bitmine CoinCraft Series Users Thread - Troubleshooting, Efficiency, O/C

[E]

To paraphrase jgarzik (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=140539.msg1496089#msg1496089),

Here is a general thread for owners of CoinCraft series miners (Desk and Rig)

For those waiting for deliveries or thinking about ordering, please see the Official and Unofficial CoinCraft Series threads:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=291141.0 (Official, locked by bitmine)
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=486808.0 (Unofficial, Active)

Normal Boot Sequence Video
Soon...

Troubleshooting after Delivery
The fans should turn on about 5-20 seconds after you apply power. If they don't, power off and check to see if the fan cables have gotten tangled in the fan blades. Also check the fan connections close to the fans and at the controller board end.

If your miner powers on and runs through a normal boot sequence, but fails to start mining (and you've double-checked your network and cgminer configuration), check the connection between the controller board (sandwiched underneath the rPi) and the module interface board (the red board running across the top of the modules). The connection is a ribbon cable that can come unplugged at either end due to jostling from the power supply cords.

Reviews

• E's capsule review: Thumbs-up with caveats. 1TH/s units so far have shipped with 240V-only power supplies. Securing internal cords, cables, and connectors before shipping would resolve most of my concerns. Some worries about power supply longevity due to negative pressure cooling.

Efficiency and Overclocking
Here are my measurements for a three module unit with 1000W Super Flower SF-1000P14XE, running on a 120V circuit (voltage at-wall about 119). All power measurements made through simultaneous V/A sampling with calibrated true RMS meters (Keithley 179A):

Code:

Clock	 GH/s Raw	HW Error %	 GH/s Net	% of Nominal	        MH/s/MHz/Chip	        Watts	        J/GH
544	 418	        0.0%	         418	        68%	                32.03	                443	        1.06
600	 458	        0.0%	         458	        75%	                31.77	                483	        1.06
704	 541	        0.0%	         541	        88%	                32.05	                571	        1.05
800	 612	        0.0%	         612	        100%	                31.88	                662	        1.08
832	 640	        0.3%	         638	        104%	                31.96	                pending	        pending
848	 647	        0.7%	         643	        105%	                31.58	                689	        1.07
864	 659	        1.8%	         647	        106%	                31.21	                713	        1.10
880	 671	        3.6%	         647	        106%	                30.64	                718	        1.11
1008	 782	        14.0%	         672	        110%	                27.79	                762	        1.13

More to follow...

[E]

Reserved.

[Zelek Uther]

To quote the first poster on jgarzik's thread:

users thread! ha! rub it in will you?  

waiting on my unit...

But seriously, thanks for the info!

[baros008]

E please add overclocking How to.

Do I understand it right, that I have to change /mineros/boot.py?

Edit:
My miners were delivered yesterday, here is some gathered knowledge.

Delivered boxes were in good shape, miners are really heavy.

Ribbon cable was disconnected from module interface board (both miners) and module interface board was disconnected from 1-2 boards on opposite side from ribbon cable (5 module miner) even though small piece of foam was inserted between module interface board and cover.

Sometimes miner does not pick up IP address from DHCP server (on display is shown 0.0.0.0 frever), after power cycling it connects to the network.

Pool balancing in CGminer settings after restart of CGminer returns to Balance mode.

Power consumption of 5 module miner is around 1070W.

Overclocking is not worth it, power consumption rises a lot and errors too.

[Roy Badami]

Some comments on the software:

The temperature display on the front panel shows the first temperature sensor - would be nicer if it showed the higher of the two.

The target and cutoff temperatures don't seem to be changeable so I can't test if they actually work.  There's no fan control as far as I can tell (the fans just run at full speed I think) so I guess the target temperature doesn't do anything yet.  That's no big deal.  But would be nice to know if the cutoff works.  I have a suspicion it isn't implemented yet - at least, I couldn't find any code in MinerOS either handling this or passing the temperatures through to cgminer.  It would be nice to have a working thermal cutoff in place before warmer weather arrives.

