Something weird just happened with RHMiner... after 54 minutes it said:

end of dev mode...

Thank you, you an awesome person...

For a moment there I thought my laptop found a block ?

Maybe it did or maybe it didn't and it was just time related ? At that very time I was starting up second laptop... so many it wasn't fast enough to send the block to the blockchain maybe it was not accepted cause there was already a new one.. not sure... in the log it said nothing.

I did see some access violation higher up in log read of address 20 or so...

Anybody know if devmode is turned off automatically after 54 minutes or is there another trigger ?! hmmm...

WOW !!!!

Perhaps my toshiba laptop did find a block but pascalcoin issued a warning:

"Cannot AddNewBlockChain due blocking lock operations node"

This was two minutes after this message of rhminer came about... assuming that time display is actually wall clock time and not time since miner started hmmmm.

Perhaps there is a bug in pascal coin preventing new found blocks from being added properly...

Not sure what rhminer or pascalcoin would normally display if a block was found and about to be added ?


(I am going to dive into pascalcoin source code to see where this error message happens).

function TNode.AddNewBlockChain(SenderConnection: TNetConnection; NewBlockOperations: TPCOperationsComp;
  var newBlockAccount: TBlockAccount; var errors: AnsiString): Boolean;

in TNode.pas

Not sure when this function is called.... maybe when new block is found ? maybe not ?


    If Not TPCThread.TryProtectEnterCriticalSection(Self,2000,FLockNodeOperations) then begin
      If NewBlockOperations.OperationBlock.block<>Bank.BlocksCount then exit;
      s := 'Cannot AddNewBlockChain due blocking lock operations node';
      TLog.NewLog(lterror,Classname,s);
      if TThread.CurrentThread.ThreadID=MainThreadID then raise Exception.Create(s) else exit;
    end;

My best guess for now what happened might be the following:

The earlier access violation might have occured during such a critical section, then the critical section was not leaved correctly, leading to this lock still being locked.

If true this could mean that pascalcoin is seriously bugged and has to be restarted to correct this lock, otherwise found blocks will never be added properly.

So this could be a very serious bug if true.

Kinda doubt this is true... then again this locking function might be cause:

class function TPCThread.TryProtectEnterCriticalSection(const Sender: TObject;
  MaxWaitMilliseconds: Cardinal; var Lock: TPCCriticalSection): Boolean;
Var tc : TTickCount;
  {$IFDEF HIGHLOG}
  tc2,tc3,lockStartedTimestamp : TTickCount;
  lockCurrThread : TThreadID;
  lockWatingForCounter : Cardinal;
  s : String;
  {$ENDIF}
begin
  tc := TPlatform.GetTickCount;
  if MaxWaitMilliseconds>60000 then MaxWaitMilliseconds := 60000;
  {$IFDEF HIGHLOG}
  lockWatingForCounter := Lock.WaitingForCounter;
  lockStartedTimestamp := Lock.StartedTickCount;
  lockCurrThread := Lock.CurrentThread;
  {$ENDIF}
  Repeat
    Result := Lock.TryEnter;
    if Not Result then sleep(1);
  Until (Result) Or (TPlatform.GetElapsedMilliseconds(tc)>MaxWaitMilliseconds);
  {$IFDEF HIGHLOG}
  if Not Result then begin
    tc2 := TPlatform.GetTickCount;
    if lockStartedTimestamp=0 then lockStartedTimestamp := Lock.StartedTickCount;
    if lockStartedTimestamp=0 then tc3 := 0
    else tc3 := tc2-lockStartedTimestamp;
    s := Format('Cannot Protect a critical section %s %s class %s after %d milis locked by %s waiting %d-%d elapsed milis: %d',
      [IntToHex(PtrInt(Lock),8),Lock.Name,
      Sender.ClassName,tc2-tc,
      IntToHex(lockCurrThread,8)+'-'+IntToHex(Lock.CurrentThread,8),
      lockWatingForCounter,Lock.WaitingForCounter,
      tc3
      ]);
    TLog.NewLog(ltdebug,Classname,s);
  end;
  {$ENDIF}
end;

Then again... perhaps same lock/critical section is used somewhere else and other pieces of code would have to be checked.

I am kinda against the "fault tolerant design of pascalcoin" it hides serious issues like this.

It might be better to let pascalcoin crash, so users can restart it or simply fix these issues.

Now these issues might be unreported/unnoticed for a long time... leading to very unfair mining if true.

One possible solution/remedy is to remove this fault tolerant design and/or implement a pascalcoin crash detection, and on crash restart the pascalcoin client, this might be a better/safer option.

Will have to look into this tomorrow

(Re-typing this bitcoin talk seemed to log me out hmm):

Secondary solution could be two run two pascalcoins, either on different systems, or in different folders/ports, code would need to be adjusted for the later.

First pascalcoin system would be mined on, then after some time, miners switch to second pascalcoin system.

Then first pascalcoin system is shutdown... while mining continues on second pascalcoin system.

Then first pascalcoin system is restarted/reloaded safebox and such.

Then miners switch to first one again. Then second one is restarted and so forth.

So to always have a good as possible running pascalcoin... not sure if this would actually help and fix the problem whatever it might be causing this lock to fail and other serious access violations.

Best solution would simply be to fix the damn problems in the first place !

Also perhaps collecting/uploading these logs automatically may also help. Bad situation this... loosing a bit of faith in this... crashing might be better to make people realise this software has some serious issues that need to be fixed... perhaps it will lead to more people actually trying to debug this code... instead of praying and hoping for the best...

