Topic: PhoenixMiner 6.2c: fastest Ethereum/Ethash miner with lowest devfee (Win/Linux) - page 499. (Read 784950 times)

https://www.virustotal.com/#/file/23b6ffd3d67980bce45ef7196fed7349c5e6c0a2b1f3fe5b2182aa58f1ebbd21/detection

Very suspicious adware/malware trojan

Well, I'm not sure I qualify as "security expert" but I certainly am a "full-time security paranoic"  And as no one else seem to risk it, I downloaded and tested the miner as well as I could.

First, I used an online virus scanner to check the file.
The results are: 2/67 detected (https://www.virustotal.com/#/file/74cfd6a34e158c2f5fe1b8422d6b8daee304394eeaf85992b117bf5de315d569/detection), which is actually an excellent result, given that the Claymore's miner gives 41/68 positives (https://www.virustotal.com/#/file/7852c50c835d7110ab8d055cccad06674e94d85324414f91366852bed9be29cc/detection).

And even the open-source ethminer 0.12.0 gives 26/67 positives, which is ridiculous (https://www.virustotal.com/#/file/4aa1082b5581540eced3acb18ee52cd06ee062772a5d386cf7501b2a8b7af094/detection) 

So, I prepared a backup image of the SSD of my rig (in case that this new miner turn out to be malicious) and then ran it for about 18 hours while monitoring the PhoenixMiner.exe network, file system, and registry activity with Wireshark and some advanced system calls monitors. It connected to my mining pool as it should and then opened port 3333, which turned out to be the port for remote control similar to Claymore's miner. I disabled to remote port with the "-cdm 0" commnad-line switch and restarted the miner. Sure enough, this time port 3333 wasn't opened and the only connection was the one to my pool.

The first new connection was observed after 16 minutes of mining, which connected to another pool (ehtermine.org) and the miner showed that it was mining for developer fee. It disconnected after 35 seconds as advertised. After that I left the rig alone and analyzed the Wireshark and the other logs the next day.

The miner connected to the devfee pool every 90 minutes, with one exception when it wasn't able to connect to the ehtermine.org. It then tried again after 13 minutes and then resumed the normal 90 minutes period between devfee connections. No other network activity was recorded. The registry activity was also normal (no keys were created and no suspicious registry key reading was detected). Also, no files outside the current folder were opened or touched.

As for the mining speed, my rig has 6x ASUS Strix 570 OC (with BIOS mod) and under Claymore's miner it makes about 173 mhs. With Phoenix the speed was about 174.5 mhs, which is not much better but I guess is still something. The power consumption from the wall was about the same (755-765W). According the the pool, the speed was even better (169 vs 166 with claymore) but this doesn't mean much as I've seen this numbers change a lot without any apparent reason, so it would take some more time before declaring PhoenixMiner to be faster.

Of course, there is no guarantee that the PhoenixMiner won't "decide to go bad" at some point of the future, but right now it seems legit. 

Some suggestions for the devs: the share difficulty is a nice touch but it would be better to directly show the number of blocks found. Most pools doesn't report this and even when they do, I'm always suspicions. Also, your miner does seem to be compatible with Claymore's manager, which is nice, but I hope that you will produce a better manager (and maybe even a mobile app for Android), because the claymore's manager is rather simplistic and I miss a lot of features.

Yes you are correct the difficulty is the most important if i am trying to solve a block.... and i am glad that your miner has it shown, Nobody could convince claymore to print it. (also i took "-log 2", nice!! you had it!).

And for a side note i tested finally your miner on my 1080Ti card and it is indeed a little bit faster than Claymore at same setting .....giving 35.3 MH/s.... plus your's devfee is less.

We can guarantee that the file is clean but there may be some anti-virus programs that doesn't like it. We have tried all the major ones and they do not find anything. The .exe is not packed but it contains some code to detect if debugger or profiler is attached to try and debug and reverse it. In such case PhoenixMiner just exits.


Unfortunately we don't know why this is happening so there is no easy way to fix it. It shouldn't be the CUDA toolkit as it is installed on all of our development machines and it doesn't interfere with PhoenixMiner.


As you can see on the screenshot from the first post  (you can also see it here: ), we print the difficulty to each found share and also the maximum difficulty of any found share. The nonce itself can be seen in the log file but it is not very interesting as what it matters is the difficulty of the found share. If it is bigger than the current difficulty of the coin that you mine, you have found a block! For example for Pirl the current difficulty is about 9.8 TH and the screenshot shows that the maximum difficulty of found share is 14.3 TH, so at least one block as found in the current mining session.

We need some security experts with good level of trust to dig in and verify this otherwise the developers could always come back and say "hey it is safe, the antivirus is paranoid"

very instersting... but i will lurk and watch people testing it and make sure this program is safe then i will try and i will support you.
thanks anyway for the great job!

After download, the antivirus show file has virus....

I know Quadro cards are not suitable for mining but i can run ccminer almost all algo and siaminer in it with no issue. However i have not yet run any Ethash based miner. I thought your's would be the first .... but no luck.

Regarding debugger, i don't have any on it. I do have CUDA 8 Toolkit which i use with compute 3.0 and drivers version is 377.48.
Anyway ... see if it is something very easy to spot and correct for you.......... otherwise you can safely ignore....

Do have any plan to show the found Nonce in your miner.

We can guarantee that the executables are 100% clean. We even decided to avoid packing the executable to allow better inspection by the anti-virus programs. Still, there is always some chance that an over-aggressive anti-virus program will give you a false positive but you can safely ignore it. As an additional precaution you can check if the .zip archive you have downloaded has the right checksum (the checksums are listed in text file PhoenixMiner_2.1_checksums.txt, which is in the MEGA folder from the first post in this thread).

Point taken Still, we thought that our time is best spent trying to improve the mining performance instead of trying to come up with a cool name

While 1% or so may seem too little to matter, the hard truth about mining is that you have to pay your electricity bill and the amortization costs of the hardware, so the real ROI is often less than 20% per year. In this context 1% is quite welcome. Of course, if you keep your earnings in crypto and hope that it will go up, it may be a lot more than that but this is a risk that a lot of miners can't or won't take.


This means that anti-dubugger code is kicking in. Probably you have some kind of CUDA profiler or debugger running and PhoenixMiner is terminating to avoid reverse engineering. At any rate we haven't tested Quadro cards (and their drivers) as they are not very often used for mining.

PhoenixMiner team

dude! look at top section of the report! it clearly says .bat with size of 615B ! Read the report details

file .exe

You thought many hours for the name of the miner?

you mean the .bat file is clean as water?!

https://www.virustotal.com/#/file/c0f6ff3dc366de7c4a908fcfcd7d0482352ceee9f6add1a272c1afa6f6358a7f/detection



the program is as clean as water

first of all claymore would be even now to lower his devfee, especially on the miner 12.6 equiash, which still the devfee is high, and lasts 90 seconds.
in my opinion it is right that there is a lot of competition, if the miner of this boy is faster than only 1% compared to claymore or other miners, considering the devfee 0.65% and more gain for us miners.
the question is: and clean this miner? are we sure that it does not hide anything illegal to steal coins and empty the customer wallets?
for the rest if it is clean and deserves, well come.

