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

[eleuthria]

website unreachable

ssl_error_bad_mac_read

Website hasn't had any problems.  Make sure you're using the full address (https://www.btcguild.com).  It won't work without www.

[1713962655]

1713962655

[1713962655]

1713962655

[1713962655]

1713962655

[jojo69]

same bookmark I have always used...worked last night, not this morning

odd

edit/  more like bizarre, it comes up fine on windoze boxes but the linux I prefer to use for these matters returns the error above...scratches head

[eleuthria]

same bookmark I have always used...worked last night, not this morning

odd

edit/  more like bizarre, it comes up fine on windoze boxes but the linux I prefer to use for these matters returns the error above...scratches head

Have you tried any other browsers?  Disabling addons?

[eleuthria]

The new pool software is finally close to completion!  All the hard parts are out of the way, now it's a matter of plugging in the database interaction, and verifying returned shares for proper difficulty.

The new pool software already has some dedicated testers set that volunteered, so hopefully it will be ready for launching on the primary servers mid-August.  One of the features of the new software will be variable difficulty on a per-worker basis.  You will be able to set it under 'Manage Workers'.  Higher difficulty shares will be recorded as multiple share submissions for crediting your account (returning a valid Difficulty 10 share will show up as 10 share submissions).

The new software will also allow you to mine by entering a Bitcoin address as your worker name.  The specifics haven't been finished yet on how payouts for anonymous workers will be handled yet.

[420]

What is difference port 80 vs 8332?

[organofcorti]

One of the features of the new software will be variable difficulty on a per-worker basis.  You will be able to set it under 'Manage Workers'.  Higher difficulty shares will be recorded as multiple share submissions for crediting your account (returning a valid Difficulty 10 share will show up as 10 share submissions).

Great work eleuthria! First BTC pool with user determined pool difficulty. I'm interested in how you'll show the advantages and disadvantages of increasing pool difficulty to miners - any ideas?

[-ck]

One of the features of the new software will be variable difficulty on a per-worker basis.  You will be able to set it under 'Manage Workers'.  Higher difficulty shares will be recorded as multiple share submissions for crediting your account (returning a valid Difficulty 10 share will show up as 10 share submissions).

Great work eleuthria! First BTC pool with user determined pool difficulty. I'm interested in how you'll show the advantages and disadvantages of increasing pool difficulty to miners - any ideas?

I think it's funny that ltc mining has had different difficulty for quite a while and btc has not. On the other hand, they just set a static difficulty. Being able to set your own difficulty would be good, and having difficulty automatically adjust would be even better, but then that will cause all sorts of confusion as utility drops off. I've been condiering scaling "utility" in cgminer to be a function of difficulty versus accepted shares to that it doesn't change when mining at variable difficulty.

[eleuthria]

What is the advantage/disadvantage of choosing to solve higher difficulty shares?

Choosing to solve higher difficulty shares is mostly a feature for the eventual rise of ASICs (even though I doubt we'll see them in anybody's hands for about a year).  The advantage to higher difficulty is a dramatic reduction in upstream traffic for the miner.  The disadvantage is you will see increased variance.  At low hash rates, there isn't much reason to switch.  But if you have a single rig running at 20+ GH/s?  It might make sense to run a Difficulty of 2-4.

As I said, this really isn't expected to be overly used until we see a dramatic increase in mining speed (which will happen eventually).  There are other scaling issues that all pools will see if we see single rigs running at 250+ GH/s, which is what the new mining protocol is being designed for.  The new pool server is a bridge for BTC Guild.  Implementing a new protocol requires intimate knowledge of your pool software, and I do not think I would ever have enough knowledge of Java to implement it into PoolServerJ.

[-ck]

From what I can read, it seems it would be best to scale difficulty to the square root of hashrate. Probably for simplicity, you could use GH as the unit and scale it to that. i.e. at 4GH use difficulty 2, at 9GH use difficulty 3, 16 diff 4 etc.. You could easily set it to any difficulty at any hashrate, but the variance will make a lot of miners wonder and complain about why their rewards fluctuate so much - even though the average will be the same. People struggle with understanding luck's effect on utility already...

[eleuthria]

From what I can read, it seems it would be best to scale difficulty to the square root of hashrate. Probably for simplicity, you could use GH as the unit and scale it to that. i.e. at 4GH use difficulty 2, at 9GH use difficulty 3, 16 diff 4 etc.. You could easily set it to any difficulty at any hashrate, but the variance will make a lot of miners wonder and complain about why their rewards fluctuate so much - even though the average will be the same. People struggle with understanding luck's effect on utility already...

Right now the plan is purely user selectable difficulty, with the default to 1.  I currently have no plans for a dynamically adjusted difficulty.

[eleuthria]

Some minor updates to the website, mostly catered to newer miners:

1) After registering an account, you're now greeted with a "Getting Started" page, providing links to mining clients, connection details, and a default worker name.
2) The Getting Started page also recommends setting optional features (Email, Wallet Lock, Automatic Payouts)


Additionally, when making sure the new page is linked properly, I discovered that one feature of the website was not working for all users!  Accounts that only had 1 worker did not see the "Current Balance" in the top bar of BTC Guild, which provides a nice ticker of your rewards on any page of BTC Guild.  This has been fixed and will now show for users that only had 1 worker.

[420]

How accurate is the Mhash under Speed on the account page?
Do I need to run full 24hr to determine my Mhash speed? (to compare mining software for optimal mhash) I think the software stats are not accurate

[eleuthria]

How accurate is the Mhash under Speed on the account page?
Do I need to run full 24hr to determine my Mhash speed? (to compare mining software for optimal mhash) I think the software stats are not accurate

Mining software is accurate.  Pool websites estimate your speed based on share submissions.  If you're running a fast GPU, the pool will get fairly close (though never exact) to what your mining software reports.  BTC Guild can generally give you an accurate speed estimate within 3-4 minutes on a GPU.  If you're mining with a CPU though, it will never be very accurate due to the high variance in CPU share submissions.

