[GUIDE] GridSeed 5-Chip USB, Blade & Black Miner Support/Tuning

[wolfey2014]

...

You probably plugged in 20 miners on the PI, this is a problem with CGMiner.
When you click on the UPDATE CONTROLA link, it will upgrade your firmware to version 1.2.0, which has BFGMiner for scrypt hashing This solves the Cgminer problem. After this, your pi will be mining at a solid 7200mhs (and this time, it will also reflect on the pool)

I'm using for my 20 miner rig on one rasbian a clean weezy img + cgminer .... this works stable and reports 7.1 gh at the pool ... is there a cgminer problem? for more then 10 miners?

Here a 4gb Hashra image ... be sure to change pools before mining ... it's set to my setup right now ... as I used to test it ...
will try it out with 20 miners in a few minutes ...

Hashra 4 gb image

yes CGMiner is not stable with the GD5 chips, It causes them to "zombie out" after a while. When 20 miners are plugged in to 1 CGMiner instance, only half of them are actually hashing properly, while still showing maximum local hashrate, hence the much lower hashrate on the pools. BFGMiner (installed on CONTROLA 1.2.0) works perfectly with 20 miners (or more? haven't tried more). I would love to see the performance of CONTROLA with 30 - 40 miners on 1 PI...anyone want to try it?

Maxzilla, did you have anything to do with developing the HASHRA firmware? Saw your name as the default username on mine...Anyway, after the latest update that switched to BGMiner i started seeing 30+ reject rates on WafflePool only, other pools were fine.
I changed over to Scripta which has been running rock solid for a couple of days now. Are all cgminer versions unstable and did I just get lucky so far?

Hi ToxicOn.
Wafflepool is not a very friendly pool for gridseed devices (high diff?) . From what I understand, even though bfgminer reports more reject rates than cgminer, both miner software have the same share submission level, so it might be that one of the 2 flavors is giving out inaccurate readings. (I didn't write the gridseed patch for BFGMiner, you can contact nwools for that).
But the main difference between the two is, with CGMiner I'm getting significantly less pool hashrate than BFGMiner (especially when plugging in more than 10 miners on 1 PI), and that's what counts.

I'm running 6 miners with no such problems using cpuminer.
Does anyone know if it's compatible with Pi or other controllers? Probably not, right?
But cpuminer is a piece of cake to use in any case!
Wolfey2014

Hi Wolfey2014. Good for you man. I love CPUMiner, but the thing is, it doesn't show you the hashrate / accepted / rejected shares. So you don't really know what the reject rate is (wafflepool doesn't show it either)

Yo Maxzilla!
Well, you are right but,, litecoinpool.org does and other pools I use do as well.
I don't trust local hash rates where cg and bfd miners go.
I am interested in seeing what Hashra Controlla can do though.
It's well tested and proven, evidently and supposedly very user friendly just like cpuminer is.
Wolfey2014

[coinminer69er]

Thanks for the help everyone, especially wolfey, you guys are awesome.

Here's where's I'm at now:  I can log in through SSH, start cgminer but when I plug in the first GSD it doesn't seem to recognize it as it's not hashing or getting any accepted shares after 30 or so mins. Green LED comes on when I plug in the USB, fan is on, red led lights up occasionally. Below is a screenshot from cgminer, any help would be appreciated.

http://imgur.com/ZCLU4Ui
Posted from Bitcointa.lk - #CrhciCCpgX83mjJM

[jjj0923]

Thanks for the help everyone, especially wolfey, you guys are awesome.

Here's where's I'm at now:  I can log in through SSH, start cgminer but when I plug in the first GSD it doesn't seem to recognize it as it's not hashing or getting any accepted shares after 30 or so mins. Green LED comes on when I plug in the USB, fan is on, red led lights up occasionally. Below is a screenshot from cgminer, any help would be appreciated.

http://imgur.com/ZCLU4Ui
Posted from Bitcointa.lk - #CrhciCCpgX83mjJM

type "./cgminer -n"

to see if it's detecting any usb devices - it appears as though your system is not detecting any usb devices - they're plugged into the hub right? and the hub is plugged into your computer right?

[coinminer69er]

type "./cgminer -n"

to see if it's detecting any usb devices - it appears as though your system is not detecting any usb devices - they're plugged into the hub right? and the hub is plugged into your computer right?

