geth GPU Mining

ConradJohnson

Anyone successfully get a GPU miner going with geth?

LarsPensjo

I got it working on both Windows and Linux Mint. On Windows, I simply downloaded the geth.exe. After adding an account, it was trivial to get it going. Except for bugs, which means I can no longer synchronize.

On Mint, I downloaded the Go source code (go-ethereum). This compiled without issue, and I could start mining in the same way as on Windows.

On Windows, I got a hash rate of about 400; on Mint I got something like 240. It was the same PC. I don't care too much about this, as I suppose we will all wait for the GPU miner anyway.

Michael_A

hey guys
After few block successfully mine, I had this error msg on my console ( geth.console )
1603 sync.go:100] Synchronisation failed: peer's unknown or unhealthy
Does someone know what does it mean?

Genoil

Apparently you can use geth as a farm server for ethminer. Have you tried that already?

Michael_A

hey Genoil
Nope,
what do you mean by farm server?

terzim

@LarsPensjo hi! Does it really work to just download the geth.exe on Windows? Doesn't one have to build the source code following the below instructions?

http://ethereum.gitbooks.io/frontier-guide/content/installing_windows.html

@Michael_A hey!

LarsPensjo

Sorry, sloppy reading, I saw it as CPU mining.

Genoil

@Michael_A you can set up a node that can have multiple mining-only nodes attached to it. This can be either eth or geth. For minign only, you have to build the ethminer binary from source and set it up for GPU mining.

In my current setup I have a free-tier EC2 node running geth with an ethminer GPU miner connected to it via RPC. At the time of writing I'm mining more than half of the new blocks with a single GTX780

Michael_A

@Genoil do you use Linux or Mac?
Right now Im using the CPU of my mac with geth, do you have any idea how to set up GPU mining on mac?

Also today it seem that the network is running smoothly, I have been mining for more than an hour without any error of sync or Invalid block alert poping up.
However I have noticed something strange I was commit to the Block number #310510 and on the next line my terminal told me that i mined the block #310444 which is 66 block in the past ( 12second*66=792second ago)
Is it a bug? it is normal that the network took 792 second to update my node ?

Michael_A

@terzim hey !

Genoil

@Michael_A . I use Linux on EC2 as the farm server and Windows for GPU mining. My mining results are very mixed. When I was writing the post before this one, I was the top miner, but after I closed it down to make a tiny change somewhere, I can't keep up any longer. Not sure what causes this. Might simply be my free-tier EC2 node being bottlenecked.

I think when you're mining blocks in the past, you're mining on a split in the chain. I get this a lot now:

2015-05-12 11:09 +00:00: I0512 11:09:40.595578   10405 worker.go:215]   Mined block #310669
2015-05-12 11:09 +00:00: I0512 11:09:41.705050   10405 worker.go:326] commit new work on block 310670 with 0 txs & 0 uncles
2015-05-12 11:09 +00:00: I0512 11:09:50.469753   10405 chain_manager.go:580] Split detected. New head #310669 (afeffffa) TD=23459331897902, was #310669 (859faaf4) TD=23459331265091

Michael_A

@Genoil Ok i see does it mean that even if I mine on a split chain it is still part of the main chain?

Also do you know any tutorial on how to create free-tier EC2 node running geth?

Genoil

@Michael_A no i don't think mining on a split is good

I noticed that to get any reasonable performance, you need at least an m3.medium instance on EC2, as you will quickly run out of of CPU time on t2.micro. Nevertheless, you can still use it to try it out. You can use these docs to get your EC2 instance up. Once you're in, follow this guidehttps://github.com/cubedro/eth-net-intelligence-api. You will need a password to actually show up on the stats page.

terzim

by the way @Genoil @Michael_A @LarsPensjo I had purchased long ago one of this USB Bitfury miners.