Great that there developers out there trying to build a competition to profit both developers and users. In my personal opinion, having a roughly 1% higher hash rate (which you are not sure nor promote strongly) and offering 0.3% lower rate won't attract many users.
Claymore has gained so much popularity and credit which won't let the users bother trying a new miner program, unless it is way faster, better, feature-rich.

There are so many obstacles for your miner program to enter the competition, like trust, benefit, speed, stability, feature, and ...

I tried your miner ..... using my Quadro K2100M..... with 2GB VRAM and 3CU
but it says.........

NVML library initialized
FATAL ERROR: Debugger detected

Why is that ??

Hello!

  Sorry for the missing info:

  1. Screenshot from mining rig with 5 GPUs (2 AMD RX480, 2 AMD RX570 and 1 GTX1070 - note that the cards are optimized for power consumption on this rig because here the electricity is rather expensive):

    

  2. The speed is generally slightly faster than Claymore's Ethereum miner in eth only mode (we have measured about 0.4-1.3% speed improvement but your results may be slightly lower or higher depending on the GPUs). To achieve highest possible speed on AMD cards it may be needed to manually adjust the GPU tune factor (a number from 8 to about 400, which can be changed interactively with the + and - keys while the miner is running). Of course, you don't have to believe us, and should check for yourself.

  3. It is mentioned in the first post that the miner supports all modern AMD and Nvidia cards like AMD RX480/470/580/570, Vega, RX460/560, and Nvidia GTX9x0 and GTX10x0. Older AMD and Nvidia cards are also supported if they have at least 2 GB VRAM (for coins other than ETH and ETC) or 4 GB VRAM (for all coins).


   Unfortunately, the miner is not for sale, it is free to use with the devfee of 0.65%, which we think is very reasonable.

  PhoenixMiner team

hello, the most important information is missing,
1) screenshot
2) speed
3) AMD support, nvidia?

 

IMPORTANT! If you get "certificate verify failed" errors on SSL connections (especially to eu1.ethermine.org), you must upgrade to PhoenixMiner 6.1b or later. The problem was caused by expired root certificate.

IMPORTANT! You can find the latest version of PhoenixMiner (as well as older releases and beta versions) here:

    https://phoenixminer.info/downloads/

Changes in version 6.2c (since 6.1b):

• Using the newer AMD RX470/480/570/580 kernels even on older drivers (Windows driver 19.2.1, or newer; and Linux driver 19.10, or newer). If you want to revert to the older kernels on these drivers, use the new command line parameter -clabi 1
• Added a workaround for the SSL pools with self-signed or expired SSL certificate: you can use the new command-line parameter -weakssl (for the pool specified by -pool), or -weakssl2 (for the pool specified by -pool2), or the new WEAKSSL: 1 option for the pools in epools.txt.
  Note that this option must be specified independently for each pool: if you use -weakssl on the command line (or in config.txt), it won't affect the pools specified in epools.txt. Instead you need to add WEAKSSL: 1 for each desired pool in epools.txt
• Fixed a crash with Nvidia cards on some older drivers (e.g. 460.79, and 460.89). If PhoenixMiner crashes or exits while showing Initializing NVML... try the new command line parameter -nvmalt
• Validated support for AMD Windows drivers 22.4.2
• Other small fixes

Known issues (driver incompatibilities, etc.) and workarounds:

• The new Nvidia 3050 and 3080 12GB cards have different kind of LHR lock, which is not supported yet by PhoenixMiner.
• When mining with LHR cards, the hashrate will start lower and will go up to its normal value in about 2-4 minutes (similar to the auto-tune process on AMD cards).
• AMD Linux driver 21.40.1 has a bug preventing proper setting of clocks and voltages on older cards (RX4x0/RX5x0/Vega/RadeonVII). Given that these drivers are also usually slower than the older drivers for these cards, we recommend using Linux drivers 20.30 for anything older than RX6000 series.
• If you are using Linux drivers 21.40.1 with Radeon VII cards, you need to add the option -fpwm 1 in order to have proper fan control.
• AMD Linux drivers 21.40.1 has finally removed the requirement of PCIe atomics but there are problems when you try to mix Polaris (RX4x0/5x0) cards and Vega or newer cards on the same rig.
• Some Nvidia cards will report a lot of stale shares under Windows 11. Using the same driver version under Windows 10 resolves the issue.

PhoenixMiner is fast (arguably the fastest) Ethash (ETH, ETC, UBQ, etc.) miner that supports both
AMD and Nvidia cards (including in mixed mining rigs). It runs under Windows x64 and Linux x64
and has a developer fee of 0.65% (the lowest in the industry). This means that every 90
minutes the miner will mine for us, its developers, for 35 seconds.

PhoenixMiner also supports ETCHash for mining ETC, Ubqhash for mining UBQ, ProgPOW for mining BCI, and dual mining
Ethash/Ubqhash with Blake2s.

The speed is generally faster than Claymore's Ethereum miner in eth only mode
(we have measured about 0.4-1.3% speed improvement but your results may be slightly lower or
higher depending on the GPUs). To achieve highest possible speed on AMD cards it may be needed
to manually adjust the GPU tune factor (a number from 8 to about 400, which can be changed
interactively with the + and - keys while the miner is running).

If you have used Claymore's Dual Ethereum miner, you can switch to PhoenixMiner with
minimal hassle as we support most of Claymore's command-line options and confirguration
files.

Crypto Mining Monitor and Management Software: https://minerstat.com/
Easy Plug&Play OS Linux with our miner: https://SimpleMining.net
Complete solution to manage and monitor mining operations of ASIC, GPU and CPU miners: https://www.awesomeminer.com/

Please note that PhoenixMiner is extensively tested on many mining rigs but there still may be some bugs.
Additionally, we are actively working on bringing many new features in the future releases.
If you encounter any problems or have feature requests, please post them here (in this thread).
We will do our best to answer in timely fashion.

Screenshot:


1. Quick start

You can download PhoenixMiner 6.2c from here:

   PhoenixMiner_6.2c_Windows.zip
   PhoenixMiner_6.2c_Linux.tar.gz

If you want to check the integrity of the downloaded file, please use the following hashes (you need the last file PhoenixMiner_NVRTC_Windows.zip only if you want to mine BCI with Nvdia cards under Windows):

For more robust integrity check, you can use our GPG public key, which was verifyed with ETH transaction from our main devfee account as explained here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.56755869. Here are the signatures for the files in this release:

• PhoenixMiner_6.2c_Windows.zip.asc
• PhoenixMiner_6.2c_Linux.tar.gz.asc
• PhoenixMiner_NVRTC_Windows.zip.asc