Here is the output with that command, it's definitely not seeing them for some reason. GSD is plugged into hub, which is plugged into the RPi. Red LED is lit on hub. It's the one that came with the order from zoom hash, should I buy a different one?

    root@raspberrypi:~# ./cgminer -n
    [2014-03-28 00:37:52] USB all: found 4 devices - listing known devices 
    [2014-03-28 00:37:52] No known USB devices

Thanks for the quick response!
Posted from Bitcointa.lk - #Y9uUj3i2zccUIx7O

[suchmoon]

type "./cgminer -n"

to see if it's detecting any usb devices - it appears as though your system is not detecting any usb devices - they're plugged into the hub right? and the hub is plugged into your computer right?

Here is the output with that command, it's definitely not seeing them for some reason. GSD is plugged into hub, which is plugged into the RPi. Red LED is lit on hub. It's the one that came with the order from zoom hash, should I buy a different one?

    root@raspberrypi:~# ./cgminer -n
    [2014-03-28 00:37:52] USB all: found 4 devices - listing known devices  
    [2014-03-28 00:37:52] No known USB devices

Thanks for the quick response!
Posted from Bitcointa.lk - #Y9uUj3i2zccUIx7O

Is it a powered hub and is it plugged into an outlet?

[maxzilla]

type "./cgminer -n"

to see if it's detecting any usb devices - it appears as though your system is not detecting any usb devices - they're plugged into the hub right? and the hub is plugged into your computer right?

Here is the output with that command, it's definitely not seeing them for some reason. GSD is plugged into hub, which is plugged into the RPi. Red LED is lit on hub. It's the one that came with the order from zoom hash, should I buy a different one?

    root@raspberrypi:~# ./cgminer -n
    [2014-03-28 00:37:52] USB all: found 4 devices - listing known devices  
    [2014-03-28 00:37:52] No known USB devices

Thanks for the quick response!
Posted from Bitcointa.lk - #Y9uUj3i2zccUIx7O

Are you using the cgminer optimised for gridseed? normal cgminer doesn't detect gridseed devices.
if so, did you compile it with the --enable-gridseed flag?
can you type in

Code:

lsusb

and post the results here please?

[favelle75]

Anyone have an issue with CGMiner when plugging in a full hub of 10 miners and having only 9 or sometimes 8 miners hash?  All 10 show up, but one just sits there with 0 shares accepted or rejected.



**edit**

Nevermind, found out it was a loose barrel plug. All better now.  :-)

[jjj0923]

well - this morning I'm giving up on the Pi Rasberry - it's ok but not great

I've been running 20 gridseeds off it now for about two weeks and it slows down to about 1/3 of it's start up hashing rate after about 12 hours and that costs me money and that's the only reason I do this.

I'm setting up an ubuntu box on a real MOB that'll bott off USB stick this morning and will run cgminer - I've run cgminer on the rasberry in addition to cpu miner but it does not like having the api activated with 20 gridseeds running - I'm afraid it's just too much activity for the little thing.

[jjj0923]

by the way- I've read perhaps or in another thread that some here warn against putting more than 3 or 4 gridseeds on one pcie connector.

please remember this: on my mining rig I have two pcie connectors powering a GPU that draws 350 watts when it's hashing away.

my 1200W PSU runs the MOB and 3 of the electric hogs that each hash at about 800 Kh/s

therefore this weekend I'm putting all two of my twenty gridseeds on one 750W power supply and I'm going to run 10 gridseeds off one pcie connector.

hell - even if I leave myself 150 watts of headroom and allocating 10 watts per gridseed I should be able to run 60 gridseeds off one 750W PSU

[suchmoon]

by the way- I've read perhaps or in another thread that some here warn against putting more than 3 or 4 gridseeds on one pcie connector.

please remember this: on my mining rig I have two pcie connectors powering a GPU that draws 350 watts when it's hashing away.

my 1200W PSU runs the MOB and 3 of the electric hogs that each hash at about 800 Kh/s

therefore this weekend I'm putting all two of my twenty gridseeds on one 750W power supply and I'm going to run 10 gridseeds off one pcie connector.

hell - even if I leave myself 150 watts of headroom and allocating 10 watts per gridseed I should be able to run 60 gridseeds off one 750W PSU

Maybe 3 or 4 was for dual mode?

In Scrypt-only mode you can safely feed 3-4 miners off ONE 18-gauge wire, and there are three of those in PCI-E.

