p2pool - Decentralized, Absolutely DoS-Proof, Pool Hopping-Proof Pool [archival]

[forrestv]

Is there a way to make it working without the need of all the blockchain?
Is it really needed?

Not currently. At some point in the future, the bitcoin client won't need all of the blockchain to run. However, P2Pool will likely always require a Bitcoin client to be present.

[HostFat]

So I have a second question:
Can it works if someone patches the bitcoind so that it only needs the last 5/6 blocks ( you should know better how many does it needs ) and auto-delete all the oldest from the db?

If it works than you can make a package with everything ( the patched bitcoind and the p2pool )
It will works instantanly and it will take few mb.

[Mike Hearn]

You always need every block in order to mine. There is no way around that, sorry.

[HostFat]

Ok, good to know. Thank you.
I always missed that point

[jamesg]

Bump for visibility. This is by far the best way to mine Bitcoin. Any miner worth his hashes should be using this pool!

I will pledge to start hashing on p2pool with 10Gh starting the middle of January.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Bump for visibility. This is by far the best way to mine Bitcoin. Any miner worth his hashes should be using this pool!

I will pledge to start hashing on p2pool with 10Gh starting the middle of January.

I was terribly lazy setting this up. I'm no computer expert. But since I've done it, I feel so much better about mining for the health of the network, as it was supposed to be.

I don't expect the average Deepbit miner to do this (please Deepbit miners, prove me wrong), but if enough large miners make the switch, we will have improved network security.

I was considering offering a bounty for miners who switch, but I have no idea how to make it work. Even if they prove they've switched, there is nothing stopping them from switching back after getting their bounty.

If there was a simple way to add a transaction with a huge fee to any block I mine for p2pool, I would seriously consider it.

You would only need a modified bitcoind so that it doesn't transmit your transaction to any other node.  It would only be included in blocks you mine.  Eventually you will solve a block (avg time depends on your personal hashrate) and when it does that transaction will be paid to all p2pool miners who are in the "share chain" at that time.

[gmaxwell]

You would only need a modified bitcoind so that it doesn't transmit your transaction to any other node.  It would only be included in blocks you mine.  Eventually you will solve a block (avg time depends on your personal hashrate) and when it does that transaction will be paid to all p2pool miners who are in the "share chain" at that time.

Adding a TXN fee is a bit unwise because if the chain splits the rest of the network, who will have heard of the txn with the fee via the orphaned block, will include it in their own.  I suppose for 1/2 BTC it wouldn't matter much though.

[bitlane]

I moved 4.5 GH/s over to P2Pool and I was surprised with how easy and straight forward setup was....even adding NMC merged mining with nothing more than a quick addition to BAT file.

Very nice job on the software......and I'm sure it will only get better from here.

Just to be clear though....'Shares' don't show up accepted very quickly.......do they ?
I have been keeping an eye on the P2Pool output and I notice a bit of an up/down speed variation at times and a much slower-than anticipated 'Share' acceptance.
......just thought I would ask to be sure.

[broken]

Bump for visibility. This is by far the best way to mine Bitcoin. Any miner worth his hashes should be using this pool!

I will pledge to start hashing on p2pool with 10Gh starting the middle of January.

I was terribly lazy setting this up. I'm no computer expert. But since I've done it, I feel so much better about mining for the health of the network, as it was supposed to be.

I don't expect the average Deepbit miner to do this (please Deepbit miners, prove me wrong), but if enough large miners make the switch, we will have improved network security.

I was considering offering a bounty for miners who switch, but I have no idea how to make it work. Even if they prove they've switched, there is nothing stopping them from switching back after getting their bounty.

If there was a simple way to add a transaction with a huge fee to any block I mine for p2pool, I would seriously consider it.

You would only need a modified bitcoind so that it doesn't transmit your transaction to any other node.  It would only be included in blocks you mine.  Eventually you will solve a block (avg time depends on your personal hashrate) and when it does that transaction will be paid to all p2pool miners who are in the "share chain" at that time.