Here are the command line parameters for some of the more popular pools and coins:

ethermine.org (ETH):
  PhoenixMiner.exe -pool eu1.ethermine.org:4444 -pool2 us1.ethermine.org:4444 -wal YourEthWalletAddress.WorkerName -proto 3
ethermine.org (ETH, secure connection):
  PhoenixMiner.exe -pool ssl://eu1.ethermine.org:5555 -pool2 ssl://us1.ethermine.org:5555 -wal YourEthWalletAddress.WorkerName -proto 3
nanopool.org (ETH):
  PhoenixMiner.exe -pool eth-eu1.nanopool.org:9999 -wal YourEthWalletAddress/WorkerName -pass x
nicehash (ethash):
  PhoenixMiner.exe -pool stratum+tcp://daggerhashimoto.eu.nicehash.com:3353 -wal YourBtcWalletAddress -pass x -proto 4 -stales 0
f2pool (ETH):
  PhoenixMiner.exe -epool eth.f2pool.com:8008 -ewal YourEthWalletAddress -pass x -worker WorkerName  
miningpoolhub (ETH):
  PhoenixMiner.exe -pool us-east.ethash-hub.miningpoolhub.com:20535 -wal YourLoginName.WorkerName -pass x -proto 1
coinotron.com (ETH):
  PhoenixMiner.exe -pool coinotron.com:3344 -wal YourLoginName.WorkerName -pass x -proto 1
ethermine.org (ETC):
  PhoenixMiner.exe -pool eu1-etc.ethermine.org:4444 -wal YourEtcWalletAddress.WorkerName -coin etc
nanopool (ETC):
  PhoenixMiner.exe -pool etc-eu1.nanopool.org:19999 -wal YourEtcWalletAddress.WorkerName -coin etc
whalesburg.com (ethash auto-switching):
  PhoenixMiner.exe -pool proxy.pool.whalesburg.com:8082 -wal YourEthWalletAddress -worker WorkerName -proto 2
dwarfpool.com (EXP):
  PhoenixMiner.exe -pool exp-eu.dwarfpool.com:8018 -wal YourExpWalletAddress/WorkerName
miningpoolhub (MUSIC):
  PhoenixMiner.exe -pool europe.ethash-hub.miningpoolhub.com:20585 -wal YourLoginName.WorkerName -pass x -proto 1
maxhash.org (UBIQ):
  PhoenixMiner.exe -pool ubiq-us.maxhash.org:10008 -wal YourUbqWalletAddress -worker WorkerName -coin ubq
ubiq.minerpool.net (UBIQ):
  PhoenixMiner.exe -pool lb.geo.ubiqpool.org:8001 -wal YourUbqWalletAddress -pass x -worker WorkerName -coin ubq
ubiqpool.io (UBIQ):
  PhoenixMiner.exe -pool eu2.ubiqpool.io:8008 -wal YourUbqWalletAddress.WorkerName -pass x -proto 4 -coin ubq
minerpool.net (PIRL):
  PhoenixMiner.exe -pool pirl.minerpool.net:8002 -wal YourPirlWalletAddress -pass x -worker WorkerName
dodopool.com (Metaverse ETP):
  PhoenixMiner.exe -pool etp.dodopool.com:8008 -wal YourMetaverseETPWalletAddress -worker Rig1 -pass x
minerpool.net (Ellaism):
  PhoenixMiner.exe -pool ella.minerpool.net:8002 -wal YourEllaismWalletAddress -worker Rig1 -pass x
etherdig.net (ETH PPS):
  PhoenixMiner.exe -pool etherdig.net:4444 -wal YourEthWalletAddress.WorkerName -proto 4 -pass x
etherdig.net (ETH HVPPS):
  PhoenixMiner.exe -pool etherdig.net:3333 -wal YourEthWalletAddress.WorkerName -proto 4 -pass x
epool.io (CLO):
  PhoenixMiner.exe -pool eu.clo.epool.io:8008 -pool2 us.clo.epool.io:8008 -worker WorkerName -wal YourEthWalletAddress -pass x -coin clo -retrydelay 2
baikalmine.com (CLO):
  PhoenixMiner.exe -pool clo.baikalmine.com:3333 -wal YourEthWalletAddress -pass x -coin clo -worker rigName


  
Dual-mining command-line examples:

ETH on ethermine.org ETH, Blake2s on Nicehash:
  PhoenixMiner.exe -pool ssl://eu1.ethermine.org:5555 -pool2 ssl://us1.ethermine.org:5555 -wal YourEthWalletAddress.WorkerName -proto 3 -dpool blake2s.eu.nicehash.com:3361 -dwal YourBtcWalletAddress -dcoin blake2s
Nicehash (Ethash + Blake2s):
  PhoenixMiner.exe -pool stratum+tcp://daggerhashimoto.eu.nicehash.com:3353 -wal YourBtcWalletAddress -pass x -proto 4 -stales 0 -dpool blake2s.eu.nicehash.com:3361 -dwal YourBtcWalletAddress -dcoin blake2s

ProgPOW command-line examples:
BCI on BCI-Server:
  PhoenixMiner.exe -pool eu-1.pool.bci-server.com:3869 -wal YourBciWalletAddress.Rig1 -coin bci -proto 1

2. Features, requirements, and limitations

• Supports AMD RX6700, RX6800, RX6900, RX5500, RX5600, RX5700, Radeon VII, Vega, 590/580/570/480/470, 460/560, Fury, 390/290 and older AMD GPUs with enough VRAM
• Supports Nvidia 30x0, 20x0, 16x0, 10x0 and 9x0 series as well as older cards with enough VRAM
• Partial unlocking of Nvidia LHR cards (except 3050 and 3080 12GB)
• Highly optimized OpenCL and CUDA cores for maximum ethash mining speed
• Optional "green" kernels for RX580/570/560/480/470/460 to lower the power consumption by 2-3% with small, or no drop in hashrate
• Lowest developer fee of 0.65% (35 seconds defvee mining per each 90 minutes)
• Dual mining ethash/Blake2s with lowest devfee of 0.9% (35 seconds defvee mining per each 65 minutes)
• Advanced statistics: actual difficulty of each share, effective hashrate at the pool, and optional showing of estimated income in USD
• DAG file generation in the GPU for faster start-up and DAG epoch switches
• Supports all ethash mining pools and stratum protocols
• Supports secure pool connections (e.g. ssl://eu1.ethermine.org:5555) to prevent IP hijacking attacks
• Detailed statistics, including the individual cards hashrate, shares, temperature, fan speed, clocks, voltages, etc.
• Unlimited number of fail-over pools in epools.txt configuration file (or two on the command line)
• Automatic GPU tuning for the AMD GPUs to achieve maximum performance with your rig
• Supports devfee on alternative ethash currencies like ETC, EXP, Music, UBQ, Pirl, Ellaism, Metaverse ETP, PGC, Akroma, WhaleCoin, Victorium, Nekonium, Mix, EtherGem, Aura, HBC, Genom, EtherZero, Callisto, DubaiCoin, MOAC, Ether-1, and EtherCC. This allows you to use older cards with small VRAM or low hashate on current DAG epochs (e.g. GTX970).
• Full compatibility with the industry standard Claymore's Dual Ethereum miner, including most of command-line options, configuration files, and remote monitoring and management.
• Supports the new Ubqhash algorithm for the UBQ coin. Please note that you must add -coin ubq to your command line (or COIN: ubq to your epools.txt file) in order to mine UBQ
• Supports the ProgPOW algorithm for the Bitcoin Interest (BCI) coin mining. Please note that you must add -coin bci to your command line (or COIN: bci to your epools.txt file) in order to mine BCI
• Supports the ProgPOW algorithm for mining BCI.
• More features coming soon!

