Bitminter bitcoin mining pool - shutdown mining 2020-07-01 website 2021-06-01

[Mikestang]

It will not make your USB sticks fail and need to reset. It will not cause lower actual hashrates. If those things happen then it's for other reasons.

New work from the server is normal. But how often do you get disconnected?

To illustrate what I am seeing I just ran a single gekko stick at kano and bitminter for the same amount of time (couple minutes), look at the hash rate difference (stick should and has average 12-14GH/s) and also the work restarts when pointed to bitminter.  Note this is not the miner receiving new work, this is something different that I have only experience since pointing the sticks here:
 

I will try the other servers and see if that changes the connection drops, but I've never had that happen at other pools.  I made no changes to my gear or setup (that have been running for months) other than to point them at bitminter.

Hash rate shown in the shift page appears to be more accurate as you stated.  For the first 2 full shifts my total hash was about expected, just a little lower than it has been historically, but the next two look at the loss of hash, this is what I'm trying to figure out.

[DrHaribo]

mint is currently an alias for us1. You can try us2 also, but I don't expect there will be a big difference in reject ratio.

On the subject of servers I've got all my minera pointed at "mint.bitminter" they are registering and hashing but would there be any advantage if I pointed them to the eu server seeing as I'm in the UK?

Yep. Should help a little bit. Note that this is no big deal. But yeah, you'd probably earn about 0.05% more.

[gt_addict]

Thanks you Dr. I'll change them over when I get the chance see what happens.

[Icon]

Well one thing you forgot to mention is using a high(er) diff rate, means when you finally submit your work and the time it takes to get there, the data could be old and get rejected. Thing is with a higher diff rating all that work for all 64 shares will be rejected..

But does save on bandwidth..

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PS

Did you change from Proportional Payment mining to full PPLNS? No more not getting paid for older shares?

[kano]

...
To illustrate what I am seeing I just ran a single gekko stick at kano and bitminter for the same amount of time (couple minutes), look at the hash rate difference (stick should and has average 12-14GH/s) and also the work restarts when pointed to bitminter.  Note this is not the miner receiving new work, this is something different that I have only experience since pointing the sticks here:
...

Extra work restarts caused by alt-coin merged mining block changes invalidating valid BTC work.

[DrHaribo]

Extra work restarts caused by alt-coin merged mining block changes invalidating valid BTC work.

At Bitminter only a new bitcoin block makes old work get rejected.

But yeah, have a look at the worker options and disable "Merged mining stale flush". That should reduce the frequency of those.

There are still some special cases where the server will ask the client to immediately switch to new work. For instance if the server gets a transaction with an extremely high fee.

Well one thing you forgot to mention is using a high(er) diff rate, means when you finally submit your work and the time it takes to get there, the data could be old and get rejected. Thing is with a higher diff rating all that work for all 64 shares will be rejected..

And when accepted, all 64 are accepted. Higher diff just means higher variance, both for accepted and rejected work. Remember that you are equally likely to be lucky as you are to be unlucky. Meaning the extra variance could cause a higher accepted count than usual, and lower than usual rejected.

Over time both will even out though.

Did you change from Proportional Payment mining to full PPLNS? No more not getting paid for older shares?

I don't understand what you mean. The pool started as proportional in late june 2011. After a couple months we switched to PPLNS with shifts.

Bitminter was the first pool to use PPLNS with shifts. A couple other pools had done PPLNS (without shifts) before that. I don't think any of them are still around now. That was in the early days when many different reward systems were being tried out.

[Indianacoin]

Recently I am getting zombie hashes while I am allowed merged mining script coins + BTC on your pool with some of my old Gridseed sets.
Coincidentally, it gets automatically fixed as soon as I stop mining scripts.

Is it having any influence on dual mining?
Or does it need some tweaking?

[DrHaribo]

Recently I am getting zombie hashes while I am allowed merged mining script coins + BTC on your pool with some of my old Gridseed sets.
Coincidentally, it gets automatically fixed as soon as I stop mining scripts.

You mine sha-256 at Bitminter and scrypt at another pool at the same time? And then what happens? I'm not familiar with the term zombie hashes.

[Mikestang]

At Bitminter only a new bitcoin block makes old work get rejected.

That is not what I'm seeing, for example here is a reject that just happened as a result of the work restart:

You can see the same type of work rejection in the screen cap I posted a few posts up, too.

But yeah, have a look at the worker options and disable "Merged mining stale flush". That should reduce the frequency of those.

