Gridcoin (GRC) - first coin utilizing BOINC - Official Thread

[COINPRADER]

I'm sure you checked, but is the sync issue related to pool mining?  This morning, my wallet stopped syncing after 6 hours, I restarted and no sync, I used the rebuild block chain and it did sync,  I mined for about an hour and started getting found blocks that were credited to me (I have been pool mining and I checked the getpoolmining mode and it was true).  First time the miner has given me the coins after a sync issue.  Of course they disappeared after yet another resync.  But it got me to thinking that no one else has implemented an in client pool miner (that I know of) so maybe...
Anyway - great work on the coin.  Love the concept!  It even got me to get BOINC going after a year hiatus.  I even joined the gridcoin team at world community grid!

FYI
I have the latest version (v1.1.4.3-g71-prod)
I use GUIminer inside the client - I have never been able to get CG miner to work with my system (repeated tries with different coins)

CoinPrader,
Great glad you are getting close.  There are about 33 pool miners and I haven't heard this specific problem; I have a fear that if a pool miner creates a stale block, something strange might be happening.  Can you do me a favor--- keep testing with the newest version as some things have been fixed that happen after you mine a block that may change the behavior.  Tell me if you fail to sync now in pool mining mode after finding blocks; ensure restartwallet=0 so you can tell; if it happens, PM me the end of the debug log.

Also, why don't you give the new cgminer version a try, it would be interesting to know if the defaults work for you.  I set them up for 4 machines today and all are working with 3 types of cards.

Rob H.

I will keep testing this - just got a stale share and I lost sync within 3 units.  I had not added the restartwallet=0 so I will wait to send you the debug results.
I will try the cgminer again and let you know.
But for now, it's off to holiday with the family so no new mining for me - catch you all after the season!
Ed

[aigeezer]

Possible bug in Mining Module window (is it OK to report this kind of thing here?). I was checking the "close miner" and "restart miner" button functions. My miner had been running at half-speed (Full Speed box unchecked) because at full speed my cursor barely responds to mouse movements. Close and Restart worked fine, but after the miner restarted, the GPU miner was clearly running at full speed, even though the box remained unchecked. Clicking it twice - on then off - took it back to half speed. I imagine it should come back on restart to whatever speed it was set to when it closed.

The reason I was trying those buttons is that they appeared to parallel the old "Register Mining Module" button pair mentioned in this outdated tutorial: https://cryptocointalk.com/topic/1589-how-to-mine-gridcoin/

Since I have not yet found a block, I was idly checking to see whether I needed to register the miner somehow. I'm still wondering about that part.     

Oh - I was not able to get the UPGRADE to work yet, so this is still the pre-upgrade version. I have not used the RPC console before and my attempts to press Enter after keying the UPGRADE command were ignored - presumably there's something else needed or syntax details I don't know. Perhaps you fixed the problem already though.

[aysyr]

Deleted - got my facts wrong

[Gridcoin]

Possible bug in Mining Module window (is it OK to report this kind of thing here?). I was checking the "close miner" and "restart miner" button functions. My miner had been running at half-speed (Full Speed box unchecked) because at full speed my cursor barely responds to mouse movements. Close and Restart worked fine, but after the miner restarted, the GPU miner was clearly running at full speed, even though the box remained unchecked. Clicking it twice - on then off - took it back to half speed. I imagine it should come back on restart to whatever speed it was set to when it closed.

The reason I was trying those buttons is that they appeared to parallel the old "Register Mining Module" button pair mentioned in this outdated tutorial: https://cryptocointalk.com/topic/1589-how-to-mine-gridcoin/

Since I have not yet found a block, I was idly checking to see whether I needed to register the miner somehow. I'm still wondering about that part.     

Oh - I was not able to get the UPGRADE to work yet, so this is still the pre-upgrade version. I have not used the RPC console before and my attempts to press Enter after keying the UPGRADE command were ignored - presumably there's something else needed or syntax details I don't know. Perhaps you fixed the problem already though.

For anyone who had trouble using Upgrade, I just released version 5.80 (Prod version):
-fixes the close of gui miner and cgminer inadvertently
-set this key if you don't want gridcoin to close cgminer/guiminer on exit:     closemineronexit=false
-fixes the bug where you receive an error when you press Create CgMiner Instance
-Full Speed and Half speed work, but still do not have a Memory of their last setting
-Sluggishness problem with cgminer fixed

Good luck,
Rob H.

[aigeezer]

Cloud nine, me - I just mined my first block.

I was stress-testing my system at the time, a zillion apps in the background and I was using Rocksmith (a guitar instruction tool) on Steam as though nothing else existed. Suddenly Rocksmith vanished, the Steam window took over with a little notice in the lower right hand corner that Gridcoin had mined a block. Then Windows rebooted! Those are problems for another day though - I mined some Gridcoins (and got the BOINC bonus). All is well. No more stress-testing for a while.     

I'll join the BOINC Gridcoin team and grab 5.8.0 Real Soon Now, but meanwhile I've got to catch up on my guitar practice. Thanks for all the help in getting set up with Gridcoin.

