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

[Brunic]

Can p2pool have an option or something to show which IP is hashing?

I'm moving all my farm to p2pool(12 computers, around 11 GHash), and right now, I'm looking for a solution to know if a worker is working or not from one central point. Usually, on a pool, it tells you which worker is online, but didn't find anything like that for p2pool.

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[c_k]

Can p2pool have an option or something to show which IP is hashing?

I'm moving all my farm to p2pool(12 computers, around 11 GHash), and right now, I'm looking for a solution to know if a worker is working or not from one central point. Usually, on a pool, it tells you which worker is online, but didn't find anything like that for p2pool.

cgminer now has an RPC interface for polling each miner

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=28402

PS: welcome to the pool! 

[Turbor]

What's happening here? Woke up today and this is what P2Pool looks like.



Edit: Restarted P2Pool and now it's reporting the correct hash rate, the correct difficulty, and the correct payout if block.

Strange, i have the same thing going on. One PC shows the correct rate, the other one is stuck at 77 somewhat GH/s. P2Pool restart wont help. Share count wont go up.  Hashing seems to work.

[forrestv]

This is a new problem with P2Pool that I'm trying to figure out now... Anyone who is having the problem: Restart P2Pool with the --debug flag. If the problem persists, it'd be very useful to me if you sent me P2Pool's log file (in data/bitcoin/log)!

[Brunic]

Finally! Had some problems with some rigs, but right now, p2pool have 11 GHash/s more! 

I had some questions about the output, to be sure I understand well how all this work.
So

Code:

Pool: 90000MHash/s in 17500 shares (16000/17000 verified)

-I suppose the MHash number is the actual strength of p2pool.
-In x shares, i suppose it is the total number of recent shares used for PPLNS.
-What (16000/17000) verified means?

Code:

Recent: 9.00% > 9000MHash/s

What is it actually? I believe it is my part of the valid shares in the network, but I'm really not sure. Because my payment currently show 2.7 BTC next block, but if I have 9%, is it not supposed to be higher?

[rahl]

I am using this for litecoin and just updated it to newer version it doesn't seem to want to connect.

start /MIN run_p2pool.exe urs pwd --net litecoin -a litecoinaddr --p2pool-port 9332 -w 9334
cd C:\Program Files (x86)\Bitcoin\Litecoin\litecoin-windows-miner-10-10-2011
start /MIN /LOW /AFFINITY E minerd.exe --algo scrypt --s 6 --threads 2 --retries -1 --url http://127.0.0.1:9334 --userpass urs:pwd

It starts up without errors. Goes to have 1000/1000 blocks and after like 10 minutes it starts saying lost connection to bitcoind for 60 seconds. Miner is giving me p2ppool not connected to any peers.

It worked fine in the older version just before so this is puzzling.

[broken]

Finally! Had some problems with some rigs, but right now, p2pool have 11 GHash/s more!  

I had some questions about the output, to be sure I understand well how all this work.
So

Code:

Pool: 90000MHash/s in 17500 shares (16000/17000 verified)

-I suppose the MHash number is the actual strength of p2pool.
-In x shares, i suppose it is the total number of recent shares used for PPLNS.
-What (16000/17000) verified means?

Code:

Recent: 9.00% > 9000MHash/s

What is it actually? I believe it is my part of the valid shares in the network, but I'm really not sure. Because my payment currently show 2.7 BTC next block, but if I have 9%, is it not supposed to be higher?

The payout is calculated by the shares of the last 24h ( about 8640 shares ). To verify even the 24h old shares, the pool keeps the shares of the last 48h. Your client verified 16000 of those from the last 48h (about 17000 shares).

The recent hashrate is calculated by the shares submitted only in the last 2h ( I think), which was about 9% of the overall hasrate in your case.

The payment for the next block stat tells you what you will get if a block will be found right now. This number will of course grow if you continue to mine.

[Turbor]

I like the concept of p2pool but there are two things not working for me. First; i can't use Bitcoin QT anymore because it will crash after some time. If i want to check on things i have to interrupt mining. Second issue; if i want to use pool rotation with cgminer p2pool goes wild. Switching to an other pool is no big problem but return is harsh. Not sure why ? I like this option because you can share your hashrate equally with pools you like to lower payout variance. If i only mine for p2pool there is no problem.

[broken]

I like the concept of p2pool but there are two things not working for me. First; i can't use Bitcoin QT anymore because it will crash after some time. If i want to check on things i have to interrupt mining.

