lolMiner 1.22: AMD Miner for Ethash / BEAM / GRIN / Ae / Tube / Equihash & more

lolMiner
-- Announcement Thread --


Hi there,
this is the announcement thread for lolMiner 1.21 / lolMiner 1.22 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 1.21 (latest Windows) lolMiner 1.22 (Latest Linux):
[Linux & Windows] Click me (1.22 - February 5th)


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 1.22
Feature Updates:

• Significantly improved the performance of zombie mode on RX 400 and RX 500 GPUs in Linux, especially for low zombie tune values between 0 and 4 and rather high epochs. Performance increases by 7-11% on epoch 393 (--4g-alloc-size 4080 on a RX 580. 4G) and 15-20% on epoch 400. Re-tuning using the auto-tune is recommended. Also this version might draw a bit more power, but with approximately same total efficiency.

Version 1.21
Feature Updates:

• slightly improved the performance of Linux zombie mode on Polaris GPUs on medium tune stages (needs re-tuning from previous settings)
• increased range of accepted zombie tune parameter for GPUs with high interconnect bandwidth
• slightly decreased GPU load of Polaris GPUs during DAG build
• Added more control about handling cards that are detected to be non-working any more. Use parameter --watchdog off/exit/script to turn off any action, exit the miner with a specific exit code or to run an external script. See detail description on the 1.21 release page
• Nvidia cards that experienced a OpenCL driver error (e.g. "CL_OUT_OF_RESOURCES" will now also trigger the watchdog with the configured effect.
• The --ethstratum parameter can now take two options separated by a ',' to give different options in case the dual or split mining mode is used.
• The dns resolving and the connection attempt can now timeout (after 10 seconds each) and will re-try to connect afterwards. This fixes an issue when a pool went offline and the following connection attempt takes indefinitely much time. Each timeout event contributes to the counter that will trigger switching to fail-over pools.
• New option --apihost (default 0.0.0.0) which controls to which host address the api binds. Use 127.0.0.1 to restrict api access to only your computer, 0.0.0.0 is equivalent to everyone can access when rig is reachable on the used apiport. IPV6 ip addresses should be supported, but is untested.

Fixes:

• Fixed a issue that might cause the rig to drop to 0 hash rate on epoch changes - including changes with activated ZIL caching
• Fixed the pool hash rate reporting not working correctly in dual & split stratum modes
• Fixed the dual stratum connection not picking up the correct worker name when --worker is used
• Fixed miner not loading Ethash / Etchash kernels on Tahiti and Hawaii GPUs when using older then end 2017 drivers.

Version 1.20
Feature Updates:

• Significantly improved Ethash mining speed on R9 390 (+6 mh/s on stock settings compared to 1.19) and Etchash speed on R9 290.
• Added new split & dual mining options. This allows more freedom or better latency and stability on ETH+ZIL dual mining as well as split mining, i.e. let some cards mine ETH while other (3 and 4G) cards mine ETC. Read instructions on usage here:
• The archives for ZIL example files now contain examples how to bypass the ZIL pools. Also an example configuration for ETH / ETC card split is provided.

Fixes:

• Fixed a bug with 4G cards crash on mining ETC when trying to falsely enter zombie-tune.
• Fixed R9 380 cards not start mining Beam
• Fixed "Address already in use" API bug in Linux (that incidentally got introduced in 1.19)

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.