[Gridcoin]

I'm sure you checked, but is the sync issue related to pool mining?  This morning, my wallet stopped syncing after 6 hours, I restarted and no sync, I used the rebuild block chain and it did sync,  I mined for about an hour and started getting found blocks that were credited to me (I have been pool mining and I checked the getpoolmining mode and it was true).  First time the miner has given me the coins after a sync issue.  Of course they disappeared after yet another resync.  But it got me to thinking that no one else has implemented an in client pool miner (that I know of) so maybe...
Anyway - great work on the coin.  Love the concept!  It even got me to get BOINC going after a year hiatus.  I even joined the gridcoin team at world community grid!

FYI
I have the latest version (v1.1.4.3-g71-prod)
I use GUIminer inside the client - I have never been able to get CG miner to work with my system (repeated tries with different coins)

CoinPrader,
Great glad you are getting close.  There are about 33 pool miners and I haven't heard this specific problem; I have a fear that if a pool miner creates a stale block, something strange might be happening.  Can you do me a favor--- keep testing with the newest version as some things have been fixed that happen after you mine a block that may change the behavior.  Tell me if you fail to sync now in pool mining mode after finding blocks; ensure restartwallet=0 so you can tell; if it happens, PM me the end of the debug log.

Also, why don't you give the new cgminer version a try, it would be interesting to know if the defaults work for you.  I set them up for 4 machines today and all are working with 3 types of cards.

Rob H.

I will keep testing this - just got a stale share and I lost sync within 3 units.  I had not added the restartwallet=0 so I will wait to send you the debug results.
I will try the cgminer again and let you know.
But for now, it's off to holiday with the family so no new mining for me - catch you all after the season!
Ed

Reproduced:  You found it!  We are storing a mined stale block that does not validate the boinchash as an orphan; its propogating and getting stuck at the end of the blocks table.  The only workaround is to re-sync.  I think this is the whole problem.  I'll fix this and test now; will release a fix as soon as it is tested!

Thanks for finding this!

Rob H.

[Gridcoin]

All,

Version 1.1.4.4 is now available for download from the prod MSI.

Alternatively, you can type upgrade from the rpc.

Starting at block 36775 the client will reject stale mined orphans instead of storing them, and we believe this was the root cause of the syncing issues.

Best Regards,
Rob Halford

[aigeezer]

All,

Version 1.1.4.4 is now available for download from the prod MSI.

Alternatively, you can type upgrade from the rpc.

Starting at block 36775 the client will reject stale mined orphans instead of storing them, and we believe this was the root cause of the syncing issues.

Best Regards,
Rob Halford

Running it now: v1.1.4.4-g71-prod according to the Help About window (which still says About Litecoin in its header, btw).

I started an instance of cgminer pool-mining BTC first to see whether Gridcoin knocked it out at launch. It did. No big deal. Everything else looks fine, 36437 blocks and "Up to date".

[traderman]

I really hope this fixes the sync issue.

All,

Version 1.1.4.4 is now available for download from the prod MSI.

Alternatively, you can type upgrade from the rpc.

Starting at block 36775 the client will reject stale mined orphans instead of storing them, and we believe this was the root cause of the syncing issues.

Best Regards,
Rob Halford

[GrahamBen]

Great, today's best news.

[asdlolciterquit]

what is the difficult of the network right now?

[TribalBob]

I am trying to understand the BOINC projects panel in the client display. It seems to come preloaded with the names of five projects, a couple of which I sometimes use but have not been accepting tasks from in recent months. The WCG is not among them, and it happens to be the project I spend all my BOINC time on recently. Anyway, is this list customizable, and if so are there instructions for it somewhere that I have overlooked?

Please forgive my bumping this part of my earlier post. I'm still trying to make sense of the BOINC projects panel. I've found old tutorials, but they only show how to set up new BOINC project accounts (assuming that users are new to BOINC) and they refer only to project names hard-coded in the panel.

My situation differs somewhat. I've been using BOINC through BAM since 2009 and my projects were in place before I set up Gridcoin. I've found advice to add projects to the project panel but I've not found a way to do it. Also, the information I've seen advises replacing project IDs at each individual BOINC project home page with a Gridcoin payout addy. This seems onerous and would negate the advantage of dealing with BOINC projects through BAM. Does it really have to be like that or am I finding outdated advice?

In summary:

Is it necessary to use the project panel at all to mine Gridcoin and get credit for BOINC activity?

If so, is there an up-to-date tutorial link, especially one that shows how to enter pre-existing BOINC project data?

Is it really a requirement to enter a Gridcoin payout ID on each relevant BOINC project's home page? If so, explanation might make it a more palatable requirement.

Thanks - I'm getting there - I'm in the top 1% of BOINC users so I'd really like to help the Gridcoin effort.           

I should have linked this for you yesterday, sorry about that:

https://cryptocointalk.com/topic/1922-cpu-mining-tutorialtopic/

That link will explain what to do with the projects listed.

For the moment I believe those projects are the only ones which are eligible for the cpu mining pool but I think there are plans to add more.