Why do you have to interrupt mining? You can check everything in bitcoind from command line.
Or you could run bitcoin_qt on a different computer and configure p2pool with an address from the other wallet.

What I did:
I wrote a private webpage that gets information from bitcoind, p2pool and miners (cgminer) via json rpc and some bash scripts.
Also I get an email to my android phone whenever p2pool finds a block

[slush]

I have maybe stupid question. I understand that P2Pool uses alternate blockchain to keep track of partially solved blocks in the network, which is used for accounting "shares" and paying the reward to the miners, right?

But who picks transactions into block? And who check if transactions are valid, so miner in P2Pool is providing useful work (work which can be accepted by bitcoin network)? Does P2Pool address and solve this problem somehow?

What happen when Bitcoin network start to accepting OP_EVAL or P2SH, but miners in the P2Pool don't update their miners? As I understand correctly, they'll be still providing "shares" to the P2Pool, but if they really solve the block, it will be eventually rejected by the Bitcoin network. But afaik P2Pool blockchain is storing prevhashes, so maybe P2Pool blockchain will be split into two separate chains when split in the transaction rules happen?

[broken]

I understand that P2Pool uses alternate blockchain to keep track of partially solved blocks in the network, which is used for accounting "shares" and paying the reward to the miners, right?

right!

But who picks transactions into block? And who check if transactions are valid, so miner in P2Pool is providing useful work (work which can be accepted by bitcoin network)? Does P2Pool address and solve this problem somehow?

As far as I understand it, every p2pool client looks for new transactions on the bitcoin network. The miner who finds a share includes new transactions to the p2pool blockchain. The other nodes check if the p2pool-block is valid by verifing the difficulty, the reference to the previous p2pool block and the including transactions. The other nodes don't need to know about the transaction prior to this ( via the bitcoin network).
I dont know if this is done already, but the transactions received over the p2pool net could be relayed to the bitcoin network and so stregthen the network.
Please correct me if this is wrong.

What happen when Bitcoin network start to accepting OP_EVAL or P2SH, but miners in the P2Pool don't update their miners? As I understand correctly, they'll be still providing "shares" to the P2Pool, but if they really solve the block, it will be eventually rejected by the Bitcoin network. But afaik P2Pool blockchain is storing prevhashes, so maybe P2Pool blockchain will be split into two separate chains when split in the transaction rules happen?

I don't know well enough, how p2pool handles chain splits , but ideally there should be a chain split.

[slush]

The other nodes check if the p2pool-block is valid by verifing the difficulty, the reference to the previous p2pool block and the including transactions.

Thanks for the response! So P2Pool chain contains ALL bitcoin transactions? What happen if one P2Pool miner include transaction which does not fit the rules of other P2Pool participants? OP_EVAL is the good example.

[BusmasterDMA]

I'm wondering if anyone could give me a pointer.  Everything seems to be working, p2pool is running, miners are hashing, yet no shares seem to be accepted.

p2pool:

Code:

10:02:42.418000 New work for worker! Difficulty: 185.041361 Payout if block: 0.0
05912 BTC Total block value: 50.027310 BTC including 50 transactions
10:02:43.444000 Pool: 98423MH/s in 17418 shares (18014/34711 verified) Recent: 0
.00% >0H/s Shares: 0 (0 orphan, 0 dead) Peers: 10
10:02:43.444000 Average time between blocks: 0.63 days
10:02:43.445000 Pool stales: 15%
10:02:44.161000 New work for worker! Difficulty: 191.408557 Payout if block: 0.0
06115 BTC Total block value: 50.027310 BTC including 50 transactions
10:02:46.450000 Pool: 99337MH/s in 17419 shares (18015/34712 verified) Recent: 0
.00% >0H/s Shares: 0 (0 orphan, 0 dead) Peers: 10
10:02:46.451000 Average time between blocks: 0.63 days
10:02:46.451000 Pool stales: 15%
10:02:55.466000 Pool: 99337MH/s in 17419 shares (18016/34712 verified) Recent: 0
.00% >0H/s Shares: 0 (0 orphan, 0 dead) Peers: 10
10:02:55.467000 Average time between blocks: 0.63 days
10:02:55.467000 Pool stales: 15%
10:02:55.974000 New work for worker! Difficulty: 185.966414 Payout if block: 0.0
05941 BTC Total block value: 50.027310 BTC including 50 transactions
10:02:58.472000 Pool: 98976MH/s in 17420 shares (18017/34713 verified) Recent: 0
.00% >0H/s Shares: 0 (0 orphan, 0 dead) Peers: 10
10:02:58.473000 Average time between blocks: 0.63 days
10:02:58.473000 Pool stales: 15%
10:03:07.488000 Pool: 98976MH/s in 17420 shares (18018/34713 verified) Recent: 0
.00% >0H/s Shares: 0 (0 orphan, 0 dead) Peers: 10
10:03:07.489000 Average time between blocks: 0.63 days
10:03:07.489000 Pool stales: 15%

