I need some help with cgminer, runs once manually, then rejects its own config

[forcefedvr6]

What's up people?  I am very new at mining,  so hopefully someone can help me out.

I am trying to hook up to the middlecoin pool and have a cgminer config file that works at all.

I'll include as much info as I know,  let me know what else you need to know.

Hardware-wise,  I think my rig is ok.  I set up a six-card rig running Sapphire hd 7950
(sku:11196-19-20g) and Win8.  Had to putz around with the gpu drivers but it does see all six.

I followed some instructions from the internet and loaded cgminer, rebooted,  and did the following through my command prompt:

setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1

and verified that that "took" .

Then I tried to set up a cgminer config for middlecoin and that didn't go too well.

Then I deleted my config and manually hooked up to the middlecoin pool by manually entering in stratum+tcp://middlecoin.com:3333  
for the url, and entered in my name and password,  and it hooked up and started hashing away based on the default settings.

Then I had it make and save a default config file while cgminer was running ("s", "w"),  which it did.

Here's where I am having problems.  If I quit out if cgminer and then attempt to restart it by clicking on the cgminer.exe file,  it won't hook up again no matter what,  even though I'm using the default config file that cgminer just created.

Below is what cgminer generates when I do "s" and "w" while it is running. (I took out my username and password,  but checked it and it is what it should be.)  One weird thing is that after the "o" in "tcpo",  there is a character that looks like another "o" but it is surrounded with a black square. I tried deleting that but it still didn't help.  

So if I delete that default config that cgminer generates and manually try to hook up to middlecoin again,  I'm able to do that,  but I'm not actually sure that I'm doing anything productive since I have not been able to run off of a config modified for scrypt,  since the kernel is set to poclbm and not scrypt.  Plus there are other settings that I know should be different to optimize my hash rate,  but I'm less worried about that as opposed to not actually being able to run off of any config yet.


{
"pools" : [
   {
      "url" : "http://stratum+tcpo://middlecoin.com:3333",
      "user" : "...."
      "pass" : "...."
   }
]
,
"intensity" : "d,d,d,d,d,d",
"vectors" : "1,1,1,1,1,1",
"worksize" : "64,64,64,64,64,64",
"kernel" : "poclbm,poclbm,poclbm,poclbm,poclbm,poclbm",
"lookup-gap" : "0,0,0,0,0,0",
"thread-concurrency" : "0,0,0,0,0,0",
"shaders" : "0,0,0,0,0,0",
"gpu-engine" : "0-0,0-0,0-0,0-0,0-0,0-0",
"gpu-fan" : "0-85,0-85,0-85,0-85,0-85,0-85",
"gpu-memclock" : "0,0,0,0,0,0",
"gpu-memdiff" : "0,0,0,0,0,0",
"gpu-powertune" : "0,0,0,0,0,0",
"gpu-vddc" : "0.000,0.000,0.000,0.000,0.000,0.000",
"temp-cutoff" : "95,95,95,95,95,95",
"temp-overheat" : "85,85,85,85,85,85",
"temp-target" : "75,75,75,75,75,75",
"api-mcast-port" : "4028",
"api-port" : "4028",
"expiry" : "120",
"gpu-dyninterval" : "7",
"gpu-platform" : "1",
"gpu-threads" : "2",
"hotplug" : "5",
"log" : "5",
"no-pool-disable" : true,
"queue" : "1",
"scan-time" : "60",
"temp-hysteresis" : "3",
"shares" : "0",
"kernel-path" : "/usr/local/bin"
}

So that is my big problem that I am having at this point.  I also make sure to delete any .bin files that cgminer creates before attempting to make any progress.

 I also have some questions about undervolting my cards through cgminer.  Can I do that through my config using the vddc settings?  I have read different things in regards to that,  and trixx seems to suck and not retain my settings in regards to that.  Afterburner won't even give me an active slider for that.  Manually trying to alter voltage through cgminer once it's running may be working,  not really sure though.  It will let me change it and says it's good,  but then the reported voltage is not what I tell it to become.

Anyway,  I have searched for a while and have not come across what I am doing wrong in regards to the config file or what I am doing wrong in order to setting up a custom config file and having cgminer run using it.

Please help me out,  I am a noob with this process.  

Also let me know if there is any info that I am leaving out in order to get this figured out.

[forcefedvr6]

I ended up figuring out why the config was not working. 

I had to delete the "http://" from the url. Now it will connect to the middlecoin pool and start hashing when I click on the cgminer.exe file. 

Now I can edit the config and set up a batch file and stuff like that.

I also added " --scrypt"  so now the url in the config reads

"url" : "--scrypt stratum+tcp://middlecoin.com:3333"

Also the "o" and the black "o" disappeared after the tcp.

Wow I can't believe that I figured that out.

[Wipeout2097]

hehe... Welcome, and good hashing!

Make sure that the line that reads intensity has "13,13,13...." or "20,20,20..." or something in between. Whatever maximizes your hash rate without giving hardware errors.

You can further improve by figuring out a good ratio between the core and mem clocks. It's usually between 60 and 70%

[forcefedvr6]

hehe... Welcome, and good hashing!

