A guide for mining efficiently on P2Pool, includes FUD repellent and FAQ - page 13.

mdude77

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Quote from: maqifrnswa on March 16, 2013, 10:37:37 PM

The mathematical fact still remains that a well tuned p2pool will out pay any other pool. In fact, it will approach solo mining. If not enough people are mining on it, it will have huge variance. You were unlucky, but someone else who mined p2pool probably had inverse luck. For example, over the past 7 days, p2pool out paid PPS by 15% (including fees). Last week, people mining on p2pool were underpaid by 15% compared to PPS (including fees). Variance (luck) is a problem for all pools that are underpowered and doesn't mean that it "pays out crap."

This isn't entirely true. The last week has been very good for p2pool. But the 3 months (not one week) has been awful.

M

gyverlb

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Quote from: Subo1977 on March 22, 2013, 03:50:24 AM

Quote from: gyverlb on March 14, 2013, 08:47:36 PM

Tune bitcoind and P2Pool
If you can't use the methods above or they aren't enough you can limit the number of connections used by bitcoind and P2Pool.

For bitcoind, use the parameter maxconnections in bitcoin.conf

Code:

maxconnections=10 # 20 is the default

Dont set this to <=8 Cheesy

Then p2pool cannot connect to the bitcoind.

Hum, there can be problems with low maxconnections. If I understand correctly, this depends on how fast you start p2pool after bitcoind because once all the connection slots are taken it refuses p2pool's attempt to connect.
bitcoind probably establish the first connections quite fast because it tries a number of "probably good" nodes first and then a slower discovery process begins.

I'll add this to the guide, thanks.

Subo1977

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Quote from: gyverlb on March 14, 2013, 08:47:36 PM

Tune bitcoind and P2Pool
If you can't use the methods above or they aren't enough you can limit the number of connections used by bitcoind and P2Pool.

For bitcoind, use the parameter maxconnections in bitcoin.conf

Code:

maxconnections=10 # 20 is the default

Dont set this to <=8 Cheesy

Then p2pool cannot connect to the bitcoind.

gyverlb

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Added a link to the Consolidated Litecoin Mining Guide for 5xxx, 6xxx, and 7xxx GPUs, more information about mining with Avalon.

zvs

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https://web.archive.org/web/*/nogleg.com

use ramfs, and it only needs to be 8GB for at least another couple weeks

you can have getwork be a couple ms, but only if you use a small blocksize. at 50k, mine was usually around a second (ed: sorry, .01 seconds)

gyverlb

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Added a FAQ entry for the stratum/scrypt problem between cgminer and P2Pool.

gyverlb

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Linked makifrnswa's post in the guide for additional information on tmpfs-based bitcoind.

It's not a turnkey solution yet, but I'm not sure this optimization is worth taking the time redacting one: I believe it's a nice hack with some marginal benefits.

gyverlb

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Added a TL;DR; chapter

Small precision about the whole network efficiency.

gyverlb

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Added advices for Avalon owners and general advice "Track your income" for everyone.

Edit: new general advice "Patience" Wink

gyverlb

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Quote from: GernMiester on March 16, 2013, 07:26:15 PM

Worked just fine but it was far from paying anywhere near what the PPS pool I left was making me even when it had donations out the wazoo.

Apparently you didn't read the original post in details. Your post doesn't bring anything useful to the discussion if you:

don't tell when you tried p2pool (was it before the orphan blocks problem was solved?)
for how long you tried it: with the current hashrate you can get easily between 80 and 120% PPS for 30 days. If you tried it for less than 3 days you can even get between 0 and 200% PPS.

So nothing new here: you probably experienced variance and didn't like it. That's OK if you are looking for predictable payments and don't want to bet on p2pool's hashrate growing (and thus lowering variance) but I fail to see anything that would deter someone who would want to make the most of its miners in the long run...

maqifrnswa

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Quote from: GernMiester on March 16, 2013, 07:26:15 PM

Worked just fine but it was far from paying anywhere near what the PPS pool I left was making me even when it had donations out the wazoo. The hashrate is low and blocks are not solved often. You can go 1, 2 or even worse 3 days with zero payout.

I quit many moons ago due to horrible random payouts that never seem to be anywhere ear what any other pool will make you. Maybe I had it setup wrong or maybe it pays like crap.. It certainly paid me less than 1/3rd of what I could have mined at a PPS pool in the same time. Its a great idea no one seems to care for and it seems mostly because it pays like crap.

The mathematical fact still remains that a well tuned p2pool will out pay any other pool. In fact, it will approach solo mining. If not enough people are mining on it, it will have huge variance. You were unlucky, but someone else who mined p2pool probably had inverse luck. For example, over the past 7 days, p2pool out paid PPS by 15% (including fees). Last week, people mining on p2pool were underpaid by 15% compared to PPS (including fees). Variance (luck) is a problem for all pools that are underpowered and doesn't mean that it "pays out crap."

If you solo mine for a month and don't find a block, you will think it pays out crap compared to PPS.

