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mvis edited this page Aug 5, 2017 · 13 revisions

Installing the Miner

TL;DR

  • Unzip the download package anywhere you like.
  • Move ethminer.ini to either %LocalAppData%/ethminer (Windows) or $HOME/.config/ethminer (Linux). Create subfolders as needed.
  • Windows Only: download and install both the VC 2013 Redistributable and the VC 2015 Redistributable
  • Run ethminer.exe --list-devices -G. Verify your GPUs are recognized. Pay special attention to the PlatformID. If it is anything other than 0, you will need to add --opencl-platform <n> to your command line.
  • Start mining with ethminer.exe -G -N 127.0.0.1:8545 -S 8008

Configuration Details

MVis-Ethminer is partially configured via command line parameters, and partially by settings in ethminer.ini. Run ethminer --help to see which settings are available on the command line. Have a look inside the .ini file to see what settings can be set there. (It is fairly well commented). Some settings can only be set on the command line (legacy ones mostly), some settings can only be set in the .ini file (newer ones mostly), and some can be set in both. For the last group, command line settings take precedence over the .ini file settings.

Failover Nodes

MVis-Ethminer can be configured to work with either one or two nodes. See the -N and -N2 options. If the first node becomes unresponsive, the miner will automatically switch to the failover node.

Screen Output

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MVis-Ethminer uses positioned output to display useful information regarding your mining rig. The image above shows an example of a mining rig with 3 GPUs.

  • Rates: the total combined rate in MH/s, followed by the individual GPU rates.
  • Temp: GPU temperatures
  • Fan: GPU fan speeds
  • Block #: current network block number as reported by your node
  • Block time: the number of minutes:seconds since the last block was mined on the network, as reported by your node.
  • Target: the upper 64 bits of the current network target value, sometimes referred to as the boundary. If your miner finds a hash value lower than the target, you will become the miner of the current block, and receive the appropriate reward. This is referred to in MVis documentation as finding a solution. The target value is inversely proportional to the network difficulty level.
  • Best Hash: the upper 64 bits of the best hash found by this mining rig, since the last block mined by this rig or any other rig in your mining operation. Remember, lower is better.
  • Work Units: the number of work units found by this mining rig. A work unit is similar to a 'share' in pool mining, minus the reward. It is a solution found to a target value that has been adjusted according to the hashing power of your mining rig. Using default settings, you should expect to see 6 work units per hour / per GPU.
  • Last: the upper 64 bits of the last work unit found by this mining rig
  • Solutions: the number of solutions found (blocks mined) by this mining rig during the current mining run.
  • Hash faults: the number of hash faults that have been detected per GPU during this mining run. A hash fault occurs when a hash value computed by the GPU does not match the hash value computed by the CPU. Of course not every hash value is checked this way. Only 1 hash value per kernel is checked. So depending on your settings, that means about 10 hashes are checked per second. Note that this is a much higher frequency of checking compared to the original Genoil miner, so don't be surprised if you see more hash faults than you are used to. Hash faults can be caused by excessive overclocking, overheating, faulty GPUs, among other things.

Limitations

  • CUDA mining is broken. The old code from Genoil is still there, but I don't have an nVidia device so was unable to duplicate the features I added on the OpenCL side to the CUDA side. Hopefully I will be able to fix this in the near future, or better yet, maybe an experienced CUDA dev will step up and volunteer for this effort. 😃
  • Pool mining is broken.
  • GPU temperatures and fan speeds are unavailable when running under Linux.
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