Bitminter client (Windows/Linux/Mac) - page 42.

DrHaribo

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Quote from: Turbor on May 06, 2012, 12:59:43 PM

Quote from: SgtSpike on May 06, 2012, 02:55:52 AM

I can't remember... is it possible to use the BitMinter client with another pool?

No

Multi-pool support, at least back-up pools, is on my TODO list. But it's a very long list.

Beta4 is out. It can retry commands if they fail or time out. Click the wrench to modify the timeout and the max number of retries. Please try it out if you had problems with timeouts before. This change should make the miner much more robust.

Turbor

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Quote from: SgtSpike on May 06, 2012, 02:55:52 AM

I can't remember... is it possible to use the BitMinter client with another pool?

No

SgtSpike

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I can't remember... is it possible to use the BitMinter client with another pool?

DrHaribo

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Beta3 is out. Restart the beta miner to get the new one.

New in beta3:

In options, automation tab, added "other devices". If you check this then new devices you connect will automatically be among the "automated devices".
In options, automation tab, added "when new devices connect". Allows you to decide whether to automatically start new devices that are plugged in.
In options, FPGA tab, disabled "rescan for added/removed FPGAs". Unfortunately a bug in nrjavaserial (the serial port library) causes the miner to fail (too many file handles) after a while with this on. Had to be disabled for now. To detect new devices use the Devices pulldown menu.
Fixed bug with hashrate sometimes showing too high around block changes. Note that the hash rate can drop a bit when there is a block change (long poll). This is because the current work unit is aborted (it is stale) and the work that was done on it isn't counted. Not sure if other miners show this, but it is a real loss that can't be avoided due to the way the BFL units work.
Fixed bug: FPGAs can now auto start when the program is started, just like other devices.
+ some small tweaks

Testing status for beta2: successful BFL mining on Windows, Mac, Linux. One success with BFLs connected through USB hub and one failure with USB hub. Two reports of BFL units timing out (with low temperature). Not sure yet what this might be.

DrHaribo

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Good find, Phraust.

Quick update on the ongoing work for FPGA support.

Serial port access in Java is in a sorry state. The latest release of the rxtx library is a few years old and full of bugs. It often causes the entire app to crash. Apparently they have bug fixes but can't be bothered to make a new release. RXTX was in beta1 of the miner and it was no good. Beta2 contains nrjavaserial which is a fork of rxtx with many improvements.

Unfortunately nrjavaserial has a few bugs too. One is that if you are mining on X serial ports and rescan the ports, then it will leak X file handles. After a while you hit the max number of file handles and networking ceases to work in the app. Therefore I will have to disable the "rescan" feature, at least for now. So it will be "click in the menu to detect FPGAs." An automatic solution may appear in the future.

Other than that the necessary features are implemented and all known bugs fixed. I'll be releasing beta3 soon which hopefully will be the last before 1.2.0 final.

This took more work than I thought it would. But now it's done and adding support for more FPGA devices is pretty easy. At least if they run off of serial ports. Any suggestions?

Phraust

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The beta2 no longer crashes (yay!), but it's still not recognizing them (boo!). I'm probably going to format and start over, as there has been quite a bit of trial and error on my part getting setup, not to mention some of the core services no longer work.

I'll try it out on one of the MacBooks when I get a chance, see if it gets recognized or not.

Turns out I did need a driver. Was googling on a wild hunch, and came across these: http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/VCP.htm

Installed, rebooted, and they got recognized. Currently churning away with three bitforces at about 2,472 Mhps using the BitMinter beta2!

DrHaribo

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Quote from: Phraust on May 03, 2012, 05:05:27 PM

Let me know if there is anything other information I can give you to help with.

I just pushed out beta2. This fixes the crashes on Windows, you can go crazy disconnecting and reconnecting devices if you want. Wink

Could you try it on Mac and see if works now? (Same URL/beta button above)

And yes, thanks for the crash log, it was very helpful.

Phraust

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Did the crash report I sent help any? I don't understand how OSX binds a USB device to a serial port without a driver, so it could be crashing because the only assigned tty's that are available to be scanned dont respond (the tty.Bluetooth.modem and TTY.Bluetooth-PDA-Sync, it normally crashes after the PDA sync crashes).

I've been able to get ufasofts miner compiled in the Ubuntu vm, and even though the BitForce is shared and available (/dev/ttyUSB0), it doesn't get recognized by either ufasoft or cgminer. Figured I'd try running windows 7 next and trying the precompiled ufasoft binaries, but short of booting up the Mac mini in Ubuntu instead of osx, I'm at a loss.

I'll try running the bitmint application from Ubuntu and see if that does anything, and will update.

Let me know if there is anything other information I can give you to help with.

Phraust

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I was able to get cgminer compiled under Ubuntu 12 via vm (parallels) but when I forward the USB devices over I can't connect to them (no devices) even though lsusb shows them. Sad

It's been quite a challenge, as I have to do this headless over an iPad vnc and ssh connection, all my hardware is being shipped here an should arrive in two weeks or so...

