OFFICIAL CGMINER mining software thread for linux/win/osx/mips/arm/r-pi 4.11.0 - page 598.

kano

legendary

Activity: 4634

Merit: 1851

Linux since 1997 RedHat 4

Quote from: Inaba on April 20, 2012, 11:29:37 AM

You're right, I won't get very far. I'll refrain from posting suggestions in the future... I mean really, who wants suggestions on how to improve a program or solve a problem?

Again ... sigh ... it's spaced out and displayed that way coz that's what it was changed to when it was requested to be that way.
... also, why I suggested you request a 2nd display format, is coz the current is that way by request.

Luke-Jr

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Activity: 2576

Merit: 1186

Code:

 cgminer version 2.4.0 - Started: [2012-04-20 16:40:08] [1 hour ago]
 [P]ool management [D]evice management [S]ettings [Q]uit
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Block: …abdc040d7363549aecca1746 @ 17:00:26    Pool: Eligius
     HW:0     1769/1777  R:0.17%  E: 3.00  ST:1  GF: 0  RF: 0  NB: 3
 5850: 82.0C   308/ 310  R:0.15%       | 6870: 74.0C   275/ 276  R:0.17%
 BF S: 66.0C   823/ 825  R:0.30%       | Icar:         363/ 366  R:0.07%
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[2012-04-20 16:51:02] Accepted 2e1b3382/…baeac1c4 Radeon 5850
[2012-04-20 16:51:35] Accepted 36edf606/…15b1f2b6 BitForce Single
[2012-04-20 16:52:06] Accepted 6984daff/…bc3431e0 BitForce Single
[2012-04-20 16:53:51] Accepted 6aeb97ad/…788b5831 Icarus
[2012-04-20 16:54:39] Accepted 5863cba3/…8ca693d8 BitForce Single
[2012-04-20 16:54:41] Accepted e12c4c4f/…ceb3c76b BitForce Single
[2012-04-20 16:55:11] Accepted 9bda7e9c/…b9814a91 BitForce Single
[2012-04-20 16:55:55] Accepted d0adf8db/…d2423c69 Radeon 5850
[2012-04-20 16:55:56] Accepted 0a8978ab/…78f8dabd Radeon 6870
[2012-04-20 16:58:49] Accepted dae4c9ff/…e7e3e12d BitForce Single
[2012-04-20 16:59:27] Accepted 5a95e666/…51f6e5ec BitForce Single
[2012-04-20 16:59:58] Accepted 640dd886/…2f5edcd9 Icarus
[2012-04-20 17:00:26] LONGPOLL detected new block on network
[2012-04-20 16:59:58] Accepted 3549dffa/…786fd89d Icarus
[2012-04-20 16:59:59] Accepted f8fa89ac/…86f8dfaa Radeon 6870

kano

legendary

Activity: 4634

Merit: 1851

Linux since 1997 RedHat 4

Quote from: kano on April 20, 2012, 09:43:14 AM

...
Pull request is up for this.
https://github.com/ckolivas/cgminer/pulls

Quote

2) ability to delete pools over the API.
This has been discussed before, but its possible to do it in the CLI, it would be great if this were enabled over the API too; its one of the last things an alternate GUI using the API cant do.

Ill pledge 2.5 BTC for each feature if they make it into the mainline.[/i]

I don't like the idea of throwing away information ... when you delete a pool you lose all it's info.
Convince me otherwise why you think this is good or needed.
No I'm not asking for more BTC - I don't want more BTC - just a reason why it's not bad to throw away the pool stats for the pool you delete - and thus why you ever use more than 32 pools

OK, I read your PM.
It's in the pull request now also.

Inaba

legendary

Activity: 1260

Merit: 1000

You're right, I won't get very far. I'll refrain from posting suggestions in the future... I mean really, who wants suggestions on how to improve a program or solve a problem?

kano

legendary

Activity: 4634

Merit: 1851

Linux since 1997 RedHat 4

Quote from: Inaba on April 20, 2012, 09:08:32 AM

Are we somehow stuck in the current display format?

It's that way by request of paying customers.

Quote

Why not compact the display. Do away with the share submission lines, or compact it to one line or something. Who cares what the hash of the share being submitted is?

Many people do actually.

Quote

It's useful under limited circumstances, but it's really just fluff and not relevant.

