[Guide] Startup mining feathercoin Solo/Pool for windows

[svennand]

This guide contains some interesting information and tips, but is out of date. Help & documentation within the mining software, the pool sites and driver support has improved to reduce the needs for a guide. @Wrapper

For AMD GPU cards and CPU mining : https://github.com/ghostlander/nsgminer

Thought I’d make an easy startup guide for new people to start their mining feathercoins.

1. Downloading QT application and creating wallet.
2. modifying for solo mining
3. third party miner program
3. customising the mining app (cgminer in this tutorial)
4. extras

Go to feathercoin.com and download the Feathercoin QT app.
Start the program and let it sync to the network (this will take a long time…)
While you wait for this go to

NSGminer and download the latest NSGminer for your operating system.

When the feathercoin-qt app has finished syncing to the network. Go to: C:\Users\yourusername\App Data\Roaming\feathercoin
(If you dont see App Data folder go to view panel and select show hidden files!)

There’s a couple of importent things in this folder, including wallet.dat which is your personal wallet. this wallet should be regularly backuped to different location since it holds all you “money”, also its a smart thing to encrypt it in the feathercoin QT app, if not its easy for someone to hack your computer and make a copy of the wallet, then they just have to transfer funds from it to another wallet and ur broke…

If you dont care for Solo-mining skip to step 3.

2. Solo Mining

What you need to do in the App Data\Feathercoin folder is to create a new textdocument feathercoin.conf (be sure to save it as feathercoin.conf and not feathercoin.conf.txt).
to check this go to view options and select show file extensions.
In this document you put in something like this (this is my config so you need to change rpcuser,rpcpassword,and all the rpcallowip):

server=1
rpcuser=svennand
rpcpassword=password
rpcallowip=192.168.0.2
rpcallowip=192.168.0.9
rpcallowip=192.168.0.14
rpcallowip=192.168.0.21
rpcallowip=192.168.0.17
rpcport=9337

Short explanation:
rpcuser/rpcpassword will be the username/password the miners need to input to get work from the feathercoin app.
rpcallowip is all the ip adresses of my miners, where 192.168.0.2 is my main computer with qtapp (if your only going to use 1 pc and thats the pc with the app just input 127.0.0.1 which reference to the localhost). Its important that you input one of those rpcallowip for each of your miners.
rpcport is the port that the miners will connect trough, its important that this port is open on the main computer and also forwarded trough the router to the computer.

Save the feathercoin.conf
Now quit the feathercoin-qt app

Go to your feathercoin-qt folder and create a shortcut of feathercoin-qt.exe, place this shortcut somewhere easy like the desktop or such.
right click the shortcut and select properties. In there wheres the path xxxx\xxxxx\feathercoin.qt.exe is inputed, add --server at the end
so it will show: “xxxx\xxxx\feathercoin-qt.exe --server” (what this does is tell the feathercoin-qt that it should run feathercoin.conf file!)

Now just start the feathercoin-qt app again trough using the shortcut you created and voila its prepared for solo mining.

3. cgminer

I will focus on cgminer app, since this is the app that in my opinion is most stable, gives god options, and support most of the currency if you want to change somethimes.

Earlier you downloaded the cgminer. now just unpack the folder and place it somewhere easy to find (Desktop or such). inside this folder theres a executable called cgminer.exe
you can now just go to start-cmd and browse to the right place and start the program with values cgminer.exe -xxx-xx-xx-x BUUT this is tiersome in the long run when you need to restart etc.

So we will create a batch file that will auto run the program with right settings.

go into the cgminer folder and create a new textdocument like earlier, but this time name it whateveryouwant.bat
in this document you should put something like this (copy of my file):

color 2
setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
cgminer --scrypt --shaders 2048,1024 --intensity 13,16 --auto-gpu --auto-fan -o 192.168.0.2:9337 -u fuzzy1 -p password --failover-only -o [url=http://uk.nut2pools.com:5565]http://uk.nut2pools.com:5565[/url] -u svennand.fuzzy1 -p password

explanation/breakdown:
color 2 sets the font color in the windows (if your like me and are tired of white on black), google for color numbers.
setx command sets it so that cgminer is able to utilize all the memory of the card (this may be important if you have problems).

now to the main feature, cgminer!
–scrypt tells cgminer that it is going to work on scrypt coin (must be set if mining scrypt coin like ltc and ftc)
if you have several cards just add extra values like i have done with shaders and intensity
–shaders tells the number of shaders on the card (google your card to find out how many shaders it has, 7970 has 2048), theres also thread-concurrency but when you set shaders you dont need to set thread concurrency. However if you want to know what thread concurrency value is, just run cgminer and go to cgminer folder, there should be a bin file that shows in the filename the value of thread concurrency.
–intensity tells the cgminer how hard it should work on the card (default is 13), the higher the number the more choppy the computer will get. if you use it when mining do not set it higher than 13! also if you use 7xxx generation amd going higher than 13 will most likely dont do you any good…
–auto-gpu will set the cgminer to use the stock engine speed of the card, alternative you can input --gpu-engine xxx where xxx is the gpu clock speed, and gpu-memclock xxx for the memory speed.
–auto-fan this will make cgminer automaticlly adjust the speed fan (recommended), in cgminer you can also set target temp and so on, default cgminer will ramp up the fan to 100% if the card reaches 85degres.
-o this should be the adress to your mining pool or solo mining client. in this case its directed towards my main computer with the feathercoin app for solo mining. also note that there added the port number with :
-u username that you either put in the pool (when your pool mining the username will be youraccountname.workername), when solomining its the username you put in feathercoin.conf
-p the password you created either in pool or feathercoin.conf(solo)

–failover-only -o this creates a secondary address. when pool mining i would either direct this to another pool, OR direct it to solo mining. The reason for this is that if your pool is beeing Ddos attacked your hashrate wont go to waste since the miner wont be able to connect to first connection, it will failover to the secondary!
if you solo mine then set up this failover-only towards a pool so you get the Long Polling from them, you still solomine and get block changes from your local main computer, but you also get information from the pool. what this does is keep the miners better up to date and will lower the probability that your working on a block allready submitted. will increase effectivity by around 2%.