PhoenixMiner requires Windows x64 (Windows 7, Windows 10, etc.), or Linux x64 (tested on Ubuntu LTS
and Debian stable).

PhoenixMiner also supports dual mining (simultaneous mining of ethash/ubqhash and other cryptocoin algorithm).
Currently we support only Blake2s as secondary algorithm for dual mining. Note that when using dual mining,
there is no devfee on the secondary coin but the devfee on the main coin is increased to 0.9%. In other words,
if you are using the dual mining feature PhoenixMiner will mine for us for 35 seconds every 65 minutes.

Solo mining is supported since version 2.7c.

While the miner is running, you can use some interactive commands. Press the key 'h' while the
miner's console window has the keyboard focus to see the list of the available commands. The
interactive commands are also listed at the end of the following section.

3. Command-line arguments

Note that PhoenixMiner supports most of the command-line options of Claymore's dual Ethereum miner
so you can use the same command line options as the ones you would have used with Claymore's miner.

Pool options:
  -pool Ethash pool address (prepend the host name with ssl:// for SSL pool, or http:// for solo mining)
  -wal Ethash wallet (some pools require appending of user name and/or worker)
  -pass Ethash password (most pools don't require it, use 'x' as password if unsure)
  -worker Ethash worker name (most pools accept it as part of wallet)
  -proto Selects the kind of stratum protocol for the ethash pool:
     1: miner-proxy stratum spec (e.g. coinotron)
     2: eth-proxy (e.g. dwarfpool, nanopool) - this is the default, works for most pools
     3: qtminer (e.g. ethpool)
     4: EthereumStratum/1.0.0 (e.g. nicehash)
     5: EthereumStratum/2.0.0
  -coin Ethash coin to use for devfee to avoid switching DAGs:
     auto: Try to determine from the pool address (default)
     eth: Ethereum
     etc: Ethereum Classic
     exp: Expanse
     music: Musicoin
     ubq: UBIQ
     pirl: Pirl
     ella: Ellaism
     etp: Metaverse ETP
     whale: WhaleCoin
     vic: Victorium
     nuko: Nekonium
     mix: Mix
     egem: EtherGem
     etz: EtherZero
     clo: Callisto
     dbix: DubaiCoin
     moac: MOAC
     etho: Ether-1
     yoc: Yocoin
     b2g: Bitcoiin2Gen
     esn: Ethersocial
     ath: Atheios
     reosc: REOSC
     qkc: QuarkChain
     bci: Bitcoin Interest
  -stales Submit stales to ethash pool: 1 - yes (default), 0 - no
  -weakssl Skip the strict SSL certificate validation for the main ethash pool (the one specified with the -pool option)
  -pool2  Failover ethash pool address. Same as -pool but for the failover pool
  -wal2 Failover ethash wallet (if missing -wal will be used for the failover pool too)
  -pass2 Failover ethash password (if missing -pass will be used for the failover pool too)
  -worker2 Failover ethash worker name (if missing -worker will be used for the failover pool too)
  -proto2 Failover ethash stratum protocol (if missing -proto will be used for the failover pool too)
  -coin2 Failover devfee Ethash coin (if missing -coin will be used for the failover pool too)
  -stales2 Submit stales to the failover pool: 1 - yes (default), 0 - no
  -weakssl2 Skip the strict SSL certificate validation for the failover ethash pool (the one specified with the -pool2 option)
  -dpool Dual mining pool address
  -dwal Dual mining wallet
  -dpass Dual mining pool password (most pools don't require it, use 'x' as password if unsure)
  -dworker Dual mining worker name
  -dcoin blake2s Currently only the Blake2s algorithm is supported for dual mining. If you want to put
       all dual mining pools in dpools.txt, you need to set -dcoin blake2s in the command-line or in config.txt
       to force the miner to load the dual mining pools from dpools.txt
  -dstales Submit stales to the dual mining pool: 1 - yes (default), 0 - no
General pool options:
  -fret Switch to next pool afer N failed connection attempts (default: 3)
  -ftimeout Reconnect if no new ethash job is receved for n seconds (default: 600)
  -ptimeout Switch back to primary pool after n minutes. This setting is 30 minutes by default;
     set to 0 to disable automatic switch back to primary pool.
  -retrydelay Seconds to wait before reconnecting (default: 20)
  -gwtime Recheck period for Solo/GetWork mining (default: 200 ms)
  -rate Report hashrate to the pool: 1 - yes, 0 - no (1 is the default), 2 - (for solo mining only)
     use alternative name of the report method "eth_submitHashRate" instead of "eth_submitHashrate"
  -nosni Do not send SNI host name on SSL connections
Benchmark mode:
  -bench [],-benchmark [] Benchmark mode, optionally specify DAG epoch. Use this to test your rig.
     If you specify only the -bench option, you will benchmark the ethash algorithm. If you want to bench
     the dual mining, use the options -bench -dcoin blake2s. If you want to benchmark the ProgPOW BCI
     algorithm, use the options -bench -coin bci
Remote control options:
  -cdm Selects the level of support of the CDM remote monitoring:
     0: disabled
     1: read-only - this is the default
     2: full (only use on secure connections)
  -cdmport Set the CDM remote monitoring port (default is 3333). You can also specify
     if you have a secure VPN connection and want to bind the CDM port to it
  -cdmpass Set the CDM remote monitoring password
  -cdmrs Reload the settings if config.txt is edited/uploaded remotely. Note that most options require restart in order to change.
      Currently the follwing options can be changed without restarting: -mi, -gt, -sci, -clf, -nvf, -gpow, and most of the
      hardware control parameters (-tt, -fcm, -fanmin, -fanmax, -powlim, -tmax, -ttli, -cclock, -cvddc, -mclock,
      -mvddc, -ppf, -straps, -vmt1, -vmt2, -vmt3, -vmr)
Mining options:
  -amd  Use only AMD cards
  -acm  Turn on AMD compute mode on the supported GPUs. This is equivalent of pressing 'y' in the miner console.
  -nvidia  Use only Nvidia cards
  -nvmalt Use alternative NVML initialization. Use this option if the program crashes or exits while showing Initializing NVML... on the console.
  -gpus <123 ..n> Use only the specified GPUs (if more than 10, separate the indexes with comma)
  -mi Set the mining intensity (0 to 14; 12 is the default for the new kernels). You may specify this option per-GPU.
  -gt Set the GPU tuning parameter (6 to 400). The default is 15. You can change the
          tuning parameter interactively with the '+' and '-' keys in the miner's console window.
          If you don't specify -gt or you specify value 0, the miner will start auto-tuning to determine the best GT value for each GPU
          Note that when the GPU is dual-mining, it ignores the -gt values, and uses -sci instead.
  -sci Set the dual mining intensity (1 to 1000). The default is 30. As you increase the value of -sci,
           the secondary coin hashrate will increase but the price will be higher power consumption and/or
           lower ethash hashrate.
           You can change the this parameter interactively with the '+' and '-' keys in the miner
           console window. You may specify this option per-GPU. If you set -sci to 0,
      the miner will use auto-tuning to determine the best value, while trying to maximize the