In a standard 24 line terminal of cgminer, 5 of those lines are static lines that can be removed. Each line for GPU/BFL/ICA has lots of whitespace that can be compacted, possibly giving the ability to display 2 units per line instead of 1.

Line beginning with TQ completely irrelevant to immediate status information - can be moved to another screen. "Connected to..." line can be combined with the next Block line and/or moved to another screen for expanded display information.

That gives ~ 19 lines of display for unit status information, possibly combined into two lines, for a total of 38 units per miner... While that limit still sucks (A full rig box will get close to that limit), it's far more reasonable than 8.

Also - remove fractional Mh/s display ... just use whole numbers. You can definitely combine relevant information to two units per line with a little creative compacting.

Firstly, you wont get very far by saying how you want it different and your idea is better than how it has been for a long time as others have wanted it to be ...

Ask ckolivas how much BTC he wants to add a 2nd optional display format and you may get your wish ... unless he doesn't want to do it Tongue

kano

legendary

Activity: 4634

Merit: 1851

Linux since 1997 RedHat 4

Quote from: P4man on April 20, 2012, 01:07:19 AM

As a workaround, you could run several instances of cgminer, each managing 8 or whatever # devices works. You can define which devices each instance manages by using --device.

In the long run, I think its clear the GUI has to be separated from the miner, so ckolivas can concentrate doing what he does best, and any half competent dev can make a gui using the API. Of course then the API should work and not crash, its something I havent heard before, I hope someone looks in to that.

In that context, Id also like to bump my earlier feature request:

Got another feature request for the API. 2 in fact:

1) be able to read the worker name of a pool over the API
When using multiple workers for things like GPUmax, its currently impossible to distinguish between them. I can understand password being hidden, but the username is even visible on the screen, so why not expose at least the worker name over the API when calling the "pools" command ?

Pull request is up for this.
https://github.com/ckolivas/cgminer/pulls

Quote

2) ability to delete pools over the API.
This has been discussed before, but its possible to do it in the CLI, it would be great if this were enabled over the API too; its one of the last things an alternate GUI using the API cant do.

Ill pledge 2.5 BTC for each feature if they make it into the mainline.[/i]

I don't like the idea of throwing away information ... when you delete a pool you lose all it's info.
Convince me otherwise why you think this is good or needed.
No I'm not asking for more BTC - I don't want more BTC - just a reason why it's not bad to throw away the pool stats for the pool you delete - and thus why you ever use more than 32 pools

Inaba

legendary

Activity: 1260

Merit: 1000

Are we somehow stuck in the current display format? Why not compact the display. Do away with the share submission lines, or compact it to one line or something. Who cares what the hash of the share being submitted is? It's useful under limited circumstances, but it's really just fluff and not relevant.

In a standard 24 line terminal of cgminer, 5 of those lines are static lines that can be removed. Each line for GPU/BFL/ICA has lots of whitespace that can be compacted, possibly giving the ability to display 2 units per line instead of 1.

Line beginning with TQ completely irrelevant to immediate status information - can be moved to another screen. "Connected to..." line can be combined with the next Block line and/or moved to another screen for expanded display information.

That gives ~ 19 lines of display for unit status information, possibly combined into two lines, for a total of 38 units per miner... While that limit still sucks (A full rig box will get close to that limit), it's far more reasonable than 8.

Also - remove fractional Mh/s display ... just use whole numbers. You can definitely combine relevant information to two units per line with a little creative compacting.

-ck

legendary

Activity: 4088

Merit: 1631

Ruu \o/

Quote from: johnyj on April 20, 2012, 01:44:33 AM

For my 5xxx cards, I found out that 2.2.6 works best. Although 2.3.3 also works fine, the cursor jumps everywhere on the screen randomly

I did see performance drop when I switch to diablo kernel, don't know why

The diablo kernel is only for 2.6 SDK based installations. That said, the custom modified poclbm kernel I include is probably equally good, if not better, for 2.6 SDK based installations. However, 2.1/2.4/2.5 SDK installations will usually work best with the phatk kernel (which is chosen automatically anyway). As for why your cursor jumps all over the screen randomly, NFI.

johnyj

legendary

Activity: 1988

Merit: 1012

Beyond Imagination

For my 5xxx cards, I found out that 2.2.6 works best. Although 2.3.3 also works fine, the cursor jumps everywhere on the screen randomly

I did see performance drop when I switch to diablo kernel, don't know why

P4man

hero member

Activity: 518

Merit: 500

As a workaround, you could run several instances of cgminer, each managing 8 or whatever # devices works. You can define which devices each instance manages by using --device.

