Topic: (OLD) BFGMiner: modular FPGA/GPU, GBT, Stratum, RPC, Avalon/Lnx/OpnWrt/PPA/W64 - page 3. (Read 260061 times)

Quote from: Luke-Jr on February 27, 2013, 11:30:32 PM

Made a BFGMiner 2.99.0 + experimental Avalon driver firmware image in case any Avalon users want to give it a try.

Be careful! If this (or anything else) bricks your Avalon's controller, you will need to attach a serial port to recover! I have no way to test this, so try it at your own risk. It should be possible to enable network recovery in U-Boot, but I cannot provide instructions for this yet. That being said, it is based very closely off the original Avalon firmware and driver code, so I don't expect any problems.

There is no web interface or init scripts for BFGMiner at this time, so you will need to use SSH to run it. It is, however, compiled with the usual Text-User-Interface (TUI) and include GNU "Screen".

Edit: OpenWrt trunk (r35828) config used to build this

tried it, bricks avalon. failsafe works. recovered to stock firmware.

I guess the wiki should be updated to warn people that bfgminer bricks their avalon ...
But then again, why would untested code even be listed on the bitcoin wiki ...

Oh right ... I forgot ... in this thread ...
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=78192.40

So everyone can expect this also with his BFL ASIC code also - written without testing ... expect it to brick your BFL ASIC also - so don't use it.

Luke-Jr

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Quote from: nathanrees19 on March 27, 2013, 07:02:31 PM

Quote from: Luke-Jr on February 27, 2013, 11:30:32 PM

I have no way to test this

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=buy+wr703n

WR703N != Avalon

Quote from: Luke-Jr on February 27, 2013, 11:30:32 PM

Made a BFGMiner 2.99.0 + experimental Avalon driver firmware image in case any Avalon users want to give it a try.

Be careful! If this (or anything else) bricks your Avalon's controller, you will need to attach a serial port to recover! I have no way to test this, so try it at your own risk. It should be possible to enable network recovery in U-Boot, but I cannot provide instructions for this yet. That being said, it is based very closely off the original Avalon firmware and driver code, so I don't expect any problems.

There is no web interface or init scripts for BFGMiner at this time, so you will need to use SSH to run it. It is, however, compiled with the usual Text-User-Interface (TUI) and include GNU "Screen".

Edit: OpenWrt trunk (r35828) config used to build this

tried it, bricks avalon. failsafe works. recovered to stock firmware.

Thanks for testing! Can you elaborate on specifically how it is bricked? Were you able to communicate with it at all?
Failsafe is actually using the firmware, so if that works it suggests some kind of config conflict..

nathanrees19

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Quote from: Luke-Jr on February 27, 2013, 11:30:32 PM

I have no way to test this

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=buy+wr703n

nathanrees19

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Quote from: Luke-Jr on February 27, 2013, 11:30:32 PM

Made a BFGMiner 2.99.0 + experimental Avalon driver firmware image in case any Avalon users want to give it a try.

Be careful! If this (or anything else) bricks your Avalon's controller, you will need to attach a serial port to recover! I have no way to test this, so try it at your own risk. It should be possible to enable network recovery in U-Boot, but I cannot provide instructions for this yet. That being said, it is based very closely off the original Avalon firmware and driver code, so I don't expect any problems.

There is no web interface or init scripts for BFGMiner at this time, so you will need to use SSH to run it. It is, however, compiled with the usual Text-User-Interface (TUI) and include GNU "Screen".

Edit: OpenWrt trunk (r35828) config used to build this

tried it, bricks avalon. failsafe works. recovered to stock firmware.

kano

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Linux since 1997 RedHat 4

Quote from: Luke-Jr on February 27, 2013, 11:30:32 PM

Made a BFGMiner 2.99.0 + experimental Avalon driver firmware image in case any Avalon users want to give it a try.

Be careful! If this (or anything else) bricks your Avalon's controller, you will need to attach a serial port to recover! I have no way to test this, so try it at your own risk. It should be possible to enable network recovery in U-Boot, but I cannot provide instructions for this yet. That being said, it is based very closely off the original Avalon firmware and driver code, so I don't expect any problems.

