Eligius: 0% Fee BTC, 105% PPS NMC, No registration, CPPSRB

[wizkid057]

A handful of the ~20 pool nodes got stuck mining a super old block... since the nodes were not agreeing, others were mining "empty" (coinbase only), but valid, blocks for quite a while.

Seems there was some breakdown of my alert system and I wasn't notified appropriately.  Some headaches in the rest of my life have kind of made this a lower priority and I, admittedly, hadn't manually checked on things for a while besides a physical look at the servers themselves occasionally.

In any case, I've got the pool server offline for the moment while things are resyncing.  Should be back online sometime in the morning by my estimates.  Will make another post afterward.

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[gembitz]

A handful of the ~20 pool nodes got stuck mining a super old block... since the nodes were not agreeing, others were mining "empty" (coinbase only), but valid, blocks for quite a while.

Seems there was some breakdown of my alert system and I wasn't notified appropriately.  Some headaches in the rest of my life have kind of made this a lower priority and I, admittedly, hadn't manually checked on things for a while besides a physical look at the servers themselves occasionally.

In any case, I've got the pool server offline for the moment while things are resyncing.  Should be back online sometime in the morning by my estimates.  Will make another post afterward.

Eligius we getting the band back together? :-D lel

[wizkid057]

Things are back up and running.

So, I'm admittedly unsure what direction to take this at this point.  My real life is, well, kind of hellish right now... I'd greatly prefer not to get into the details publicly.  Suffice it to say I've been blindsided on several fronts from close people I trusted, and picking up the pieces of that is taking a significant effort both mentally and financially.

Long story short, I don't think I'll have time in the near future to complete my work on Eligius-Hu's front end.  The backend is basically done, though, and running.  So if the pool finds a block, people get paid and such.

Pool is still running, working, etc... and I can host the servers pretty much indefinitely without issue.  Just a matter of completing all the front end stuff.

Admittedly, I'm not sure if it'd be worth it or not at this point.  Is there demand for such a pool still?  Looking at the current mining landscape, my guess would be no... but I could be wrong.

Thoughts appreciated.

[DaveF]

Seriously, if you are having life issues at the moment I would let Eligius go.
It's sad and it sucks, but I'm sure you don't need more crap going on.
Do you really want to have to deal with a payout issue or a front end issue or.....whatever on top of whatever is going on in your life?
Mining has changed a lot over the last couple of years and will probably change again. You can always come back.

Don't add stress that you don't need.

Hope everything gets better with whatever is going on.

-Dave

[Gws24]

Basically everything what DaveF said!

If you do decide to keep it alive then at least put up a simple front-end so people can see what's going on (hashrate pool etc). Right now people are just guessing.

[gembitz]

Things are back up and running.

So, I'm admittedly unsure what direction to take this at this point.  My real life is, well, kind of hellish right now... I'd greatly prefer not to get into the details publicly.  Suffice it to say I've been blindsided on several fronts from close people I trusted, and picking up the pieces of that is taking a significant effort both mentally and financially.

Long story short, I don't think I'll have time in the near future to complete my work on Eligius-Hu's front end.  The backend is basically done, though, and running.  So if the pool finds a block, people get paid and such.

Pool is still running, working, etc... and I can host the servers pretty much indefinitely without issue.  Just a matter of completing all the front end stuff.

Admittedly, I'm not sure if it'd be worth it or not at this point.  Is there demand for such a pool still?  Looking at the current mining landscape, my guess would be no... but I could be wrong.

Thoughts appreciated.

+1 thank you for your hard work!    ~keep your spirits up we will still be here :-D #cheerzzz

[DaveF]

Sigh.....It's working on an old block again.
Luke can you ping out to WK again?

I really think it's time to call it quits on this. I'm pulling eligius out of my backup pool rotation.

-Dave

[wizkid057]

Fixed.  A drive failure on the full node machine for the pool ended up causing degradation that dropped the array to read-only mode for recovery safety.

[DaveF]

Fixed.  A drive failure on the full node machine for the pool ended up causing degradation that dropped the array to read-only mode for recovery safety.

Cool. Thanks for fixing it. I know you are stressed and busy with life but, you might want to put up a basic stats page even if only does a refresh once an hour or something.
Just the basic, time & date of update / node is on this block / this much hashrate

This way we at least know what the pool thinks and if there is an issue it does not linger for a week.

Seriously, I had you as a backup pool and when my router blew and I replaced it my miners did not fail back. I have had this before and all I have to do is reboot my proxy.
But I was busy so I didn't do it for a while because "what the heck eligius might find a block"

So all I did was burn electricity for no reason.....

And before everyone says it, yeah I know I should fail to a PPS pool that way I don't have to worry about ramp up or down or any other thing. I get paid for the shares and move back to the main pool whenever. I have mined at eligius for years and figured what the heck, lets keep it as a backup.

-Dave

[Pyrojason]

Things are back up and running.

...

Thoughts appreciated.

WK, good to hear you're still moving forward. Sorry to hear about the troubles.

As others have mentioned, if you have a simple front end it would make a solid start for people to have yet another pool option.
Be well.

[btcrealm]

Admittedly, I'm not sure if it'd be worth it or not at this point.  Is there demand for such a pool still?  Looking at the current mining landscape, my guess would be no... but I could be wrong.