      ethash hashrate regardless of the secondary coin hashrate.
  -clkernel Type of OpenCL kernel: 0 - generic, 1 - optimized, 2 - alternative, 3 - turbo (1 is the default)
  -clgreen Use the power-efficient ("green") kernels (0: no, 1: yes; default: 0).
                 You may specify this option per-GPU. Note that you have to run auto-tune again as the
                 optimal GT values are completely different for the green kernels
  -clnew Use the new AMD kernels (0: no, 1: yes; default: 1)
  -clabi Use OpenCL 1.x even if 2.x is supported by the driver (0: no, 1: yes; default: 0)
  -clf AMD kernel sync (0: never, 1: periodic; 2: always; default: 1)
  -nvkernel Type of Nvidia kernel: 0 auto (default), 1 old (v1), 2 newer (v2), 3 latest (v3).
                Note that v3 kernels are only supported on GTX10x0 GPUs. Also note that dual mining is
                supported only by v2 kernels. You may specify this option per-GPU.
  -nvdo Enable Nvidia driver-specific optimizations (0 - no, the default; 1 - yes). Try -nvdo 1 if your
            are unstable. You may specify this option per-GPU.
  -nvnew Use new Nvidia kernels if supported (0: no, 1: yes; default: 1)
  -nvf Nvidia kernel sync (0: never, 1: periodic; 2: always; 3: forced; default: 1). You may specify this option per-GPU.
  -lhr Nvidia LHR unlock (0: no, -1: automatic, 100-1000: unlock intensity; default: -1).
                If this option is not specified (or specified as -1), the default LHR unlock intensity is 520. You may specify this option per-GPU.
  -mode Mining mode (0: dual mining if dual pool(s) are specified; 1: ethash only even if dual pools are specified).
            You may specify this option per-GPU.
  -list List the detected GPUs devices and exit
  -gbase Set the index of the first GPU (0 or 1, default: 1)
  -minRigSpeed Restart the miner if avg 5 min speed is below MH/s
  -eres Allocate DAG buffers big enough for n epochs ahead (default: 2) to
      avoid allocating new buffers on each DAG epoch switch, which should improve DAG switch stability
  -daglim
      (AMD Polaris, Baffin, Tonga, or Fiji cards only) Limit the DAG size to MB to allow mining on 4 GB cards a few weeks after epoch 373
      on Windows (or 381 on Linux). The possible values except the exact DAG limit are also 0 (turn off the DAG limit), 1 (automatic DAG
      limit size, usually 4023 MB under Windows; this is the default). Note that the hashrate will drop significantly with each epoch
      after the DAG limit is in effect. If the hashrate drops too much (e.g. from 28 MH/s to just 2-3 MH/s, you need to use lower value,
      for example "-daglim 3996" or even lower.
  -dagrestart Restart the miner when allocating buffer for a new DAG epoch. The
      possible values are: 0 - never, 1 - always, 2 - auto (the miner decides depending on the driver version).
      This is relevant for 4 GB AMD cards, which may have problems with new DAG epochs after epoch 350.
  -lidag Slow down DAG generation to avoid crashes when swiching DAG epochs
      (0-3, default: 0 - fastest, 3 - slowest).
  -gser Serializing DAG creation on multiple GPUs (0 - no serializing, all GPUs generate the DAG simultaneously, this is the default;
      1 - partial overlap of DAG generation on each GPU; 2 - no overalp (each GPU waits until the previous one has finished generating the DAG);
      3-10 - from 1 to 8 seconds delay after each GPU DAG generation before the next one)
  -gpureset Fully reset GPU when paused (0 - no, 1 - yes; default: no, except on 1080Ti). You may specify this option per-GPU.
  -altinit Use alternative way to initialize AMD cards to prevent startup crashes
  -rvram Minimum free VRAM in MB (-1: don't check; default: 384 for Windows, and 128 for Linux)
  -wdog Enable watchdog timer: 1 - yes, 0 - no (1 is the default). The watchdog timer checks
      periodically if any of the GPUs freezes and if it does, restarts the miner (see the -rmode
      command-line parameter for the restart modes)
  -wdtimeout Watchdog timeout (30 - 300; default 45 seconds). You can use this parameter to increase
      the default watchdog timeout in case it restarts the miner needlessly
  -rmode Selects the restart mode when a GPU crashes or freezes:
     0: disabled - miner will shut down instead of restarting
     1: restart with the same command line options - this is the default
     2: reboot (shut down miner and execute reboot.bat)
  -log Selects the log file mode:
     0: disabled - no log file will be written
     1: write log file but don't show debug messages on screen (default)
     2: write log file and show debug messages on screen
  -logfile Set the name of the logfile. If you place an asterisk (*) in the logfile name, it will be
      replaced by the current date/time to create a unique name every time PhoenixMiner is started. If there
      is no asterisk in the logfile name, the new log entries will be added to end of the same file. If you
      want to use the same logfile but the contents to be overwritten every time when you start the miner,
      put a dollar sign ($) character in the logfile name (e.g. -logfile my_log.txt$).
  -logdir Set a path where the logfile(s) will be created
  -logsmaxsize Maximum size of the logfiles in MB. The default is 200 MB (use 0 to turn off the limitation).
      On startup, if the logfiles are larger than the specified limit, the oldest are deleted. If you use a
      single logfile (by using -logfile), then it is truncated if it is bigger than the limit and a new one
      is created.
  -config Load a file with configuration options that will be added to the command-line options.
      Note that the order is important. For example, if we have a config.txt file that contains -cclock 1000
      and we specify command line -cclock 1100 -config config.txt, the options from the config.txt file will take
      precedence and the resulting -cclock will be 1000. If the order is reversed (-config config.txt -cclock 1100)
      then the second option takes precedence and the resulting -cclock will be 1100. Note that only one -config
      option is allowed. Also note that if you reload the config file with 'c' key or with the remote interface,
      its options will take precedence over whatever you have specified in the command-line.
  -timeout Restart miner according to -rmode after n minutes
  -pauseat Pause the miner at hh::mm (24 hours time). You can specify multiple times: -pauseat 6:00,12:00
  -resumeat Resume the miner at hh::mm (24 hours time). You can specify multiple times: -resumeat 8:00,22:00
  -gswin GPU stats time window (5-30 sec; default: 15; use 0 to revert to pre-2.8 way of showing momentary stats)
  -gsi Speed stats interval (5-30 sec; default: 5; use 0 to disable). The detailed stats are still
           shown every 45 seconds and aren't affected by the -gsi value
  -astats Show advanced stats from Web sources (0: no; 1: yes). By default the coin exchange rates are updated every
              4 hours, and the coin difficulty is updated every 8 hours. You can increase these periods by specifying
              for example -astats 12, which will increase update periods to 12 and 24 hours respectively