GernMiester

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Worked just fine but it was far from paying anywhere near what the PPS pool I left was making me even when it had donations out the wazoo. The hashrate is low and blocks are not solved often. You can go 1, 2 or even worse 3 days with zero payout.

I quit many moons ago due to horrible random payouts that never seem to be anywhere ear what any other pool will make you. Maybe I had it setup wrong or maybe it pays like crap.. It certainly paid me less than 1/3rd of what I could have mined at a PPS pool in the same time. Its a great idea no one seems to care for and it seems mostly because it pays like crap.

Subo1977

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Quote from: maqifrnswa on March 16, 2013, 05:44:41 PM

Quote from: gyverlb on March 16, 2013, 04:37:03 PM

That's not something you download but something you configure using Linux, tmpfs, the standard bitcoind v0.8 and your skills as a sysadmin. I didn't do it myself because I don't have enough RAM to store the whole data directory (so it wouldn't work well for me) but I've met someone on IRC who claimed having done so with a getwork latency < 0.01s.

If someone can post instructions, I'll link to them.

Code:

mkdir -p /var/ramdrive
mount -t tmpfs -o size=10G,mode=0744 tmpfs /var/ramdrive

Tune it for you own mount location, desired size, and desired permissions. You may need to run the scone command as root, and if you do you'll need to chown the new mount point:

Code:

sudo chown user:user ~/ramdrive

now copy over your blocks to ~/ramdrive and it will be super fast. Note that you'll need > 7GB for your blockchain, I don't know how many consumer level machines are around with that much (but Sub's 64GB will rock)

You need to remount it every boot, or you can put the following at the end of your /etc/fstab

Code:

tmpfs /var/ramdrive tmpfs size=500M,mode=0777 0 0

it's going to be root owned, so you can tune the permissions as you wish

take from http://kvz.io/blog/2007/07/18/create-turbocharged-storage-using-tmpfs/

Great . I will try it on Monday and Report it.

maqifrnswa

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Quote from: gyverlb on March 16, 2013, 04:37:03 PM

That's not something you download but something you configure using Linux, tmpfs, the standard bitcoind v0.8 and your skills as a sysadmin. I didn't do it myself because I don't have enough RAM to store the whole data directory (so it wouldn't work well for me) but I've met someone on IRC who claimed having done so with a getwork latency < 0.01s.

If someone can post instructions, I'll link to them.

Code:

mkdir -p /var/ramdrive
mount -t tmpfs -o size=10G,mode=0744 tmpfs /var/ramdrive

Tune it for you own mount location, desired size, and desired permissions. You may need to run the scone command as root, and if you do you'll need to chown the new mount point:

Code:

sudo chown user:user ~/ramdrive

now copy over your blocks to ~/ramdrive and it will be super fast. Note that you'll need > 7GB for your blockchain, I don't know how many consumer level machines are around with that much (but Sub's 64GB will rock)

You need to remount it every boot, or you can put the following at the end of your /etc/fstab

Code:

tmpfs /var/ramdrive tmpfs size=500M,mode=0777 0 0

it's going to be root owned, so you can tune the permissions as you wish

take from http://kvz.io/blog/2007/07/18/create-turbocharged-storage-using-tmpfs/

gyverlb

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Just reorganized and added details in the "General Advices on running P2Pool chapter".

Damn my own ADSL connection or router seems to be dying. I've had extended period of downtimes.

Next chapter (kidding but maybe not): how to setup a backup 3G network connection for your own home network using Linux and some script voodoo.

Subo1977

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Quote from: gyverlb on March 16, 2013, 04:37:03 PM

Quote from: Subo1977 on March 16, 2013, 04:32:06 PM

Quote from: gyverlb on March 16, 2013, 04:17:43 PM

Quote from: Subo1977 on March 16, 2013, 03:37:27 PM

lightning fast bitcoind Huh

"lightning fast" -> extremely fast

Does it answer your question?

No. Where can i get this ?

That's not something you download but something you configure using Linux, tmpfs, the standard bitcoind v0.8 and your skills as a sysadmin. I didn't do it myself because I don't have enough RAM to store the whole data directory (so it wouldn't work well for me) but I've met someone on IRC who claimed having done so with a getwork latency < 0.01s.

If someone can post instructions, I'll link to them.

Thats Fine. I have One Maschine with 4 x Xeon quadcore and 64 Gb RAM Grin

gyverlb

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Quote from: Subo1977 on March 16, 2013, 04:32:06 PM

Quote from: gyverlb on March 16, 2013, 04:17:43 PM

Quote from: Subo1977 on March 16, 2013, 03:37:27 PM

lightning fast bitcoind Huh

"lightning fast" -> extremely fast

Does it answer your question?

No. Where can i get this ?

That's not something you download but something you configure using Linux, tmpfs, the standard bitcoind v0.8 and your skills as a sysadmin. I didn't do it myself because I don't have enough RAM to store the whole data directory (so it wouldn't work well for me) but I've met someone on IRC who claimed having done so with a getwork latency < 0.01s.

If someone can post instructions, I'll link to them.

Subo1977

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Activity: 344

Merit: 250

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