In the long run, I think its clear the GUI has to be separated from the miner, so ckolivas can concentrate doing what he does best, and any half competent dev can make a gui using the API. Of course then the API should work and not crash, its something I havent heard before, I hope someone looks in to that.

In that context, Id also like to bump my earlier feature request:

Got another feature request for the API. 2 in fact:

1) be able to read the worker name of a pool over the API
When using multiple workers for things like GPUmax, its currently impossible to distinguish between them. I can understand password being hidden, but the username is even visible on the screen, so why not expose at least the worker name over the API when calling the "pools" command ?

2) ability to delete pools over the API.
This has been discussed before, but its possible to do it in the CLI, it would be great if this were enabled over the API too; its one of the last things an alternate GUI using the API cant do.

Ill pledge 2.5 BTC for each feature if they make it into the mainline.

-ck

legendary

Activity: 4088

Merit: 1631

Ruu \o/

Reluctant to add another line for something so flaky, variable, unreliable, and just plain broken. Doesn't make sense. Alas curses just isn't flexible enough to cope with this sort of usage where it has some idea of being used on fixed terminals where resizing is a big deal. curses...

kano

legendary

Activity: 4634

Merit: 1851

Linux since 1997 RedHat 4

Quote from: -ck on April 19, 2012, 10:44:57 PM

Who was the moron who thought up 8? Me. 14 was the tipping point. Beyond 14 the display became corrupt. It is impossible to create "windows" off-screen with a curses display meaning that when I tried to make the window larger, it generated all sorts of annoying problems to do with trying to "resuscitate" the display when it's resized to a reasonable size. Now I'm quite sure you really could not care less about the reasons behind the annoying code problems that affect me. The reason I chose 8 was that I figured anyone with more than 8 devices is likely to at some stage get to 16, 20, whatever, and NOT be using GPUs, since most drivers are limited to 8 devices. Bad choice? Maybe, but there is another limit at 14 which will affect you at some stage even if you're okay at 12. So I can easily change it to 14 on the next release, but then you'll be burnt beyond that. When I created the curses interface for cgminer I never anticipated device numbers would be a limit. I CAN rewrite it entirely to make no upper limit but that would involve doing some annoying code rewrites.

I was thinking (well I've actually already done the change on my machine) to make it 8 by default (though 14 now since you said there is some issue above 14) and a parameter --max-status-lines that people can use and be damned of the consequences of their own choice if they resize the screen?

No idea if that is problematic or not - but if resizing the screen before starting cgminer works OK for more than 14 (and not changing it smaller later) then those with many FPGA's who still want to see all that info in a single terminal window can cause their own problems if they wish by using the --max-status-lines option?

(and adding the option is of course a simple code change)

Though, I guess, I can see that coming back in the future to bite you coz people will then say it doesn't work when they use that option and resize the screen to mess it up ...

jddebug

sr. member

Activity: 446

Merit: 250

Quote from: -ck on April 19, 2012, 10:44:57 PM

Who was the moron who thought up 8? Me. 14 was the tipping point. Beyond 14 the display became corrupt. It is impossible to create "windows" off-screen with a curses display meaning that when I tried to make the window larger, it generated all sorts of annoying problems to do with trying to "resuscitate" the display when it's resized to a reasonable size. Now I'm quite sure you really could not care less about the reasons behind the annoying code problems that affect me. The reason I chose 8 was that I figured anyone with more than 8 devices is likely to at some stage get to 16, 20, whatever, and NOT be using GPUs, since most drivers are limited to 8 devices. Bad choice? Maybe, but there is another limit at 14 which will affect you at some stage even if you're okay at 12. So I can easily change it to 14 on the next release, but then you'll be burnt beyond that. When I created the curses interface for cgminer I never anticipated device numbers would be a limit. I CAN rewrite it entirely to make no upper limit but that would involve doing some annoying code rewrites.