Any idea how to set it up to mine on Geth?

acros

Hey @Genoil , would you happen to have an idea why I get this:

$ ./ethminer -v 9 -G -F http://127.0.0.1:8545
./ethminer: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libOpenCL.so.1: no version information available (required by /home/ubuntu/git/cpp-ethereum/build/libethcore/libethcore.so)
./ethminer: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libOpenCL.so.1: no version information available (required by /home/ubuntu/git/cpp-ethereum/build/libethash-cl/libethash-cl.so)
  ℹ  02:53:05|ethminer  Getting work package...
  ℹ  02:53:05|ethminer  Got work package: #837a0519…  < #0000000e…
  ℹ  02:53:06|ethminer  Mining on PoWhash #837a0519… : 0 H/s = 0 hashes / 0.5 s
  ℹ  02:53:06|ethminer  Mining on PoWhash #837a0519… : 0 H/s = 0 hashes / 1.001 s
  ℹ  02:53:07|ethminer  Mining on PoWhash #837a0519… : 0 H/s = 0 hashes / 1.502 s
  ℹ  02:53:07|ethminer  Mining on PoWhash #837a0519… : 0 H/s = 0 hashes / 2.003 s
  ℹ  02:53:07|ethminer  Got work package: #9f188e30…  < #0000000e…

I get 0 H/s for the first work package, and upon getting the second one, it just stops right there (or so it seems). I'm using "geth --rcp" as work server (it's up to date on the blocks and connection from ethminer seems OK at first sight)

Genoil

@acros yes this looks very familiar. I suspect the miner is generating the DAG needed for hashing the received work, without telling you. So you could simply wait for a while and then it will continue. What I do instead isthe following:

$ ./ethminer -D 319535

This just generates the DAG required for mining the specified block (319535 when I'm writing this) and 30,000 of its neighbours. After that relaunch the miner and you should be good to go.

acros

Thanks a lot @Genoil , I really appreciate the help

$ ./ethminer -D 321545
Initializing DAG for epoch beginning #300000 (seedhash 9b2baad7…). This will take a while.
$ 

Is this operation silent though? The above command returns almost immediately (exit code 0 though)

Genoil

@acros hm ok then it is something else, you've already got the right DAG. I don't have have ethminer on Linux but on Windows, I don't get these "version info missing" messages. Perhaps you should try to get rid of those first, as they are generated by the opencl miner initialisation calls.

acros

@Genoil , I managed to get rid of the error messages but still no dice:

$ ./ethminer -v 9 -G -F http://127.0.0.1:8545
  ℹ  14:05:15|ethminer  Getting work package...
  ℹ  14:05:15|ethminer  Got work package: #061d3fa4…  < #0000000a…
  ℹ  14:05:16|ethminer  Mining on PoWhash #061d3fa4… : 0 H/s = 0 hashes / 0.5 s
  ℹ  14:05:16|ethminer  Mining on PoWhash #061d3fa4… : 0 H/s = 0 hashes / 1.001 s
  ℹ  14:05:17|ethminer  Mining on PoWhash #061d3fa4… : 0 H/s = 0 hashes / 1.502 s
  ℹ  14:05:17|ethminer  Mining on PoWhash #061d3fa4… : 0 H/s = 0 hashes / 2.003 s
  ℹ  14:05:17|ethminer  Got work package: #5c936910…  < #0000000a…

For those interested, I used the preload trick:

export LD_PRELOAD="/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libOpenCL.so.1"

Then rebuilt the project

acros

I asked on the cpp gitter chat room and was informed that ethminer has a bug that has just been fixed and will be released soon (at least for Linux). Fingers crossed!

n12o

I am also seeing those "0 H/s = 0 hashes", and the benchmark worked well. Do you have a link to the patch that fixes the issue?

acros

Hey @n12o, commit a508bb85ae93c03b8971d064602567f39c07cad7 fixes the above issue for me, but overall there are still a lot of problems... See https://gitter.im/ethereum/cpp-ethereum for some of the issues I get

Smithgift

terzim said:

by the way @Genoil @Michael_A @LarsPensjo I had purchased long ago one of this USB Bitfury miners.

Any idea how to set it up to mine on Geth?

Ethereum is deliberately designed to use a different mining algorithm than bitcoin. A bitcoin ASIC like those produced by Bitfury will not work at all.

n12o

acros said:

Hey @n12o, commit a508bb85ae93c03b8971d064602567f39c07cad7 fixes the above issue for me, but overall there are still a lot of problems... See https://gitter.im/ethereum/cpp-ethereum for some of the issues I get

Oh, Thanks. I couldn't make geth work with ethminer, I always got 0 H/s. Mining from "eth" and now it is working.

acros

Has anyone been successful with ethminer and AMD cards?