Thoughts appreciated.

Hi wizkid057, glad to see your still alive and kicking.  Sorry to hear the real life problems continue : (

I think many of us would love to see Eligius come back to life and would jump back.  Honestly though you would get all of us hobbyists that won't let the old mining times go and maybe some of the more serious miners.  I check back in every few months (clearly I'm posting this now on October posts) to see if you are still around.  If its still a hobby/interest for you then I'd say when you get a chance bring it back!  There are those of us that will come back.

[fryarminer]

Going through my coin collection I have a Casascius Bearer Bar where way back in the early days I mined directly onto with Eligius. It was the only pool I knew of that would distribute the coins directly from the block without routing them through the pool’s address first. So the Casascius Bar has quite a nice transaction history when you look up the address. All clean new bitcoin.
WK, I just want to thank you for all the hard work you did on Eligius. I will always consider it the best pool.
Thanks dude.

[lightfoot]

Yep, that and p2pool were the way to go. And given that other pools "vanished" along the way *grumble* with coin balances it was nice to get paid for work done.

Miss it, slush is a fine pool, just isn't quite the same.

[kano]

Yep, that and p2pool were the way to go. And given that other pools "vanished" along the way *grumble* with coin balances it was nice to get paid for work done.

Miss it, slush is a fine pool, just isn't quite the same.

Slush skips block transaction verification and mines empty blocks.

As for coinbase payout: you still have to wait the full 101 confirms (over 16hrs) - a pool that sends the payout at that point may only add a few more confirms (less than an hour) or even only one confirm (average 10 minutes)
But ... some new miners don't support it since it's a MUCH bigger coinbase transaction
obviously that also means a much larger work size being sent from the pool to the miner.
Block distribution is now highly optimised - but it can never optimise the coinbase transaction since it will ALWAYS be an unknown transaction that needs to be sent with the block header, thus if you make it large, you're slowing down the block distribution.
Also, as is very well known, this pool had a very high orphan rate - around 3% compared to around 1% for most pools back then.

[2GOOD]

Yep, that and p2pool were the way to go. And given that other pools "vanished" along the way *grumble* with coin balances it was nice to get paid for work done.

Miss it, slush is a fine pool, just isn't quite the same.

Slush skips block transaction verification and mines empty blocks.

As for coinbase payout: you still have to wait the full 101 confirms (over 16hrs) - a pool that sends the payout at that point may only add a few more confirms (less than an hour) or even only one confirm (average 10 minutes)
But ... some new miners don't support it since it's a MUCH bigger coinbase transaction
obviously that also means a much larger work size being sent from the pool to the miner.
Block distribution is now highly optimised - but it can never optimise the coinbase transaction since it will ALWAYS be an unknown transaction that needs to be sent with the block header, thus if you make it large, you're slowing down the block distribution.
Also, as is very well known, this pool had a very high orphan rate - around 3% compared to around 1% for most pools back then.

The wait was never a big deal, but I've never thought about the block header, you are absolutely correct. Anyway it was nice to have the mining symbol in your core wallet, still own some unspent coinbase inputs 

[btcrealm]

Yep, that and p2pool were the way to go. And given that other pools "vanished" along the way *grumble* with coin balances it was nice to get paid for work done.

Miss it, slush is a fine pool, just isn't quite the same.

Slush skips block transaction verification and mines empty blocks.

As for coinbase payout: you still have to wait the full 101 confirms (over 16hrs) - a pool that sends the payout at that point may only add a few more confirms (less than an hour) or even only one confirm (average 10 minutes)
But ... some new miners don't support it since it's a MUCH bigger coinbase transaction
obviously that also means a much larger work size being sent from the pool to the miner.
Block distribution is now highly optimised - but it can never optimise the coinbase transaction since it will ALWAYS be an unknown transaction that needs to be sent with the block header, thus if you make it large, you're slowing down the block distribution.
Also, as is very well known, this pool had a very high orphan rate - around 3% compared to around 1% for most pools back then.

The wait was never a big deal, but I've never thought about the block header, you are absolutely correct. Anyway it was nice to have the mining symbol in your core wallet, still own some unspent coinbase inputs 

Its been a long time since I've seen the mining symbol in my wallet.  I think deepbit was the only other pool I was on that did that.

[btcrealm]

Newcomer to our years old thread?
http://prntscr.com/1085cho
Not sure anyone that has been around forever and would actually use the pool would report this.

[skleven81]

What happened to this pool? I still have 0.8BTC in my wallet there.

[lightfoot]

The only thing I think Eligius stored was the concept of "shelved shares" which were banked during bad block runs and paid from on good block runs. Since it's gone, those shares are null. But they were never actual bitcoins.

Check around for the keys to the wallet you have eligius paying to. Your coins should be there if anywhere.

Now, PPS systems like Eclipse did vanish with people's bitcoins, I think I lost a bitpenny or two when that went bye bye. Annoying, they could have just paid out final balances to the wallet on record but no.....

[skleven81]

It was a weird one. Your login was your bitcoin adress. So i guessed it was an adress generated by the site. Have a project finding loose ends from my time in mining. It`s hard.