Topic: Smartcoin Linux mining administration. [MULTI-MACHINE SUPPORT NOW IN!] - page 40. (Read 105029 times)

Im busy setting it up now, will report back in this thread about success/failures(doubtfull)

could you please explain how the load is balanced? say i have connected to 5 pools. Does load balancing responds to the miner idle? or it simply check whether one pool is down then re-balance the rest?

[EDIT: 7-19-2011]
Please refer to the first post of this thread for installation instructions!



****** THE TEXT BELOW IS THE ORIGINAL AND KEPT HERE FOR POSTERITY *************
BETA RELEASE!!!

Well, its not really to the point I wanted it for now, but I'm tagging the beta release right now.  Its been 100% stable running, though there are a couple of minor bugs here and there with the interface.

The url of the smartcoin development site is http://code.google.com/p/smartcoin/.  You can follow development here, report bugs/feature requests and check out the source code if you would like.


To install:
Smartcoin doesn't install any mining software, fglrx drivers, ati sdk, pyOpenCL or any other software normally installed for mining.
It is assumed that your machine is set up to mine already (i may automate this in the future though)
You also need to make sure that your $LD_LIBRARY_PATH for the ATI sdk is set in the environment.

On your local mining machine:

Once you go through the installer, you can start smartcoin at any time by typing 'smartcoin' in  your terminal


To Use:
Once you've got smartcoin running, you should be at the control screen. This window give you options to control the smartcoin system.  The first thing you should do is add some workers (option 7).. Type 'a' (for add) at the next option screen, and follow the on-screen prompts. Once your first worker is created, the Automatic profile kicks in (ctrl+a followed by 1 will take you to the status screen where you can see).  As you add more workers, the automatic profile will adjust on the fly to equally share all workers across all hashing devices.  For most people, this is all you will ever need to do.  The installer should have automatically added your hashing devices (gpus), installed miners and popular pools.  Of course, you can add/edit/delete these, but you shouldn't have to touch them.
The real power is in setting up your own profiles. Option 8, Configure Profiles allows you to do this.  Type 'a' (for add) at the next options screen, then follow the on-screen prompts for setting up a profile with as many instances you want for each worker on each device.  Yes, its a bit complicated, but once you get it figured out, you'll see how amazing it is! (you can change profiles from the command screen - you can even manually run the AutoDonation profile! )


known issues:
-----------------------------
- Rejected percentage on status screen only accurate to a whole number (decimal places just show .00)
- Editing profiles isn't implemented yet (though you can delete a profile and add a new one, for now)
- Installer seems to work ok, though I'm not sure how well it does at adding all dependencies.
- CPU devices are disabled by default for now (though technically, they should work)
- Entering a colon ( for the donation time in the settings menu setting crashes  smartcoin_control.sh (enter times as 0100 for 1:00am, 1400 for 2:00pm etc... until I start filtering the input.)
- The log file in ~/smartcoin.log never gets wiped... Need to add a log rotation routine (though the log is barely used at the moment, so it shouldn't be an issue)
- Deleting miners isn't "safe" yet(you may delete the miner flagged as default).  If you delete a miner, you may have to go to edit miners, and set a new one as default.


Notes:
---------------------------------
When running the installer, you may be prompted for a mysql password.  This password isn't necessarily the same as your login password,  you need to use the password that was set when you initially installed the mysql server.

Smartcoin uses a linux utility called GNU Screen.  GNU Screen is a complicated piece of software in its own right, but you have to at least know the basics to get full use of Smartcoin.
Below are the keystrokes used to perform certain actions.  They are part of GNU screen, and I can't make them easier, sorry!
(ctrl+a 1 means, hit the control key and 'a' at the same time, then release them. Then press 1)

ctrl+a 0  -> Control screen
ctrl+a 1  -> 1st host machine (localhost normally)
ctrl+a 2  -> 2nd host machine (and so on.... Not supported yet)
ctrl+c    -> Kill the script. Press o to reload it after killing it
ctrl+a d  -> Detach (can also be done from control screen)



Though I spent a fair amount of time testing as many options as I could,  I'm sure there will be some bugs found while introducing the codebase to a large audience.  Please be kind and report what you find here, I'll be sure to fix them as soon as I can.


A note on the AutoDonate feature:
At install time, you will be asked if you would like to donate a portion of your hashing power to help fund development.  Please consider donating a small number of minutes per day (36 would be nice -  its only 1%).  You can enter 0 to opt-out of AutoDonating, and you can change the settings at any time from the control screen.  A random time is stored in the database at install. Each day at that time, your hashes will go to some special donation pools that I have set up, and return to the current profile after the amount of minutes you specified. None of this is done in a sneaky way, the status screen will clearly show you as it happens,  and you are free to watch the process for yourself.