Well, a much easier approuach would be, to just look at a block generated by p2pool like the last one:
http://blockexplorer.com/block/0000000000000be899d85554ae2719639e3d3c87868727aec7c51bd5fd9dfe1a
and then split 1BTC (or what ever you wanna give as reward) between all generation outputs and just make a simple transaction to them. But that would give a bonus to everyone and not just the ones who recently switched.

[forrestv]

Just to be clear though....'Shares' don't show up accepted very quickly.......do they ?
I have been keeping an eye on the P2Pool output and I notice a bit of an up/down speed variation at times and a much slower-than anticipated 'Share' acceptance.
......just thought I would ask to be sure.

Yes, the difficulty is currently ~150, so with 4.5GH/s, you should get a share about every 2 minutes and 23 seconds.

[bitlane]

Just to be clear though....'Shares' don't show up accepted very quickly.......do they ?
I have been keeping an eye on the P2Pool output and I notice a bit of an up/down speed variation at times and a much slower-than anticipated 'Share' acceptance.
......just thought I would ask to be sure.

Yes, the difficulty is currently ~150, so with 4.5GH/s, you should get a share about every 2 minutes and 23 seconds.

Awesome. I just wanted to make sure there wasn't something wrong with how I set things up.

[bitlane]

WTF ?
I just got 1 MINED + 5 additional PAYMENTS in my wallet from P2pool.......
I started mining last night. What does this mean exactly ?

[bitlane]

WTF ?
I just got 1 MINED + 5 additional PAYMENTS in my wallet from P2pool.......
I started mining last night. What does this mean exactly ?

Maybe this.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=57027.0

But I found a block for the pool also, didn't I ? it's labeled as MINED, the others are labeled as received from P2pool.

[bitlane]

WTF ?
I just got 1 MINED + 5 additional PAYMENTS in my wallet from P2pool.......
I started mining last night. What does this mean exactly ?

Maybe this.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=57027.0

But I found a block for the pool also, didn't I ? it's labeled as MINED, the others are labeled as received from P2pool.

Mined would be any block found by anyone using the p2pool, if I'm not mistaken.

You have a payment with 13 confirms from the pool ? what does it say in your BTC client for label or source ? from about 2.5 hours ago.

[bitlane]

You have a payment with 13 confirms from the pool ? what does it say in your BTC client for label or source ? from about 2.5 hours ago.

Yep. Says mined.

OK, cool. thanks for clearing that up for me.

[jamesg]

I read earlier in the thread that mining for namecoin on p2pool is solo and not setup to be shared between all of the miners on p2pool.

What would need to happen to get this working? Is it possible?

Also, what can be done to get some nice graphs / charts around mining on p2pool?

I would contribute to a bounty if need be.

P2pool is the only long term viable option for pools IMHO and I would like to see it succeed.

[rjk]

What is the recommended way to run p2pool as a service on Windows? I have bitcoind running as a service using BitcoinServiceWrapper (somewhere in the forums), and I would like to do the same with p2pool.

[forrestv]

At the risk of sounding dumb, what does FPS mean
and, more importantly, how do I set it properly on cgminer ?

Cgminer does not have a FPS setting. The closest thing is the "intensity" setting, which has the opposite effect. Keep it low (<=8?) or just leave it at the default, which works fine for me.

EDIT: Forgot the first part of your question. FPS means frames per second, and is the number of times that your miner updates the work that it is working on every second. A higher FPS means less time between updates, so less time is wasted after a long poll response comes in.

[rjk]

What is the recommended way to run p2pool as a service on Windows? I have bitcoind running as a service using BitcoinServiceWrapper (somewhere in the forums), and I would like to do the same with p2pool.

Also, how many peers is the maximum? I obtained 10 peers rapidly, but then it never went any higher than that. Additionally, there is (xxxxx/17381 Verified), which is increasing extremely slowly. What does this number mean?

[NothinG]

One more question, if I may:

I have multiple dedicated miners at home which really aren't suited
to running the bitcoin client (no disk).

I'd like to run one instance of p2pool and the bitcoin client on a small
non-mining machine and have all my miners get work from there.

Is that possible ?
If so, how can I see per-miner stats in the pool's output ?

You can setup RPC to allow remote connections (192.168.x.x) so you can allow the miners to connect to your local PC's port.