Sometimes some of the AJAX URLs stop responding.  I've had the module info disappear from the dashboard page - and also the temperatures and total speed.  The odd thing is that a reboot doesn't fix this, but the dashboard does start working again eventually.

[GodfatherBond]

Im now waiting for delivery without PSUs, can someone post a pic of PDU or generally inside of Desk showing how power cables are connected.
Im planning to run 1TH units with two PSUs 900W & 850W. But not sure if there's PDU inside or if power cables are connected directly to modules?
Any info would be helpful.

[baros008]

I changed password and moved miners to hosting facility.

Now when I log into web interface of miners I get this error:

500 Internal Server Error

The server encountered an unexpected condition which prevented it from fulfilling the request.
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/cherrypy/_cprequest.py", line 606, in respond
cherrypy.response.body = self.handler()
File "/mineros/web/mako_h.py", line 14, in __call__
env.update(self.next_handler())
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/cherrypy/_cpdispatch.py", line 25, in __call__
return self.callable(*self.args, **self.kwargs)
File "/mineros/web/auth.py", line 142, in login
cherrypy.session.regenerate()
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/cherrypy/lib/sessions.py", line 91, in regenerate
self.delete()
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/cherrypy/lib/sessions.py", line 163, in delete
self._delete()
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/cherrypy/lib/sessions.py", line 263, in _delete
del self.cache[self.id]
KeyError: '00619a402a4766f5389200bc12872a007fcb2f54'

Powered by CherryPy 3.1.2

How do I fix this?

PS: Miners are still hashing, but I can't change settings.

[baros008]

Somebody please send me unmodified image of the Raspberry SD card with mineros so I can try to fix my miners.

[bomberb17]

Hello all,
I have a coincraft desk from Bitmine, which mines fine using its web interface.
However I'd like to find a way to display its cgminer output. Logging to the miner using SSH I get the following processes running:

Code:

root@raspberrypi:~# ps
  PID USER       VSZ STAT COMMAND
    1 root      1684 S    init [5]
    2 root         0 SW   [kthreadd]
    3 root         0 SW   [ksoftirqd/0]
    5 root         0 SW<  [kworker/0:0H]
    7 root         0 SW   [rcu_preempt]
    8 root         0 SW   [rcu_bh]
    9 root         0 SW   [rcu_sched]
   10 root         0 SW<  [khelper]
   11 root         0 SW   [kdevtmpfs]
   12 root         0 SW<  [netns]
   13 root         0 SW   [kworker/0:1]
   14 root         0 SW<  [writeback]
   15 root         0 SW<  [bioset]
   16 root         0 SW<  [kblockd]
   17 root         0 SW   [khubd]
   18 root         0 SW<  [rpciod]
   19 root         0 SW   [khungtaskd]
   20 root         0 SW   [kswapd0]
   21 root         0 SW   [fsnotify_mark]
   22 root         0 SW<  [nfsiod]
   23 root         0 SW<  [crypto]
   29 root         0 SW<  [kthrotld]
   30 root         0 SW<  [VCHIQ-0]
   31 root         0 SW<  [VCHIQr-0]
   32 root         0 SW<  [VCHIQs-0]
   33 root         0 SW<  [iscsi_eh]
   34 root         0 SW<  [dwc_otg]
   35 root         0 SW<  [DWC Notificatio]
   37 root         0 SW<  [deferwq]
   39 root         0 SW   [mmcqd/0]
   40 root         0 SW<  [kworker/0:1H]
   41 root         0 SW   [jbd2/mmcblk0p2-]
   42 root         0 SW<  [ext4-dio-unwrit]
   75 root      3488 S    /lib/udev/udevd -d
  122 root         0 SW<  [bcm2708_spi.0]
  196 root      3484 S    /lib/udev/udevd -d
  213 root      3484 S    /lib/udev/udevd -d
  427 root      2412 S    /usr/sbin/dropbear -r /etc/dropbear/dropbear_rsa_host_key -p 22 -B
  432 root      2208 S    /sbin/syslogd -n -O /var/log/messages
  434 root      2208 S    /sbin/klogd -n
  443 root         0 SW   [w1_bus_master1]
  463 root      8700 S    python /mineros/minerosd.py start
  469 root      1944 S    /sbin/getty 115200 ttyAMA0
  470 root      1944 S    /sbin/getty 38400 tty1
  472 root      128m S    python /mineros/web/index.py
 3673 root      127m S    cgminer --text-only --lowmem --bitmine-a1-options 16000:800000:8000 -o http://api.bitcoin.cz:8332 -O xxxx:xxxx -o stratum+tcp://nl1.ghash.io:3334 -O xxxx.xxxx:xxxx -o stratum+tcp:
 4025 root         0 SW   [kworker/0:0]
 4059 root         0 SW   [kworker/u2:0]
 4064 root         0 SW   [kworker/u2:2]
 4065 root         0 SW   [kworker/u2:1]
 4066 root      2836 R    /usr/sbin/dropbear -r /etc/dropbear/dropbear_rsa_host_key -p 22 -B
 4067 root      2388 S    -sh
 4069 root      2388 R    ps

