seems bfgminer has an issue that if you choose a failover pool that mines a different coin then the main pool the whole thing stops working after awhile..
to combat this you need to add the tags --pool-goal default and --pool-goal failover to the command line..
like this
bfgminer -o http://pool1:port -u pool1username -p pool1password --pool-goal default -o http://pool2:port -u pool2usernmae -p pool2password --pool-goal failover
currently there is no way i can find to do this in minera
You are right. But in the meantime you could write all the options including pools in the options field and uncheck the use of json configuration if I remember well.