I get 0 H/s and a seg fault :-/

$ ./ethminer -G -F http://127.0.0.1:8545
No protocol specified
Error: No root privilege. Please check with the system-admin.
No protocol specified
  ℹ  20:46:12|ethminer  Getting work package...
  ℹ  20:46:12|ethminer  Getting work package...
  ℹ  20:46:12|ethminer  Got work package:
  ℹ  20:46:12|ethminer    Header-hash: 8535bed0cdd6834b95655b8c729f69cdd095116b692421f72d1099dc8e50a823
  ℹ  20:46:12|ethminer    Seedhash: 9b2baad7528ecec612c5751a6bd525905892d7892e155c3b05e61363154a940b
  ℹ  20:46:12|ethminer    Target: 0000000628e2f30ce66170ebf18b3bce6465f3e9b738b642f291770d966b70ee
  ℹ  20:46:12|gpuminer0  workLoop 0 #00000000… #9b2baad7…
  ℹ  20:46:12|gpuminer0  Awaiting DAG 0
  ℹ  20:46:12|gpuminer0  Loading full DAG of 300000
  ℹ  20:46:13|ethminer  Mining on PoWhash #8535bed0… : 0 H/s = 0 hashes / 0.5 s
  ℹ  20:46:13|gpuminer0  Awaiting DAG 0
  ℹ  20:46:13|ethminer  Mining on PoWhash #8535bed0… : 0 H/s = 0 hashes / 1 s
  ℹ  20:46:13|gpuminer0  Awaiting DAG 0
  ℹ  20:46:14|gpuminer0  Awaiting DAG 0
  ℹ  20:46:14|ethminer  Mining on PoWhash #8535bed0… : 0 H/s = 0 hashes / 1.501 s
  ℹ  20:46:14|gpuminer0  Awaiting DAG 0
  ℹ  20:46:14|ethminer  Mining on PoWhash #8535bed0… : 0 H/s = 0 hashes / 2.002 s
  ℹ  20:46:15|gpuminer0  Awaiting DAG 0
  ℹ  20:46:15|ethminer  Mining on PoWhash #8535bed0… : 0 H/s = 0 hashes / 2.503 s
  ℹ  20:46:15|gpuminer0  Awaiting DAG 0
  ℹ  20:46:15|ethminer  Mining on PoWhash #8535bed0… : 0 H/s = 0 hashes / 3.004 s
  ℹ  20:46:16|gpuminer0  Awaiting DAG 0
  ℹ  20:46:16|ethminer  Mining on PoWhash #8535bed0… : 0 H/s = 0 hashes / 3.504 s
  ℹ  20:46:16|gpuminer0  Awaiting DAG 0
  ℹ  20:46:16|ethminer  Mining on PoWhash #8535bed0… : 0 H/s = 0 hashes / 4.005 s
  ℹ  20:46:17|gpuminer0  Awaiting DAG 0
  ℹ  20:46:17|ethminer  Mining on PoWhash #8535bed0… : 0 H/s = 0 hashes / 4.506 s
  ℹ  20:46:17|gpuminer0  Awaiting DAG 0
  ℹ  20:46:17|ethminer  Mining on PoWhash #8535bed0… : 0 H/s = 0 hashes / 5.007 s
  ℹ  20:46:18|gpuminer0  Awaiting DAG 0
  ℹ  20:46:18|ethminer  Mining on PoWhash #8535bed0… : 0 H/s = 0 hashes / 5.508 s
  ℹ  20:46:18|gpuminer0  Loading from libethash...
  ℹ  20:46:18|gpuminer0  Done loading.
  ℹ  20:46:18|gpuminer0  Full DAG loaded
Using platform: AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing
Using device: AMD A6-7400K Radeon R5, 6 Compute Cores 2C+4G(OpenCL 1.2 AMD-APP (1642.5))
  ℹ  20:46:18|ethminer  Mining on PoWhash #8535bed0… : 0 H/s = 0 hashes / 6.008 s
  ℹ  20:46:19|ethminer  Mining on PoWhash #8535bed0… : 0 H/s = 0 hashes / 6.509 s
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

terzim

@Smithgift thank you.

mik

terzim said:

by the way @Genoil @Michael_A @LarsPensjo I had purchased long ago one of this USB Bitfury miners.

