Topic: Does anyone else have stability issues with linuxcoin - page 3. (Read 5650 times)

Perhaps you might have been a little rough on the extenders, and some of the wires have micro fractures or broke? That happened to me, and I had to solder them together and replace the ones that were ruined.

They are really fragile little things.

I really am going mad over this issue.

Is it the P67 chipset with only 16 PCIe lanes from the CPU and the rest have to be duplicated ?

IRQ conflicts ?

UEFI problems ?

Technically the extender is just a cable extender and it is dumb ( has no extra circuitry ) so should work as long as it is within the 19 cm or so spec limit.

I can't even get 11cm and 7cm lengths to work on my motherboards. Should I stick to old hardware from 5 years ago from now on ?

I really want to resolve this issue and maybe jjshabadoo can cooperate so we can solve it since it seems that he also faces the same problem as me.

Thanks !

UEFI; no not likely a factor. But you may have a point, if the motherboard has a PCIe switch onboard, it may give you less headroom to use extenders. Extenders do not conform to the PCIe spec, it just exploits some headroom, but there might not be enough on complex boards with long traces or perhaps slightly more crappy PCIe controllers.

Please don't tell me that the Asus board which did not work with extenders is the P8P67 WS Revolution motherboard.

I just bought one hoping it will solve my extender problems. I pray that S works because I am trying since June 2011 to solve this extender problem.

4 cards plugged straight into the mobo works flawlessly. As soon as I use just 1 extender and the rest plugged in normally the whole thing does not work anymore and it is not xorg.conf or any other such BS ( Linux headless so not even SSH can solve my issues without any monitor ).

I'm no noob but this issue has been killing me ever since. The PSU ( AX1200 ) is just fine etc.

If you are having the same issue maybe let us cooperate so we can solve it and use extenders for better cooling and less fan noise / wear !

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that these new boards have UEFI and fancy chips like PLX PEX8608, NF200, Lucid Hydra and these chips add extra latency to the routing and the extenders also do that and the driver cuts off any cards that do not respond within a certain ms limit or something ? I have tried PCI latency timer but still the same BS. I really am desperate LOL. Is this your issue ?

I have an old Asus P5ND2-SLI motherboard which works flawlessly with the same extenders and is just perfect, old BIOS based and no nonsense crap chips like Lucid or PLX BS and it just works with 3 extenders and 1 plugged into the board directly and Linuxcoin never fails to start.

On the new UEFI rig I managed to get Linuxcoin / BAMT to start while using the cards with the extenders but it really is hit and miss. One time it works but the next 100 times it does not for some reason. I have dmesg logs if you need them etc. all using Linuxcoin / BAMT through SSH without any monitor etc.

Thanks !

Why? They are what they are - nonstandard gizmos.
I can't imagine how those two hair-thin wires are supposed to carry 75W of juice *scratches head*

Still, the extenders have seen... extensive use and in general solve more problems then they create.
My only advice is, purchase more than you actually need and sieve out the bad ones.

Exactly right guys, the extenders are killing me. I just whacked in 4 5870's on the asus p67 board and BANG, no issues. Even able to take a card in and out. WTF is wrong with extenders and why do they cause so many issues? It's killing us on my other rigs too. I've realized the cards do fine even in close quarters on the mobo as long as you blow some extra fans through them and screw the overclocks. Get what you can and just f'in leave it alone.

I do have those 5870's at 950/160 and they are fine. worst temp is 71c. These are stock 5870's from ben's outlet.

I do have one box with one card on an extender and its been fine. I'm going to move toward always putting the first card on the board in slot 1 and then a card in the last slot. Open cases of course, basically mobo trays nailed to boards or whatever and then maybe put one more card on an extender in slots 2 or 3 or 4.

I've also learned we are getting killed by trying to use two psu's. We have two rigs with 3 5970's connected to two seasonic x750 gold psu's connected with a lian li PSU connectors and those bitches fry pci extenders like they're going out of style, powered or not. Nevermind they are NEVER stable.

