[~1000 GH/sec] BTC Guild - 0% Fee Pool, LP, SSL, Full Precision, and More

[eleuthria]

My seven miners were connected to central.  They all stopped at the same time and I couldn't reconnect.  They are all connected to east now.  It happened at the end of the 3 hour block and I missed three fast blocks before I came home and changed servers.

Why?

Sam

The provider of our server uses Softlayer.  Softlayer was under attack by a very large DDoS and a LARGE number of servers that use Softlayer in that area were effectively offline (significant packet loss causing slow/unreliable connections).  As for your miners not reconnecting, that's something you'll have to ask the miner authors about.  The pool doesn't do any funny things with connections, its very standard pushpool in terms of authorization/getwork routing.

[eleuthria]

Received an email that finally gave me figures that show a significant level of pool hoppers in the pool could in fact be detrimental to the rewards of regular users.  Unless its a very large portion of users hopping the effect is very small (enough to be called luck noise), but it is there.  However, as mining is evolving, it may only be a matter of time before a client comes along with this capability built in.  If that were to happen, then it could create a noticeable impact.

I'm evaluating the two options I see that would "solve" the issue.  1 hour delay on stats, or SMPPS.  I was very anti-SMPPS at first, but the email I received included a comparison of how the payouts would have looked over a 72 hour period where pool hoppers were involved, using proportional vs SMPPS.  I'll be giving it some thought this weekend after I get miner idle emails back up and running.

[sgravina]

My seven miners were connected to central.  They all stopped at the same time and I couldn't reconnect.  They are all connected to east now.  It happened at the end of the 3 hour block and I missed three fast blocks before I came home and changed servers.

Why?

Sam

The provider of our server uses Softlayer.  Softlayer was under attack by a very large DDoS and a LARGE number of servers that use Softlayer in that area were effectively offline (significant packet loss causing slow/unreliable connections).  As for your miners not reconnecting, that's something you'll have to ask the miner authors about.  The pool doesn't do any funny things with connections, its very standard pushpool in terms of authorization/getwork routing.

I could not reconnect to central.  But switching to east worked fine.  It seems my whole house was rejected by central, all 7 system system stopped at once and none could reconnect.  Could I have been placed on a 'black list' by mistake?  Nothing wrong with the miner software because I can connect to east with no problem.

Sam

[fcmatt]

what are the chances you can private message me the info you received or share it here on the btcguild thread if that is a better route
to go? thanks.

also... it seems delaying stats for just a little while is the easiest to implement. why an hour though? nice round number?

[sgravina]

I could not reconnect to central.  But switching to east worked fine.  It seems my whole house was rejected by central, all 7 system system stopped at once and none could reconnect.  Could I have been placed on a 'black list' by mistake?  Nothing wrong with the miner software because I can connect to east with no problem.

Sam

I just check and I can now connect to central.

I am going to write a health script that will restart the miners if there load drops.  If I can be black listed by a server it would be good to know so that I can switch to another.

Sam

[PcChip]

+1 for sharing as much of the email as you can without revealing anything sensitive


Also, +1 for delayed stats instead of changing up your payment system.  1 hour delay would be great, even better would be a random 55-75 minute delay.



Keep up the good excellent work!

[jjiimm_64]

question:

If we get a 1 hour (or whatever) delay in the stats.  does that include the individual worker stats?  I use the worker stats to monitor my workers.  It would be..........well I would not like to loose the interface that you provide..  

Jim

edit:  all my connections just went down.....

edit 5 minutes later...  connections still down. I connect to uscentral

[fcmatt]

question:

If we get a 1 hour (or whatever) delay in the stat.  does that include the indvidual worker stats?  I use the worker stats to monitor my workers.  It would be..........well I would not like to loose the interface that your provide..  

Jim

i am almost 100% positive that the worker stats would only change a bit to no longer reflect when a new round
happens. in other words they would tell you the approx speed, shares, stales, last submitted share, etc.. but the
whole this/new round stat thing would have to change a bit so it does not tip off pool hoppers. After all they could
screen scrape that to detect when the pool found a block because the stats reset to 0 or a low value...

[jjiimm_64]

question:

If we get a 1 hour (or whatever) delay in the stat.  does that include the indvidual worker stats?  I use the worker stats to monitor my workers.  It would be..........well I would not like to loose the interface that your provide..  

Jim

i am almost 100% positive that the worker stats would only change a bit to no longer reflect when a new round
happens. in other words they would tell you the approx speed, shares, stales, last submitted share, etc.. but the
whole new round stat thing would have to change a bit so it does not tip off pool hoppers.

hmmm..  but one where to watch the number of shares, and you see the number of shares go down, doesn't that mean a round started.?

