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

[eleuthria]

Website is temporarily offline while I do some major updates to how the site stores the 24-hour/72-hour/1-week charts.  Mining is unaffected, the website is only turned off to prevent people from accessing the database tables while they are being heavily trimmed.


UPDATE:  Website back online, sorry it took a little longer than expected.

[pikeadz]

Is it just me or is anyone noticing their "Balance" not increasing despite having continuing open and closed earnings?  My balance field was last updated seemingly about 5 hours ago or so.  I haven't done any kind of formal audit but it just seems like that field normally updates faster than this.

[eleuthria]

Is it just me or is anyone noticing their "Balance" not increasing despite having continuing open and closed earnings?  My balance field was last updated seemingly about 5 hours ago or so.  I haven't done any kind of formal audit but it just seems like that field normally updates faster than this.

For PPLNS, balances updates every single time a block has been found.  This is *normally* around every 30 minutes (sometimes much faster, sometimes slower).  While we've had amazing luck for the last day and a half, we're currently on a dry spell with ~2.5 hours [as of this post] since the last block, meaning no balances have updated in 2 and a half hours.

[pikeadz]

Is it just me or is anyone noticing their "Balance" not increasing despite having continuing open and closed earnings?  My balance field was last updated seemingly about 5 hours ago or so.  I haven't done any kind of formal audit but it just seems like that field normally updates faster than this.

For PPLNS, balances updates every single time a block has been found.  This is *normally* around every 30 minutes (sometimes much faster, sometimes slower).  While we've had amazing luck for the last day and a half, we're currently on a dry spell with ~2.5 hours [as of this post] since the last block, meaning no balances have updated in 2 and a half hours.

I see.  Thanks for clearing that up!

EDIT:  ...aaaaaaand we finally found a block   over 3 hours later.  I guess it all averages out!

[eleuthria]

Yep, the dry spell ended and we got a burst of 5 blocks fairly fast!


Notice to users on getwork using the default btcguild.com:8332 - The server running that pool is going to be down for maintenance tonight.  I have moved DNS over to a backup server, and you should start being redirected.  Sorry for any downtime caused.  Depending on your miner behavior and DNS settings you may also see a number of 'Unknown' rejects show up since your miner may have work stored from the old server and then submitting it to the new server.

DNS will be returned to the normal getwork server after approximately 12 hours.

[dogie]

One of those is mine. By blades have been running at 200% luck since I bought them [although 2 blocks = not very reliable data], enjoy my coins bitches.

EDIT: Is there any way I can see which of my workers actually found the block? I want to give it a sticker.

[eleuthria]

One of those is mine. By blades have been running at 200% luck since I bought them [although 2 blocks = not very reliable data], enjoy my coins bitches.

EDIT: Is there any way I can see which of my workers actually found the block? I want to give it a sticker.

Hmm...surprisingly I -do- have it saving the worker ID of which worker found the block [thought I only kept User ID].  I'll see if I can squeeze it in somewhere (no promises).

[dogie]

One of those is mine. By blades have been running at 200% luck since I bought them [although 2 blocks = not very reliable data], enjoy my coins bitches.

EDIT: Is there any way I can see which of my workers actually found the block? I want to give it a sticker.

Hmm...surprisingly I -do- have it saving the worker ID of which worker found the block [thought I only kept User ID].  I'll see if I can squeeze it in somewhere (no promises).

Thanks. Also someone inboxed me some questions about merged mining and I didn't know the answers:

I tried doing research on merged mining using btcguild but didnot find much info. So i thought i will reach out to you.
I had a few questions regarding the same. Would appreciate if you could clarify them

1) If i do merged mining, will my BTC hash rate / shares decrease which inturn will decrease my BTC earnings.

2) Is it possible to carryout merged mining using stratum proxy.?

3) I understand that i need to connect to a different pool address and port. So if i do that, will i still be able to mine BTC using PPLNS.?

4) what are the other downsides (if any) of doing merged mining. I don't want to hamper / reduce the current BTC earnings.

5) Are there any additional fees associated with merged mining.

[eleuthria]

1) If i do merged mining, will my BTC hash rate / shares decrease which inturn will decrease my BTC earnings.

2) Is it possible to carryout merged mining using stratum proxy.?

3) I understand that i need to connect to a different pool address and port. So if i do that, will i still be able to mine BTC using PPLNS.?

4) what are the other downsides (if any) of doing merged mining. I don't want to hamper / reduce the current BTC earnings.

5) Are there any additional fees associated with merged mining.