So I'm going to either unload the 750's or actually, probably cheaper to just buy one more motherboard, cheap ram and cheap cpu.  Just a shame to have boards like MSI 890FXA-GD70's with only two cards, but F it. We can mine for a while and then maybe to decide to screw with one rig at a time.

Sorry for the long post, but thanks for the help and this noob has learned his lesson. Don't get too fancy maxing shet out when you're just getting started even if you think you know hardware, because mining is its own animal.

I can build and overclock the S out of a gaming machine, but so what.

That. Right on, P4.

Sounds like you have too many potential sources of problems. If I were you, Id start by plugging in a single card, with no extender cable and see what happens. If that magically solves all problems, slowly build form there, by adding the cables and extra cards and see when the problem occurs.

yes that sometimes can be a problem..  linuxcoin should be shutdown gracefully. i have had problems when shutting down if files get corrupted. I then just replace the /live read write part of the stick and go again.

I know, maybe i need to switch over.

Now i'm having a hell of a time with an ASUS P8P67 WS motherboard and 4 5870's on extenders. they were doing great for days on an MSI 890FXA-GD70 until the damn lan port went up on me. I had those suckers at 950/160 cranking along. decided to mess with the rig to put two fans behind the gpu's for better cooling and here I am three days later with jack shet to show for it.
 
Also this damn asus board is freaking me out with the uefi bios i don't know which settings to do for the flash drive with linuxcoin, uefi boot or regular or what. I can get in with a fresh install, gpu's then hang. I try to reboot and then after linuxcoin graphic, black screen.

BAMT > LinuxCoin

also, could one of my issues with the autostart script be that when the miners get locked up or whatever, I use a power button to power down, basically forced power down instead of using the restart button?

Sure, no problem, as long as all the machines are on the same subnet (if you dont know what that is, then they are)

Yeah i don't use that amdoverdrivectrl thing since I started with cgminer. I've been hesitant to go ssh since it just seems I can't even get the basics working. I've also been using the older cgminer because when I first started these things, I was told to do that because of the older version of ubuntu /debian or whatever linuxcoin is built with.

First things first, I think I need to lower all my clocks and start there, let's face it, GPU's are going to get sick more often when they are overworked.

Also i just had a neck fusion and can't work for long periods, so that doesn't help. Thank you and I'll get to work on a few things and report back.

Will putty work if the windows computer I use is a laptop on wireless lan and the miners are wired?

I packed up the mobo on the rig with the lan not working and am going to RMA since I had a second mobo sitting here anyway. The board just pissed me off too much.

A few things.
I just glanced over that wiki, it uses AMDOverdriveCtrl  to set clocks. You dont need that, and shouldnt use that if you use cgminer.

Second remark, dont use keyboard/screen on the miners. There is no need. Assuming you have a network connection, there is this thing called SSH. I am assuming your main PC runs windows, if so just install putty:
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/

Use it to connect to the miners. Just enter the IP address and set connection type to SSH, and connect (save sessions for each of your machines so its easy to connect to them). You should get a shell, enter ÿour linuxcoin credentials (username="user" and password="live" by default. Note that you dont see anything while typing the password, thats normal).

Next thing you want to do is install a little utility called "screen". That allows you run cgminer over SSH, and close SSH and be able to reconnect to that same "screen" later.

To launch a miner now, just run


You can close SSH now if you want, and if later you want to reconnect to that screen, start the ssh session and run


I see you are using gcminer 2.0.7. its pretty old, you will want to download the latest version. If you need help with that, Ill talk you through it, but lets start by seeing if you manage the above.


As for the rig without lan, let me know what I asked in the other thread about the lights. To troubleshoot that one, we will need monitor and keyboard, unless youd have a spare network card that does work.