Baros suggested killing the process and restarting cgminer, but that would probably disable the web interface functionality.. All I want is to see the cgminer output. A log file would work for me as well..

P. S I agree that a SD card image is also necessary, if someone can upload one on a file hosting website or cloud drive that would be great..

[baros008]

Basically you can kill cgminer process and then start manually another cgminer process with your arguments according to this post
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=486808.msg5417609#msg5417609, then you will see cgminer output.

If you add all command parameters as seen in /mineros/boot.py then web interface works after restart of cgminer:

cgminer -- --text-only --lowmem --bitmine-a1-options '+a1_options+' -o '+row[1]+' -O '+row[2]+':'+row[3]+' -o '+row[4]+' -O '+row[5]+':'+row[6]+' -o '+row[7]+' -O '+row[8]+':'+row[9]+' '+row[10]+' --api-allow '+row[12]+' --api-listen --queue 50 '+row[13]

Substitute row[number] with value from corresponding row on the miner settings page in web interface.

[Roy Badami]

Im now waiting for delivery without PSUs, can someone post a pic of PDU or generally inside of Desk showing how power cables are connected.
Im planning to run 1TH units with two PSUs 900W & 850W. But not sure if there's PDU inside or if power cables are connected directly to modules?
Any info would be helpful.

The PSU is an ATX PSU and is internal (although I'm running with my own PSU, mounted externally using various extension cables).

My (600GH/s) unit is powered as follows.  24-pin motherboard connector to the small controller board which is stacked on top of the Pi (and which powers the Pi and fans).  A six pin PCI-E to each 200GH/s hashing module (three of them in my system).  A standard floppy connector to power the backplane that connects the modules.  From memory, I think that's it - but it's certainly all just connectors on a standard ATX PSU.

The supplied PSU (and indeed the one I'm using) are of a kind that has a physical hard power switch next to the mains lead.  The controller board (and via it the Pi and display) are powered by the standby power from the motherboard connector.  So when you turn on the hard power switch, the system powers up the Pi and the display, and the Desk starts to boot up on standby power (even though the PSU is really still 'off').  After the Pi boots, it then turns the ATX PSU on, and then the controller board powers up the fans and of course at this point the modules are now powered by the PSU, and the system starts up MinerOS and cgminer and starts hashing.

Hope that helps

roy

[bomberb17]

Basically you can kill cgminer process and then start manually another cgminer process with your arguments according to this post
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=486808.msg5417609#msg5417609, then you will see cgminer output.

If you add all command parameters as seen in /mineros/boot.py then web interface works after restart of cgminer:

cgminer -- --text-only --lowmem --bitmine-a1-options '+a1_options+' -o '+row[1]+' -O '+row[2]+':'+row[3]+' -o '+row[4]+' -O '+row[5]+':'+row[6]+' -o '+row[7]+' -O '+row[8]+':'+row[9]+' '+row[10]+' --api-allow '+row[12]+' --api-listen --queue 50 '+row[13]

Substitute row[number] with value from corresponding row on the miner settings page in web interface.

