[CLOSED] BTC Guild - Pays TxFees+NMC, Stratum, VarDiff, Private Servers

[ice_chill]

Great Pool so far, I am happy I switched from Deepbit Much better website interface too.

Is there a program to have NameCoin wallet on my PC ?

[Smoovious]

Great Pool so far, I am happy I switched from Deepbit Much better website interface too.

Is there a program to have NameCoin wallet on my PC ?

You have to get the namecoin daemon and/or client if you want to do that.

If you don't intend on keeping them, then use a deposit address from one of the exchanges trading NMC, as your withdrawl address, and you can sell them off without messing with the NMC daemon at all.

-- Smoov

[Joshwaa]

My miners are connected and mining, but the web page shows no mining at all going on.  Whats going on?

[420]

mine2 is working for me as well as web interface updating as normal

[Joshwaa]

Yea was just a hicup I guess only went on for a couple hours. Looks like the DB caught up with the shares though.

[eleuthria]

Yes, it looks like implementing the load balancers caused some small issues with some of the filters on the servers.  Most traffic went through, but it would occasionally drop some packets entirely, and this morning it looks like the DB server was dropping packets from mine2 for a while.  It did eventually catch up.

I've tweaked the settings on all 3 servers this morning, so this shouldn't be a problem going forward.

[eleuthria]

Great Pool so far, I am happy I switched from Deepbit Much better website interface too.

Is there a program to have NameCoin wallet on my PC ?

Thanks for the compliments on the pool .  I've always tried to keep the site providing as many of the vital statistics in one location, without becoming difficult to read/scan.

As for a namecoin wallet, unfortunately I haven't been able to find something that is quite as user friendly as Bitcoin's client.  Most users that actually use namecoin do so with the command line client (namecoind).  As Smoovius mentioned, most users simply use a withdrawal address for a namecoin exchange when they want to trade their namecoins for BTC, avoiding the need to run namecoin on their local machine at all.  Just be careful, since many (all?) namecoin exchanges use temporary addresses, meaning you would have to get a new withdrawal address and set it on BTC Guild for each withdrawal.

[eleuthria]

Continued work happening on the load balancers today.  As with yesterday, anybody pointed at a specific server (mine1-3) should be fine.  This is only currently affecting people mining at the generic 'btcguild.com' hostname.  Similar to yesterday, this shouldn't cause any service interruption, and should at most result in a disconnected longpoll or a couple of rejected shares.

[Smoovious]

... As Smoovius mentioned, most users simply use a withdrawal address for a namecoin exchange when they want to trade their namecoins for BTC, avoiding the need to run namecoin on their local machine at all.  Just be careful, since many (all?) namecoin exchanges use temporary addresses, meaning you would have to get a new withdrawal address and set it on BTC Guild for each withdrawal.

Vircurex uses fixed addresses, as does BTC-e. If you request a new address from their deposit pages, the old address continues to work, even tho it isn't shown on the page anymore.

I've been using mine for months now.

Vircurex has many trading possibilities, detailed email notifications, but they have less volume.
BTC-e has fewer trading possibilities, no email notifications, but they have more volume.

My recommendation is to have an account at both, just to have a backup available if needed.

-- Smoov

[eleuthria]

The 24 Hour Earnings stat is currently incorrect for namecoins.  Fixing it shortly (it will take 24 hours for the number to be accurate again).

[squall1066]

The 24 Hour Earnings stat is currently incorrect for namecoins.  Fixing it shortly (it will take 24 hours for the number to be accurate again).

Confirmed, I dont think 0 is correct, lol, But is it just a display fault or are we just going to loose them?

Edit - I would not use anonymous mining, as I think it's a good idea for the server to have contact E-mail for Account varification.
What I would like is the abillity to remove accounts! No-one has done this.

[eleuthria]

The 24 Hour Earnings stat is currently incorrect for namecoins.  Fixing it shortly (it will take 24 hours for the number to be accurate again).

Confirmed, I dont think 0 is correct, lol, But is it just a desplay fault or are we just going to loose them?

It's just a display fault.  It will start to rebuild the 24 hour earnings over the next day.  When I fixed the code used to generate graphs & calculate 24 hour earnings, I forgot to update the NMC side with it.

[420]

Great Pool so far, I am happy I switched from Deepbit Much better website interface too.

Is there a program to have NameCoin wallet on my PC ?

Thanks for the compliments on the pool .  I've always tried to keep the site providing as many of the vital statistics in one location, without becoming difficult to read/scan.

As for a namecoin wallet, unfortunately I haven't been able to find something that is quite as user friendly as Bitcoin's client.  Most users that actually use namecoin do so with the command line client (namecoind).  As Smoovius mentioned, most users simply use a withdrawal address for a namecoin exchange when they want to trade their namecoins for BTC, avoiding the need to run namecoin on their local machine at all.  Just be careful, since many (all?) namecoin exchanges use temporary addresses, meaning you would have to get a new withdrawal address and set it on BTC Guild for each withdrawal.

yup. I made the mistake and accidentally clicked nmc payout when i didn't change my nmc wallet yet, i forget it was already stored and lost 1NMC, no big deal

but if possible could you have it open a confirm dialog box saying, "this will be sent to your saved NMC address, are you sure?"

