lolMiner 1.19: AMD Miner for Ethash / BEAM / GRIN / Ae / Tube / Equihash & more

[mining44eth]

lolMiner
-- Announcement Thread --


Hi there,
this is the announcement thread for lolMiner 1.19 a multi algorithm Ethash / Equihash / Beam & Grin miner with focus on AMD GPUs (OpenCL based).
Note it will run on most Nvidia GPUs, too but the speed and stability may vary.


Download:

lolMiner 1.19:
[Linux & Windows] Click me (1.19 - January 10th)


Driver Requirement:
Nvidia:
Cuda 10 or 11
AMD:
- Big Navi: amdgpu-pro 20.40 (Linux) / Adrenaline 20.11.2 (Windows) and newer.
- Navi: amdgpu-pro 19.30 (Linux) / Adrenaline 19.10.02 (Windows) and newer.
- Vega: amdgpu-pro 18.50 (Linux) / Adrenaline 18.10 (Windows) and newer.
- older cards: Blockchain drivers and newer.


Usage:
There is a new online manual with basic examples hosted.
Supported Algorithms
Algorithm Solvers for Memory Size
Ethash 4G+
Beam Hash I 3G / 4G
Beam Hash II 3G / 4G
Beam Hash III 3G / 4G
Cuckatoo-31 4G / 8G / 16G
Cuckatoo-32 4G / 8G / 16G
Cuckaroo-30CTX 8G
Cuckaroo-29 6G
Cuckoo-29 6G
CuckarooD-29 4G / 6G
CuckarooM-29 6G / 8G
ZelHash 3G / 4G
Equihash 144/5 2G
Equihash 192/7 3G / 4G
Equihash 210/9 2G

* and many others


Changelog

Version 1.19
Feature Updates:

• Added automatic tuning mode for --zombie-tune. This is default on, so just run the miner with --4g-alloc-size set only to run the zombie mode automatic tuning. At the end it will report the configuration in case you want to use the configuration again. You can also exclude cards from tuning or set their value manually, e.g. --zombie-tune 2,auto,0,auto will run the automatic tuning on the 2nd and 4th GPU while using fixed number 2 for first card and 0 for the 3rd one. The tuning will need about 30 seconds per card in the rig to show first results. The next two phases take about 1 minute per card and followed by a approximately 1.5 minutes fine tune phase.
• Ethash stratum connection will now reconnect after three pool rejected shares in a row that did pass own CPU verify before. This solves issues with unstable proxy forwarding e.g. in some ZIL pools. Also helps to get quicker to a failover pool if configured.

Fixes:

• Miner did not start up when "DEVICES" was configured in as a vector in json file, e.g. in some ETHOS configurations.

Version 1.18
Feature Updates:

• Improved linux zombie mode power draw & speed Polaris GPUs (R9 380, RX Fury, RX 4x0 and RX 5x0). Depending on configuration, the zombie mode now uses 0.5 to 1W less energy and is 0.2 to 0.4 mh/s faster.
• Added --zombie-tune parameter for Polaris GPUs. This will increase the performance of zombie mode (further up on the general improvement) by an other 5-15%, depending on parameter and epoch (later epochs profit more). Default value is 0 (off), for most cards the value of 2 is optimal. If you see cards getting slower then before, set to 0 or 1. Note: you either can give one value for the whole rig or provide a comma separated list for each card individually. Cards not running zombie mode ignore the parameter.
• The parameter --4g-alloc-size can now also be set for each card individually
• Slight rework of Beam Hash III back end. Improves poolside hash rate by approx 0.2 to 0.3% - displayed hashrate and power consume kept equal.
• Added a 4G_Ethash_Linux_Readme.txt file to the Linux release, giving guidance how to configure for ideal zombie mode performance.

Fixes:

• Segmentation fault when the dns resolve of a pool fails
• Miner does not restart after connection loss.
• Applied potential fix for "address or port already in use" bug.