Output from ufasoft miner:

Code:

>bitcoin-miner -o http://USER:PASS@127.0.0.1:9332/ -t 14 -g no -v --algo sse2_64
bitcoin-miner 0.13  Copyright (c) 2011 Ufasoft  http://ufasoft.com/open/bitcoin
Mining for http://USER:PASS@127.0.0.1:9332/
14 threads      Using SSE2
22.2 MHash/s

Also similar results from Phoenix miner.

Thank you.

[DeathAndTaxes]

I have maybe stupid question. I understand that P2Pool uses alternate blockchain to keep track of partially solved blocks in the network, which is used for accounting "shares" and paying the reward to the miners, right?

well there is no such thing as partially solved.  hashes which meet difficulty target for p2pool but don't solve the block are a share.  Much like any other pool except p2pool uses a variable difficulty.  Currently difficulty of a share is ~190.  (Difficulty ~= 2.328 * GH/s but it is based on prior share times so it reacts slowly).

But who picks transactions into block? And who check if transactions are valid, so miner in P2Pool is providing useful work (work which can be accepted by bitcoin network)? Does P2Pool address and solve this problem somehow?

Each user's local bitcoind.  No different than solo mining except the coinbase has the addresses which match the "share chain" to provide proper split of credit.

As far as a malicious user producing an invalid block well that is possible but it is no worse than block witholding that a malicious can do in a normal pool

What happen when Bitcoin network start to accepting OP_EVAL or P2SH, but miners in the P2Pool don't update their miners? As I understand correctly, they'll be still providing "shares" to the P2Pool, but if they really solve the block, it will be eventually rejected by the Bitcoin network.

Blocks wouldn't be rejected.  If the bitcoind is out of date it will see p2sh transactions as invalid and not include them.  The block produced would still be valid much like mining a completely empty (except coinbase) block is valid now.

[gnar1ta$]

What I did:
I wrote a private webpage that gets information from bitcoind, p2pool and miners (cgminer) via json rpc and some bash scripts.
Also I get an email to my android phone whenever p2pool finds a block

How do I get something like this?  I have remote rigs in an area prone to power outages and usually rely on pool miner idle alerts for status, which I don't have with p2pool.

[broken]

@ BusmasterDMA

with current pool difficulty 190 and your hashrate of 22MH/s it takes about 12 hours to solve one share.

[BusmasterDMA]

@ BusmasterDMA

with current pool difficulty 190 and your hashrate of 22MH/s it takes about 12 hours to solve one share.

Thank you.  So with a GPU hashing at 400MH/s should I expect to see a share per ~0.6hr?  I assume one share in this pool is not equivalent to a share in another pool such as Eligius, correct?  I should still expect a similar payout over time though, even though the rate of shares is not the same?

[eleuthria]

@ BusmasterDMA

with current pool difficulty 190 and your hashrate of 22MH/s it takes about 12 hours to solve one share.

Thank you.  So with a GPU hashing at 400MH/s should I expect to see a share per ~0.6hr?  I assume one share in this pool is not equivalent to a share in another pool such as Eligius, correct?  I should still expect a similar payout over time though, even though the rate of shares is not the same?

Correct, each share with p2pool is equivalent to 190 shares at a regular pool currently.  Over the long run, you should see a similar payout, but it will involve higher variance.  You may see extremely high payouts if you get lucky on a share in a short p2pool round, or you may get no payout because you couldn't produce a diff-190 share during the round.

[BusmasterDMA]

Thanks to the devs of P2Pool for making a fine product and to Broken and Eleuthria for answering my questions.

[gnar1ta$]

Correct, each share with p2pool is equivalent to 190 shares at a regular pool currently.  Over the long run, you should see a similar payout, but it will involve higher variance.  You may see extremely high payouts if you get lucky on a share in a short p2pool round, or you may get no payout because you couldn't produce a diff-190 share during the round.

Ha nice sales pitch from the guy running a no variance pool.  +1 on the marketing.