RESOLVED: Seems this bug is still hanging around.....

[Steve Sokolowski]

None of my miners will mine proper as of today.

Gblades always 15Mhs... Today 10Mhs
Gblack always 25Mhs..... Today 19Mhs
A2 Always around 100Mhs Today 56MHs??

Sent the Gblack to litecoinpool and mined great.

Don't know whats wrong but never seen it this bad.. I have unhooked for now don't have time to test.. Was something recently changed?

Yes. We're going to change it back in an hour. It was an attempt to fix this problem, but it didn't work. We apologize.

[CritterDog]

None of my miners will mine proper as of today.

Gblades always 15Mhs... Today 10Mhs
Gblack always 25Mhs..... Today 19Mhs
A2 Always around 100Mhs Today 56MHs??

Sent the Gblack to litecoinpool and mined great.

Don't know whats wrong but never seen it this bad.. I have unhooked for now don't have time to test.. Was something recently changed?

Yes. We're going to change it back in an hour. It was an attempt to fix this problem, but it didn't work. We apologize.

Ok, I was really baffled because all my miners have been working very well.. Then rejects started shooting really high.. I will try again later..
Thanks for letting me know

[Steve Sokolowski]

None of my miners will mine proper as of today.

Gblades always 15Mhs... Today 10Mhs
Gblack always 25Mhs..... Today 19Mhs
A2 Always around 100Mhs Today 56MHs??

Sent the Gblack to litecoinpool and mined great.

Don't know whats wrong but never seen it this bad.. I have unhooked for now don't have time to test.. Was something recently changed?

Yes. We're going to change it back in an hour. It was an attempt to fix this problem, but it didn't work. We apologize.

Ok, I was really baffled because all my miners have been working very well.. Then rejects started shooting really high.. I will try again later..
Thanks for letting me know

This issue is now resolved. Thanks for your patience.

As to GenTarkin's reports, I think that we should consider this whole thread resolved too. We were not able to determine any effect from these messages. The correct shares are being submitted successfully, but the mining software incorrectly writes that it is mining a low difficulty and finding blocks to the screen. We'll add to the documentation that this message is expected with some miners, and to ignore it.

[GenTarkin]

The reason we based our system off dollars is because we still are not sure if Bitcoin has a future; the outlook on the U.S. Dollar is much better. Still, we are looking into potentially supporting other currencies for display such as Bitcoin and the Euro.

Well, one thing can tell you for sure is the USD will fail someday - all fiat currencies always have. Bitcoin may not fail ultimately. =)

I dont know, I guess a majority of the mining community has a much different outlook than you guys do in regards to fiat currencies. When it comes to mining crypto, everything should be pegged to crypto ... btc being the most stable(time, economy and price) to date.
All the stats pegged to USD kinda makes it hard to gauge overall btc profit ratio vs other pools(in comparison to gauging profitability on other pools).

[GenTarkin]

Yes. We're going to change it back in an hour. It was an attempt to fix this problem, but it didn't work. We apologize.

Ok, I was really baffled because all my miners have been working very well.. Then rejects started shooting really high.. I will try again later..
Thanks for letting me know

This issue is now resolved. Thanks for your patience.

As to GenTarkin's reports, I think that we should consider this whole thread resolved too. We were not able to determine any effect from these messages. The correct shares are being submitted successfully, but the mining software incorrectly writes that it is mining a low difficulty and finding blocks to the screen. We'll add to the documentation that this message is expected with some miners, and to ignore it.

Sounds like a decent resolution to the problem =) ... not that were was ever one, but now its good to know exactly what was going on =)

[Steve Sokolowski]

The reason we based our system off dollars is because we still are not sure if Bitcoin has a future; the outlook on the U.S. Dollar is much better. Still, we are looking into potentially supporting other currencies for display such as Bitcoin and the Euro.

Well, one thing can tell you for sure is the USD will fail someday - all fiat currencies always have. Bitcoin may not fail ultimately. =)

I dont know, I guess a majority of the mining community has a much different outlook than you guys do in regards to fiat currencies. When it comes to mining crypto, everything should be pegged to crypto ... btc being the most stable(time, economy and price) to date.
All the stats pegged to USD kinda makes it hard to gauge overall btc profit ratio vs other pools(in comparison to gauging profitability on other pools).

I wouldn't have given the same answer as Chris did.

The real reason that the site is focused on dollars is that we offer payouts in many cryptocurrencies. Some sites, like Clevermining, only payout in bitcoins, so it makes sense for them to state what their bitcoin payouts will be. But since we don't focus on any particular currency, bitcoins don't mean anything special to us and it would actually take more code to deal with them.

Since you suggested that profits be listed in bitcoins on the charts, I'll add a bug to the bug tracker to do that at some point in the future, in addition to what is there now.