[squall1066]

Great Pool so far, I am happy I switched from Deepbit Much better website interface too.

Is there a program to have NameCoin wallet on my PC ?

Thanks for the compliments on the pool .  I've always tried to keep the site providing as many of the vital statistics in one location, without becoming difficult to read/scan.

As for a namecoin wallet, unfortunately I haven't been able to find something that is quite as user friendly as Bitcoin's client.  Most users that actually use namecoin do so with the command line client (namecoind).  As Smoovius mentioned, most users simply use a withdrawal address for a namecoin exchange when they want to trade their namecoins for BTC, avoiding the need to run namecoin on their local machine at all.  Just be careful, since many (all?) namecoin exchanges use temporary addresses, meaning you would have to get a new withdrawal address and set it on BTC Guild for each withdrawal.

yup. I made the mistake and accidentally clicked nmc payout when i didn't change my nmc wallet yet, i forget it was already stored and lost 1NMC, no big deal

but if possible could you have it open a confirm dialog box saying, "this will be sent to your saved NMC address, are you sure?"

Yes +1 to this, I also came from deepbit, and not looking back, I'm squall1066 everywhere I go to avoid confusion, I am not a user of command line client, So I will be saveing up my NMC then trading in, Glad I read this as I did not know about the re-generation of a deposit address, So for an infrequent user would loose more saved up coins if used the same payout. so thanks for pointing that out.

[eleuthria]

The new load balancer setup had a few hiccups at first yesterday, but the last 8 hours have gone very smoothly.  I did find out that port 80 mining broke as a result, so I am working on correcting this ASAP.  Additionally, I will be adding a withdrawal confirmation screen that clearly displays your withdrawal address and mentions the warning about some exchanges not allowing you to reuse an address.

[eleuthria]

Port 80 users:  Change your mining server to:  port80.btcguild.com

The new load balancers rest on 'btcguild.com', and all DNS entries have been moved to that round robin.  Because of this, port 80 on the load balancers must redirect users to https://www.btcguild.com (due to the frequency of people not typing in 'www').

port80.btcguild.com will allow you to continue mining on port 80, and also experience the benefit of load balancing across the multiple backends.

[eleuthria]

Port 80 users:  Change your mining server to:  port80.btcguild.com

The new load balancers rest on 'btcguild.com', and all DNS entries have been moved to that round robin.  Because of this, port 80 on the load balancers must redirect users to https://www.btcguild.com (due to the frequency of people not typing in 'www').

port80.btcguild.com will allow you to continue mining on port 80, and also experience the benefit of load balancing across the multiple backends.

So does that mean we should switch from mine2 or 3 to port80.btcguild.com?

If you have to mine on port 80, yes.  Port 80 no longer works when pointed at mine2 or mine3.btcguild.com, due to the overhaul of how the load balancing works.

[eleuthria]

Oh, that's why it's happening. Thanks, I really should check this thread more often.

Actually, you looked just after I discovered (and fixed) the issue.  Port 80 mining is one of those very rare cases, so when doing a massive overhaul on server setup, it wasn't something I was thinking about.  This morning I woke up to an email about Port 80 mining being broken, so I immediately went to work to correct the error since I knew exactly what was causing it.

[eleuthria]

A confirmation page has been added for manual NMC and BTC withdrawal requests.

[eleuthria]

Summary of Recent Changes
The last 48 hours have had some large changes to BTC Guild's server setup.  The following is a list of what has changed, what to do if you have any problems in the new setup.

Changes/Updates
1) BTC Guild is now using many load balancing servers in round robin DNS.  All DNS entries (except de.btcguild.com) have been updated to use the round robin load balancing.
2) There is now a payout confirmation page for BTC and NMC withdrawals, warning users that some exchanges may not allow you to reuse an address.
3) Database improvements have taken place in many areas, drastically increasing website performance for some of the routine tasks.

Problems/Fixes
1) Port 80 mining was broken for approximately 10 hours due to the new load balancing setup.  To resume port 80 mining, change your server from mine2/mine3, to 'port80.btcguild.com'
2) If you are seeing a large number of 'Unknown' rejected shares, please restart your miners.  It seems that some miners (exact clients/versions not yet determined) will add the new DNS entries from round robin, but still keep the old IP as well, meaning it might submit shares to the wrong server.  Restarting the miner should resolve the issue.


Aside from the above, I am encouraging users to stop using direct IP to connect their miners if possible.  There are still a couple users mining on an IP that has been inactive for weeks.  Please use the hostname (btcguild.com or port80.btcguild.com) to connect.  If you must use an IP to connect, please update to 107.21.115.160.



UPDATE:  Some emails are going out to the top users of BTC Guild to provide a way to bypass the load balancing/proxy layer.  As time goes on, more users will be given the credentials.  If you receive the email, please do not post a copy of it here, and do not provide the addresses to anybody else.