Thank you for the explanation. Having the 14 would be a great option if you would add it next time around it would definitely help.

-ck

legendary

Activity: 4088

Merit: 1631

Ruu \o/

Who was the moron who thought up 8? Me. 14 was the tipping point. Beyond 14 the display became corrupt. It is impossible to create "windows" off-screen with a curses display meaning that when I tried to make the window larger, it generated all sorts of annoying problems to do with trying to "resuscitate" the display when it's resized to a reasonable size. Now I'm quite sure you really could not care less about the reasons behind the annoying code problems that affect me. The reason I chose 8 was that I figured anyone with more than 8 devices is likely to at some stage get to 16, 20, whatever, and NOT be using GPUs, since most drivers are limited to 8 devices. Bad choice? Maybe, but there is another limit at 14 which will affect you at some stage even if you're okay at 12. So I can easily change it to 14 on the next release, but then you'll be burnt beyond that. When I created the curses interface for cgminer I never anticipated device numbers would be a limit. I CAN rewrite it entirely to make no upper limit but that would involve doing some annoying code rewrites.

jddebug

sr. member

Activity: 446

Merit: 250

Quote from: Inaba on April 19, 2012, 09:45:08 PM

Ok, so I haven't been following the cgminer thread... but I stopped in here because of this horrible commit that removes the display of more than 8 devices. This basically makes cgminer useless for large farms. I was just getting to the point where I was digging cgminer and getting comfortable with it, so I cranked it up on one of my larger boxes and low and behold it becomes a useless brick.

Ugh. I can't really fathom how the thought process went in removing this. Why would you want to remove literally the most important information from cgminer? Every other bit of information cgminer provides is less relevant than the current hashrate and temps of the units that are connected. You can literally take every single other piece of information and do away with it and cgminer will retain value. However, removing that information makes cgminer less functional than every other mining program out there. So... what was the thought process behind that?

+1

I too wish to know why it is limited to 8, why not 6 or 12 or 30? Why not allow as many as one wants and if it gets to be to many, that individual could decide to run more instances or something.

I've had to revert to 2.3.1-2 so I can at least see my individual hash rates.

Inaba

legendary

Activity: 1260

Merit: 1000

Ok, so I haven't been following the cgminer thread... but I stopped in here because of this horrible commit that removes the display of more than 8 devices. This basically makes cgminer useless for large farms. I was just getting to the point where I was digging cgminer and getting comfortable with it, so I cranked it up on one of my larger boxes and low and behold it becomes a useless brick.

Ugh. I can't really fathom how the thought process went in removing this. Why would you want to remove literally the most important information from cgminer? Every other bit of information cgminer provides is less relevant than the current hashrate and temps of the units that are connected. You can literally take every single other piece of information and do away with it and cgminer will retain value. However, removing that information makes cgminer less functional than every other mining program out there. So... what was the thought process behind that?

Before someone mentions the API for a different front end, the API does not work on all machines. I have 3 machines in my farm that, if the api is enabled, will crash the machine. Disabling the API is the only thing that will allow cgminer to run on those machines. The API is not the solution.

-ck

legendary

Activity: 4088

Merit: 1631

Ruu \o/

Quote from: Luke-Jr on April 19, 2012, 06:07:46 PM

No, there was no objection to this fix. You're thinking of something else, where Kano admitted his objection was unreasonable.

The land of the pedants, this be, where I must be proven wrong. What a fun game. This is starting to feel like the linux kernel mailing list and I will start ignoring people if it continues. Yes there were 3 different code issues in question. One was the PGA display thing, one was the hidden CPU mining bugs, and one was to make cgminer's display work with more than 14 devices. I refused all of them. Your debate was over the first. My issue is you muddied the water and somehow made this discussion about me being a tyrant and not accepting obvious fixes. The display thing was pretty much unrelated. Stretch this out any further, and I'll ignore you.

Luke-Jr

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Activity: 2576

Merit: 1186

Quote from: -ck on April 19, 2012, 05:58:20 PM

Quote from: Luke-Jr on April 17, 2012, 10:55:19 PM

By the way, another example to demonstrate multiple points that have come up tonight...

Gigavps recently came in the #CGMiner channel to report a bug about the "semi-graphical" command line display malfunctioning with more than 16 devices - he had just turned on a total of 17+ FPGAs.