Any idea how to set it up to mine on Geth?

Hi terzim,
I think these are not suitable for eth mining since these are ASICs as I remember.

0xff

Probably just got my GPU mining working, but having some doubts as I have not seen any message that a block has been mined.

what I did was

in console 1:

geth account new
geth --mine --rpc

in console 2:

ethminer -G (this by default will communicate with geth on port 8545)

So, first question - is option "--mine" necessary for geth in this setup?
Second - since no blocks have yet been mined I am not sure - is the beneficiary account attached to geth (GO wallet) or ethminer (CPP wallet)?


Output in console 1:

...
I0515 00:31:51.703645 577 worker.go:337] commit new work on block 336762 with 0 txs & 0 uncles
I0515 00:31:56.633073 577 chain_manager.go:628] imported 1 block(s) (0 queued 0 ignored) in 4.508584ms. #336760 [17f73592 / 17f73592]
I0515 00:32:03.382181 577 chain_manager.go:628] imported 0 block(s) (0 queued 1 ignored) in 3.805216ms. #336762 [fdcc6059 / fdcc6059]
I0515 00:32:03.382351 577 chain_manager.go:628] imported 1 block(s) (0 queued 0 ignored) in 4.885062ms. #336762 [fdcc6059 / fdcc6059]
I0515 00:32:03.382979 577 worker.go:337] commit new work on block 336763 with 0 txs & 1 uncles
I0515 00:32:21.364697 577 chain_manager.go:628] imported 1 block(s) (0 queued 0 ignored) in 12.270032ms. #336763 [8a207778 / 8a207778]
I0515 00:32:21.365819 577 worker.go:337] commit new work on block 336764 with 0 txs & 1 uncles
...

Output in console 2:

ℹ 00:08:42|main Got work package:
ℹ 00:08:42|main Header-hash: 3e492b6713e1aae9cd2d31850c40db23710cee2a23a7b6e321bcedb808617607
ℹ 00:08:42|main Seedhash: d705bfceb18862841d146b65702167152de74c08a4c1821a1698fcc414d8978e
ℹ 00:08:42|main Target: 0000000283ccaf363f49d5e33c4951e629926ab8ed03c0a6e61b5aeb7d311dca
⚡ 00:08:42|miner0 Worker stopping 0.102481 s
⚡ 00:08:42|main Start worker 0.105742 s
ℹ 00:08:43|main Mining on PoWhash #3e492b67… : 286282 H/s = 144000 hashes / 0.503 s
ℹ 00:08:43|main Mining on PoWhash #3e492b67… : 270483 H/s = 274000 hashes / 1.013 s
ℹ 00:08:44|main Mining on PoWhash #3e492b67… : 263192 H/s = 399000 hashes / 1.516 s
ℹ 00:08:44|main Mining on PoWhash #3e492b67… : 260783 H/s = 526000 hashes / 2.017 s
ℹ 00:08:45|main Mining on PoWhash #3e492b67… : 258204 H/s = 653000 hashes / 2.529 s
ℹ 00:08:45|main Mining on PoWhash #3e492b67… : 257331 H/s = 781000 hashes / 3.035 s
ℹ 00:08:46|main Mining on PoWhash #3e492b67… : 256142 H/s = 907000 hashes / 3.541 s
ℹ 00:08:46|main Mining on PoWhash #3e492b67… : 257298 H/s = 1040000 hashes / 4.042 s
ℹ 00:08:47|main Mining on PoWhash #3e492b67… : 256432 H/s = 1166000 hashes / 4.547 s
ℹ 00:08:47|main Mining on PoWhash #3e492b67… : 255689 H/s = 1292000 hashes / 5.053 s
ℹ 00:08:48|main Mining on PoWhash #3e492b67… : 255671 H/s = 1420000 hashes / 5.554 s
ℹ 00:08:48|main Mining on PoWhash #3e492b67… : 254989 H/s = 1546000 hashes / 6.063 s
ℹ 00:08:49|main Mining on PoWhash #3e492b67… : 254639 H/s = 1674000 hashes / 6.574 s
ℹ 00:08:49|main Mining on PoWhash #3e492b67… : 253849 H/s = 1797000 hashes / 7.079 s
ℹ 00:08:50|main Mining on PoWhash #3e492b67… : 254648 H/s = 1931000 hashes / 7.583 s
ℹ 00:08:50|main Mining on PoWhash #3e492b67… : 254419 H/s = 2058000 hashes / 8.089 s
ℹ 00:08:51|main Mining on PoWhash #3e492b67… : 253313 H/s = 2179000 hashes / 8.602 s
ℹ 00:08:51|main Mining on PoWhash #3e492b67… : 253075 H/s = 2304000 hashes / 9.104 s
ℹ 00:08:52|main Mining on PoWhash #3e492b67… : 252836 H/s = 2429000 hashes / 9.607 s
ℹ 00:08:52|main Mining on PoWhash #3e492b67… : 252818 H/s = 2556000 hashes / 10.11 s
ℹ 00:08:53|main Mining on PoWhash #3e492b67… : 252564 H/s = 2684000 hashes / 10.627 s
ℹ 00:08:53|main Mining on PoWhash #3e492b67… : 252245 H/s = 2808000 hashes / 11.132 s
ℹ 00:08:54|main Mining on PoWhash #3e492b67… : 252363 H/s = 2936000 hashes / 11.634 s
ℹ 00:08:54|main Mining on PoWhash #3e492b67… : 252059 H/s = 3059000 hashes / 12.136 s
ℹ 00:08:55|main Mining on PoWhash #3e492b67… : 252353 H/s = 3190000 hashes / 12.641 s
ℹ 00:08:55|main Mining on PoWhash #3e492b67… : 252548 H/s = 3320000 hashes / 13.146 s
ℹ 00:08:56|main Mining on PoWhash #3e492b67… : 252179 H/s = 3442000 hashes / 13.649 s
ℹ 00:08:56|main Got work package:
ℹ 00:08:56|main Header-hash: f06debe13e279fe8f047aecf5b864df9d09852a0d8bf1b7e158f70fded36762e
ℹ 00:08:56|main Seedhash: d705bfceb18862841d146b65702167152de74c08a4c1821a1698fcc414d8978e
ℹ 00:08:56|main Target: 0000000283ccb9444a7a84a937b1c9dcdff85f2386cd0701d4ecb1c893e1e45a
⚡ 00:08:56|miner4 Worker stopping 0.10707 s