If I understand correctly you suggest killing the cgminer process and then running again cgminer from command line?
That would probably work, but
a) I'm not sure if everything else will work (e.g. web interface)
b) If I log out, the process would kill itself. I could maybe keep it running with screen, but screen is not installed in this distribution.

[baros008]

If I understand correctly you suggest killing the cgminer process and then running again cgminer from command line? yes
That would probably work, but
a) I'm not sure if everything else will work (e.g. web interface) web interface works, tested
b) If I log out, the process would kill itself. I could maybe keep it running with screen, but screen is not installed in this distribution. I don't know how to solve this

[bomberb17]

If I understand correctly you suggest killing the cgminer process and then running again cgminer from command line? yes
That would probably work, but
a) I'm not sure if everything else will work (e.g. web interface) web interface works, tested
b) If I log out, the process would kill itself. I could maybe keep it running with screen, but screen is not installed in this distribution. I don't know how to solve this

Ok so is there a way to install screen? Is there any repository for downloading software for this distribution?
By running

Code:

root@raspberrypi:~# cat /etc/issue
Poky 9.0.3 (Yocto Project 1.4.3 Reference Distro) 1.4.3 \n \l

And there's little information on the web for this distro

[Roy Badami]

'Fraid I don't have time to keep up with the official thread, so I'm hoping someone here knows:

Is there any newer firmware for the Desk yet, or is the firmware that the units shipped with the latest available?

Thanks

roy

[Roy Badami]

Okay, well if it's of any interest to anyone, this is the patch I'm now running my CoinCraft Desk with (against the original MinerOS my Desk shipped with - which may not be the same as the MinerOS that your Desk shipped with.  I kept it simple - I didn't want to do more than the bare minimum to meet my needs since there might be new firmware coming soon anyway.  My patch implements the following:

• Front panel shows the higher temperature of the two sensors (standard code just picks the first one it finds)
• Performs an emergency halt if either sensor exceeds 70C.  Note:
  
  • This doesn't power off the machine (last thing I want to do with an overheating miner is shut off the fans) but it does stop all mining.
  • There's no auto-restart.  The easiest way to manually restart mining once the unit has cooled down is to press the "Save and Restart CgMiner" button in the settings page of the web interface (you don't have to make any changes to settings.)
    
  • When halted the LCD display shows the word 'halted' in place of the hash rate.
  • I've not done any work on the web interface, so this simply fails to update the displayed hash rate since it can't contact cgminer.  (It's fairly obvious that the system has halted though given that temperature and CPU will be much lower than normal.)
  • The cutoff temperature is not configurable (except by editing the constant at the top of the code)

You're welcome to use this freely if it's any use to you but please note:

• I don't support this, and can't provide assistance in applying patches
• You should review the code yourself and decide whether you are happy with it
• If the patch doesn't apply cleanly, it probably means your unit shipped with a slightly different version of the code than mine.  You did review the code and decide you were happy with it, right?
• I'm not responsible for bricked devices, and can't provide assistance in recovering from problems.  (Did I say already, I don't support this.)

Patch against the original minerosd.py is here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/b1lfs9dsp9pmatl/mineros.patch

[none2k]

Hi!
I've received a coincraft a1, but it was delivered without a raspberry pi image. The asics are connected to the RPi via the GPIO, and I don't understand how to use this. Cgminer cannot find the device by default.

I would greatly appreciate if anyone could upload the raspberry pi SD image for the coincraft a1 somewhere for me to download!
Thank you very much.

[GodfatherBond]

'Fraid I don't have time to keep up with the official thread, so I'm hoping someone here knows:

Is there any newer firmware for the Desk yet, or is the firmware that the units shipped with the latest available?