Normally hash rate estimates are within +/- 10% on a good GPU (300+ MH/s) after enough time has elapsed.  This is because there will always be some variance in your share submissions.  The faster your worker is, the smaller that margin of error becomes.

[420]

How accurate is the Mhash under Speed on the account page?
Do I need to run full 24hr to determine my Mhash speed? (to compare mining software for optimal mhash) I think the software stats are not accurate

Mining software is accurate.  Pool websites estimate your speed based on share submissions.  If you're running a fast GPU, the pool will get fairly close (though never exact) to what your mining software reports.  BTC Guild can generally give you an accurate speed estimate within 3-4 minutes on a GPU.  If you're mining with a CPU though, it will never be very accurate due to the high variance in CPU share submissions.

Normally hash rate estimates are within +/- 10% on a good GPU (300+ MH/s) after enough time has elapsed.  This is because there will always be some variance in your share submissions.  The faster your worker is, the smaller that margin of error becomes.

okay mine is right under 2ghash, cgminer takes 5-15 minutes to slowly creep up to max speed showing on the screen
btc guild account showed 1552 a few minutes ago and now refresh it shows 1564 but my cg miner now shows 1829, a minute ago showed 1827

[eleuthria]

Some updates to the website have been going on tonight, nothing major.  The pool speed estimate and worker speed estimates may be a bit inaccurate for the next 10 minutes while the database rebuilds enough data for a proper average.

UPDATE:  All fixed now.  Was fun seeing the pool report its hash rate in the 100+ TH/s range for a few brief moments .

[eleuthria]

The 'My Payouts' page now contains a link to the payment transaction on Blockchain.info .  As a reminder, you can find a link to a full CSV of your entire payout history at the bottom of the payout table.  This includes transaction IDs as well.

Please remember, all payouts from BTC Guild are issued with the default bitcoind transaction fees included, but not all pools include every transaction they should.  There is no guarantee that your transaction will be confirmed on the very next block.  Depending on which pools are finding blocks, and overall network block production, it can take anywhere from a few seconds to over an hour.

[eleuthria]

Some minor updates are being deployed to the database and website servers today to optimize some of the more intense database queries (automatic payouts, idle warnings, and speed graphs).  Mining will be unaffected, but there may be not be an auto payout at 1 PM (PDT) if the new script hasn't been set to execute.

There may be some small delays in loading the website (possible timeouts) when the scripts are being tested.  A simple reload should do the trick though.  I will try to keep my trial runs limited to avoid any interference with website usability.


UPDATE:  Scripts were all shifted around and everything worked flawlessly.  It cut down how hard the DB server worked during some scripts by close to 50%.

[eleuthria]

Performance Charts for workers will be disabled temporarily.  I am making a big change to the way the graphs are generated.  Hopefully this can be done without requiring a reset of the graphs (which would also reset the 24 hour earnings statistics).


UPDATE:  The new change has been deployed.  I didn't have to reset the charts, but you your 24 hour earnings will be slightly misreported for the next 24 hours (you'll be missing about 10 minutes worth).  Additionally, your speed charts may show a small dip as a result of the missing 10 minutes.  This is because previously the code was taking ~90 seconds to execute, and was running 8 minutes after the hour.  The new code takes about 4 seconds to run, and runs every hour on the hour.

This does not affect your earned rewards, simply the way the pool calculates your 24 hour earnings.

[eleuthria]

One of the changes to the automatic payout script made it so people who had old inactive workers (but other still active workers) weren't receiving auto payouts.  The bug has now been fixed and I ran the automatic payouts a few times to clear up any backlogged auto-payments.

[somenick]

what is it
cgminer all is ok (possibly)
diablo

[08.08.12 12:09:06] mine3.btcguild.com accepted block 1 from Cypress (#2)    
[08.08.12 12:09:10] mine3.btcguild.com accepted block 2 from Cypress (#2)    
[08.08.12 12:09:16] mine3.btcguild.com accepted block 3 from Cypress (#2)    
[08.08.12 12:09:19] mine3.btcguild.com accepted block 4 from Cypress (#1)    
[08.08.12 12:09:20] mine3.btcguild.com accepted block 5 from Cypress (#1)    
[08.08.12 12:09:49] ERROR: Cannot connect to mine3.btcguild.com: connect timed out
[08.08.12 12:09:55] ERROR: Cannot connect to mine3.btcguild.com: Connection timed out
[08.08.12 12:09:57] ERROR: Cannot connect to mine3.btcguild.com: connect timed out
[08.08.12 12:10:04] ERROR: Cannot connect to mine3.btcguild.com: connect timed out
[08.08.12 12:10:16] ERROR: Cannot connect to mine3.btcguild.com: Connection timed out
[08.08.12 12:10:19] ERROR: Cannot connect to mine3.btcguild.com: connect timed out
[08.08.12 12:10:35] ERROR: Cannot connect to mine3.btcguild.com: connect timed out
[08.08.12 12:10:37] mine3.btcguild.com accepted block 6 from Cypress (#1)    
[08.08.12 12:10:37] mine3.btcguild.com accepted block 7 from Cypress (#1)    
[08.08.12 12:10:38] ERROR: Cannot connect to mine3.btcguild.com: Connection timed out
[08.08.12 12:10:39] mine3.btcguild.com accepted block 8 from Cypress (#2)    
[08.08.12 12:10:42] mine3.btcguild.com accepted block 9 from Cypress (#2)    
[08.08.12 12:10:47] mine3.btcguild.com accepted block 10 from Cypress (#1)