For the time being, you can join just those projects or you can join other projects as well, it will not hurt your ability to solve blocks and get rewarded, but I think it may detract from your cpu mining earnings...

[TribalBob]

Reproduced:  You found it!  We are storing a mined stale block that does not validate the boinchash as an orphan; its propogating and getting stuck at the end of the blocks table.  The only workaround is to re-sync.  I think this is the whole problem.  I'll fix this and test now; will release a fix as soon as it is tested!

Thanks for finding this!

Rob H.

I am about 99% sure this will be the cause. Well done COINPRADER!

[TribalBob]

Ok, I'm not sure why, but my cgminer instance still causes my desktop to become very sluggish when I launch cgminer from inside the client... I will be working on troubleshooting this today...

***Edit***

Can you push the latest version of the source, thanks!

***Edit***

Ok, if I set the intensity lower (13) on the internal miner the sluggishness mostly goes away, but then I only get ~10Kh/s. I normally run cgminer on intensity of 18 with no problems.

[TribalBob]

Also, my external cgminer is still crashing every 10 - 15 minutes even with "restartwallet=0" set.

[Gridcoin]

Version 5.8.3 (1.1.4.4) is available for download:
You can type "upgrade" from the RPC for this version.
 
The following changes have been made:
1. We disabled the blockchain snapshot feature in hopes after block 36775 and a 51% majority upgrade the root sync issue will be fixed, and to alleviate the cgminer restart problem.
2. Fixed the communication with the cgminer API.
3. Added a CGMiner monitor checkbox, that will automatically restart the API if your mh/s drops to zero; it is checked once every 5 minutes.
4. Added a 25 second delay to initialize the miners so that the client can start quicker and smoother.
5. Fixed the close guiminer/close cgminer bug (IE we start the API once and only once, and monitor it once every 5 minutes).
 
Rob H.


PS - TribalBob-- The snapshot feature was the culprit for the Cgminer close problem; please try this version.  Also, the sluggishness bug "should" be fixed in this version; please update us.

We still have to wait for block 36775 to pass with 50% upgrading before we know for sure; lets cross our fingers.

[aigeezer]

Also, my external cgminer is still crashing every 10 - 15 minutes even with "restartwallet=0" set.

Something similar has been happening to me. My separate instance of cgminer (mining BTC with USB ASICS) would shut down from time to time whenever I was also running the Gridcoin GPU miner. I recently noticed that when this happens, the Gridcoin mining module reports that the GPU MH/s rate has dropped to zero also. I'm now pretty sure that the Gridcoin miner stops first and takes the other instance of cgminer down with it. I can restart the Gridcoin miner with the Restart Miner button in the mining console. It always starts up at full speed but can be throttled back with repeated clicks of the Full Speed button.

Before using Gridcoin, I routinely ran two instances of cgminer, one for ASIC BTC mining and the other for scrypt LTC mining. They coexist without problems, so I'm pretty sure these problems originate with Gridcoin somehow.

Frequency of the crashes so far is from a couple of minutes to an hour apart. One lesson learned for me is to check the status of the Gridcoin miner whenever the other instance of cgminer crashes.

I see there is a new update to try, so I'll give it a shot.

[TribalBob]

Version 5.8.3 (1.1.4.4) is available for download:
You can type "upgrade" from the RPC for this version.
 
The following changes have been made:
1. We disabled the blockchain snapshot feature in hopes after block 36775 and a 51% majority upgrade the root sync issue will be fixed, and to alleviate the cgminer restart problem.
2. Fixed the communication with the cgminer API.
3. Added a CGMiner monitor checkbox, that will automatically restart the API if your mh/s drops to zero; it is checked once every 5 minutes.
4. Added a 25 second delay to initialize the miners so that the client can start quicker and smoother.
5. Fixed the close guiminer/close cgminer bug (IE we start the API once and only once, and monitor it once every 5 minutes).
 
Rob H.


PS - TribalBob-- The snapshot feature was the culprit for the Cgminer close problem; please try this version.  Also, the sluggishness bug "should" be fixed in this version; please update us.

We still have to wait for block 36775 to pass with 50% upgrading before we know for sure; lets cross our fingers.

Wow, that was quick! Good work Rob! The communication problem with the API being fixed should theoretically repair the sluggishness as well, correct...?

***Edit***

Wow, just realized you specifically mentioned that already, lol... Not sure how I missed it, sorry...

[TribalBob]

I can confirm that my external instance of cgminer is no longer crashing. I still get a bit of lag on intensity 13 with the internal miner so I'm scared to try my usual 18. For now I am using the external miner, I am gong to do some last minute Christmas shopping and when I return I will experiment with the higher intensity settings.

For now though, it does appear (at least to me) that the external miner crashes are over.

[Gridcoin]

Apparently we're not going to move past 36775, so I had to create a new version again:
  (This change worked in testnet; but obviously not going to work in prod).


 I changed the checkpoint to block 36810, and now we're going to try something better; discard the orphan if it fails the boinc hash.

Please download the 1.1.4.5 Prod MSI or Upgrade.

Thanks,
Rob H.