[GenTarkin]

The reason we based our system off dollars is because we still are not sure if Bitcoin has a future; the outlook on the U.S. Dollar is much better. Still, we are looking into potentially supporting other currencies for display such as Bitcoin and the Euro.

Well, one thing can tell you for sure is the USD will fail someday - all fiat currencies always have. Bitcoin may not fail ultimately. =)

I dont know, I guess a majority of the mining community has a much different outlook than you guys do in regards to fiat currencies. When it comes to mining crypto, everything should be pegged to crypto ... btc being the most stable(time, economy and price) to date.
All the stats pegged to USD kinda makes it hard to gauge overall btc profit ratio vs other pools(in comparison to gauging profitability on other pools).

I wouldn't have given the same answer as Chris did.

The real reason that the site is focused on dollars is that we offer payouts in many cryptocurrencies. Some sites, like Clevermining, only payout in bitcoins, so it makes sense for them to state what their bitcoin payouts will be. But since we don't focus on any particular currency, bitcoins don't mean anything special to us and it would actually take more code to deal with them.

Since you suggested that profits be listed in bitcoins on the charts, I'll add a bug to the bug tracker to do that at some point in the future, in addition to what is there now.

That makes *some sense* but ultimately, in cryptoworld, nearly all altcoin prices are pegged to BTC rate, since most of the time the altcoins funnel through BTC at an exchange prior to being converted to USD.

[GenTarkin]

So, I spoke w/ luke-jr regarding the "pool is issuing work for an old block"
He suggested that on the server side ...
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Stratum_mini ... 28DRAFT.29

That can somehow be used to set different *arbitrary* work goals for every altcoin and would prevent the message from happening.

From what he tells me something like this being issued w/ every coin change would do the trick:
mining.set_goal("litecoin")
mining.set_goal("feathercoin")
etc...

1 for each coin

He also mentioned this: "BFGMiner supports it if the pool is defined with the #goalreset option"

... I guess this is what he means:
"-o stratum+tcp://somepool:3333/#goalreset -O x --pool-goal multihoppool:malgo=scrypt"
Would have to be part of the bfgminer client side options.

[GenTarkin]

Now, Ill add my own discovery.
Ive found a way to modify bfgminer to suppress this message. Basically, I told bfgminer to only keep a block backlog in memory the current block instead of 6 blocks. So, now the message no longer appears.
This can be accomplished by changing line 7550 in miner.c
Change:

Code: Select all

 if (HASH_COUNT(blkchain->blocks) > 6)

To:

Code: Select all

 if (HASH_COUNT(blkchain->blocks) > 0)

Then recompile bfgminer.
NOTE: this breaks BALANCE / LOAD-BALANCE.
There may be a better way to accomplish it but ... this works for now =)

[GenTarkin]

Well, after digging around some more and experimenting, came up w/ a more advanced fix.
No issues w/ balance - load balance that I can see =)
But basically, now the message is still displayed but I appended (normal for multicoin pools) to it and functionally the network diff & current block hash properly update back to the old block its mining. So, the "found new block messages" shouldnt show anymore because of improperly displayed net diff.

Here's the code, if you search for "if (was_active)" in miner.c
Just add the parts of my code that are different, to miner.c then recompile bfgminer

Code: Select all

                        if (was_active)
                        {
                                struct block_info * const t = calloc(sizeof(struct block_info), 1);
                                memcpy(t->prevblkhash, prevblkhash, sizeof(t->prevblkhash));
                                t->block_id = block_id;
                                t->block_seen_order = new_blocks++;
                                t->first_seen_time = time(NULL);
                                // Pool actively changed block
                                if (pool == current_pool())
                                        restart = true;
                                if (block_id == blkchain->currentblk->block_id)
                                {
                                        // Caught up, only announce if this pool is the one in use
                                        if (restart)
                                        {
                                                set_curblock(goal, t);
                                                set_blockdiff(goal, work);
                                                applog(LOG_NOTICE, "%s %d caught up to new block",
                                                       work->longpoll ? "Longpoll from pool" : "Pool",
                                                       pool->pool_no);
                                        }
                                }
                                else
                                {
                                        // Switched to a block we know, but not the latest... why?
                                        // This might detect pools trying to double-spend or 51%,
                                        // but let's not make any accusations until it's had time
                                        // in the real world.
                                        set_blockdiff(goal, work);
                                        set_curblock(goal, t);
                                        char hexstr[65];
                                        blkhashstr(hexstr, prevblkhash);
                                        applog(LOG_WARNING, "%s %d is issuing work for an old block: %s (Normal if multicoin pool)",
                                               work->longpoll ? "Longpoll from pool" : "Pool",
                                               pool->pool_no,
                                               hexstr);
                                }
                        }
                }