We cannot use your mine if we cannot leave it unatended
I can fully understand that - when you want to make money with mining stability is the alpha and omega. Thats why I released this so early and with hints that this is beta because I do not have the testing machines (yet) to get it rock stable for all platforms that it may support. Therefore I am very thankful about any comment here helping me to improve stability.
I will add an extra mark to the Windows version that it is instable. Linux version currently causes much less problems and should be preferred when possible.
Due to the feedback of last hours, here is the updated list of known issues:
[ALL OS, NVIDIA] High CPU Utilization (Found by me, Confirmed by all NVidia Users here)Reason:Nvidia has a busy wait for OpenCL kernel completion thats considered a but for over 6 years now, but is not yet fixed (in CUDA it is...)
Problem for Miners: High CPU utilization that may cause problems with CPU cooling. Also dropping hashrate when too many instances are active on the same rig with week CPU and instances may crash. For example an Intel Celeron 3855u may only run one instance of lolMiner currently, Core I5 with 4 physical cores may run up to 3 GPU. More then 4 GPU are currently only stable with Intel Server CPU or AMD Threadripper.
Expected Time to Fix: I am currently testing a fix that will lower the CPU cost of one GTX 1080 from about 115% single core CPU utilization to about 20 (on my testing machine). This will cost about 2% of hash-rate but will allow larger rigs to operate and the CPU to stay cooler. I will provide the beta fix today before 3pm UTC.
Ps: You will always require a strong CPU for Minexcoin anyways, since the found solutions have to be put twice to SHA256 to compare it with the target. This is currently done on CPU and since the high end Nvidia cards can reach up to 20k sol/s this is not easy for the CPU. I expect that when properly fixed the above mentioned Celeron may handle 4-6 GPU but if you have a larger rig it would be better mining an other coin on the other GPUs or have a more potent CPU in the rig.
[ALL OS] At slow / unstable Internet connection sometimes lolMiner still submits shares but server does not accept them (Found by me, Confirmed by an offline friend of mine)Reason: Well - weak connection is always bad for mining. Often re-connect helps.
Problem for Miners: lolMiner does not detect this yet and thus sometimes computes but shares are not counted. So you can not leave the miner unattended.
Expected Time to Fix: Today. I will add a timer that measures the time difference between last submitted share and the last accepted one. Will cause an automatic re-connect if this time is too large.
[Windows / Official AMD drivers] Miner starts, but reports 0 sol/s or Miner does not start up with CL-compile error (Confirmed by me) Ps: I am confused... I could be certain that someone yesterday gave a Screenshot of this and reported it but now the post is gone. Why?
Reason: Unknown yet.
Problem for Miners: Can not mine.
Expected Time to Fix: I can reproduce the error (when using CPU part on my Kaveri machine), but do not know why this happens yet. Will require deeper investigation because it seems that the OpenCL code does not return what it should do (and what it does on other platforms...)
[Windows, Linux (?) / Official AMD drivers] Miner does not start up with CL-compile error (Found by me, Confirmed by qwep1 and ruckus_pro) Reason: Some problem with the OpenCL code for some AMD OCL drivers. It is unknown yet if this is also true for Linux version. Linux version with Open Source drivers is stable (but slower)
Problem for Miners: Can not mine.
Expected Time to Fix: I can reproduce the problem on some ages old machine at home. I will have a look into the issue later today and hope to get rid of this within next week.
[Windows] Random crash during execution (Reported by AAile, Confirmed by Aeon_)Reason I do not know yet. It may be that the Nvidia driver things that the App over-utilizes the card. Currently lolMiner has only a very few things done on CPU before the next iteration starts (because the SHA stuff is done in an other thread), so the pressure on the GPU is very high.
Problem for Miners: The miner can not leave the miner unattended.
Expected Time to Fix: I need more info about when this happens and why. I hope that I can get rid out of this with the CPU load fixes above. Else one countermeasure could be running an external demon that checks if the miner is still running and restart it when it does not. Also I consider inserting a parameter that lowers GPU utilization (but of cause this will cost hash-rate... maybe one finds a stable trade of). I thing at least 2 of this countermeasures will be implemented within next two weeks, hopefully earlier. But for a definite fix I have to find the exact reason first
Ps:
I like transparency and so I report that from current dev-fee income lolMiner-mnx has a market share of 0.8 % (Approx 400 ksols from 49 MSol) and I collected 0.055 mnx as def-fee till now. Thats not that much but more will surely come when the miner gets more stable. I also wanted to announce that I want to pay back approx half of the income of lolMiner-mnx from its first month of existence to those helping me (be detailed reporting) here getting it stable or test it on different platforms during the first two weeks of existence. Of cause I can not say how much that will be in detail yet, but hey, that offer is better than none