There is no web interface or init scripts for BFGMiner at this time, so you will need to use SSH to run it. It is, however, compiled with the usual Text-User-Interface (TUI) and include GNU "Screen".

Edit: OpenWrt trunk (r35828) config used to build this

tried it, bricks avalon. failsafe works. recovered to stock firmware.

I guess the wiki should be updated to warn people that bfgminer bricks their avalon ...
But then again, why would untested code even be listed on the bitcoin wiki ...

Aseras

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Quote from: Luke-Jr on February 27, 2013, 11:30:32 PM

Made a BFGMiner 2.99.0 + experimental Avalon driver firmware image in case any Avalon users want to give it a try.

Be careful! If this (or anything else) bricks your Avalon's controller, you will need to attach a serial port to recover! I have no way to test this, so try it at your own risk. It should be possible to enable network recovery in U-Boot, but I cannot provide instructions for this yet. That being said, it is based very closely off the original Avalon firmware and driver code, so I don't expect any problems.

There is no web interface or init scripts for BFGMiner at this time, so you will need to use SSH to run it. It is, however, compiled with the usual Text-User-Interface (TUI) and include GNU "Screen".

Edit: OpenWrt trunk (r35828) config used to build this

tried it, bricks avalon. failsafe works. recovered to stock firmware.

Luke-Jr

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Quote from: Aseras on March 26, 2013, 02:30:06 PM

Quote from: Luke-Jr on February 27, 2013, 11:30:32 PM

Made a BFGMiner 2.99.0 + experimental Avalon driver firmware image in case any Avalon users want to give it a try.

Be careful! If this (or anything else) bricks your Avalon's controller, you will need to attach a serial port to recover! I have no way to test this, so try it at your own risk. It should be possible to enable network recovery in U-Boot, but I cannot provide instructions for this yet. That being said, it is based very closely off the original Avalon firmware and driver code, so I don't expect any problems.

There is no web interface or init scripts for BFGMiner at this time, so you will need to use SSH to run it. It is, however, compiled with the usual Text-User-Interface (TUI) and include GNU "Screen".

Edit: OpenWrt trunk (r35828) config used to build this

Luke, is there any way to run this without reflashing the firmware?

Not quite so easily. Due to the ridiculously small amount of flash, you can't install packages.
midnightmagic was successful at extracting the binaries/libraries and putting them in tmpfs to run, but that will be lost on reboot.

Quote from: Aseras on March 26, 2013, 02:30:06 PM

Is there a change log ( for the avalon build ) of what makes this different or better than the cgminer build in NEXT?

Not sure what "NEXT" is.. the Avalon driver in BFGMiner is basically a clean merge of xiangfu's codebase, so the differences are mostly the usual between cg and BFG: many more bugs fixed, reliable/working GBT support, more updated FPGA drivers, etc
There isn't really any good summary of these differences, but I did start a wiki page comparison of mining software that people can contribute things to.

Note that bfgminer does not have a web interface on OpenWrt yet, so you would be giving that up for now.
On the other hand, the build includes GNU Screen and the ncurses interfaces.

Aseras

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Quote from: Luke-Jr on February 27, 2013, 11:30:32 PM

Made a BFGMiner 2.99.0 + experimental Avalon driver firmware image in case any Avalon users want to give it a try.

Be careful! If this (or anything else) bricks your Avalon's controller, you will need to attach a serial port to recover! I have no way to test this, so try it at your own risk. It should be possible to enable network recovery in U-Boot, but I cannot provide instructions for this yet. That being said, it is based very closely off the original Avalon firmware and driver code, so I don't expect any problems.

There is no web interface or init scripts for BFGMiner at this time, so you will need to use SSH to run it. It is, however, compiled with the usual Text-User-Interface (TUI) and include GNU "Screen".

Edit: OpenWrt trunk (r35828) config used to build this

Luke, is there any way to run this without reflashing the firmware?
Is there a change log ( for the avalon build ) of what makes this different or better than the cgminer build in NEXT?