  -gpow Lower the GPU usage to n% of maximum (default: 100). If you already use -mi 0 (or other low value) use -li instead
  -li Another way to lower the GPU usage. Bigger n values mean less GPU utilization; the default is 0.
  -resetoc Reset the hardware overclocking settings on startup
  -leaveoc Do not reset overclocking settings when closing the miner
Hardware control options, use comma to specify different values for each GPU:
  -tt Set fan control target temperature (special values: 0 - no HW monitoring on ALL cards,
     1-4 - only monitoring on all cards with 30-120 seconds interval, negative - fixed fan speed at n %)
  -ttj    Set fan control target hotspot (junction) temperature (can be used
     only on GPUs that report the junction temperature). Example: -ttj 75 will keep the junction temperature at or bellow 75C by
     increasing the fan speed as necessary. This parameter can be combined with -tt, and -ttmem
  -ttmem    Set fan control target video memory temperature (can be used only
     on GPUs that report the VRAM temperature). Example: -ttmem 83 will keep the GPU memory temperature at or
     bellow 83C by increasing the fan speed as necessary. This parameter can be combined with -tt, and -ttj
  -hstats Level of hardware monitoring: 0 - temperature and fan speed only; 1 - temperature, fan speed, and power;
     2 - full (include core/memory clocks, voltages, P-states). The default is 1.
  -pidle Idle power consumption of the rig in W. Will be added to the GPU power consumption when
     calculating the total power consumption of the rig.
  -ppf The power usage of each GPU will be multiplied by this value to get the actual usage. This value is
     in percent, so for example if the GPU reports 100 W power usage and you have specified -ppf 106 the GPU
     power usage will be calculated to be 100 * (106 / 100) = 106 W. This allows you to correct for the efficiency
     of the PSUs and the individual GPUs. You can also specify this value for each GPU separately.
  -prate Price of the electricity in USD per kWh (e.g. -prate 0.1). If specified the miner will calculate the
     rig daily electricity cost
  -fanmin Set fan control min speed in % (-1 for default)
  -fanmax Set fan control max speed in % (-1 for default)
  -fanstop  (AMD cards under Windows only) If set to 0 (the default), and a
     fixed fan speed (e.g. -tt -40), or -fanmin is used, the miner will not allow the fans to stop rotating.
     If set to 1, PhoenixMiner will not interfere in the fan stop function of the card.
  -fcm Set fan control mode (0 - auto, 1 - use VBIOS fan control, 2 - forced fan control; default: 0)
  -tmax Set fan control max temperature (0 for default)
  -powlim Set GPU power limit in % (from -75 to 75, 0 for default)
  -cclock Set GPU core clock in MHz (0 for default). For Nvidia cards use relative values (e.g. -300 or +400)
  -cvddc Set GPU core voltage in mV (0 for default). For Nvidia cards use relative values (e.g. -300 or +400)
  -mclock Set GPU memory clock in MHz (0 for default)
  -mvddc Set GPU memory voltage in mV (0 for default)
  -tstop Pause a GPU when temp is >= n deg C (0 for default; i.e. off)
  -tstart Resume a GPU when temp is <= n deg C (0 for default; i.e. off)
  -mt VRAM timings (AMD under Windows only): 0 - default VBIOS values; 1 - faster timings; 2 - fastest timings.
     The default is 0. This is useful for mining with AMD cards without modding the VBIOS. If you have modded BIOS,
     it is probably faster than even -mt 2
  -leavemt  Do not reset memory timing level ("-mt") to 0 when closing
  -ttli   Lower GPU usage when GPU temperature is above n deg C. The default value is 0, which means do not lower the usage regardless of the
     GPU temperature. This option is useful whenever -tmax is not working. If you are using both -tt and -ttli options, the
     temperature in -tt should be lower than the -ttli to avoid throttling the GPUs without using the fans to properly cool them first.
  -tmaxj   Lower GPU usage when hotspot (junction) temperature is above n deg C (can be used only on GPUs that report the junction temperature).
     The default value is 0, which means do not lower the usage regardless of the GPU hotspot temperature. If you are using both
     -ttj and -tmaxj options, the temperature in -ttj should be lower than the -tmaxj to avoid throttling the GPUs without using
     the fans to properly cool them first.
  -tmaxmem   Lower GPU usage when VRAM temperature is above n deg C (can be used only on GPUs that report the memory temperature).
     The default value is 0, which means do not lower the usage regardless of the GPU memory temperature. If you are using both
     -ttmem and -tmaxmem options, the temperature in -ttmem should be lower than the -tmaxmem to avoid throttling the GPUs
     without using the fans to properly cool them first.
  -straps Memory strap level (Nvidia cards 10x0 and P10x series only). The possible values are 0 to 6. 0 is the default value and uses the default
     timings from the VBIOS. Each strap level corresponds to a predefined combination of memory timings (-vmt1, -vmt2,
     -vmt3, -vmr). Strap level 3 is the fastest predefined level and may not work on most cards, 1 is the slowest (but still faster than
     the default timings). Strap levels 4 to 6 are the same as 1 to 3 but with less aggressive refresh rates (i.e. lower "-vmr" values).
  -straps Memory strap level (AMD Vega cards only). The possible values are 0 to 5. 0 is the default value and uses the default timings from the
     VBIOS. Each strap level corresponds to a predefined combination of memory timings. Strap level 5 is the fastest level and may not work
     on most cards, 1 is the slowest (but still faster than the default timings). Note that straps for AMD cards are experimental and may
     lead to crashes or instability. "-vmt1", "-vmt2", and "-vmt3" parameters have no effect on AMD cards
  -vmt1  Memory timing parameter 1 (0 to 100, default 0)
  -vmt2  Memory timing parameter 2 (0 to 100, default 0)
  -vmt3  Memory timing parameter 3 (0 to 100, default 0)
  -vmr   Memory refresh rate (0 to 100, default 0). For AMD cards you may also use "-rxboost"
  -nvmem  Force using straps on unsupported Nvidia GPUs (0 - do not force, 1 - GDDR5, 2 - GDDR5X). Make sure that the parameter matches your GPU
     memory type. You can try this if your card is Pascal-based but when you try to use -straps or any other memory timing option, the card
     is shown as "unsupported".
  -rxboost Memory refresh rate on AMD cards (0 - default values, 1 - predefined value that should work on most cards, 2 to 100 -
     increasingly aggressive settings). If you want to fine tune the value, you may run the miner with "-rxboost 1", write down the
     corresponding "-vmr" values that are showed in the log file, and then use "-vmr" instead with adjusted values.
  -vmdag    Reset straps to default during DAG generation (default: 1)
  -mcdag    Reset GPU memory clock to default during DAG generation. Nvidia
     only, default: 0 (turned off). This may allow you to set higher memory overclock on your Nvidia cards without risking corrupt DAG
     buffer, which can lead to excessive number of stale shares.

