[Guide] Dogie's Comprehensive ASICMiner Cube Setup [HD]

[alexrossi]

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99% is a stratum proxy problem

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[babaji.ca]

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99% is a stratum proxy problem

Does that mean you now have BFG working for you as a proxy server, and now your cubes are humming along?

[alexrossi]

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99% is a stratum proxy problem

Does that mean you now have BFG working for you as a proxy server, and now your cubes are humming along?

yeah!!!! i succesfully switched on BFG and the raspi is doing a great job!!! You are THE MAN!!! 

[otsaku]

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99% is a stratum proxy problem

I've got the stratum running on a RPi.

Keep forgetting to mention that the RPi has both a wifi adapter and is plugged into the router. If I remove either of these the cube stops hashing. If I only have one of the RPi's ips as my pools the cube stops hashing.

I've tried pointing the cube at one of my macs running the proxy but it won't connect.

I'll try bfgminer on the RPi in a couple of hours.

[babaji.ca]

glad to hear it worked,

keep a close eye on it, i think the raspi can lock up every few days. do you have another machine on the network where you can run a backup proxy? Then just use it's ip as the server 'B' on your cube. So if the raspi locks up while you are away the cubes can switch servers

[alexrossi]

I'll try bfgminer on the RPi in a couple of hours.

Is the original stratum proxy the problem: with 1 cube it still work, with more the cpu can't handle the load

[stewdk]

so if you have 3 cubes connected to one single proxy they will appear as one worker to the pool

I actually run 3 instances of bfgminer proxy on my pi, each using about 10% cpu. still way less than slush's so I can use three command lines

Longpoll is currently not implemented in the bfgminer getwork proxy, so that will result in low efficiency / lots of stales.  Using slush's proxy, cubes do appear as separate workers to the pool when running a single instance of slush's proxy, however, I can't recommend that either.  While playing around with slush's proxy and the stratum-mining pool software, I discovered that if you have multiple cubes connected to one instance of slush's proxy, then the proxy will get the share difficulties confused and only submit shares that meet the highest difficulty requirements of all workers.
Based on the above findings, currently the best setup is ONE INSTANCE OF SLUSH'S PROXY PER CUBE, however much cpu time that ends up using.  I really wish longpoll would be implemented in the bfgminer getwork proxy soon...  Either that, or the cube firmware should be updated to support stratum natively.

[twib2]

the cube firmware should be updated to support stratum natively.

THIS!

ftw

[twib2]

Longpoll is currently not implemented in the bfgminer getwork proxy, so that will result in low efficiency / lots of stales.  Using slush's proxy, cubes do appear as separate workers to the pool when running a single instance of slush's proxy, however, I can't recommend that either.  While playing around with slush's proxy and the stratum-mining pool software, I discovered that if you have multiple cubes connected to one instance of slush's proxy, then the proxy will get the share difficulties confused and only submit shares that meet the highest difficulty requirements of all workers.

I'm interested in this - how did you determine this and how much of an effect do you see?  I use slush's proxy except for p2pool sites.  I currently run one proxy that serves two Blades and another proxy that serves 5 Cubes.  I do notice that my Cubes run faster on slush's proxy than on bfgminer - fewer stales, but still not as high an efficiency number as my Blades.

[qwertyasdfg]

Evening All,

I'm after some advise on how I can get my cube to successfully mine on two separate pools, as in the primary/backup function, so if one looses connectivity or times out for any reason, it switches to the other pool.

I am currently mining on Slush's pool and another pool using a windows 7 64bit laptop as a proxy machine and am using mining_proxy.exe in order to do so, if I want to mine on the other pool I just open up the command prompt, navigate to the mining proxy directory and execute the following command
mining_proxy.exe -o (host) -p (port)

My cube is setup with the standard settings with the ports being 8332, 8332, pool address being the IP address of my proxy machine and the username and password of my pool worker credentials.

I have tried to use cgminer and bfg miner on numerous occasions but have been unsuccessful in making them work for me.

Yesterday I downloaded the latest cgminer 3.90 but after entering my pool address:port and leaving the username and password blank and hitting enter, the program would encounter a problem and shutdown, I tried again but this time I populated the username and password fields but I encountered the same problem.

bfg miner seems to get me to a page where I can start tinkering with some settings but always says that no devices were found, once I've managed to get it connected to a pool I think and it said something along the lines of "pool is hiding blocks", or something along those lines.

So now, as proxy miner seems to be the only one working for me, is their any way for me to set it up to achieve my purpose?

Also what does diff 64, 128 and 256 mean? The other pool that I am on offers me various different ports to choose from with the options of diff 64, 128 or 256.

Thanks in advance for your time and help.

