lolMiner 1.17: AMD Miner for Ethash / BEAM / GRIN / Ae / Tube / Equihash & more

lolMiner
-- Announcement Thread --


Hi there,
this is the announcement thread for lolMiner 1.17 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 1.17:
[Linux & Windows] https://www.sendspace.com/folder/3iikme


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 here.
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 1.17
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

Version 1.13

• Ethash: Reduced power draw significantly on non-zombie mode for Rx Fury & Rx 470 - 590, slight reduction for Vega & Navi
• Ethash: Slightly improved performance on Vega, Navi and Nvidia GPUs. Significantly improved performance on R9 390. (1)
• Added (Linux) Zombie mode for RX 5300XT & RX 5500 4G cards. Windows users can try it by using "--win4galloc off --4g-alloc-size 4008". (Vary the last number to find out sweet spot)
• Added ETCHash support for Radeon HD 79x0 / R9 280 (X) & RX 5300 3G. On Linux will be good for ETCHash till epoch ~250 (about July 2022)
• Added caching of last 5 used light caches. This will reduce the switching time for Nicehash & ZIL dual mining significantly.
• Added support for extranonce subscription on EthereumStratum/1.0.0 (Nicehash) format - this will stop the miner from frequently reconnecting to Nicehash
• Added detection of pool not accepting worker name in <wallet.workerName> format when using ETHPROXY stratum. Miner will reconnect with worker name copied into --worker in this case.
• Added experimental workaround for mining epoch 385+ with RX 470 - 590 and Linux kernel 5.6.x: Note this fix will deactivate the ZIL cache ability and force the miner to create DAG a bit slower. Deactivate it with --disableLinux56fix . Other Linux kernel versions and other GPUs are unchanged.
• Fixed bug: "conversion of data to type "b" failed" when using ETHPROXY stratum mode on some pools.
• Fixed potential issue causing GPUs to freeze when a GPU needs to reboot, e.g. epoch change or connection loss.
• Fixed benchmark mode for ETCHash. Use --benchmark ETCHASH --benchepoch 390 to benchmark performance post fork.
• Fixed benchmark mode not starting up when called from json type configuration.

(1) (its still not perfect, but way better)


Version 1.12

• Added support for ETCHash (Ethereum Classic dag size reduction planned for end November). Use --algo ETCHASH to activate it. (See note below).
• Reworked Ethash codes for late epochs on Windows. See 4G_Windows_Readme.txt for configuring it.
• Slightly improved Ethash efficiency for GCN 3 (R9 Fury, 470 - 590) & Navi cards
• Added experimental support for Ethash on Nvidia GPUs (See note below)
• Added new parameter: --4g-alloc-size to define the memory allowed for Ethash on 4G cards. Maxing out will give more epochs of mining & better Zombie mode performance, lower values may improve compatibility. Suggested values: Linux: 4076 Windows 4008 - 4024
• Added new parameter: --worker to set the worker in ETHPROXY stratum mode (improves pool compatibility)
• Overall new Ethash host size back end - hopefully improving stability of mining
• Fixed bug: Zombie mode generates defect shares in Windows
• Fixed bug: Logs were not written when "LOG" : 1 was set in json style config file