Luke-Jr

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Quote from: mitty on March 26, 2013, 01:26:46 PM

Quote from: Luke-Jr on March 26, 2013, 01:14:08 PM

Quote from: mitty on March 26, 2013, 01:11:20 PM

Quote from: Luke-Jr on March 26, 2013, 01:14:08 PM

USB only supports/allows chaining hubs up to 5 deep. Often, your motherboard has at least one hub builtin (so 4 left). Most "USB hub" products with more than 3-4 ports are really just multiple 4 port hubs internally - so count as 2-3 each. On top of that, "USB hub" products are 99% garbage quality. Adding unreliable USB cables on top of that doesn't help either.

Thanks for the info. I tried using that 12 port hub on Amazon that has a ton of reviews and found it to work fine until I got rid of my x6500's and it immediately started disconnecting after ~10 minutes of running. It's too bad that USB hubs are so unreliable.. guess it's time for another mining host. :/ (unless there's some mythical high quality usb hub that can be chained)

Sadly, even if you find a model that works well, these manufs like to swap the internals out with no model number changes, so you can't be sure you're buying the same thing Sad

Edit: With that in mind, a Satechi UH-12P I bought used has been working fine, though it's not perfect (it's missing some desirable features).

I had bought that one and it ran my BFLs for 10 minutes then they all started timing out. I switched to different hubs and they seemed to work fine up until this new problem, so maybe I just got a defective one?

Pretty sure the guy I bought it from ran it full of X6500s. I have a wide variety of devices on it now, maybe half of which are miners.

Do you run Linux? It might be useful to post what lsusb -vv shows for yours and compare it to mine.

Oh I already returned it to amazon and got a refund, sorry. (I do run Linux on my miner but I'm at work right now either way)
I had 3 x6500's and 6 BFLs attached to the 12 port hub and it worked fine, but it started giving me problems as soon as I disconnected the x6500s which I thought was really strange. I might try buying 4 of those and attaching them all directly to my system so I can put up to 48 devices without buying another host though, if you seem to think they work fine.

X6500 is a lot more "chatty" on USB, so maybe it's some kind of problem with power savings (X6500s preventing that from being active).

My hub has:

Yubikey
ZTEX 1.15x
ModMiner
Icarus
BitForce Single (FPGA)
(empty)
X6500
(empty)
eZ430-Chronos-915 wireless programmer
Samsung ML-2510 laser printer
ZTEX 1.15y

As I mentioned, USB hub companies like to swap out the internals without changing model numbers, so there's basically no way to predict if you'd be buying the same hub I have.

mitty

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Quote from: mitty on March 26, 2013, 01:11:20 PM

Quote from: mitty on March 26, 2013, 01:11:20 PM

USB only supports/allows chaining hubs up to 5 deep. Often, your motherboard has at least one hub builtin (so 4 left). Most "USB hub" products with more than 3-4 ports are really just multiple 4 port hubs internally - so count as 2-3 each. On top of that, "USB hub" products are 99% garbage quality. Adding unreliable USB cables on top of that doesn't help either.

Thanks for the info. I tried using that 12 port hub on Amazon that has a ton of reviews and found it to work fine until I got rid of my x6500's and it immediately started disconnecting after ~10 minutes of running. It's too bad that USB hubs are so unreliable.. guess it's time for another mining host. :/ (unless there's some mythical high quality usb hub that can be chained)

Sadly, even if you find a model that works well, these manufs like to swap the internals out with no model number changes, so you can't be sure you're buying the same thing Sad

Edit: With that in mind, a Satechi UH-12P I bought used has been working fine, though it's not perfect (it's missing some desirable features).

I had bought that one and it ran my BFLs for 10 minutes then they all started timing out. I switched to different hubs and they seemed to work fine up until this new problem, so maybe I just got a defective one?

Pretty sure the guy I bought it from ran it full of X6500s. I have a wide variety of devices on it now, maybe half of which are miners.

