these instructions to upgrade to cgminer 3.4.2 and we shall see if that improves anything.

[Scorpia]

also you might want to look at updating the http git.

as for the time, check http://www.minepeon.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=95

it allows the time to be stared on power outage so you dont need to wait for the ntp to sync.

as for general 0.2.3 stability. i found i got much better stability when i went back to 0.2.2 then did the git pull.

you end up with the same minepeon but it seems like a more reliable arch linux.

[LogicalUnit]

also you might want to look at updating the http git.

Not sure how to do this. . .

[Scorpia]

try this

cd /opt/minepeon/http
git pull

then I would suggest a

sudo reboot

[LogicalUnit]

Okay, I have reverted to MinePeon 0.2.2 with the latest ntp, cgminer and http packages. I'm trying to run the status screen as described here but the script terminates and the screen stops updating when I disconnect my ssh client. How do I make a python script continue after disconnecting ssh?

[LogicalUnit]

Code:

sudo python2 cgminerLCDStats.py &

The ampersand did the trick

Now to see how stable it is. . .

[LogicalUnit]

14 hours of uptime so far. Excellent!

[tk1337]

I know that the first step would be to check the MinePeon logs, but I don't know where they are saved.

Not sure if you saw my response in the MinePeon thread, but the system log files are located:

Code:

/var/log/

sudo cat /var/log/auth.log
sudo cat /var/log/crond.log
sudo cat /var/log/daemon.log
sudo cat /var/log/errors.log
sudo cat /var/log/everything.log
sudo cat /var/log/faillog
sudo cat /var/log/kernel.log
sudo cat /var/log/lastlog
sudo cat /var/log/messages.log

(Use sudo cat to output the entire contents of the file or you could do sudo tail -n [number] /var/log/[filename].log (Example: sudo tail -n 50 /var/log/auth.log would give me the most recent 50 entries within that file.)

auth.log = authorization systems log
crond.log = crontab log / cron jobs
daemon.log = system & application daemons (usually background processes)
errors.log = system errors.
everything.log = *should be **everything*** (hehe)
faillog = login failure log.
kernel.log = messages from the linux kernel
lastlog = login log
messages.log = general messages and system notices.

[LogicalUnit]

Very helpful. Many thanks.

[LogicalUnit]

Hmm, now my LCDStats script has stopped working!! I'm getting the following output:

Code:

Welcome to cgminerLCDStats
Copyright 2013 Cardinal Communications
Main Exception Handler:
Failed to claim interface

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "cgminerLCDStats.py", line 473, in <module>
    displayErrorScreen(str(e))   # something bad happened, better display the error screen
  File "cgminerLCDStats.py", line 198, in displayErrorScreen
    display = LCDSysInfo()
  File "/home/minepeon/cgminerLCDStats/pylcdsysinfo.py", line 332, in __init__
    raise IOError("Failed to claim interface")
IOError: Failed to claim interface

[Zeek_W]

Have you tried imaging the SD card to a new one? Not sure at all if it is the problem - but they do have a finite life.

[LogicalUnit]

The SD card is only a few weeks old. I have another one I could use, but I'm confused to why the LCD screen suddenly stopped working.

[LogicalUnit]

Hmm, after a few power cycles, LCDStats is working again. No idea what was causing it to fail. After investigation, MinePeon 0.2.2 and cgminer 3.4.2 were running properly, it was just my LCD that froze, leading me to believe something else was wrong.

[tk1337]

I got this issue yesterday, tbh, it just means it couldn't locate the lcd display from the GPIO.

I'm starting to think a longer delay period before running CGMiner on bootup is a really great idea. As someone mentioned in the other post the factor of time (since there's no hardware clock) can skew CGMiners stats and more-than-likely cause a few other issues, I would imagine. So, I'm going to write a bash script to stage things, start processes in an order, then (if it's actually starting a process that should be constantly running) check said process to make sure it's running before starting the next item. I haven't really taken the time to look to the current script that starts CGMiner other than a few quick glances.

Granted on a bootup CGMiner might take a few to load, but I'd rather that then have random oddities.

[cardcomm]

I've duplicated this issue, and posted a "fix" for it here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=137934.msg3149341#msg3149341

In short, it's likely a bad USB cable.

[cardcomm]

Code:

sudo python2 cgminerLCDStats.py &

The ampersand did the trick

Now to see how stable it is. . .

BTW, I'm not actually running v0.2.3a. But I think the best way to start and stop cgminerLCDStats on that version is:

systemctl start cgminerLCDStats
systemctl stop cgminerLCDStats

I actually just updated the MinePeon readme on the cgminerLCDStats github about this.

[LogicalUnit]

Great work, mate. The little MtGox ticker is very cool

[LogicalUnit]

I've duplicated this issue, and posted a "fix" for it here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=137934.msg3149341#msg3149341

In short, it's likely a bad USB cable.

Hmm, I've tried 3 different USB cables, including crimping one, and none of them work. The device shows up when I do an lsusb as Van Ooijen Technische Informatica shared ID for use with libusb, but I get the same error.