Thanks

roy

I received my units two days ago and those came with firmware with the same old problems, i.e. It seems there's not yet newer available.

BTW, thank you for the patch, I will take a look. Wish to get cgiminer shot down when temp exceeds set level.

[bomberb17]

So I own my CC Desk for nearly a month, and I have concluded that the linux distribution the Desks are using (yocto) is very basic and limited. (possibly for simplicity and performance reasons)
There is no package manager to install new software, even no gcc compiler, and despite my efforts, I have yet to find a way to install other useful software. (e.g. screen, no-ip)
So I'm thinking of porting to another tested linux distro for Rpi (e.g. Arch)
By running ps I get the following output

Code:

root@raspberrypi:~# ps
  PID USER       VSZ STAT COMMAND
    1 root      1684 S    init [5]
    2 root         0 SW   [kthreadd]
    3 root         0 SW   [ksoftirqd/0]
    5 root         0 SW<  [kworker/0:0H]
    7 root         0 SW   [rcu_preempt]
    8 root         0 SW   [rcu_bh]
    9 root         0 SW   [rcu_sched]
   10 root         0 SW<  [khelper]
   11 root         0 SW   [kdevtmpfs]
   12 root         0 SW<  [netns]
   13 root         0 SW   [kworker/0:1]
   14 root         0 SW<  [writeback]
   15 root         0 SW<  [bioset]
   16 root         0 SW<  [kblockd]
   17 root         0 SW   [khubd]
   18 root         0 SW<  [rpciod]
   19 root         0 SW   [khungtaskd]
   20 root         0 SW   [kswapd0]
   21 root         0 SW   [fsnotify_mark]
   22 root         0 SW<  [nfsiod]
   23 root         0 SW<  [crypto]
   29 root         0 SW<  [kthrotld]
   30 root         0 SW<  [VCHIQ-0]
   31 root         0 SW<  [VCHIQr-0]
   32 root         0 SW<  [VCHIQs-0]
   33 root         0 SW<  [iscsi_eh]
   34 root         0 SW<  [dwc_otg]
   35 root         0 SW<  [DWC Notificatio]
   37 root         0 SW<  [deferwq]
   39 root         0 SW   [mmcqd/0]
   40 root         0 SW<  [kworker/0:1H]
   41 root         0 SW   [jbd2/mmcblk0p2-]
   42 root         0 SW<  [ext4-dio-unwrit]
   75 root      3488 S    /lib/udev/udevd -d
  117 root         0 SW<  [bcm2708_spi.0]
  202 root      3484 S    /lib/udev/udevd -d
  203 root      3484 S    /lib/udev/udevd -d
  427 root      2412 S    /usr/sbin/dropbear -r /etc/dropbear/dropbear_rsa_host_key -p 22 -B
  432 root      2208 S    /sbin/syslogd -n -O /var/log/messages
  434 root      2208 S    /sbin/klogd -n
  436 root         0 SW   [kworker/0:2]
  443 root         0 SW   [w1_bus_master1]
  463 root      8700 S    python /mineros/minerosd.py start
  469 root      1944 S    /sbin/getty 115200 ttyAMA0
  470 root      1944 S    /sbin/getty 38400 tty1
  472 root      129m S    python /mineros/web/index.py
11104 root      135m R    cgminer --text-only --lowmem --bitmine-a1-options 16000:800000:8000 -o stratum+tcp://nl1.ghash.io:
11263 root      2836 R    /usr/sbin/dropbear -r /etc/dropbear/dropbear_rsa_host_key -p 22 -B
11264 root      2388 S    -sh
11272 root         0 SW   [kworker/u2:0]
11280 root         0 SW   [kworker/u2:1]
11295 root         0 SW   [kworker/u2:2]
11297 root      2388 R    ps

So from what I understand I could just copy the whole mineros directory and make the command
" python /mineros/minerosd.py start " run on system startup. Am I missing something?

[bomberb17]

I have made an SD card image, if anyone needs it I can send it to you, its only ~40MB zipped. PM me to send download link