4. Extras

]Backup plan for your wallet:
create a new batch file, backupwallet.bat and put it on your desktop.
inside this document write something like:

@echo off

set DD=%DATE:~0,2%
set MM=%DATE:~3,2%
set YY=%DATE:~8,2%
set YYYY=%DATE:~6,4%
set HH=%TIME:~0,2%
set MN=%TIME:~3,2%

set filename=wallet_date_%DD%_%MM%_%YY%_time_%HH%-%MN%

echo %filename%
copy C:\Users\fuzzypc\AppData\Roaming\Litecoin\wallet.dat c:\Users\fuzzypc\dropbox\Wallets\litecoin\%filename%.dat
copy C:\Users\fuzzypc\AppData\Roaming\feathercoin\wallet.dat c:\Users\fuzzypc\dropbox\Wallets\feathercoin\%filename%.dat
copy C:\Users\fuzzypc\AppData\Roaming\yacoin\wallet.dat c:\Users\fuzzypc\dropbox\Wallets\yacoin\%filename%.dat
pause

You need of course to set different end adresses for the wallet, but point is that whenever you run this batch it will backup those wallets to my dropbox and rename them using time value of the computer. that way if something fails, u accidentally overwrite/delete your wallet. just rename the wallet in dropbox to wallet.dat and move it back to the app data\yourcoin directory and start qt app=)

Tweaking your gear (do not recommend this unless you are certain what you are doing).

Do all the tweaking inside cgminer using shortcut (G) Graphics card and © Change value
1. start with difficulty 13 (leave this trough the entire process).
2. tweak engine speed example adjust from 800 (depending on your card) and increase by 5, leave it for 10-15 seconds and add another 5. Do this until the AMD graphics driver crash and has to recover, then turn back the value to when it was stable (ps have a watch on your temp to see it not going to high, also keep away from the powersettings, as long as you dont touch those what you are doing will not harm your card!).
3. when you have found the perfect engine speed, start by increasing memory speed increments of around 20, you should now see that the khash speed of the card slowly rises each time you enter new value (wait 10-15 seconds between each change). the ideal speed of the memory should be around 1.57-1.60 x engine speed (this value is from people experience). The point is that you add 20 each time until the Hashrate suddenly drops. thats when you have found the tipping point!, now just decrease memory speed with value of 1 until you reach the maximum hashrate.

4. when all this is done you can start changing your intensity (check that hardware error is 0 in cgminer), if the hardware error count is starting to count you are
overpushing your card!
Also it might be a good idea under this process to connect to a pool, if the rig produces a lot of stale shares or invalid shares than your card is pushed to hard. the stale/invalid shares SHOULD be below 1%.

If you find any of this helpfull, please feel free to donate some 8)

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[svennand]

reserved

[A Former User]

Thank you for typing this out it has helped me greatly!

I am now trying to get Stratum and VARDIFF working…

When I start Stratum it will not connect to the server it just says "Invalid Credentials ". So in my start up bat I added the correct credentials and then it just hangs on the opening window and I have to close it.

Anyone have any luck with Stratum and or VARDIFF?

[deroekeloze]

[quote]rpcallowip=192.168.0.2
rpcallowip=192.168.0.9
rpcallowip=192.168.0.14
rpcallowip=192.168.0.21
rpcallowip=192.168.0.17[/quote]

could just use this instead:
rpcallowip=192.168.0.*

good work ;)

[A Former User]

I have 800 kh/s is it better to mine solo or in a pool? Thanks

[A Former User]

[quote name=“NoBit” post=“12986” timestamp=“1370957314”]
I have 800 kh/s is it better to mine solo or in a pool? Thanks
[/quote]

Mine in a pool, that is not going to be profitable solo.

[svennand]

[quote name=“deroekeloze” post=“12573” timestamp=“1370899472”]
[quote]rpcallowip=192.168.0.2
rpcallowip=192.168.0.9
rpcallowip=192.168.0.14
rpcallowip=192.168.0.21
rpcallowip=192.168.0.17[/quote]

could just use this instead:
rpcallowip=192.168.0.*

good work ;)
[/quote]

I like to manullay specify which ip adress should have access to my feathercoin wallet computer. also the ip adresses is locked toward the mac adresses of each computer on the router.
(and yes, i know mac adress is as insecure as it can possible be, but it adds a bit more hassle for outsiders :D)

But jeg 192.168.0.*, or 192.168.*.* works like a charm

EDIT.
Btw maybe move this thread to the tutorial section?

[A Former User]

[quote name=“dalexc” post=“30450” timestamp=“1381000887”]
When I get to the --server part, it’s not working. The program tells me the file won’t work with “–server”

What am I doing wrong?
[/quote]

start it with “-server” without quotes, not –

[svennand]

bump

[marhaben]

How do I know if I am correctly solo mining? My cards are all hashing, but the cmd line keeps refreshing with “new block detected on network” and then the block changes.

[wrapper]

[quote name=“marhaben” post=“42393” timestamp=“1386665612”]
How do I know if I am correctly solo mining? My cards are all hashing, but the cmd line keeps refreshing with “new block detected on network” and then the block changes.
[/quote]

Thats a good question. Its a bit hidden down here in guides. Do you want to re ask it in Mining?