[PcChip]

question:

If we get a 1 hour (or whatever) delay in the stats.  does that include the individual worker stats?  I use the worker stats to monitor my workers.  It would be..........well I would not like to loose the interface that you provide..  

Jim

We are only asking him to delay the "BLOCK FOUND!" announcement that's like a dinner bell ringing for the hoppers

edit: it appears the stats page for workers is somewhat frozen in time... I started a new worker going ~200 MH/s and it's still not showing up as being active (20 mins+ later)

[jjiimm_64]

question:

If we get a 1 hour (or whatever) delay in the stats.  does that include the individual worker stats?  I use the worker stats to monitor my workers.  It would be..........well I would not like to loose the interface that you provide..  

Jim

We are only asking him to delay the "BLOCK FOUND!" announcement that's like a dinner bell ringing for the hoppers

I realize that,  but I believe you can infer a block found when you 'shares this round' reset.  (are lower then last you checked).
That being said, the most important stat I use the the 'Last Share'  which tells me conclusively and very quickly that the miner is still accepting shares.

side question:  How do you get your 5850 to 400H.  is it flashed to a 5870?

[fcmatt]

getting a 5850 to 400 mh/s is quite the achievement and not a common thing for people to do.
a more realistic value would be 360-370 or so mh/s. it all depends on the type of 5850 and just how good
the silicon is.. meaning every chip is slightly different in a 5850.

[PcChip]

I realize that,  but I believe you can infer a block found when you 'shares this round' reset.  (are lower then last you checked).
That being said, the most important stat I use the the 'Last Share'  which tells me conclusively and very quickly that the miner is still accepting shares.

side question:  How do you get your 5850 to 400H.  is it flashed to a 5870?

part1: Yes he should delay those as well since you're right about being able to detect a new block that way.  As for your workers, normally the worker stats page is realtime (it seems frozen at this time though) so you should be able to hit F5 to refresh it and see if any of your worker threads are at 0 MH/s, also that will let you know exactly which GPU has crashed (if you name the workers sanely)


part2: I clocked it to ~980 MHz core, 300 MHz RAM, and have the latest PhatK Kernel improvements

[hugolp]

question:

If we get a 1 hour (or whatever) delay in the stats.  does that include the individual worker stats?  I use the worker stats to monitor my workers.  It would be..........well I would not like to loose the interface that you provide..  

Jim

There is no need to delay the last share received or the speed worker stats, but the shares this rounds would need to be delayed because it reveals when a round starts.

[eleuthria]

I will likely implement the stat delay, since the response to possibly changing payout scheme from proportional is quite mixed.  Essentially "This Round" would be removed from worker stats.  You'd have:

Est. Speed, Total Shares (Since Reset), Total Shares (All time), and Last Share Received

Reset shares and last share received are being fixed tonight/tomorrow.  I will hold off on implementing a stat delay until those are back in place to allow reasonable worker monitoring.

[eleuthria]

The worker stats froze because the sync script was failing to connect to US Central.  The connection issues on Central are outside of my control, they're a network wide issue, not a server specific issue.  Once I get the reset shares/last shares restored I'll split the sync script for worker stats so an individual server won't stop the rest of the workers from updating.

[jjiimm_64]

eleu:

 I am seeing an amount on my Unconfirmed Rewards.  I have not seen this above 0 since I started donating 2.5%/  currently donating 5% and have not change it.  is the central issue possibly to blame?  I am connected to that and did see the connection issues for a while.

edit:   looking around for that luck switch...  these 5 hour blocks will kill a good man.

[Coolhwip]

Same, I'm seeing unconfirmed rewards and I'm donating 2.5%

Thanks for your reply.

[eleuthria]

Fixed the bug.  Optimized the database to significantly reduce size and speedup SELECT queries.  Ended up changing block_number (not block ID) to an unsigned value momentarily, then set it back to unsigned after remembering block_number is set to -1 on invalids.

[pdawg]

eleu:

 I am seeing an amount on my Unconfirmed Rewards.  I have not seen this above 0 since I started donating 2.5%/  currently donating 5% and have not change it.  is the central issue possibly to blame?  I am connected to that and did see the connection issues for a while.

edit:   looking around for that luck switch...  these 5 hour blocks will kill a good man.

Yea the last 48 hrs have yielded lower than usual btc, the 24hr prior to that was smoking hot.  One question I have is when does the miner idle warning setting buttons return?