Done, I unchecked that box for all my workers.  What are the pros/cons of that check box?  I would hope to eliminate work restarts outright rather than reduce the frequency.  Oh, and the screen cap immediately above was taken 15 minutes after I made this change, so it did not appear to eliminate it.

And no explanation why my gekko stick only mines here at 4-5GH instead of 12-14GH?  It's very odd and I can reproduce easily, just change from kano to bitminter back and forth and note the speed difference.

[DrHaribo]

At Bitminter only a new bitcoin block makes old work get rejected.

That is not what I'm seeing, for example here is a reject that just happened as a result of the work restart:

I meant that namecoin work flushes do not cause stale work at Bitminter. I was talking about the work flush (restart), not the disconnects.

About the disconnects, let me know if us2 or eu1 works better.

But yeah, have a look at the worker options and disable "Merged mining stale flush". That should reduce the frequency of those.

Done, I unchecked that box for all my workers.  What are the pros/cons of that check box?  I would hope to eliminate work restarts outright rather than reduce the frequency.  Oh, and the screen cap immediately above was taken 15 minutes after I made this change, so it did not appear to eliminate it.

That checkbox makes the server not flush work when there is a new namecoin block. It will still flush work when there is a new bitcoin block and in some other (very rare) cases. Using this feature will cause much more stale namecoin work, but namecoin income isn't that high at the moment anyway.

And no explanation why my gekko stick only mines here at 4-5GH instead of 12-14GH?  It's very odd and I can reproduce easily, just change from kano to bitminter back and forth and note the speed difference.

That is indeed odd. Does it go up and down a lot, or is it 4-5 GH/s all the time?

[Mikestang]

About the disconnects, let me know if us2 or eu1 works better.

...

That is indeed odd. Does it go up and down a lot, or is it 4-5 GH/s all the time?

It was staying 4-5GH all day long.  I could access it remotely and restarted it several times and nothing changed; however when I got home and physically restarted it (i.e. unplug from hub, unplug hub, etc.) everything was back to normal for a bit, now it's acting up again.  Anyway, like you said, is not pool related and must be something else.

I'll let everything run for a bit and then try us2, because I am still seeing the interrupt/reject share/restart work thing.

[AriesIV10]

Bitcoin Difficulty:   158,427,203,767
Estimated Next Difficulty:   157,935,538,038 (-0.31%)
Adjust time:   After 1925 Blocks, About 12.9 days
Hashrate(?):   1,197,675,017 GH/s
Block Generation Time(?):   
1 block: 9.6 minutes
3 blocks: 28.9 minutes
6 blocks: 57.7 minutes

[AriesIV10]

---Block---

Good Job Saglimbeni!

[gt_addict]

Woohoo!!! About time. Now it would be nice if we could get another before it hits 10%

[Mikestang]

I'll let everything run for a bit and then try us2, because I am still seeing the interrupt/reject share/restart work thing.

I put the usb sticks on my laptop and they're running just fine (14GH on the compac, 8GH on the nanofuries), so there's a usb issue with my poor old tower computer. 

I pointed them to us2 and have not seen any work restarts in the couple hours they've been running, so it's possible that was related to the problem with my other computer as well.

Mine on. 

[DrHaribo]

Good stuff! Now let's find another block

[Mikestang]

First full shift after everything is running properly shows 70GH, just as was expected.  Rejects are 0.02% less on us2 vs. 1, so I'll leave them pointed there.

This stuff happens to me with cars all the time, where you change one thing and something unrelated goes wrong and you wonder how the two are related... but they're not.

CDF is just about 50%, we could expect a block any time now. 

[luthermarcus]

Recently I am getting zombie hashes while I am allowed merged mining script coins + BTC on your pool with some of my old Gridseed sets.
Coincidentally, it gets automatically fixed as soon as I stop mining scripts.

You mine sha-256 at Bitminter and scrypt at another pool at the same time? And then what happens? I'm not familiar with the term zombie hashes.

I think that has more to do with his equipment zombie in my experience your running your equipment too hard. It can't sustain the you settings consider lowering them.

[Mikestang]

Question regarding "Auto cash out", does the pool not send out payments unless the auto cash out feature is enabled?  I am assuming payouts are only done manually using "send coins" unless we select auto cash out, but I did not see this written out anywhere.  Thanks!

[DrHaribo]

Question regarding "Auto cash out", does the pool not send out payments unless the auto cash out feature is enabled?  I am assuming payouts are only done manually using "send coins" unless we select auto cash out, but I did not see this written out anywhere.  Thanks!

You can choose whether to use auto cash out or "send coins".

Auto cash out is free, but has a 0.01 BTC minimum.

"Send coins" has a small fee, but you can send tiny amounts.