Start GUIMiner.


Set Bitcoin client path
( Solo Utilites - Set Bitcoin client path)
Now GUIMiner aware of bitcoin client whereabouts.

If you never opened your bitcoin.conf and did not created user/password in it:
Set Bitcoin pass
( Solo Utilites - Create solo password)
Enter username and password.
GUIMiner will add them in bitcoin.conf

Now launch Bitcoin with server options
You cant launch it, if client already running.
If your client already running with -server flag, you can skip that step.

(Solo Utilites - Launch Bitcoin client as server)

Time to create new miner
(File - New Opencl miner  or New other miner)



Server - Chose Solo from dropbox.

Enter your username and pass, created in solo utilites section (or if you already have user\password  in bitcoin.conf - use them)

Choose device and fill Extra flags field with options if needed.



You set.

Click Start.

In left lower corner you will see:
Difficulty 1 hashes: 0 (number will rise - it replaces "shares" that used in pool mining and works as indicator that all normal).
In right lower corner you will see hashrate.
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Recommended to have Solo miner as backup, in case of your pooled miner malfunction.
To do so, make sure that -f number in your Extra flags field, of solo miner is larger than in your main, pooled miner.
-f flag  related to Poclbm miner. Running Poclbm without -f flag, starts miner with -f30 by default. Poclbm is used if you create New OpenCL miner through File menu. For other miners consult on their main pages of the forum.
Both pooled (main) and solo miners should be started and running for that.

you are my hero!! thank you

Also - what if one wanted to add some miners from remote locations - assuming I can VPN/pass the IP traffic - is it theoretically possible to solo mine, using one minerd, with multiple miners both local and remote?

Anyone had any success with this?

edit 'Minderd'

One additional note, if you want to make sure your miners aren't dead in the water if the local bitcoin server goes down, set your GPU's/CPU's up to also mine with a pool, but with lower priority.  Set both to autostart and start them up.

For example I have a 6950 mining solo and pointing to my local bitcoin server using GUIMiner and the following flags, -v -w 128 -f 1.

I also created another miner for the same GPU pointing to slush's pool with the flags, -v -w 128 -f 15

If I look in my status, the GPU is mining full bore solo (365 MH/s) and just a trickle towards Slush (45 khash/s), but if my local bitcoin server goes down and the local miner gets a connection problem, the slush miner ramps up to full speed until that server comes back.

Of course, if your internet connection goes down, neither will work, but there's not much you can do about that.

Really depends on what you're doing.  If your solo mining, it can be a long time.  Figure out how much your total hashrate is and pop it into this calculator.

http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator.php

So, let's say you are currently mining with 500 MH/sec across all your miners, you're looking at making on average 1.16 BTC a day, but if you're solo mining you can only find a full block of 50 so you  have to extrapolate that out as to when you can expect to find one.  So, 50 1.16 =  43.1 Days, on _average_ until you find a block of 50.  That's assuming the difficulty level doesn't go up, which it's about to tomorrow and likely will every 2 weeks.

Of course, you could get lucky and find a block in your first hour of mining or you could mine for 12 months and not find a thing.  Every hash you throw out has an equal chance to be correct, so you never know when you are going to do it.  You also won't see anything in your Bitcoin server client window until you actually find a block and win the 50 coins, so the only way to check on things is to just check your miners and make sure they're running.

The other option is to look at some of the pools.  With those, you'll get a more regular stream of coins, but it'll be in smaller increments.  If it takes your pool 2 hours to find a block and you put in 1% of the total pool hashing power, you'll get 1% of the 50 coins, or .5.  Minus any fees the pool charges.  

Theoretically, over the long haul, if you spend a year solo mining and a year in a pool (that has no fees) you should end up with the exact same amount of coins.

Thanks a ton for the response.  Can I assume that ALL my other miners can use the same rpcuser/rpcpassword?

Hypothetical: Say I have legitimate, approved, and sponsored access to a couple of schools over the summer, where the PCs are not in use.  (And yes I understand that CPU mining is generally unprofitable). Postulate that these schools have green/living roofs for cooling, wind and solar for electric, and are carbon neutral.  If I can run a cpu miner on 200-300 PCs, even if they only get 3-400khashs each, and I can guarantee (within reason) 99.999 uptime on my minerd/bitcoind process, I'm better off solo-mining with my own pool, neh? 

Although I'd only be able to do this during the summer months while school is out.  Say 3 months.  Pool or no? 

In that "abstract" case more intelligent solution is preferred, be it "push pool" (we can call it "solo" in that case) solution or "Flexible mining proxy" (pooled mining) solution.

EDIT: If computers will CPU mine, then of course pooled solution is better (200-300 CPU mining computers, ~ 300-400 Mh/sec total).

Yes, you can use the same rpcuser/password for every client connecting to the server.  If anything, it just makes your life easier.

AS for pooling vs. solo, eh...really depends on the CPU's in the boxes.  Check out the Bitcoin Hardware Comparison Wiki and see if you can find the approximate CPU's your having so you can calculate out what you think you're max might.  Let's say theoretically you are getting 500 KH/sec each, that's about 150 MH/sec total.  With that, and current difficulty, you're looking at maybe 8-10 coins a month.  (IE, It'll take probably 5 months to find a block of 50).  I'd probably go pooled.

Finally as for your hypothetical situation.  Sounds great, but do you have legitimate, approved, and sponsored access to run their PC's at 100% during those three months?  That's really the key.  Can it be done, yes.  Do you want to risk your job/position if someone finds out as CPU's die earlier lives than normal?  Assume even a couple of CPU's will likely give up the ghost, will you make enough profit to replace those?

While it sounds awesome, just watch your keister so you don't get canned over it. I've seen people making 100K/year get fired for taking a ream of paper, so be careful.

And btw, I'm glad folks are getting help from the post, I'm happy to put up the info.  It's the least I can do after I got great information answers from the forums as I've been figuring things out myself as well.

Hehe, happy to help, and best advice I can give you is to have fun.   BTC prices can crash, difficulty can go through the roof, but they can't take anything you learn from the project away from you.

You positive you have the path for the bitcoin client set correctly in the GUIMiner UI (Solo Utilities -> Set Bitcoin Client Path).

Also, if you're doing pooled mining, you don't even need to worry about having the bitcoin client up and running, just GUIMiner works fine. 

Worst case, launch the bitcoin client with the -server flag.  (bitcoin.exe -server) which will do the same thing.