     Under Linux this option will execute the daggen.sh script (if present in the current directory) for each GPU, passing the GPU
     index as the first argument, and PCIE bus ID as second argument. The miner will not wait for the daggen.sh script to finish before
     starting to generate the DAGs. Instead it will for a fixed 7 seconds. This allows you to do all the following in the
     daggen.sh: turn off the overclocking of Nvidia GPUs, sleep for 30-60 seconds, and then  re-apply the overclocking of the Nvidia GPUs.

General Options:
  -v,--version  Show the version and exit
  -vs Show short version string (e.g. "4.1c") and exit
  -h,--help  Show information about the command-line options and exit

Per-GPU options
Some of the PhoenixMiner options can provide either the same setting for all GPUs, or a different
setting for each of the GPUs. For example, to specify the -gt value for all cards you would write
-gt 90 but if you want to specify a different GT value for each of the cards, use something like this:
-gt 20,15,40,90,90 for a five-GPU mining rig. This would set GT to 20 for the first GPU, 15 for the second
GPU, and so on. If you specify less values than you have GPUs, the rest of the GPUs will use the default
value for the parameter.

You can also use another, more flexible way of specifying different values for the different cards.
This is best explained by example: -cclock *:1100,1-3:1090,4:1300 - here we are setting core clock
to 1100 MHz for all cards, except the cards 1 to 3, on which it is set to 1090 MHz, and card 4 to 1300 MHz.

The part before the colon (:) is the selector, which selects the GPUs for which the value after the colon is applied. The selector can be:
  - single GPU index: e.g. 5:1000 sets 1000 for the 5th GPU
  - range of GPU indexes: e.g 2-5:1200 sets 1200 for the GPUs 2,3,4, and 5
  - asterisk, which sets the value for all GPUs
  - label amd or nvidia: e.g. amd:1090 sets the value to 1090 for all AMD cards
  - arbitrary string that starts with letter and can contain letters, numbers and asterisks,
    which is matched with the GPU name as listed by PhoenixMiner. Example: gtx*1070:+500 will
    set value +500 for all cards which contain 'gtx' and '1070' in their names with anything
    between them. This will match 'Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070' but not 'Nvidia GeForce 1070'.
    
Note that if more than one selector matches given card, than only the last one counts.
Example: -cclock *:1100,1-4:1090,2:1300 will set card 2 to 1300; cards 1,2, and 4 to 1090;
and the rest of the cards to 1100 MHz core clock.
  
Additionally, while the miner is running, you can use the following interactive commands
in the console window by pressing one of these keys:
  s   Print detailed statistics
  1-9 Pause/resume GPU1 ... GPU9 (if you have more than 9 GPUs, type 010 for card 10, 011 for card 11, etc.)
  p   Pause/resume the whole miner
  +,- Increase/decrease GPU tuning parameter
  g   Reset the GPU tuning parameter (and stop auto-tuning if active)
  x   Select the GPU(s) for manual or automatic GT tuning
  z   Start AMD auto-tune process
  r   Reload epools.txt and switch to primary ethash pool
  e   Select the current ethash pool (if you have more than 9 pools in the list, type 010 for pool 10, 011 for pool 11, etc.)
  d   Select the current dual-mining pool
  y   Turn on AMD Compute mode if it is off on some of the GPUs
  c   Reload the config.txt file (some settings require restart, see -cdmrs option above for details)
  h   Print this short help  

4. Configuration files

Note that PhoenixMiner supports the same configuration files as Claymore's dual Ethereum miner
so you can use your existing configuration files without any changes.

Instead of using command-line options, you can also control PhoenixMiner with configuration
files. If you run PhoenixMiner.exe without any options, it will search for the file config.txt
in the current directory and will read its command-line options from it. If you want, you can
use file with another name by specifying its name as the only command-line option
when running PhoenixMiner.exe.

You will find an example config.txt file in the PhoenixMiner's directory.

Instead of specifying the pool(s) directly on the command line, you can use another configuration
file for this, named epools.txt. There you can specify one pool per line (you will find an example
epools.txt file in the PhoenixMiner's directory).

For the dual mining pools, you can use the dpools.txt file, which has the same format as epools.txt
but for the secondary coin. You will find an example epools.txt file in the PhoenixMiner's directory.
Note that unlike the epools.txt, which is loaded each time when the miner starts, the dpools.txt file
is only read if you specify a dual mining pool on the command line with -dpool, or at least add
the -dcoin blake2s command-line option.

The advantages of using config.txt and epools.txt/dpools.txt files are:
- If you have multiple rigs, you can copy and paste all settings with these files
- If you control your rigs via remote control, you can change pools and even the miner options by
uploading new epools.txt files to the miner, or by uploading new config.txt file and restarting
the miner.

5. Remote monitoring and management

Phoenix miner is fully compatible with Claymore's dual miner protocol for remote monitoring and
management. This means that you can use any tools that are build to support Claymore's dual miner,
including the "Remote manager" application that is part of Claymore's dual miner package.

We are working on much more powerful and secure remote monitoring and control functionality and
control center application, which will allow better control over your remote or local rigs and some
unique features to increase your mining profits.

6. Hardware control options

 Here are some important notes about the hardware control options:

• Most recent Nvidia drivers require running as administrator (or as root under Linux) to allow hardware control, so you must run
    PhoenixMiner as administrator for the VRAM timing options to work.
• When using the VRAM timing options ("-straps", "-vmt1", "-vmt2", "-vmt3", "-vmr"), start with lower values and make sure that the
    cards are stable before trying higher and more aggressive settings. You can use "-straps" along with the other options. For example
    "-straps 1" "-vmt1 60" will use the timings from 1st strap level but -vmt1 will be set to 60 instead of whatever value is specified by
    the 1st strap level. In such case the "-straps" option must be specified first.
• Generally, the "-vmt3" option has little effect on the hashrate, so first try adjusting the other parameters.
• The VRAM timing options can be quite different between the GPUs, even when the GPUs are the same model. Therefore, you can (and
    probably should) specify the VRAM timing options per-GPU.
• Hardware control options are supported for both AMD and Nvidia cards under Windows. Under Linux most options are supported only for AMD cards.
• If you specify a single value (e.g. -cvddc 1150), it will be used on all cards. Specify different values for each card like this (separate with comma): -cvddc 1100,1100,1150,1120,1090 If the specified values are less than the number of GPUs, the rest of GPUs will use the default values.
• We have tested only on relatively recent AMD GPUs (RX460/470/480/560/570/580, Vega, Radeon VII, RX5700). Your results may vary with older GPUs.
• The blockchain beta drivers from AMD show quite unstable results - often the voltages don't stick at all or revert back to the default after some time. For best results use the newer drivers from AMD: 18.5.1 or later, where most of the bugs are fixed.
• -tmax specifies the temperature at which the GPU should start to throttle (because the fans can't keep up).
• If you use other programs for hardware control, conflicts are possible and quite likely. Use something like GPU-Z to monitor the voltages, etc. MSI Afterburner also seems to behave OK (so you can use it to control the Nvidia cards while AMD cards are controller by PhoenixMiner).
• This should be obvious but still: if given clocks/voltages are causing crashes/freezes/incorrect shares when set with third-party program, they will be just as much unstable when set via PhoenixMiner hardware control options.
• If you have problems with hardware control options of PhoenixMiner and you were using something else to control clocks, fans, and voltages (MSI Aftrerburner, OverdriveNTool, etc.), which you were happy with, it is probably best to keep using it and ignore the hardware control options of PhoenixMiner (or use only some of them and continue tweaking the rest with your third-party tools).

