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

[eleuthria]

At least for me I usually get the idle warning email. I login btcguild to make sure which ones have gone idle, so I look at the dashboard. After getting the miner up I look for the idle warning enable but I have to go settings for that. I know that logically it is a setting but that setting is automatically turned off when something that can be seen in dashboard happens. So I wish idle e-mail setting was in dashboard.

The reason that idle warnings are not in the dashboard any more is that soon (this weekend) they will remain turned on after they are sent.  I'm setting up a new outgoing email server with proper RDNS settings and SPF records so hopefully they will not get completely dropped by some email providers.  I had to turn them off after they were sent before due to the daily outgoing email limits imposed by Google Apps, which is what I've been using to make sure the emails don't get marked as spam. 

Setting up the new outgoing email server is my next project after the hot wallet maintenance (which starts in just over 1 hour).

[averwind]

The reason that idle warnings are not in the dashboard any more is that soon (this weekend) they will remain turned on after they are sent.  I'm setting up a new outgoing email server with proper RDNS settings and SPF records so hopefully they will not get completely dropped by some email providers.  I had to turn them off after they were sent before due to the daily outgoing email limits imposed by Google Apps, which is what I've been using to make sure the emails don't get marked as spam. 

Setting up the new outgoing email server is my next project after the hot wallet maintenance (which starts in just over 1 hour).

This made more sense, thanks!

[skeeterskeeter]

*snip*

Hmm, I'll see what I can do tonight. Does CGMiner do stratum by default? Will I be working faster or just the same as usual when I switch? I figure the same speed.

So stratum supports little miners still, but had to be geared toward Gigahash miners because of their shear speed?

With stratum there is no persistent connection via HTTP, so each time a miner wants work they create a TCP packet asking for info from the server? (is that what "push-based" means?).

Hmm, just found the stratum white paper from Slush

https://docs.google.com/document/d/17zHy1SUlhgtCMbypO8cHgpWH73V5iUQKk_0rWvMqSNs/edit?hl=en_US#heading=h.qtac027hfsqw

[eleuthria]

*snip*

Hmm, I'll see what I can do tonight. Does CGMiner do stratum by default? Will I be working faster or just the same as usual when I switch? I figure the same speed.

So stratum supports little miners still, but had to be geared toward Gigahash miners because of their shear speed?

With stratum there is no persistent connection via HTTP, so each time a miner wants work they create a TCP packet asking for info from the server? (is that what "push-based" means?).

Hmm, just found the stratum white paper from Slush

https://docs.google.com/document/d/17zHy1SUlhgtCMbypO8cHgpWH73V5iUQKk_0rWvMqSNs/edit?hl=en_US#heading=h.qtac027hfsqw

CGMiner (all recent versions for the last couple months) supports stratum by default.  You will not hash faster, but will likely have lower stale rates.

Stratum with variable difficulty is designed as "infinitely" scalable without increasing the amount of data required between the miner and the pool.  So it's small and massive miner friendly.

Stratum is a persistent TCP connection.  It's push-based because you don't ask for work from the server, the server just pushes new work to you whenever it has new work.  The work supplied by the server is more than 4.2 billion times more work than what you would have received from getwork [and can be expanded further easily], meaning you will never run out of work before new work is sent.

[eleuthria]

Hot wallet maintenance has started.  While I've given the estimate of being done around noon (PST), I'm hoping it will be done much earlier than that.

1 Hour Update:  Hot wallet has been upgraded to 0.8 bitcoind and is resync'ing the blockchain in the new format just to be safe.  The private key for the wallet coins are mined to has been imported and it is nearly sync'd.  Coins from all the change addresses were moved to the cold wallet, and fresh coins have been sent to the hot wallet address.  As soon as these coins have a few confirmations the hot wallet will be put back online.

1h 20m Update:  Hot wallet is now set to process auto payouts at the next interval (11 AM).  Manual payouts still frozen until a few more confirmations hit.

[eleuthria]

Hot wallet maintenance is complete and all payouts are now being processed again.  I did a manual run on automatic payouts to catch up on the two that were missed.

[eleuthria]

Upcoming Changes (This weekend hopefully):

1) New email server being deployed to avoid the outgoing email limits imposed by Google Apps.  Once it's confirmed to work, this means Idle Warning settings will not be disabled once an email has been sent.

2) Mining Teams.  Yes, I know it's not an important feature, but it can help bring back some spirit of competition among miners.  You might not be able to be the fastest or the luckiest on your own, but it can be fun to see how you and your friends compare to other groups.

[LazyOtto]

Mining Teams.  Yes, I know it's not an important feature, but it can help bring back some spirit of competition among miners.  You might not be able to be the fastest or the luckiest on your own, but it can be fun to see how you and your friends compare to other groups.