1) It should not affect hash rate directly, but being on a different server (different location) it may have a minor affect either + or -.
2) No, merged mining on BTC Guild is only available on getwork at this time.
3) Yes, the mergedmining.btcguild.com:8332 getwork server records BTC as PPLNS while recording NMC as 5% PPS.
4) Being on getwork, it requires more bandwidth.  It is also not software I designed, so support and updates are very limited.
5) No additional fees other than the fee taken from NMC (5% PPS).

[americandesi]

1) If i do merged mining, will my BTC hash rate / shares decrease which inturn will decrease my BTC earnings.

2) Is it possible to carryout merged mining using stratum proxy.?

3) I understand that i need to connect to a different pool address and port. So if i do that, will i still be able to mine BTC using PPLNS.?

4) what are the other downsides (if any) of doing merged mining. I don't want to hamper / reduce the current BTC earnings.

5) Are there any additional fees associated with merged mining.

1) It should not affect hash rate directly, but being on a different server (different location) it may have a minor affect either + or -.
2) No, merged mining on BTC Guild is only available on getwork at this time.
3) Yes, the mergedmining.btcguild.com:8332 getwork server records BTC as PPLNS while recording NMC as 5% PPS.
4) Being on getwork, it requires more bandwidth.  It is also not software I designed, so support and updates are very limited.
5) No additional fees other than the fee taken from NMC (5% PPS).

Thanks for the clarification Guys..! I PM'ed both of you at the same time with the same questions.!
But its better to have it in this thread for newbies.!

[z0ki]

Hi,

Is there an issue with stratum servers ?
All my workers are reporting connection failures.

Thanks

[eleuthria]

Was just woken up by my alarms, looks like something is hitting the servers.  Working on figuring out what's going on ASAP.


UPDATE:  For the first time in quite a while, this was not an attack.  One of tables on the database crashed and the servers were unable to post to it.  I've repaired the table and restarted the DB server.  On the bright side, this was causing the Stratum servers to crash, allowing users to fall back to their backup servers if their miners were configured to do so.



Based on my miner output, it looks like the total outage time was around 10 minutes [5 minutes to trigger my alarm, 2 minutes for me to wake up and check it wasn't false, 3 minutes to fix].

[z0ki]

All is back to normal. Miners are connecting and submitting shares normally.

Sorry for rude wake up and thanks for the lightning fix 

[wtfvanity]

Based on my miner output, it looks like the total outage time was around 10 minutes [5 minutes to trigger my alarm, 2 minutes for me to wake up and check it wasn't false, 3 minutes to fix].

Unacceptable. We need to reduce wake up time. 2 minutes is ridiculous.

[eleuthria]

Based on my miner output, it looks like the total outage time was around 10 minutes [5 minutes to trigger my alarm, 2 minutes for me to wake up and check it wasn't false, 3 minutes to fix].

Unacceptable. We need to reduce wake up time. 2 minutes is ridiculous.

2 minutes to wake up -and- make sure it wasn't a false alarm!


A small update to the situation:  Your dashboard speeds will be artificially low due to the gap in shares.  I'm updating the dashboard temporarily to try to ignore that gap so users can see that they're hashing normally again.  As a result, DISPLAYED speeds might fluctuate a little wildly for a few minutes!  Your actual speeds are obviously not affected .

[americandesi]

Was just woken up by my alarms, looks like something is hitting the servers.  Working on figuring out what's going on ASAP.


UPDATE:  For the first time in quite a while, this was not an attack.  One of tables on the database crashed and the servers were unable to post to it.  I've repaired the table and restarted the DB server.  On the bright side, this was causing the Stratum servers to crash, allowing users to fall back to their backup servers if their miners were configured to do so.



Based on my miner output, it looks like the total outage time was around 10 minutes [5 minutes to trigger my alarm, 2 minutes for me to wake up and check it wasn't false, 3 minutes to fix].

Good one.! Thanks eleuthria..!
Anyone noticed.. the pool has been having bad luck for almost a day now..!!

[jdany]

jolted out of bed by an alarm, (I hope it was like an air raid siren) what a pleasant beginning to a day.

[eleuthria]

Good one.! Thanks eleuthria..!
Anyone noticed.. the pool has been having bad luck for almost a day now..!!

Not unexpected.  We had a few very good days.  We're quite ahead on luck since the difficulty change [finally] .

jolted out of bed by an alarm, (I hope it was like an air raid siren) what a pleasant beginning to a day.

Actually, my alarm is humorous.  It's the Steve Balmer "Developers, Developers, Developers" rant, with bad techno in the background and includes the screaming.

[Igotcha]

Did we had another problem right now?

Lost connection to pool.

[eleuthria]

Did we had another problem right now?

Lost connection to pool.

Not showing any problems.  All servers are still running with a couple thousand connections each, no errors in any logs, and no drop in the pool speed to indicate a regional issue.