How did I confirm this bug? Not with 17 FPGAs - can't expect every developer to have that kind of equipment handy for testing - but by using CPUmining to generate 17 CPU threads. So yet another thing CPUmining helps test is CGMiner's basic frameworks themselves.

Unfortunately, ckolivas expressed that he would refuse to merge a fix for this issue even if I wrote it. Pretty much defeats the point. (Though I did still offer to debug and write the fix for Gigavps, at a reasonable per-hour cost; I can't blame him for declining, considering it wouldn't get merged)

P.S. Kanoi, thanks for digging out the logs which show you alone agreed to abide by your poll, but #CGMiner is a private channel and posting logs publicly is technically forbidden.

Yes, I'm a real bad guy, I don't accept code, and I keep the cgminer channel private. Playing on words makes this whole discussion look ridiculous. There is no rule about posting IRC logs publicly. It is not even remotely a private channel, and I happily accept code when it's good, useful, and not controversial. The code in question, Kano had a reasonable objection to in an area that affected him and his code, and I don't have an opinion regarding it, so I wasn't going to make the decision (unlike other times). I don't care how you spin this, but unless you and Kano can agree on it, I will continue to refuse to accept it.

No, there was no objection to this fix. You're thinking of something else, where Kano admitted his objection was unreasonable.

-ck

legendary

Activity: 4088

Merit: 1631

Ruu \o/

Quote from: Luke-Jr on April 17, 2012, 10:55:19 PM

By the way, another example to demonstrate multiple points that have come up tonight...

Gigavps recently came in the #CGMiner channel to report a bug about the "semi-graphical" command line display malfunctioning with more than 16 devices - he had just turned on a total of 17+ FPGAs.

How did I confirm this bug? Not with 17 FPGAs - can't expect every developer to have that kind of equipment handy for testing - but by using CPUmining to generate 17 CPU threads. So yet another thing CPUmining helps test is CGMiner's basic frameworks themselves.

Unfortunately, ckolivas expressed that he would refuse to merge a fix for this issue even if I wrote it. Pretty much defeats the point. (Though I did still offer to debug and write the fix for Gigavps, at a reasonable per-hour cost; I can't blame him for declining, considering it wouldn't get merged)

P.S. Kanoi, thanks for digging out the logs which show you alone agreed to abide by your poll, but #CGMiner is a private channel and posting logs publicly is technically forbidden.

Yes, I'm a real bad guy, I don't accept code, and I keep the cgminer channel private. Playing on words makes this whole discussion look ridiculous. There is no rule about posting IRC logs publicly. It is not even remotely a private channel, and I happily accept code when it's good, useful, and not controversial. The code in question, Kano had a reasonable objection to in an area that affected him and his code, and I don't have an opinion regarding it, so I wasn't going to make the decision (unlike other times). I don't care how you spin this, but unless you and Kano can agree on it, I will continue to refuse to accept it.

-ck

legendary

Activity: 4088

Merit: 1631

Ruu \o/

Quote from: greatwolf on April 19, 2012, 09:24:34 AM

I just downloaded cgminer 2.3.3 and I thought I'd give it a try. My initial impressions of it is that it's rather buggy and general usage is complicated by the long list of options displayed from cgminer --help.

Other miners I've used like phoenix and ufa-soft miner do not exhibit such problems and they work as expected. On the other hand, I can't even get a proper benchmark read out from cgminer. A search on this thread shows someone else with nvidia hardware encountering similar problems and difficulty though they were using an earlier version 2.2.3. Apparently the latest cgminer build hasn't address these problems yet.

You can't have your cake and eat it too. You either have lots of power and lots of features and with that, ways to set up and use all those features. It doesn't look like you ever actually managed to get it working at all and blaming the software is a great way to sort out the problem. At the very least start the program with -D --verbose -T and then give us the output, the way the documentation in the readme says when you have a problem. Didn't read the readme? Of course not, it's too long. Why is it too long? Because cgminer has 100 times as many features as other miners so the documentation needs to be extensive. It's a catch 22. cgminer is extensive machinery, it is NOT a fancy gui app. For that, use guiminer.

Topic: OFFICIAL CGMINER mining software thread for linux/win/osx/mips/arm/r-pi 4.11.0 - page 598. (Read 5806103 times)