Version 1.17
Feature Updates:

• Significantly reduced Ethash power draw on Navi GPUs, Slightly improved performance of 6800 (XT) / 6900
• Added Cuckoo-29, Cuckaroo-30 CTX, Cuckatoo-31 (MWC) and Cuckatoo-32 (Grin) for RX 6800 family of GPUs
• Reduced number of stale shares on Cortex algorithm. This will result in a minimally lower displayed hash rate, but higher pool side hash.
• Added a basic temperature protection mechanism. See notes below for usage.
• Added parameter --singlethread to work with Ethash and Equihash algorithm. This will disable the 2nd mining thread and slightly reduce performance of the involved cards. Use this option to reduce stumbles when a card does graphic output in parallel. Use --singlethread (equivalent to --singlethread -1) to enable single thread mode for all GPUs, use --singlethread to set the mode for one single card.
• Added reading of junction temperature on AMD GPUs.
• The API is now bound to the local host, causing less issues with firewalls.
• Windows: use --computemode to automatically enable the compute mode on all detected AMD GPUs. Requires higher privileges and a driver restart, see example files.
• lolMiner.exe Windows executable is now digitally signed.

Fixes:

• Ethash Ethproxy stratum mode some times loosing worker name.
• Beam Hash III not starting up in Linux on RX 5000 & RX 6000 series card on amdgpu-pro 20.45 driver.
• Ethash & Beam not starting up on Radeon R9 380
• Ethash not starting up on some 6G Nvidia cards
• Ethash mining frequently trying to start up a card if there was an error during mining.
• "DEVICES" parameter not working when configuring the miner from json file.

Basic temperature management / overheating protection:
Use --tstop to stop any mining operation on a GPU at the given temperature. Use --tstart to allow a restart of the card below a lower temperature. Further you can use --tmode edge/junction/memory to apply the scheme to edge (chip), junction (hotspot) or memory temperature. If a GPU does not have the required sensors the chip temperature will be used as a back up - if no sensors are available at all the parameters will be ignored.

Note that at the moment the miner has no fan control module and also no throttling to keep a target temperature. This may be included in a future version. Thus you should put the limit high enough so the operation system or the driver has a chance to ramp up the fan speed itself. Currently tstop is supposed to be a overheat protection to prevent hardware damage in extreme cases, e.g. broken fans.


Version 1.16

• Added support of Ethash and Beam Hash III for RX 6000 generation of GPUs
• All supported algorithms now show the share difficulty and have best share statistics.
• New feature: use --rebuild-defect n to trigger a rebuild of DAG if a GPU produced n defect shares on the current one. Default is 3, use 0 to deactivate this feature.
• New feature: Use --workmulti n to modify the amount of Ethash work a GPU does per batch. Higher values will cause less CPU load but more stale shares, lower values will give less stale shares but higher CPU load. Performance may vary for different values. Default is 128.
• New feature: if Ethash pool disconnects within 2 seconds from connection attempt (immediate reconnect), then the other stratum mode is tested to login.
• New feature: AMD Vega and newer cards now display memory temperature in statistics & api (only visible if there is at least one such GPU in the rig).
• Default ethstratum changed from ETHV1 to ETHPROXY for better pool compatibility.
• Stratum pool addresses now understand "stratum+tcp://", "stratum+ssl://" and "ssl://" prefixes (turning on or of ssl / tls automatically) for better compatibility with existing configurations.
• Slightly reduced CPU load when mining Ethash
• New coloring scheme with more friendly colors. For terminals that do not have rgb colors (e.g. shellinabox) use --basecolor to restrict to a simpler set. Use --nocolor to deactivate coloring completely.
• Fixed bug: Cards may crash when switching from ZIL cache back to normal mining.
• Fixed bug: Wavy hashrate - especially for rigs with many AMD Navi GPUs.
• Fixed bug: (Linux
  
  Watchdog not called when a GPU is stuck & extremely high CPU load on crashed GPU. (1)
• Fixed bug: Hashrate reporting not working on some pools (e.g. sparkpool)
• Fixed bug: Miner can crash after trying to reconnect to same pool over 5 minutes.
• Fixed bug: Miner crashes when mixing TLS and non-TLS pools for fail-over.

(1) Note on watchdog use: When the watchdog script is called the miner will stop working on the other cards. If this is not wished use --disablewatchdog. Please make sure the script can be executed with the current user rights / does password-less operations.


Version 1.14

• Added Ethash Zombie mode for 4G Nvidia GPUs. Use --4g-alloc-size to calibrate the number of MBytes the GPUs are allowed to use.
• Fixed a segmentation fault on Nvidia & mixed rigs when starting Ethash mining