7. FAQ

Q001: Why another miner?
   A: We feel that the competition is good for the end user. In the first releases of PhoenixMiner
   we focused on the basic features and on the mining speed but we are now working on making our
   miner easier to use and even faster.
  
Q002: Can I run several instances of PhoenixMiner on the same rig?
   A: Yes, but make sure that each GPU is used by a single miner (use the -gpus, -amd, or -nvidia
   command-line options to limit the GPUs that given instance of PhoenixMiner actually uses).
      Another possible problem is that all instances will use the default CDM remote port 3333,
   which will prevent proper remote control for all but the first instance. To fix this problem,
   use the -cdmport command-line option to change the CDM remote port form its default value.
  
Q003: Can I run PhoenixMiner simultaneously on the same rig with other miners?
   A: Yes, but see the answer to the previous question for how to avoid problems.
  
Q004: What is a stale share?
   A: The ethash coins usually have very small average block time (15 seconds in most instances).
   On the other hand, to achieve high mining speed we must keep the GPUs busy so we can't switch
   the current job too often. If our rigs finds a share just after the someone else has found a
   solution for the current block, our share is a stale share. Ideally, the stale shares should be
   minimal as same pools do not give any reward for stale shares, and even these that do reward
   stale shares, give only partial reward for these shares. If the share is submitted too long
   after the block has ended, the pool may even fully reject it.
  
Q005: Why is the percentage of stale shares reported by PhoenixMiner smaller than the one shown
   by the pool?
   A: PhoenixMiner can only detect the stale shares that were discovered after it has received a
   new job (i.e. the "very stale") shares. There is additional latency in the pool itself, and in
   the network connection, which makes a share stale even if it was technically found before the
   end of the block from the miner's point of view. As pools only reports the shares as accepted
   or rejected, there is no way for the miner to determine the stale shares from the pool's
   point of view.
  
Q006: What is the meaning of the "actual share difficulty" shown by PhoenixMiner when a share is
   found?
   A: It allows you to see how close you were to finding an actual block (a rare event these days
   for the most miners with reasonable-sized mining rigs). You can find the current difficulty for
   given coin on sites like whattomine.com and then check to see if you have exceeded it with your
   maximum share difficulty. If you did, you have found a block (which is what the mining is all
   about).
  
Q007: What is the meaning of "effective speed" shown by PhoenixMiner's statistics?
   A: This is a measure of the actually found shares, which determines how the pool sees your
   miner hashrate. This number should be close to the average hashrate of your rig (usually a 2-4%
   lower than it) depending you your current luck in finding shares. This statistic is meaningless
   in the first few hours after the miner is started and will level off to the real value with
   time.
  
Q008: Why is the effective hashrate shown by the pool lower than the one shown by PhoenixMiner?
   A: There are two reasons for this: stale shares and luck. The stale shares are rewarded at only
   about 50-70% by most pools. The luck factor should level itself off over time but it may take
   a few days before it does. If your effective hashrate reported by the pool is consistently lower
   than the hashrate of your rig by more than 5-7% than you should look at the number of stale shares
   and the average share acceptance time - if it is higher than 100 ms, try to find a pool that is
   near to you geographically to lower the network latency. You can also restart your rig, or
   try another pool.

8. Troubleshooting

P001: I'm using AMD RX470/480/570/580 or similar card and my hashrate dropped significantly in the past
     few months for Ethereum and Ethereum classic!
     S: This is known problem with some cards. For the newer cards (RX470/480/570/580), this can be
     solved by using the special blockchain driver from AMD (or try the latest drivers, they may
     incorporate the fix). For the older cards there is no workaround but you still can mine EXP,
     Musicoin, UBQ or PIRL with the same speed that you mined ETH before the drop.
     
P002: My Nvidia GTX9x0 card is showing very low hashrate under Windows 10!
      S: While there is a (convoluted) workaround, the best solution is to avoid Windows 10
      for these cards - use Windows 7 instead.
      
P003: I'm using Nvidia GTX970 (or similar) card and my hashrate dropped dramatically for Ethereum or
      Ethereum classic!
      S: GTX970 has enough VRAM for larger DAGs but its hashate drops when the DAG size starts
      to exceed 2 GB or so. Unlike the AMD Polaris-based cards, there is no workaround for this
      problem. We recommend using these cards to mine EXP, Musicoin, UBQ or PIRL with the same speed
      that you used to ETH before the drop.
      
P004: I can't see some of my cards (or their fan speed and temperature) when using Windows Remote Desktop (RDP)!
      S: This is a known problem with RDP. Use VNC or TeamViewer instead.
      
P005: On Windows 10, if you click inside the PhoenixMiner console, it freezes!
      S: This is a known problem on Windows 10, related to so called "Quick Edit" feature of the command
     prompt window. From PhoenixMiner 2.6, the QuickMode is disabled by default, so you shouldn't experience
     this problem. If you still, do, read here how to solve it: https://stackoverflow.com/q/33883530

P006: Immediately after starting, PhoenixMiner stops working and the last message is "debugger detected"
      S: If you have only Nvidia cards, add the option -nvidia to the PhoenixMiner.exe command line.
     If you have only AMD cards, add the option -amd to the command line.
     
P007: PhoenixMiner shows an error after allocating DAG buffer and shuts down.
      S: If you have more than one GPU, make sure that your Windows page file minimal size is set to at
          least (N x DS + 4) GB, where N is the number of GPUs, and DS is the size of DAG in GB (about 2.9 GB around
          January 2019 for ETC and ETH). For example, if you have 10 GPUs, you need 10 x 2.9 + 4 = 33 GB minimal
          size of the page file. Note that this will increase as the DAG sizes increase. If you are using -clkernel 3, for each GPU add size of
          the DAG twice instead of once (e.g. for 3 GPUs mining with -clkenel 3 you will need 3 x 2 x 2.9 + 4 = 21.4 GB minimal page file size)
     
P008: The miner sometimes crashes when the DAG epoch change.
      S: During DAG generation, the GPUs are loaded more than during the normal operation. If you have
     overclocked or undervolted the GPUs "to the edge", the DAG generation ofter pushes them "over the
     edge". Another possible reason for the crash (especially if the whole rig crashes) is the higher
     power usage during this process. You can lower the DAG generation speed by specifying the -lidag
     command-line option. The possible values are 0 (no slow down), 1, 2, and 3 (max slowdown).
     In order to check if your rig would be stable during DAG generation, run it in benchmark mode
     by specifying the -bench 210 command line option. Then every time when you press the key 'd'
     the miner will advance to the next DAG epoch, and you will be able to see if it is stable during
     multiple DAG generations. If it isn't you can try to alter the -lidag and -eres command line options
     until the desired stability is achieved.

P009: The miner can't create the DAG buffer when mining ETC or ETH
     S: The versions of PhoenixMiner before 4.2 only support DAG epoch up to 265. Both ETC and ETH has reached epoch 266 already. To ensure uninterrupted operation, please upgrade to 4.2.
         PhoenixMiner 4.2 supports DAG epoch up to 330, and PhoenixMiner 4.5 supports DAG epoch up to 450.