I hope it works well for everyone that tests the beta.  I'll be checking back on and off throughout the day to answer install questions!

Thanks very much. This really helps me to SEE temperature. I hope your miner will also do wonders.

current ETA to beta is 1 day (one day later than I wanted)

Everything is "done" to where I wanted it for beta release, but I haven't finished testing all options.  I'm hanging it up for tonight to spend some time with the wife, but a few hours of testing tomorrow should get it to beta (I'm sure there will be little bugs to fix as I test). Overall, things are looking really well!

What is the current ETA of an alpha of this being ready. I've been looking forward to this coming online and as I'm running ubuntu as well, would be willing to help test this.

Phil

smartcoin is just a collection of scripts working together, so its not really dependent on any specific version of linux.  I don't have plans an making my own disto out of it, but I have not objection to the author of LinuxCoin including the smartcoin system on his distro.

I've been developing and testing on Ubuntu, so that would be a good place to start.  You will need to already have it set up as a working miner (phoenix/poclbm install, pyopencl install, fglrx, ati sdk, etc....).  Eventually I'll add features to the install script which will do this all for you, but thats at least a few weeks down the road.

PLEASE linuxcoin is soooooo buggy ..use ubuntu distro or linuxarch..so that everything installs itself /or is already installed (usb-ready)..

maybe i speak only for me but linuxcoin made my head burst!

Donated again can`t wait ^^  have 10x1.7ghash wating for ur system

Nice work dude! I can't wait for the final release!

I take that you still need to install a linux distro on the machine or are you going to build your own custom distro for this purpose? Any chance of this being integrated into LinuxCoin?

i am deeply impressed.

whoa! - deeply awed and humbled by a real programmer.  I have few bitcoins, but will contribute upon successful testing.

Have you been running out of memory running that many phoenix instances?

Very good idea!!!!  Will contribute :-)

M

Here's a quick shot of the progress..  Starting to add a little color...  If you look, you will see hints of multi-machine support

Just a quick status update...

I just finally got to test the rewrite a few minutes ago.  The entire internal profile engine, and large parts of the other code were completely restructured to allow for multiple machine support.  This is the first time i've gotten to test the code in almost 3 days (I couldn't test it until it was at least complete enough to run)
So after a couple of hours of fixing small typos and fixing small bugs introduced in the rewrite, it now starts up and runs as beautifully as ever

There is also a new "feature" called AutoDonate.  This allows you to donate a  percentage of your hash power to donation pools/workers that I have set up to help fund development.  How it works is this:
- During install, you are asked if you want to donate a small bit of hash power to the cause
- You can specify how many minutes per day to donate your hashes to the donation pools. (i.e 36 minutes per day is 1%)
- A random start time is generated and stored in the database
- Each day, starting at the random start time, hashes will be donated to the donation pools instead of the ones defined in the currently running profile.  After the specified number of minutes, hashes go back to your profile's defined pools as normal.
- Of course, you don't have to donate at all, but I thought it was a creative solution especially for those that wish to donate, but can't spare the bitcoins up front.  You can also change the donation setting from the menu at any time.  I have nothing to hide here and you can examine the source for yourself.  If you decide to use smartcoin, please consider a small ongoing AutoDonation!




Multi-machine support won't be included in the (soon to be released) beta, but I estimate that its over 80% complete
Another new feature will appear in the multi-machine update in the future to support macro-profiles ("macros").  Macros allow you to store profile information for each individual machine, and execute all of the profiles at once in one go.


Thats it for now, its time for a full QA test (which includes wiping a machine and installing from scratch, as well as testing each feature individually).  I'm hoping to meet the friday beta release, but if I miss it - it won't be by much

...or you can use 'watch' like this:


Updates every five seconds (-n 5).

WoW, I've been lurking around this thread and I'm impressed. I'll chip in some BTC when I get to test it when my new rig is up. Congrats on your achievements! 

Update for today

The UI is now 95% done.  You can now add/edit/delete pretty much everything from the cli interface (except profile editing isn't finished, its the very last thing to do UI wise). I plan on finishing the interface tomorrow, then the rest of the week will be spend doing some internal restructures and small database restructure.  This will pave the way to provide the ability for smartcoin to control more than one machine.  I did some small-scale tests today with excellent results - communication will happen over ssh (secure).  The neat thing is, smartcoin doesn't even have to run on a miner, it can be any linux box, and orchestrate everything over the network as needed.

Don't get too excited though, this multi-machine functionality won't be in the beta, though I plan to have the internal restructuring to allow for this by beta release (so that future releases won't require database changes, etc).

If just just want a quick script for temperature monitoring, you can use something very simple like this:


Just put it in an executable file and run it, should spit out the temperature every 10 seconds.