[coinminer69er]

Are you using the cgminer optimised for gridseed? normal cgminer doesn't detect gridseed devices.

can you type in

Code:

lsusb

and post the results here please?

I did used this command to install cgminer -   wget https://db.tt/UygLkqwd -O cgminer
based on this tutorial on reddit - http://www.reddit.com/r/litecoinmining/comments/20qddx/a_simple_guild_to_set_up_gridseed_ltc_mining_rig/

With the gridseed plugged into hub(green LED is on, red lights up occasionally), with hub powered on (plugged into PSU and red LED is on) and plugged into RPi, this is what I get when I run lsusb -

Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0424:9512 Standard Microsystems Corp.
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0424:ec00 Standard Microsystems Corp.
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 050d:945a Belkin Components F7D1101 v1 Basic Wireless Adapter [Realtek RTL8188SU]

I tried the standard zoomhash image, hashra and scripta yesterday, but had trouble setting up the wifi adapter so I went with the standard raspbian setup that was in the Unicorn Hasher guide.
Posted from Bitcointa.lk - #lk0YcbSLv4yyRo9e

[suchmoon]

Are you using the cgminer optimised for gridseed? normal cgminer doesn't detect gridseed devices.

can you type in

Code:

lsusb

and post the results here please?

I did used this command to install cgminer -   wget https://db.tt/UygLkqwd -O cgminer
based on this tutorial on reddit - http://www.reddit.com/r/litecoinmining/comments/20qddx/a_simple_guild_to_set_up_gridseed_ltc_mining_rig/

With the gridseed plugged into hub(green LED is on, red lights up occasionally), with hub powered on (plugged into PSU and red LED is on) and plugged into RPi, this is what I get when I run lsusb -

Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0424:9512 Standard Microsystems Corp.
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0424:ec00 Standard Microsystems Corp.
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 050d:945a Belkin Components F7D1101 v1 Basic Wireless Adapter [Realtek RTL8188SU]

I tried the standard zoomhash image, hashra and scripta yesterday, but had trouble setting up the wifi adapter so I went with the standard raspbian setup that was in the Unicorn Hasher guide.
Posted from Bitcointa.lk - #lk0YcbSLv4yyRo9e

I would suggest to try to plug the Gridseed directly into Raspberry with a known good USB cable. Make sure the Raspberry is powered off, plug in the Gridseed, power both on. If that works you can then test the hub.

[usao]

Are you using the cgminer optimised for gridseed? normal cgminer doesn't detect gridseed devices.

can you type in

Code:

lsusb

and post the results here please?

I did used this command to install cgminer -   wget https://db.tt/UygLkqwd -O cgminer
based on this tutorial on reddit - http://www.reddit.com/r/litecoinmining/comments/20qddx/a_simple_guild_to_set_up_gridseed_ltc_mining_rig/

With the gridseed plugged into hub(green LED is on, red lights up occasionally), with hub powered on (plugged into PSU and red LED is on) and plugged into RPi, this is what I get when I run lsusb -

Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0424:9512 Standard Microsystems Corp.
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0424:ec00 Standard Microsystems Corp.
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 050d:945a Belkin Components F7D1101 v1 Basic Wireless Adapter [Realtek RTL8188SU]

I tried the standard zoomhash image, hashra and scripta yesterday, but had trouble setting up the wifi adapter so I went with the standard raspbian setup that was in the Unicorn Hasher guide.
Posted from Bitcointa.lk - #lk0YcbSLv4yyRo9e

I would suggest to try to plug the Gridseed directly into Raspberry with a known good USB cable. Make sure the Raspberry is powered off, plug in the Gridseed, power both on. If that works you can then test the hub.

Odd, on my rpi, I have to start both the miner and the rpi with the usb cable un-plugged in, then plug it in after it's running. Otherwise it won't see the devices.
Im using the hashra image and 10 GSDs on a powered hub.

[vertoe]

Does anyone else get kernel panic messages on raspberry pi?

I'm using ArchLinuxARM latest image and compiled cgminer from this github repository:
https://github.com/girnyau/cgminer-gc3355

I'm running 10 Gridseeds. They are running well at 3.6 MH/s until some point when it goes Oops:

Code:

[ 4565.377848] Unable to handle kernel paging request at virtual address 00002055
[ 4565.385255] pgd = c9df8000
[ 4565.393214] [00002055] *pgd=c9df8000, *pte=00000000, *ppte=00000000
[ 4565.404992] Internal error: Oops: 17 [#1] PREEMT ARM
[...]