I'm on the ASICMiner team.     

[iCEBREAKER]

Mining Teams are great fun!  The SETIs, Folders, and BOINCers have had them since forever.

Let the granfalloonery commence!   

[eleuthria]

Mining Teams are great fun!  The SETIs, Folders, and BOINCers have had them since forever.

Let the granfalloonery commence!   

Yeah, I planned on adding them LONG ago but it wasn't received too well at first.  Now a few other pools have added them, and I think with the new interface it will be nice.  The old interface was pretty cluttered already without adding Teams.

[iCEBREAKER]

Way back then (2011), a mining pool was pretty much the same thing as a mining team.  And we hashed using abacuses and trained pterodactyls, Flintstone-style.

The emergence of friendly, healthy intra-pool rivalries is a good example of Bitcoin scaling as it grows up.

Welcome to the latest metasystem transition; you're soaking in it!   

[BitMinerN8]

Way back then (2011), a mining pool was pretty much the same thing as a mining team.  And we hashed using abacuses and trained pterodactyls, Flintstone-style.

The emergence of friendly, healthy intra-pool rivalries is a good example of Bitcoin scaling as it grows up.

Welcome to the latest metasystem transition; you're soaking in it!   

Yeah, now all we need are some integrated blockchain and MtGox live charts and there would be no reason to leave the dashboard. 

[iCEBREAKER]

^^Yes!  Let's make this the UI update to end all UI updates.

Besides the MtGox and Blockchain.info scrapers, we need integrated RSS for BTCtalk drama feeds.

Then I'll nevar haff to leave BTCGuild!!!  WIN!!!!!~1!

[BkkCoins]

Mining Teams are great fun!  The SETIs, Folders, and BOINCers have had them since forever.

Let the granfalloonery commence!   

Yeah, I planned on adding them LONG ago but it wasn't received too well at first.  Now a few other pools have added them, and I think with the new interface it will be nice.  The old interface was pretty cluttered already without adding Teams.

Can we join any team we like or will the team have to allow/invite members? I'm guessing we can create a team but if I saw an existing one I feel an affinity with I'm wondering if joining is just a one-click type affair.

[eleuthria]

Mining Teams are great fun!  The SETIs, Folders, and BOINCers have had them since forever.

Let the granfalloonery commence!   

Yeah, I planned on adding them LONG ago but it wasn't received too well at first.  Now a few other pools have added them, and I think with the new interface it will be nice.  The old interface was pretty cluttered already without adding Teams.

Can we join any team we like or will the team have to allow/invite members? I'm guessing we can create a team but if I saw an existing one I feel an affinity with I'm wondering if joining is just a one-click type affair.

Teams will be simple to create/join.  When creating a team, whoever creates it will have the option of a Public (anyone can join) or Private (password restricted) team.  If you just want to join a team, there will be a drop down list to choose one (with password entry for private teams).

[TechCF]

Nice update to the website. Love the EU support aswell! But I would like to see stratum on port 80. Right now the port80 server isn't even listed on the new pages.

[eleuthria]

Nice update to the website. Love the EU support aswell! But I would like to see stratum on port 80. Right now the port80 server isn't even listed on the new pages.

I'm not currently advertising port 80, because I need to move it to a different server shortly.  I will be adding Stratum support on port 80 once it is ready.


Additional notice to users:  I will attempting to switch to a new email server tonight.  Some emails may get bounced back or lost during this time, and outgoing emails may or may not function.  I'm hoping it all works, but email servers are a real PITA.  I will make another post later today with a defined time frame for when the switch will start.

[miner49er]

67117 ?
Who is this guy? with that kind of power, maybe want to mine solo. is he a member of the btcguild operators?

now i really have hardware envy....

[crazyates]

67117 ?
Who is this guy? with that kind of power, maybe want to mine solo. is he a member of the btcguild operators?

now i really have hardware envy....

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=49417.msg1570367#msg1570367

[eleuthria]

I've just finished setting up a new outgoing email server.  I've sent many test emails through it to my various GMail/Google Apps emails, and it is passing all of their SPF checks as a validated IP for outgoing emails to come from.

I've set the pool to now use this new outgoing server for all notifications.  This also means that we are no longer subject to the Google Apps daily outgoing email limit, so Idle Notification Emails are no longer turned off once they've been triggered!

I'll be monitoring the new system for the rest of the evening to make sure other email providers are not bouncing emails back as spam.  Emails still come from webmaster@btcguild.com .

Depending on your email provider, you may need to whitelist webmaster@btcguild.com, or check your Junk/Spam folders and unmark them as junk/spam until the smart filtering stops putting it there.