DrHaribo

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Quote from: Phraust on May 02, 2012, 05:09:53 PM

Am I supposed to install drivers for these? I'm kind of at a loss...

On Windows it should install the necessary drivers automatically when you plug it in. Not sure about Mac and Linux yet. It's just a standard virtual-serial-port-over-USB kind of thing.

I'm looking into the issue with crashing under Mac OS X. If you have access to a Windows machine you could try that so they don't sit around idle.

Phraust

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I just got my BFLs yesterday, and I spent most of the night trying to compile ufasoft and cgminer to try and get it to work. From what I can piece together, OSX isn't assigning them ttyUSBn locations (when I ls /dev/*USB* I only get the bluetooth devices mentioned, although they all show up under the system report tool)

Am I supposed to install drivers for these? I'm kind of at a loss...

SgtSpike

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Quote from: DrHaribo on May 02, 2012, 03:44:36 AM

In theory it should be faster than cgminer and the other miners, because of faster work dispatch. In practice the difference is negligible (less than 1 Mhps per BFL single). This may prove more useful with the rig boxes.

Instead of checking whether the device is done with 10 ms pauses in between checks, it will first leave the device in peace until it gets close to done (cgminer does the same), then start 10 ms polling, and when it gets very close to done it starts 1 ms polling. This allows quick reaction pushing out new work once the device is idle. Right after it goes "ok, I'm all done, I think I'll just read the newspaper now" you have to detect that situation quickly and put it back to work. You can click the wrench and change the 10 ms and 1 ms values. You could even change the 1 ms to 0 ms. Running with 0 ms might be ok. It won't hog the CPU as much as the AMD drivers do/did. Wink

I just thought it might be a bit brutal for a default setting.

Cool, looking forward to giving it a try!

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Quote from: Phraust on May 02, 2012, 09:07:42 AM

Trying it out on OSX Lion (10.7.3) Server w/ 3x BitForce singles. When I try to scan for FPGAs, it just crashes. After it gets through with trying the Bluetooth modem (which fails), it dies. Mooing to try rebooting and giving it another shot.

The whole app crashes, and possibly Java leaves a crash log on the desktop? Probably the RXTX library (for Java access to serial ports) that's doing it. I'm starting to hate that buggy thing.

Could you try adding them one by one using the menu to probe a specific port?

Phraust

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Trying it out on OSX Lion (10.7.3) Server w/ 3x BitForce singles. When I try to scan for FPGAs, it just crashes. After it gets through with trying the Bluetooth modem (which fails), it dies. Mooing to try rebooting and giving it another shot.

DrHaribo

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In theory it should be faster than cgminer and the other miners, because of faster work dispatch. In practice the difference is negligible (less than 1 Mhps per BFL single). This may prove more useful with the rig boxes.

Instead of checking whether the device is done with 10 ms pauses in between checks, it will first leave the device in peace until it gets close to done (cgminer does the same), then start 10 ms polling, and when it gets very close to done it starts 1 ms polling. This allows quick reaction pushing out new work once the device is idle. Right after it goes "ok, I'm all done, I think I'll just read the newspaper now" you have to detect that situation quickly and put it back to work. You can click the wrench and change the 10 ms and 1 ms values. You could even change the 1 ms to 0 ms. Running with 0 ms might be ok. It won't hog the CPU as much as the AMD drivers do/did. Wink

I just thought it might be a bit brutal for a default setting.

Fefox

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Quote from: SgtSpike on May 01, 2012, 07:21:18 PM

Very cool! Will definitely be giving this a shot when I receive mine...

How is the hashrate on the BFL's compared to cgminer?

seems to be the same. I get about 825 Mh for both miners.

SgtSpike

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Very cool! Will definitely be giving this a shot when I receive mine...

How is the hashrate on the BFL's compared to cgminer?

DrHaribo

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v1.2.0 beta1 just released.

New in this release: support for BFL BitFORCE FPGA devices!

A big thanks to Fefox for lending me his BFL singles for testing and his participation in the testing!

If you have one or more such devices, please help test this beta. It has only been tested on 64 bit Windows. That leaves 32 bit Windows, 32/64 bit Linux, 32/64 bit Mac OS X.

How to use it:
It doesn't probe the serial ports by default. There is a new menu "devices" with two possible actions: checking all serial ports for BitFORCE devices, or a specific one. Also there is a new FPGA tab in the options (Settings -> Options in the menus). Here you can set how to detect FPGAs on startup and whether to scan for added/removed devices at intervals. There are also some settings you can change on each device. Click the wrenches to change these settings.

Please try it out:

If the device reaches max temp it will stop. Click the wrench to change the max temp. Is 75 C a good default max temperature?

Any feedback appreciated.

DrHaribo

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I have gotten a few reports that the miner runs very fast on 7970s.

Has anyone compared directly against DiabloMiner? I don't have a 7970 to test on.

P4man

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The easy solution for Ubuntu: open Ubuntu software center, search for "IcedTea Java 6 web start". Install it. Done

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Topic: Bitminter client (Windows/Linux/Mac) - page 42. (Read 654627 times)