MacMiner 1.5.16b2 and previous versions bugs

polanskiman

I have been testing the various releases you have pushed lately.

I have noticed that since v.1.5.15 the "Release Notes" windows shows when the application starts up. Up to now it's normal. The problem is that if you click the "hide release notes for version" button, the "Release Notes" window will still show up (this time for about 2 seconds) if the application is closed and launched again. In my opinion that window should not open at all since the user already asked to hide that window. Also I would recommend rephrasing and instead, saying something like "Hide release notes on next startup" or "Do not show this window again" (if that of course is the intended objective of that button) as the word "version" is not very explicit and rather confusing.

I have also noticed several bugs within CPU Miner, GPU Miner and the Pool panel in the Preferences:

1 - CPU Miner: within the "CPU Miner Option" window, if you decide to select an un-configured coin (meaning that no pool and username/password were previously saved) and click "Apply" then click on the "Start" button, you can't actually stop it no matter how many times you click on the "Stop" button. This is not a normal behaviour. In fact I would even recommend you not to allow the user to select a coin that hasn't been previously configured in the Pool panel of the Preferences. Greying out those coins that are not yet configured could be the way to go, or if that is too complicated to implement then inform the user with a pop up window or within the output window (like in the GPU Miner), that the coin first needs to be configured prior to running the miner. No matter how you do it, a miner shouldn't be allowed to run prior configuration of the coin by the user.

Also, if the application has never been run before and therefore no Pools have been configured and you try to run the CPU Miner, the application will exhibit the same behaviour as commented above and you won't be allowed to quit the application because it says "Please stop your miners before quitting". The problem is that you can't stop it and the only way to quit is to either configure a pool with a username and password then select that in the CPU Miner Option window then quit the application or force quitting it. Either way the process doesn't seem right.

2 - GPU Miner: (Note: This bug will only occur if a configured coin (Pool/Usern./Pass) is not run after the application is launched).

Similarly to the CPU miner, if you decide to select an un-configured coin (meaning that no pool and username/password were previously saved) and click "Apply" then click on the "Start" button, you will receive a notification saying “Settings changed. Your miner was restarted automatically after a sudden stop at xx:xx:xx”. if you click “Umm… Ok.” you would expect things to be over, but the notification keeps poppping up every 4/5 seconds. The only way to stop this is to go to the GPU Miner Option window and change to a coin that is already configured.

3 - Pool panel in the Preferences: I have only saved SHA-256 (Bitcoin) and Scrypt (Litecoin), however if I select any other currency (Scrypt adaptive, QuarckCoin or MaxCoin), the pool, the usernamne and lastly the password will be the ones of the last coin I selected, meaning the fields won’t be cleared out.

For now those are the bugs I have seen.

FabulousPanda

Thank you for the report, I will make sure they're all fixed in the next update!

zaph

When I run 1.5.16b it only starts GPU mining. When I start 1.5.13 It starts BFG mining as it should.

Two questions

1: Do both version use the same preferences?

2: What is the last version that correctly uses the preferences and correctly mines?

FabulousPanda

The new GPU Miner window is the same BFG window that's been modified - they both use the same config files to find a pool, but there's a new setting in the GPU miner setting panel for choosing which coin to mine which is the main difference. I suspect this would be what is causing a problem, but it should be set to LTC by default and hopefully most people won't have experienced a problem with the upgrade in that regard.

The only other changed preferences are that GPU Miner no longer asks whether you want to use it for CPU mining as that was inefficient and no longer asks whether you want to disable GPU mining as that would be a bit pointless.

I'm working halfway through an update to tidy this up a bit The last version where BFG is as it was  I think is 1.5.15, but may be 1.5.14

zaph

It is not the 1.5.16b miner window, it is that it does not mine with my BFL hardware. 1.5.13 does use the BFL hardware.

FabulousPanda

That's peculiar! To have used BFL with the exBFG window you'd have had to have had -S bfl:all or similar in the settings on that window, there shouldn't have been any change which would stop you using that window as before with it except having to switch to Bitcoin in the miner settings panel

Is there a specific reason you use that rather than the FPGA/ASIC window? They both use bfgminer for ASICs