Hey Patrike, I have some more requests as mining seemingly is evolving in weird ways.
-A way to pull date/time stamp for rules activation from a txt file which is monitored. Such as scanning a text file and recognizing a date/time stamp and using that as a trigger. Date/time syntax could be specified by the user to make it easier to program for you.
-Adding a command to shutdown miners. There is reboot command, but not shutdown.
-Adding the ability to send a magic packet to machines (Wake on Lan). Machine MAC addresses in addition to IPs should be recorded by Awesome Miner and should be seamlessly integrated with miners. Wake on Lan is heavily documented with examples, very easy to implement, and used in a lot of applications. This is very important for low power usage scenarios.
-Apply a template to selected miners. I'm not sure if there is some weird way of doing this already, but you can only select pools or pool groups, and not change the template (which is needed for swapping algorithms on a schedule).
Thanks. ^^
1) This one is a bit specific and I don't think there will be much general use for a feature like this to justify new trigger settings for it. I can write a few lines of custom C# script for you that will trigger based on file content. Please give me an example of what the file format will look like and I will get back to you on this.
2) You can use the rules for this - both for manually triggering a shutdown but also as part of some automated tasks. Please see "Example: Shutdown remote PC via a button click":
https://support.awesomeminer.com/support/solutions/articles/35000085907-rules-detect-mining-issues-and-automate-tasksThe example illustrates how you can add a menu item to the Actions button where you can execute any remote command, in this case a shutdown command. This action is very flexible as it can automate many tasks on the remote miners.
3) This is a very interesting suggestion that I've actually not been thinking of before. Awesome Miner would have to save the last known MAC address of each Remote Agent but otherwise it should be quite straight forward. This would make sense to have as a rule action. I will expore this request and see when it's possible to implement.
4) Is this for use in a rule where you want to make changes on a schedule? There is a rule action called Apply Managed Template that you can use. Please let me know if this was what you were looking for or if I misunderstood your request.
Thanks for all comments, questions and feedback!
Yup, might be specific to me. I asked a page or so back if it could be done in a custom script, but you didn't respond on that one. That would also work. Once I come up with a syntax for it I'll shoot you a PM regarding this.
Yup, there are also other ways of shutting down as well as rebooting using scripts, just like a WoL, but it would be nice if it was integrated into AM itself without writing scripts or batfiles outside of it. We might just be mincing words at this point as I like to have everything rolled into one thing instead of a patch works of bandaids everywhere. Not really as important as the other suggestions although a right click option outside of a rule would still be great.
Yeah, it's pretty easy to do. MACs generally don't change, so it could be even more reliable then IP or computer names for finding miners if they change names. There are a lot of options for saving MAC beyond just using it for WoL. If you're looking for how to implement WoL there are quite a few well documented examples so it makes it easy to use.
https://wiki.wireshark.org/WakeOnLANhttps://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/knom/2008/12/31/wake-on-lan-client-with-c/Yes that's what I was looking for. Apparently I missed it because of 'apply managed' in front of it, I was just looking for template.
In addition, another helpful item that would be great to have in AM is redundancy in the network. Right now if you try to run multiple AM clients on the same network it causes things to freak out. It would be nice if you could have 'redundant' AMs installs that simply monitor each other and don't do anything until one or the other is changed. A usage scenario for this is obviously if the computer goes down with AM on it, the monitoring and scheduling features go with it. Other usage scenarios include mobile. If you have a laptop for instance you take home with you off the network and you have a computer you leave on the mining network, they should sync with each other when you come back to whatever is the most up to date (there is a lot of options for syncing).
Thanks for your detailed reply.
Just a small comment about the shutdown. It will not require you to put batch-files on each computer as you can enter the "shutdown" command directly in the rule in Awesome Miner. I do however understand the general point you are making here about that it's nice to have as much as possible integrated and ready-to-use in Awesome Miner.
About multiple AM installations your points are correct. For GPU mining, a Remote Agent cannot be controlled by multiple Awesome Miner instances. For ASIC mining, it's however possible to monitor the same ASIC miners from many locations. Also, Awesome Miner isn't true client-server based in this sense. It would be ideal to have the Core of Awesome Miner allowing multiple user interface application to connect. This would however require major changes, but as I've received similar comments in the past, at least from those running large scale mining operations, it might be supported in the future.
Yup, just to make sure we're on the same page, the shutdown option wasn't just for a rules action, but also for a context option. Right click on miner > shutdown. There is already reboot, however remotely shutting down rigs is sometimes something you're looking to do.
If you're looking for priorities, the WoL feature is something I'm currently very interested in. I'll have to shoot you with a syntax for a c# script for rules action. I'm working with someone else on this, so I'll send you a PM whenever I get this figured out.
I understand the idea of centralizing everything. Honestly this is where a web based service would compete with the AM client. You should honestly just have AM in a web page, although I could definitely see that leading to problems with security and people trying to mess with network difficulty by somehow disabling all AM rigs. There would be a bit of work, but if the AM client was a little less hands on with controlling agents and having two computers sync with each other when something changes (or however many AM clients are running). Whichever AM client has more up to date settings, other AM clients update their settings with whatever was updated and don't change agents unless they're the ones that changed it in the first place.
Maybe I'm oversimplifying things, but it seems more of a order of operations thing if you're just trying to band aid fix things to make them work. That and AM still needs a sync'd repository and a way to adjust what software is uploaded to remote AM clients, so we can clean up old miner software that has been uploaded.