[stewdk]

Longpoll is currently not implemented in the bfgminer getwork proxy, so that will result in low efficiency / lots of stales.  Using slush's proxy, cubes do appear as separate workers to the pool when running a single instance of slush's proxy, however, I can't recommend that either.  While playing around with slush's proxy and the stratum-mining pool software, I discovered that if you have multiple cubes connected to one instance of slush's proxy, then the proxy will get the share difficulties confused and only submit shares that meet the highest difficulty requirements of all workers.

I'm interested in this - how did you determine this and how much of an effect do you see?  I use slush's proxy except for p2pool sites.  I currently run one proxy that serves two Blades and another proxy that serves 5 Cubes.  I do notice that my Cubes run faster on slush's proxy than on bfgminer - fewer stales, but still not as high an efficiency number as my Blades.

The pool server software shows each accepted share and that share's difficulty.  When I had two cubes going through a single instance of slush's proxy, the pool server software adjusted the share difficulty to each cube, and somehow it managed to assign a difficulty of 10 (ten) to cube 1, and a difficulty of 100 (hundred) to cube 2.  I noticed in the pool software terminal that cube 1 was only submitting shares of difficulty 100 or higher even though the pool share difficulty was 10 for that cube. Using two separate proxies fixed this.

Here's the faulty setup:
[cube 1 and cube 2] --> [slush's proxy] --> [pool server]

Here's a setup that works:
[cube 1] --> [instance 1 of slush's proxy] --> [pool server]
[cube 2] --> [instance 2 of slush's proxy] --> [pool server]
etc..


I don't have enough stats to say how much effect this really has... With two workers that have the same hashrate you would think that the pool server would give out shares of the same difficulty to each, but that is definitely not the case with slush's pool or the stratum-mining pool software I've been playing with.  More info on the pool server software: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=162788.0

[J_Dubbs]

Longpoll is currently not implemented in the bfgminer getwork proxy, so that will result in low efficiency / lots of stales.  Using slush's proxy, cubes do appear as separate workers to the pool when running a single instance of slush's proxy, however, I can't recommend that either.  While playing around with slush's proxy and the stratum-mining pool software, I discovered that if you have multiple cubes connected to one instance of slush's proxy, then the proxy will get the share difficulties confused and only submit shares that meet the highest difficulty requirements of all workers.

I'm interested in this - how did you determine this and how much of an effect do you see?  I use slush's proxy except for p2pool sites.  I currently run one proxy that serves two Blades and another proxy that serves 5 Cubes.  I do notice that my Cubes run faster on slush's proxy than on bfgminer - fewer stales, but still not as high an efficiency number as my Blades.

The pool server software shows each accepted share and that share's difficulty.  When I had two cubes going through a single instance of slush's proxy, the pool server software adjusted the share difficulty to each cube, and somehow it managed to assign a difficulty of 10 (ten) to cube 1, and a difficulty of 100 (hundred) to cube 2.  I noticed in the pool software terminal that cube 1 was only submitting shares of difficulty 100 or higher even though the pool share difficulty was 10 for that cube. Using two separate proxies fixed this.

Here's the faulty setup:
[cube 1 and cube 2] --> [slush's proxy] --> [pool server]

Here's a setup that works:
[cube 1] --> [instance 1 of slush's proxy] --> [pool server]
[cube 2] --> [instance 2 of slush's proxy] --> [pool server]
etc..


I don't have enough stats to say how much effect this really has... With two workers that have the same hashrate you would think that the pool server would give out shares of the same difficulty to each, but that is definitely not the case with slush's pool or the stratum-mining pool software I've been playing with.  More info on the pool server software: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=162788.0

Interesting, never knew this... But can one windows machine run multiple Slush proxies? I never had success opening two, only tried one time thinking it might distribute work evenly. I checked the thread you linked and saw what looked like scary Linux stuff, is that the only way?

[stewdk]

Interesting, never knew this... But can one windows machine run multiple Slush proxies? I never had success opening two, only tried one time thinking it might distribute work evenly. I checked the thread you linked and saw what looked like scary Linux stuff, is that the only way?

No, that link is for how to set up pool server software.  Yes, you can definitely set up multiple proxies on a windows machine. Just open up another command window and make sure to assign a different getwork port to each proxy.

[twib2]

I don't have enough stats to say how much effect this really has... With two workers that have the same hashrate you would think that the pool server would give out shares of the same difficulty to each, but that is definitely not the case with slush's pool or the stratum-mining pool software I've been playing with.  More info on the pool server software: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=162788.0

Thanks Stew - looks like it's helping me get another 5% since I had so many cubes sharing the same proxy.  Definitely appreciated!

[herener]

I've had a few cubes that go all x's on me when the power turns off or when updating a setting in the config page. 