Make sure that the line that reads intensity has "13,13,13...." or "20,20,20..." or something in between. Whatever maximizes your hash rate without giving hardware errors.

You can further improve by figuring out a good ratio between the core and mem clocks. It's usually between 60 and 70%

Thanks for the welcome.  I've been reading and tinkering around with settings all night. 

One thing that is going on that concerns me is that I can't get cgminer to initialize if I set the "kernel" to "scrypt".  It runs with it set to "poclbm",  and it runs if I delete the whole "kernel...poclbm" line,  so I'm not actually sure if I'm doing much of anything in terms of scrypt mining.  Does having the "--scrypt" in the url build the right kernel?   Does running the python kernel prevent me from mining scrypt properly?
I'm seeing ~3M hash/second average and WUof 38.7 / minute,  which seems really bad,  but I just started so I don't know if that's normal. Plus literally everything is getting rejected so far. I'm now starting to think that my video drivers are not jiving with cgminer somehow,  despite the fact that the rig and cgminer sees them all. 

[Wipeout2097]

Here's part of my cgminer.conf:

"intensity" : "20,17",
"vectors" : "1",
"worksize" : "256",
"kernel" : "scrypt",
"lookup-gap" : "2",
"thread-concurrency" : "7680,16384",  <- Use 16384 or see below
"shaders" : "1536,1536", <- Should be 1792 for you
"gpu-engine" : "800-900,700-790",
"gpu-fan" : "0-85,0-85",
"gpu-memclock" : "1500,1500",
"gpu-memdiff" : "0,0",
"gpu-powertune" : "0,0",
"gpu-vddc" : "1,0.9",
"temp-cutoff" : "78,78",
"temp-overheat" : "73,73",
"temp-target" : "68,68",
"api-listen" : true,
"api-port" : "4028",
"auto-fan" : true,
"expiry" : "120",
"gpu-dyninterval" : "10",
"gpu-platform" : "0",
"gpu-threads" : "1",
"scrypt" : true,
"temp-hysteresis" : "3",
"kernel-path" : "/usr/local/bin",
"api-allow" : "W:127.0.0.1,W:192.168.2.101"
}

If it crashes/doesn't load/locks, etc..., better download pre-compiled .bin files, which btw are faster than default. Download from https://forum.litecoin.net/index.php?topic=6058.0 , unpack to the cgminer folder and choose the proper thread-concurrency value

[Wipeout2097]

Oh, hold on, I'm not sure I understood ... Please post a screenshot of your cgminer window.

If you see ~3 Mh/s and it shows multiple lines with "Accepted ...", it's a tad low but still acceptable value for scrypt on your setup. Scrypt hashes tend to be ~1/1000 of SHA2 for the same cards.

[forcefedvr6]

Ok,  so I figured out that I have to use the scrypt kernel to mine scrypt,  and that

"scrypt":true

was missing from my config file. Thanks for pointing that out.   Once I added that in to my config,   cgminer would run,  although it was sputtering along, and was only initializing two gpus. 

I tried using a couple of those modified kernels and matched the thread concurrency to what was specified, and they didn't really work at all,  usually telling me that none of my gpus were available. I'm sure that I was not doing something properly with setting them up, but read on.

So then I re-loaded the original scrypt kernel that I had saved in another folder from my original cgminer download and it would not work if I had the gpu platform set at zero,  but then I changed that to "1" and now it is running with all six cards hashing,  and it actually accepted a few blocks so far with no rejections.  =)

( I am using cgminer 3.6.6 ,  just for the record)

I have my config set with nothing really optimized yet and with dynamic intensity just to get it going,  but here is a copy of the first "successful" config:

{
"pools" : [
   {
      "url" : "--scrypt stratum+tcp://middlecoin.com:3333",
      "user" : "xxx",
      "pass" : "xxx"
   }
]
,
"intensity" : "d",
"vectors" : "1",
"worksize" : "256",
"kernel" : "scrypt",
"lookup-gap" : "2",
"thread-concurrency" : "0",
"shaders" : "0",
"gpu-engine" : "0",
"gpu-fan" : "0-85,0-85,0-85,0-85,0-85,0-85",
"gpu-memclock" : "0",
"gpu-memdiff" : "0,0,0,0,0,0",
"gpu-powertune" : "20",
"gpu-vddc" : "1.000",
"temp-cutoff" : "95,95,95,95,95,95",
"temp-overheat" : "85,85,85,85,85,85",
"temp-target" : "75,75,75,75,75,75",
"api-mcast-port" : "4028",
"api-port" : "4028",
"auto-fan" : true,
"expiry" : "120",
"gpu-dyninterval" : "10",
"gpu-platform" : "1",
"gpu-threads" : "1",
"scrypt" : true,
"hotplug" : "5",
"log" : "5",
"no-pool-disable" : true,
"queue" : "1",
"scan-time" : "60",
"temp-hysteresis" : "3",
"shares" : "0",
"kernel-path" : "/usr/local/bin"
}

So with those settings,  I'm seeing ~15.2 k Hash per card,
or around 91 k hash total average per second,  and wu : 101/m,   and have 4500 total accepted
so far with no rejects,  after running for about forty minutes.

So it seems like I may have a stable base with which to start optimizing my config.