Automatic restart of MacMiner

Dane Skow

Greetings,
I am new and using MacMiner Version 1.5.16b(2) (1516b) to mine MaxCoin. It seems that every few minutes MacMiner completes a block and then waits for me to notice and restart it. Am I missing some way to automatically restart (thus keeping the miner busy) ? If not, that sure would seem a very useful feature.
Thanks
Dane

Adam J Walderston™ 

I too am using Version 1.5.16b(2) (1516b) and have noticed that I have to keep manually re-starting the GPU Miner on both my iMac and MBP. 

polanskiman

Same here.

FabulousPanda

Are you all mining MaxCoin? I've only been running the VTC GPU miner but I haven't run in to the issue, I'll try MaxCoin!

polanskiman

Yes Maxcoin.

FabulousPanda

The MaxCoin version of cgminer must be buggy, it is new, I'll bring it up on github  - does the miner appear to keep mining or does it actually stop (best indicated by whether the button says start or stop and whether logs keep printing)

polanskiman

It actually stops mining. No more log and the button says stop. It's random. Can work for some time as it can stop in 5 seconds.

FabulousPanda

The button still says stop? ooh er. I'll have a good look at the code!

polanskiman

Once it stops, it stops for good. Yes the button says stop and the graphic card stops running.

FabulousPanda

As chance would have it I've just been debugging this and noticed that the auto restart was failing, and why - I'm currently exporting a fixed version for upload well, MacMiner is fixed to auto restart - the backend is still buggy though!

FabulousPanda

Please let me know how you get on with this version:

http://downloads.fabulouspanda.co.uk/MacMiner.app-1.5.17b.zip

I'll be MaxCoin mining too!

polanskiman

Nice. I am trying it now.

FabulousPanda

When I tested it it restarted about 5 times before it started again properly

polanskiman

It restarts automatically now and window informs the user that the miner has been restarted.

FabulousPanda

awesome, that's how it should be! Unfortunately though with the frequent restarts, it only informs you of the LAST time it was restarted!

polanskiman

sloppy implementation of the backend!!

FabulousPanda

yeah, I'm looking in to whether there's a better option

polanskiman

Mining at ~60 MH/s.

 [2014-02-19 08:45:48] Stratum from pool 0 detected new block

(5s):63.75M (avg):57.01Mh/s | A:2064  R:128  HW:0  WU:13.6/m          

 [2014-02-19 08:45:53] Stratum from pool 0 detected new block

(5s):58.64M (avg):56.95Mh/s | A:2064  R:128  HW:0  WU:13.5/m          

(5s):60.25M (avg):57.00Mh/s | A:2064  R:128  HW:0  WU:13.6/m          

(5s):54.35M (avg):56.88Mh/s | A:2064  R:128  HW:0  WU:13.7/m          

(5s):53.74M (avg):56.85Mh/s | A:2064  R:128  HW:0  WU:13.7/m          

     

   

Can you explain what the A: R: HW: and WU: mean?

Aren't the dev of MaxCoin responsible for the backend?

FabulousPanda

Accepted, Rejected, Hardware Errors (no I don't know what the W stands for) and Work Utility, which is shares solved per minute

it's nice seeing an alt coin mine in MH right?

FabulousPanda

oh right- probably -ware!

polanskiman

Thank you. Yeah much better than the Kh/s I was seeing with Litecoin

polanskiman

By the way I have no idea how to set all those options: Worksize, vectors, thread concurrency, shaders etc etc. Would you mind clarifying this?

FabulousPanda

They're settings to do with how the mathematics are calculated like work size sometimes works higher so a GPU likes big work infrequently or vice versa, you can get some optimal standards here: 

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison

FabulousPanda

Please upgrade - I've updated from the official MaxCoin 3.6.6 version to this one:

https://github.com/Atrides/cgminer_keccak-3.7.3

It seems a little faster and the bug seems to be fixed too!

polanskiman

Thanks. Having a look it a now. Actually had already looked at it before but was still a bit confused about it. if I understand well:

-I = intensity

-w = work size

-v = vector (or voltage?)

For the others them seem to be call by their full name. Also what is the function of the "Manual Flags" ? I also found this: https://litecoin.info/Mining_hardware_comparison

Already done the upgrade . Testing it now. So MacMiner is not using the official keccak backend anymore?

Also there is still a bug with this version which was already present since 1.5.16. When you open the app, no miner window opens. You have to manually go to "view" then select the miner that you want. In previous versions the app remembered which miner windows were opened before closing the app.

FabulousPanda

v is vector yeah, you can set with -v or --vectors and like that with most things. You can guess which MacMiner is setting so don't set both at the same time!

It looks as though no-one is using the official backend anymore, the official was updated to include code from a github repo that the one I'm using was based on, so in a way it's pretty likely that what we're using now is the preview version of the future official version :P

polanskiman

I have edited my last post.

FabulousPanda

Ah, that was actually a feature request. The windows now open only if they're set to auto-start in preferences, except the pool preferences which open if none are set. I should add open but don't start to that!

polanskiman

Yes, as before. Because now it adds one more click if you don't set the auto-start function in the Preferences. In my case I am testing things now so I don't want to have the miner auto-start each time I launch the app. 

Normally any application that opens, at least opens a window so that user knows that the app has been launched.

FabulousPanda

mm I do hate apps that open with no windows. will get this in there for the next version!

polanskiman

I do have a question regarding workers. Is it ok to run the same worker on 2 different machines or should I create one worker for each machine?