Yeah basically followed the linuxcoin headless install wiki to start. I wrote a mining bash script for cgminer to handle my pool, fan, engine and memory control. I also use the auto start script from the wiki, but I think I'm going to cut that out, because when the gpu's get sick, I hold down the power button to shut down and then restart it. sometimes the auto script works and I'm back in up in no time, most of the time it doesn't. So then i hook up a monitor, keyboard, and mouse and go for a restart and usually what happens is I get the graphical interface failed to load error message and it asks if I want to see the log, which means zero to me, so i click no and end up at a command prompt. I can then run my mining script, startminers.sh but only my cpu mines, but cgminer does start.

So i use that adapter command to try and reconfigure the gpu's, but they are never recognized again unless I just start over with a fresh install.

I run linuxcoin on a 16gb flash drive with a 2GB persistence file and yes I go into the live/image syslinux.cfg and delete everything except the persistent command lines and memory test in case I need it. Ma king for a default persistent install.

I guess my cards eventually shut down from heat, but the gpu temps are never above 70 on any of my cards. i have all 5970's and 5870's. I clock the 5870's at 950/300 and the 5970's at 820/410. Here is my standard mining script:
 
This is for my four 5870's on x16 extenders on an msi 890FXA-GD70
/usr/local/bin/startminers.sh
#!/bin/bash
sudo aticonfig –-od-enable
cd cgminer-2.0.7
./cgminer –o http://us.eclipsemc.com:8337 –u username –p password –I 9,9,9,9 --gpu-fan 85 --gpu-engine 950 --gpu-memclock 160

This has been my most stable rig. It ran great until my ethernet port shit the bed last night. Ran for over a week without issue. i just added two scythe ultra kaze behind the four cards to blow air through them.

I also have a rig with two 5970's in slot 1 and slot 5 on and MSI 890FXA-GD70 with fans blowing through the cards also from behind

Those have been at 820/410 with same script as above.

I also have a mongoloid rig with this set-up:

MSI 890FXA-gd70
3 5870's and one 5970. 5970 and one 5870 on extenders other two cards on board.

I use this script for that one.
./cgminer –o http://us.eclipsemc.com:8337 –u username –p password –I 9,9,9,9,9
gpu-fan 85 gpu-engine 950,950,820,820,950 gpu-memclock 410


Oh and all rigs use amd semprons and seasonic x1250 gold psus.

any help is greatly appreciated.

Have no stability issues with linuxcoin whatsoever. I just boot it of an USB stick in persistent mode and launch cgminer and it runs and runs and keeps running on both my rigs. Worst thats happened is the GPU crashing when I overclocked too far, all I have to do is restart cgminer- although I read if the first card crashes, you may need a reboot to cure it.  If I add more cards, I also do need to run aticonfig, and then reboot. Thats completely normal.

Anyway, I think you should find out and/or describe more in detail whats happening. Is it just the GPU crashing, is there a problem with the OS or stick perhaps? What do you mean its not starting, is the machine not booting or only the miner app not launching? What cards, miner etc do you use? What clocks on the cards.. You are running this in persistent mode, right?

It's f'in killing me at this point. seems I have to reload the entire OS every time one of my gpus overheats or goes dead or whatever the hell you call it. The whole xorg, graphical interface error comes up and I'm screwed. I've used the sudo aticonfig -f --initial --adapter=all line to try and reconfigure the gpus and it never works. l also use the auto start script from the headless wiki, but it seems if i just hold the shutdown button and restart it, it rarely restarts.

Is linuxcoin just buggy? or am i just too much of a noob to do it right? Does it need to be updated? i just can't understand why a system is so damn fickle. You move a gpu to try a new slot or add a card and you have to start all over again.

Is there a more stable way to do this? is following the linuxcoin wiki just out of date?

I'd greatly appreciate some advice on getting some stable rigs. The longest I've kept one stable is about a a week now and I am fairly certain I am not having heat issues.

Thanks in advance.