Not sure if this software can recover at all from locking issues... probably not if a thread keeps the lock or something like that...

This is my second complaint with this software... Would like it to have only 1 or a max of 2 threads... so that it's less race condition prone and easier to debug.

How for main GUI/VCL and 1 for pascal coin engine...

May have to submit a pip for this... doubt it will be accepted but who knows.

Would require rework of TCP handling and some other stuff...

But where there is a will... there is a way...

Perhaps the lock bug was caused when I closed the laptop and windows logged out...

Anyway I am going to halt mining cause I have lost faith in it because of all these bugs... can't be sure it's actually working correctly.

Could just be a waste of electricity at this point.

LOL.

Yeah I kinda noticed this. I will therefore not cut back on the Fs when I feel like it, unless you cut back too LOL.

It's not.  It crashed 3 times in 1 hour.  The website is down too.

I am gambling between solo/coinotron/and nano.

I'm leaving it on 1 mode for the night. 

I don't use Windows and you and few others are the reason normal people end up on anti-psychotics.

Under Release.  Click the green download button.  Unzip using 7z (the Windows 7/8/8.1/10 unzip effs up on some archives).

You need the release wallet too v 4.0.1 for Windows I'm guessing.  Binary unless you can spare 1 minute to compile using FPC/lazarus.

Point the miner from the terminal, sorry I mean 'cmd' in run that type text to run an App box.

rhminer.exe -v 2 -r 20 -s http://localhost:4009 -GPU 0 -gputhreads 400 -extrapayload TakeTheBluePill

BTW.  I didn't read anything you wrote.  I'm writing this from very bad memory.  I drank a case of PBR last night.

I use Kali (on 7 old computers), so I can compile from source.  As you can tell I have only been using Linux for 7 days.

If you still can't figure it out follow these steps (how to use a computer tutorial):

I looked at your forum posts.  WTF or GTFO never dealt with crypto.  Stop being stupid!

Hey bob it works like this:

1. Download RHminer package, find the RHminer.exe extract it somewhere... this is all you need.

2. Click start button then either enter cmd.exe on white bar or find command prompt black icon with c:\ in it.

3. type cd\somefolder where rhminer.exe was extracted.

4. try run it rhminer.exe this will show command line options.

Eventually you will have to put the following line in a text file somewhere:

"C:\Tools\PascalCoin\version 4.01\PolyMiner\CPU\rhminer.exe" -v 2 -r 20 -s http://127.0.0.1:4009 -cpu 0 -cputhreads 2 -extrapayload Bob

^ This uses the cpu option of rhminer.

GPU will look like:

"C:\Tools\PascalCoin\version 4.01\PolyMiner\CPU\rhminer.exe" -v 2 -r 20 -s http://127.0.0.1:4009 -gpu 0 -gputhreads 32 -extrapayload Bob

Save this text file as run.txt then rename it to run.bat

You must make sure it's not run.txt.bat otherwise it won't work.

Find tools->folder options in  windows explorer and go to view  then uncheck hide extensions for known file types.

Also checkmark "show hidden folder and folders" this may help you later to find the app dir and data folders of pascalcoin easier if you want to copy your wallet to somewhere safe or so or mess with blockchain.

Once down you can click run.bat next time to start the miner, this is handy.

This bat file can also be added to task schedular to run it from a certain time, not going to explain how to do that now but it's a nice option... but probably not necessary if you just want to run it straight away.

Try the steps above and let us know at which step you had problems.

In short what you just did above was:

1. Download and extract a release/binary distribution... source code is included too... this is a bit messy of polyminer1... I can agree with you there. the github/zip contains different releases for gpu... these are cuda architecture... if you want to run this miner on your nvidia graphics card then you must match the cuda architecture yourself manually and use the correct rhminer... rhminer will not work on amd/ati graphics cards I think.

2. Open a ms-dos command prompt and run an exe that way to test it out and via command line options.

3. Create a batchfile and run the batchfile.

Batch files work with command line options which look something like:

-s sometext

-s is to indicate it's a command line option/switch

sometext is the input for the option.

Now you have some terms to google and learn more about this.

I agree with you a little bit, that for younger people you should not have to know about old ms-dos commands... this was way before your time

Creating a nice GUI app/front-end for rhminer would not be too difficult... somebody could do it... including me...

Probably would take about 1 hour or so to create a nice gui front end...

But me tired and have to go to sleep.

I'll make you guys a deal... for 10 pascal coins I will make a nice gui front end for RHminer ! =D

How common is it to not have any accepte shares shown when mining?

Have it running as a test on a server, and even though I get 900H/S, it constantly shows 0 accepted shares..

No errors, log file shows it's getting work and running fine. I'm using a local wallet on the same server and connecting to that.

Mining solo on mainnet?

With that HR, you will wait a long time if you manage to get a reward.
Look at the nethash in the wallet under block explorer.
I stopped solo 2 days ago.

Your configuration is correct.  I soloed 4 blocks on the night of the HF in few hours.  Then stopped eventually.

I used the default process priority on Linux.  It doesn't make a difference.  Maybe different on Windows?
I can load 24 logical cores out of 24 on my old xeon and still watch YouTube.

I used extra payload "TimeToWakeUP", but I'm pretty sure that does not increase your chances of solving a block.   

He has some kind of error in the calculations mate? I often mine solo solo but confuses me that he has errors. Would like to understand before investing time and energy.

Hope this helps:
As soon as You solve solo block, You will see accepted share. With Your speed, I'll say week-two-three. If difficulty doesn't goes upward in the meantime.