After getting them to turn back on or go all O's again seemingly at random I think I have found a way to replicate getting them back to O's. 

If your cube is all x's and you know the PSU is good/has the amps to be able to run a cube at high try this:
 
  1) Turn off your PSU
  2) Unplug the ethernet cable
  3) Turn your PSU back on
  4) Wait for the Red LED to finish its initial startup blinking sequence (its just a few seconds long)
  5) After the last blink wait a second then plug the ethernet cable back in.

This seems to work for me on a fairly consistent basis.


Another tip.  If your cube is well powered and still resets all the time try taking out all of the blades and taking off the heatsinks.  One of mine had a grey punchout left in it between the heatsink and the grey heat material causing a bulge and air gaps between the two.  I'm not saying this is the only reset problem but it has been running for a few hours without a poweroff on high after that got removed.

https://i.imgur.com/KhlZ8GN.jpg?2

-herener

[J_Dubbs]

Interesting, never knew this... But can one windows machine run multiple Slush proxies? I never had success opening two, only tried one time thinking it might distribute work evenly. I checked the thread you linked and saw what looked like scary Linux stuff, is that the only way?

No, that link is for how to set up pool server software.  Yes, you can definitely set up multiple proxies on a windows machine. Just open up another command window and make sure to assign a different getwork port to each proxy.

I'm not very skilled with writing .bat files, I know how to do it for bfgminer, but not Slush's Proxy tool. Can you paste a sample of what this might look like? I thought Slush's tool only worked on 8332...

Edit: Okay, I got a .bat file written that launches it, and it seems the port switch is "-p", but I can't seem to get it to talk to Slush's server. Is there a way to run stratum proxy for Slush but use a port other than 8332?

Right now both blades are running on 1 proxy, using port 8332. I've got the .bat file halfway there, it opens but can't connect...

[stewdk]

I'm not very skilled with writing .bat files, I know how to do it for bfgminer, but not Slush's Proxy tool. Can you paste a sample of what this might look like? I thought Slush's tool only worked on 8332...

Edit: Okay, I got a .bat file written that launches it, and it seems the port switch is "-p", but I can't seem to get it to talk to Slush's server. Is there a way to run stratum proxy for Slush but use a port other than 8332?

Right now both blades are running on 1 proxy, using port 8332. I've got the .bat file halfway there, it opens but can't connect...

No, the -p switch specifies the port of the pool server.  Run

Code:

mining_proxy.exe --help
pause

to see the available switches.

proxy1.bat:

Code:

mining_proxy.exe --getwork-port 8332 --stratum-port 3333

proxy2.bat:

Code:

mining_proxy.exe --getwork-port 8331 --stratum-port 3332

etc...

I personally like to add the --quiet option as well, but that's your preference.

[lithod02]

any other PSU besides 800W Corsair GS recommended I cant find that one in stock. I want tot power 2 cubes.

[Celeris]

Is there some trick to turning a cube on? I've tried 3 different PSUs, and each one starts and then shuts off after a couple seconds. I've seen other people say it's some kind of under or overcharge, and it can be solved with jamming some capacitors into the PSU, but I have no idea how to do that (and my local Radio Shack doesn't even have 1000+ uF 12v caps).

I've tried:

Visiontek 500W (it exploded and is ruined)
Antec 550W
Corsair 850W

All three of them just shut off after a couple seconds. Is there anything else I can try before buying another PSU? I'm kind of tired of buying new PSUs for this thing.

[J_Dubbs]

I'm not very skilled with writing .bat files, I know how to do it for bfgminer, but not Slush's Proxy tool. Can you paste a sample of what this might look like? I thought Slush's tool only worked on 8332...

Edit: Okay, I got a .bat file written that launches it, and it seems the port switch is "-p", but I can't seem to get it to talk to Slush's server. Is there a way to run stratum proxy for Slush but use a port other than 8332?

Right now both blades are running on 1 proxy, using port 8332. I've got the .bat file halfway there, it opens but can't connect...

No, the -p switch specifies the port of the pool server.  Run

Code:

mining_proxy.exe --help

to see the available switches.

proxy1.bat:

Code:

mining_proxy.exe --getwork-port 8332 --stratum-port 3333

proxy2.bat:

Code:

mining_proxy.exe --getwork-port 8331 --stratum-port 3332

etc...

I personally like to add the --quiet option as well, but that's your preference.

Wow, thanks! I'll try this out now! I believe the "--quiet" option cuts out the message scrolling, right?


EDIT: Okay, seems to be working, only thing is the --help option didn't work out, window just opened then closed immediately when I did that. I added the quiet switch, seems to cut down the messaging. Thanks again.