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Topic: Avalon ASIC users thread - page 216. (Read 438335 times)

legendary
Activity: 4466
Merit: 1798
Linux since 1997 RedHat 4
February 03, 2013, 02:19:10 AM
Maybe someone can get on teamviewer or the like & see whats happening  Huh
As I said, this already happens with Icarus.
It's not surprising - and the API output says it is doing the same thing.
legendary
Activity: 2212
Merit: 1001
February 03, 2013, 02:17:36 AM
Maybe someone can get on teamviewer or the like & see whats happening  Huh
legendary
Activity: 4466
Merit: 1798
Linux since 1997 RedHat 4
February 03, 2013, 02:15:31 AM
Again, no, it was not hashing.  Avoid speculating wildly based on a tiny subset of hundreds of variables.

No speculation.
MHs says it is hashing - reread my last reply.
legendary
Activity: 1596
Merit: 1091
February 03, 2013, 02:12:55 AM
Mighr be a stupid question but are you sure that your office isn't doing anything on the network that might be giving you an issue?  Like proxy server settings?

Yes.

newbie
Activity: 56
Merit: 0
February 03, 2013, 02:12:18 AM
Mighr be a stupid question but are you sure that your office isn't doing anything on the network that might be giving you an issue?  Like proxy server settings?
legendary
Activity: 1596
Merit: 1091
February 03, 2013, 02:01:53 AM
Again, no, it was not hashing.  Avoid speculating wildly based on a tiny subset of hundreds of variables.
legendary
Activity: 4466
Merit: 1798
Linux since 1997 RedHat 4
February 03, 2013, 01:51:24 AM
i.e. still hashing, still getting work, but not sending anything back to the pool/bitcoind.

No, not hashing.

Hmm but you said MHs isn't changing i.e. that hash rate isn't dropping.
Check "Total MH" which should be increasing.

Edit: yes it may not *actually* be hashing, but the driver module may think it is and isn't getting an error from the devices and thus assuming it is hashing and thus it's effectively saying that it's just not finding any nonces.
i.e. it's able to send the work and the expected responses are coming back, but without any nonces.
legendary
Activity: 1596
Merit: 1091
February 03, 2013, 01:46:16 AM
i.e. still hashing, still getting work, but not sending anything back to the pool/bitcoind.

No, not hashing.

legendary
Activity: 4466
Merit: 1798
Linux since 1997 RedHat 4
February 03, 2013, 01:45:31 AM
i.e. still hashing, still getting work, but not sending anything back to the pool/bitcoind.
So either there's an issue of heat causing bad/no nonces to come back or there's some failure to send out the answers (failure to send is unlikely)

Counting the amount of work done is up to the driver supplying a response back to the call to scanhash()
Is Hardware Errors increasing?

... and yes the driver module can reply in such a way as cgminer thinks it is working but no nonces are being found.
Since a work item doesn't have to find a none (they only average one per nonce range as you know) if it isn't actually returning any nonces then that would also match your description (i.e. due to some over heat MCU/whatever issue that might happen on occasion and the reboot fixes it)

Edit: this happens with Icarus on rare occasions Smiley
legendary
Activity: 1596
Merit: 1091
February 03, 2013, 01:11:24 AM
Still having some amount of reliability problems.  Moving the miner in the office helped a great deal.  However, still seeing machine restarts for unknown reasons (note: must ping support, inquire about reboot logging).

And right now, the miner is in a strange state where the controller (running Linux) and cgminer are alive, but fans are not running, and no work is occurring:

Code:
  [Elapsed] => 10477
   [MHS av] => 15419.77   (this is not changing)
   [Found Blocks] => 0
   [Getworks] => 385         (these are increasing, slowly)
   [Accepted] => 37082     (these are not increasing)
   [Rejected] => 398
...
   [fan1] => 0                     (indeed, fans are not moving)
   [fan2] => 0
   [fan3] => 0
   [temp1] => 26
   [temp2] => -1
   [temp3] => 48
   [temp_max] => 49

And the pool agrees that no shares are incoming.

legendary
Activity: 4312
Merit: 3517
what is this "brake pedal" you speak of?
February 02, 2013, 08:38:33 PM
Have you tried measuring the power without the UPS square wave being invovled? I.o.w. plug it straight into the wall (or perhaps with a transient protector only)?

No, though several have requested that.

It would be good to eliminate the UPS as a factor, agreed.

I believe you mentioned you had it plugged into an APC backUPS 550. if its like my APC backUPS ES-550, it only trickle charges the battery when power is on. normally your avalon will be running on wall power with only surge suppression.

also if your avalon draws 600+ watts it wont power your avalon when the powers out. the ES-550 only delivers 330 watts when in battery backup mode.

this is if its plugged into the battery backup outlets of course. there are surge suppression only outlets on the ES-550 too.
legendary
Activity: 966
Merit: 1000
February 02, 2013, 08:27:55 PM
#99
jeff, you should verify your measurement (with load and without load) without ups asap.
legendary
Activity: 4466
Merit: 1798
Linux since 1997 RedHat 4
February 02, 2013, 07:22:54 PM
#98
Jeff,

You can take a look here:

https://github.com/ckolivas/cgminer/commit/7e2b1e80aafc431f8572ad57bb012f2dfe7f7c97


I am testing this on my openwrt and i am having zero memory leaks for almost 10 hours. I guess when you mine with stratum, Avalon memory will be exhausted very soon, which can cause system reboot.

Are you having cgminer patches (source) related to avalon?
Someone from Avalon team has to send you recompiled/updated cgminer package probably.