Do you run Linux? It might be useful to post what lsusb -vv shows for yours and compare it to mine.

Oh I already returned it to amazon and got a refund, sorry. (I do run Linux on my miner but I'm at work right now either way)
I had 3 x6500's and 6 BFLs attached to the 12 port hub and it worked fine, but it started giving me problems as soon as I disconnected the x6500s which I thought was really strange. I might try buying 4 of those and attaching them all directly to my system so I can put up to 48 devices without buying another host though, if you seem to think they work fine.

Luke-Jr

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USB only supports/allows chaining hubs up to 5 deep. Often, your motherboard has at least one hub builtin (so 4 left). Most "USB hub" products with more than 3-4 ports are really just multiple 4 port hubs internally - so count as 2-3 each. On top of that, "USB hub" products are 99% garbage quality. Adding unreliable USB cables on top of that doesn't help either.

Thanks for the info. I tried using that 12 port hub on Amazon that has a ton of reviews and found it to work fine until I got rid of my x6500's and it immediately started disconnecting after ~10 minutes of running. It's too bad that USB hubs are so unreliable.. guess it's time for another mining host. :/ (unless there's some mythical high quality usb hub that can be chained)

Sadly, even if you find a model that works well, these manufs like to swap the internals out with no model number changes, so you can't be sure you're buying the same thing Sad

Edit: With that in mind, a Satechi UH-12P I bought used has been working fine, though it's not perfect (it's missing some desirable features).

I had bought that one and it ran my BFLs for 10 minutes then they all started timing out. I switched to different hubs and they seemed to work fine up until this new problem, so maybe I just got a defective one?

Pretty sure the guy I bought it from ran it full of X6500s. I have a wide variety of devices on it now, maybe half of which are miners.

Do you run Linux? It might be useful to post what lsusb -vv shows for yours and compare it to mine.

mitty

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Activity: 359

Merit: 250

USB only supports/allows chaining hubs up to 5 deep. Often, your motherboard has at least one hub builtin (so 4 left). Most "USB hub" products with more than 3-4 ports are really just multiple 4 port hubs internally - so count as 2-3 each. On top of that, "USB hub" products are 99% garbage quality. Adding unreliable USB cables on top of that doesn't help either.

Thanks for the info. I tried using that 12 port hub on Amazon that has a ton of reviews and found it to work fine until I got rid of my x6500's and it immediately started disconnecting after ~10 minutes of running. It's too bad that USB hubs are so unreliable.. guess it's time for another mining host. :/ (unless there's some mythical high quality usb hub that can be chained)

Sadly, even if you find a model that works well, these manufs like to swap the internals out with no model number changes, so you can't be sure you're buying the same thing Sad

Edit: With that in mind, a Satechi UH-12P I bought used has been working fine, though it's not perfect (it's missing some desirable features).

I had bought that one and it ran my BFLs for 10 minutes then they all started timing out. I switched to different hubs and they seemed to work fine up until this new problem, so maybe I just got a defective one?

Luke-Jr

legendary

Activity: 2576

Merit: 1186

USB only supports/allows chaining hubs up to 5 deep. Often, your motherboard has at least one hub builtin (so 4 left). Most "USB hub" products with more than 3-4 ports are really just multiple 4 port hubs internally - so count as 2-3 each. On top of that, "USB hub" products are 99% garbage quality. Adding unreliable USB cables on top of that doesn't help either.

Thanks for the info. I tried using that 12 port hub on Amazon that has a ton of reviews and found it to work fine until I got rid of my x6500's and it immediately started disconnecting after ~10 minutes of running. It's too bad that USB hubs are so unreliable.. guess it's time for another mining host. :/ (unless there's some mythical high quality usb hub that can be chained)

Sadly, even if you find a model that works well, these manufs like to swap the internals out with no model number changes, so you can't be sure you're buying the same thing Sad

Edit: With that in mind, a Satechi UH-12P I bought used has been working fine, though it's not perfect (it's missing some desirable features).

mitty

sr. member

Activity: 359

Merit: 250