This is zcash testnet being mined, sped up 60x for dramatic effect.
Make it fullscreen, sit back, and imagine this being realtime and real net
You’d expect that looking at it for real would be like watching paint dry, but it is oddly mesmerizing.
With the equihash being so slow, you can see every hash produced by every node in the pool slowly coming in.
Tick, tick-tick, tick, the fans whirring.
Another observation that is made apparent in timelapse is how a new block derails the computation - each time one comes in, every node have to restart, and there is a 20-30 second pause with nothing happening.
[quote=“bitcartel, post:2, topic:1962”]Which Linux distro are you using, what font is being used and what screen recording software did you use?[/quote]Arch Linux.
Not a clue - i’m font-blind. My guess is that it’s some default one.
Recorded with “while true; do scrot -z & sleep 2; done”
Once done, “ffmpeg -framerate 30 -start_number 2290 -i img/scrot_%05d.png -c:v libx264 -x264opts opencl -r 30 -vframes 12240 -pix_fmt yuv420p mining.mp4”
It’s called “tmux” - a split-screen “screen” clone.
On the right is my mining pool control server, on the upper left is the debug output of my miner on one of the nodes, on the lower left is a script that polls RPCs like getinfo, listunspent and so on every so often and reformat it into human-readable form.
[quote=“adrian, post:4, topic:1962”]This is your miner?[/quote]Yep.
Stats are on the lower left - a block per hour with average difficulty of 70.
On the right, the hash rates are shown every now and then, between 0.3 and 0.4 H/s, counter resets every 10 minutes.
[quote=“zcashio, post:6, topic:1962”]Does this mean I can set-up 3-4 computers that will mine zcsah and use one different computer to monitor them?[/quote]More or less.
I got one computer with zcashd on it that runs the server, and a dozen computers that run nothing but the miner, doing hashes on server’s data and sending the solutions back.
It’s about twice as efficient as running zcashd on each machine separately.
The server gets the output of getblocktemplate from zcashd, forms a block, then sends it’s header to every node, each with it’s own nonce value.
The nodes keep a live connection to the server when they start, and wait for data.
Once data is received, they start computing, then send solutions back.
If new data is received mid-computation, it is aborted and started anew with the new data, thus avoiding wasting time on stale blocks.
The server looks for a new block every 5 seconds, and keeps a list of nodes and their states (to know which ones are free and which are computing). On receiving a solution, it computes the SHA256, and if it fits the target, sends the block to the zcashd over submitblock RPC. Otherwise, it either waits for the next solution, or sends a new block header over.
[quote=“seafood, post:10, topic:1962”]How do you run a miner without running zcashd?[/quote]I wrote a standalone miner, which communicates over TCP with a control server that communicates over RPC with zcashd.
Hey, do you know the awesome linux terminal terminator? Looks like someting that could work out for you, heh.
Edit0. Like I’m blind, you are already using tmux. Also +1 for ArchLinux.
Edit1. Would it be hard for you to release a benchmarking tool for systems (not a miner)? How to (mining) benchmark a system (not single core)? — I am in the process of preparing some hardware, but I need numbers to measure feasibility. Thanks
Is there any particular requirement on CPU? Will a q8400 Core2quad be enough? or Hyperthreading Technology is a prerequisite for this coin? Pls let me know. Thanks in advance.
I like the emulator on the video. Any guide for a newbie?
Is the standalone miner using Stratum (or a similar protocol).
Is the standalone miner responsible for putting together blocks or is that what the “control server” you mentioned above responsible for. Did you write that control server yourself?