Genoil

@0xff it's looking good, but your hashrate isn't very good. last few days avg. hashrate has been doubling every day, so chances you actually mine something at 0.2MH/s are declining fast. This project really needs a mining pool if it wants to stay interesting for small scale GPU miners.

dagide

Hi, I'm getting the same problem running geth and ethminer -G; the miner get stuck after "got work package"

[email protected] ~/Repositories/Ethereum/cpp-ethereum/build $ bin/ethminer -G -F http://127.0.0.1:8545 -v 9
ℹ 13:20:30|ethminer Getting work package...
ℹ 13:20:30|ethminer Got work package: #3c842c30… < #00000001…
◇ 13:20:30|ethminer pause took 9e-06
◇ 13:20:30|ethminer kickOff took 0.00012
ℹ 13:20:30|ethminer Mining on PoWhash #3c842c30… : 0 H/s = 0 hashes / 0.5 s
ℹ 13:20:31|ethminer Mining on PoWhash #3c842c30… : 0 H/s = 0 hashes / 1 s
ℹ 13:20:31|ethminer Mining on PoWhash #3c842c30… : 0 H/s = 0 hashes / 1.501 s
ℹ 13:20:32|ethminer Mining on PoWhash #3c842c30… : 0 H/s = 0 hashes / 2.002 s
ℹ 13:20:32|ethminer Mining on PoWhash #3c842c30… : 0 H/s = 0 hashes / 2.503 s
ℹ 13:20:33|ethminer Mining on PoWhash #3c842c30… : 0 H/s = 0 hashes / 3.003 s
ℹ 13:20:33|ethminer Got work package: #3316d0df… < #00000001…

Ethminer is not creating the DAG (ram usage doesn't increase), I think it's doing nothing. I have geth and ethminer at the last git commit and in benchmark mode ethminer runs well. Is there a workaround for this problem or I should open a github ticket?

dagide

Ok, I've solved the problem above and was my fault

Anyway all works well after re-cloning the clean repo and recompiling ethminer.