Here is a screenshot:



/edit: Found the solution here: http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/a/24121/6441

When you say it crashes, are you talking about the cgminer itself, or your Raspberry Pi?

If it's the Raspberry Pi, you should probably check that you've got the "slub_debug=FP" hack in place. This has been discussed in other places, but to save you searching time, here's what you need to do (if it's not already in place):

sudo nano /boot/cmdline.txt

Add the following code at the end of the first line (on the same line as the other text, DO NOT add new line!)

Code:

slub_debug=FP

Save the file then reboot your Raspberry Pi.

What the above does is basically enable some kernel debug mode on the Raspberry Pi. I have no idea why debug mode prevents the system kernel crash, but there's a lot of anecdotal evidence that it does work. In my case, I couldn't run for more than an hour before my Pi would crash.

I suspect that there's a kernel bug that cgminer is somehow triggering. I don't know if anyone has seriously investigated this, given that most people just want a work around so that they can keep mining reliably. But if you're interested, here's a related thread that I found:

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=55370

If the issue is that cgminer is crashing, not your Pi, doesn't it get restarted by the Scripta /etc/rc.local?

I've seen cgminer crash too. I got about 48 hours the last time before it crapped out. I'm using the dtbartle version that I built myself from the git sources, and I've got 10 GridSeed units.

This morning I decided to run cgminer in text only mode under daemontools. I've been running my Dual Miner version of cgminer like that for weeks on another rig and have never seen a crash of either the Pi or cgminer (and I don't have the slub_debug hack enabled on that Raspberry Pi, either). There's a lot to like about daemontools, including logging. And I see no need to have a terminal output in a detached screen process when Scripta does a nicer job of giving me visual miner status.

I have no idea if running cgminer in its default terminal mode under screen is in fact problematic or not. The stability problems might just be in the gc3355 implementation of cgminer. But I like how my other rig is running and it's nice to keep things consistent.

Anyway HTH...

[suchmoon]

Odd, on my rpi, I have to start both the miner and the rpi with the usb cable un-plugged in, then plug it in after it's running. Otherwise it won't see the devices.
Im using the hashra image and 10 GSDs on a powered hub.

Weird. I would suggest the same thing, try one or two miners without a hub, maybe there is something wrong with it.

[coinminer69er]

I would suggest to try to plug the Gridseed directly into Raspberry with a known good USB cable. Make sure the Raspberry is powered off, plug in the Gridseed, power both on. If that works you can then test the hub.

That worked! Looks like one of my GSDs is DOA though, and that was the one I had pulled out of the box to test with so that definitely didn't make things any easier. By swapping the USB cable that was connected to the RPi to the different GSDs I was able to get them all up and running individually. I guess the usb hub I got from zoom hash was DOA as well. I've got another one from Amazon on the way so hopefully that's all I need to get them all up and running. Thanks for the help
Posted from Bitcointa.lk - #GAZHePRYCz3W44fO

[podizzle]

hey guys can anyone tell me whats wrong here? all 18 are being detected but only some are accepting shares so far? my total accepted and hash looks right at top but its not even coming close to what the pool is showing.

http://imgur.com/2xT57GG

[suchmoon]

hey guys can anyone tell me whats wrong here? all 18 are being detected but only some are accepting shares so far? my total accepted and hash looks right at top but its not even coming close to what the pool is showing.

http://imgur.com/2xT57GG

Your Mhz is probably wrong. You should start at 800 and step up only if it's stable. Most unmodified Gridseeds don't work well above 850. It's unclear from your screenshots how long it's been running, but there a lot of HW errors.

[podizzle]

hey guys can anyone tell me whats wrong here? all 18 are being detected but only some are accepting shares so far? my total accepted and hash looks right at top but its not even coming close to what the pool is showing.

http://imgur.com/2xT57GG

Your Mhz is probably wrong. You should start at 800 and step up only if it's stable. Most unmodified Gridseeds don't work well above 850. It's unclear from your screenshots how long it's been running, but there a lot of HW errors.

thanks friend! i will try 800 dunno why its at 888 ?

[vertoe]

hey guys can anyone tell me whats wrong here? all 18 are being detected but only some are accepting shares so far? my total accepted and hash looks right at top but its not even coming close to what the pool is showing.

http://imgur.com/2xT57GG

Most of your Hashpower is getting eaten by HW errors. Try 850 MHz clocking.