No one (but Avalon) has any source code yet ...
hero member
Activity: 981
Merit: 500
DIV - Your "Virtual Life" Secured and Decentralize
February 02, 2013, 06:31:36 PM
#97
I guess the point people menioned about the power can be pointed to as this. When BFL missed estimates they didn't say they used a laptop PS that was 80% efficient and their box had fans so those take power, plus they needed additional fans. They said it uses 80 Watts (at the wall) and people checked at the wall to verify power claims.

Why didn't Avalon at least list their system by their actual draw? because 400 sounds wayyyyy better then 600. It is easy enough to plug in and verify. This is the cost in power the customer pays for is the one that would matter not that the modules apparently take 2/3rds of the power.

Now do I care if the unit is stand alone. No. Do I care about power draw. Yes. Why because I can run linux on a Rpi at ~5W and some BFL gear for less watts (if the numbers are off by 800%) and have less cooling required through the hot part of the year.

To me the fact that the main face of Icarus and Lancelot trolled BFL over being wrong about power use makes me wonder why such a great and honest person wouldn't publish an accurate power consumption figure for a unit that actually plugs into the wall. It isn't difficult. It is expected that the power use listed for a device with 1 power plug will include the power burned up by the Power supply, the hubs, the Open WRT, the fans and anything else in the case that would be powered to use the device.

Maybe I missed the part where other companies forgot to take into concideration their Power supplies or fans for a boxed unit. Maybe the Avalon team was inexperienced with this as the previous offerings where not as complete of a unit. I don't know.
legendary
Activity: 966
Merit: 1000
February 02, 2013, 05:43:22 PM
#96
DC Power supplies are marked by the DC wattage provided, not by the AC wattage consumed.  There is nothing at all strange about a device marked "450W" pulling 600+ watts from the wall.  

This is a 91% efficiency power supply. So even if that was "normal" 620W AC is ~565W DC.  565W DC > 400W DC.

Also remember the 400W number comes from the product listing for the entire unit.  It is "strange" for a company to have all the specs related to the entire unit except the power which just happens to be just the chip (not even the total DC wattage).  Now for the module only listing putting a wattage of ~180W DC would be realistic. 

Still even if you take 620W AC remove the PSU inefficiency getting 565W DC then drop out 25W for the host and 3 5W fans = 540W not 400W.  A single module by itself has to be pulling ~180W ea (3x180 = 540) not ~133W ea (3x133W=400W).   So the 400W number is dishonest, there is no way or reason to spin that.  The sad thing is first out the door @ 180W per module and 620W per unit is still impressive.  It is dishonesty that isn't even needed.

There is a second stage of DC-DC conversion where the 12V output from the ATX power supply is further reduced, adding another layer of loss.
hero member
Activity: 938
Merit: 1009
February 02, 2013, 04:55:59 PM
#95
Paging Jgarzik.  Party of one.  Jgarzik, party of 1!  Your seat at the ASIC table is ready.  JGarzik, party of 1!

I think this is one dinner you'll be happy to eat alone. Smiley

At least he gets dinner. Unlike at "Chez Papillon" where they're seating guests while the kitchen is still waiting for ingredients.
legendary
Activity: 1610
Merit: 1000
February 02, 2013, 04:42:13 PM
#94
Jeff,

You can take a look here:

https://github.com/ckolivas/cgminer/commit/7e2b1e80aafc431f8572ad57bb012f2dfe7f7c97


I am testing this on my openwrt and i am having zero memory leaks for almost 10 hours. I guess when you mine with stratum, Avalon memory will be exhausted very soon, which can cause system reboot.

Are you having cgminer patches (source) related to avalon?
Someone from Avalon team has to send you recompiled/updated cgminer package probably.

legendary
Activity: 1596
Merit: 1091
February 02, 2013, 03:50:18 PM
#93
Are you using getwork or stratum on p2pool? Did you try both? Any difference between the two?

Stratum, with "+8" (difficulty 8.0).  Stratum seems to work better in general, with Avalon's modified cgminer 2.10.4.

sr. member
Activity: 420
Merit: 250
February 02, 2013, 02:49:55 PM
#92
Did I tell you to shut up?

BFL can plug into a OpenWRT device LIKE one in AVALON. Even an Android phone would work.

Your question is does Raspberry Pi gonna have enough bandwidth as a host? Fck yes, it also shows you know crap about this.


Avalon engineered the OpenWRT solution to work effectively.

I don't know what they had to do to make that happen, but I know that you can get away with using a low computer power single purpose device if well engineered to the application.

Everyone in this thread seems to be suggesting the end consumer should slap some 5W toy device called a "Raspberry Pi" into their BFL miner. My experience tells me this is not a real solution.

What operating system and mining software should they install on it? What optimizations should they perform on the OS build to ensure the bitcoin miner is not interrupted by other processes?

If BFL isn't going to provide a mining controller, then most users will end up using a real computer, not a "Raspberry Pi." You should be more realistic.


In addition to that - serious miners are already running a beefy system as a host to control mining equipment... the simple fact is... unless you want to be physically close to your mining location, you need a machine to remote into and control your power switches and other gear. If you're running a big enough farm - it's also going to be your bitcoind node.

Slapping openwrt on a device doesn't make it easier to administer remotely - why expose your avalon (or any mining machine) to potential intrusion via forwarded ports? It makes no sense, you'll have a secure vpn link to a machine on that local subnet.



hero member
Activity: 658
Merit: 500
February 02, 2013, 02:31:45 PM
#91
So, it does not work with p2pool. right?

Just mined all night on p2pool.

It looks like fixing the air flow/physical configuration solved the issues.

No miner or machine restarts while I was sleeping, and while it was mining p2pool.

(no p2pool blocks either, alas)



Are you using getwork or stratum on p2pool? Did you try both? Any difference between the two?
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