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README.txt
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README.txt
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GUIMiner - a graphical interface for mining Bitcoins
====================================================
by Chris 'Kiv' MacLeod
based on:
- "poclbm" by m0mchil
- 'rpcminer' by puddinpop
- "phoenix" by jedi95
- bitcoin-miner by ufasoft
What is it?
-----------
GUIMiner is a graphical front end for mining Bitcoins. It provides a more
convenient way to operate Bitcoin miners without having to use the command
line. It supports both NVIDIA and ATI GPUs, as well as CPU mining. It
supports both pooled mining and solo mining, with a wide list of pool
servers pre-set with the program.
What is it not?
---------------
GUIMiner does not replace the standard Bitcoin client from bitcoin.org - you
still need that program to view your account balance and send transactions.
It is not a server, so it has to connect either to a mining pool, or to your
computer's 'bitcoin.exe' if mining solo.
The Latest Version
------------------
You can get the latest version on the project page at GitHub:
https://github.com/Kiv/poclbm
Features
--------
- Supports multiple miners in a tabbed interface.
- Remembers your login info between sessions.
- Supports both solo and pooled mining.
- Supports OpenCL, CUDA, and CPU mining.
- Minimizes to tray. Hover on tray icon to see status.
- Displays your accepted and stale/invalid shares over time.
- View your account balance with a pool and/or withdraw funds from
the GUI, at participating pools.
Requirements
------------
- To mine using an ATI GPU, you need an OpenCL compatible card with a
working version of OpenCL installed. If you are unsure whether your GPU
supports OpenCL, try the GPU Caps Viewer:
http://www.ozone3d.net/gpu_caps_viewer/
For AMD/ATI cards, to get a version of OpenCL you need the Stream SDK which is
available here:
http://developer.amd.com/gpu/AMDAPPSDK/downloads/pages/AMDAPPSDKDownloadArchive.aspx
For NVIDIA cards, you can also install OpenCL and mine that way, or you can
install CUDA and use rpcminer-CUDA which may provide slightly higher performance
since it is optimized specifically for NVIDIA cards.
For CPU mining, you don't need anything special; you can mine using rpcminer-cpu
or rpcminer-4way; try both to see which has better performance on your CPU.
Instructions for Pooled Mining
------------------------------
Pooled mining is recommended for most users, since it gives steadier payouts
than solo mining. Several pool servers are supported out of the box; you can
select one from the "Server" dropdown menu. Different servers have different
fees and features; you can visit the website for each one to learn more. Also,
the official Bitcoin forums are a good source for information:
http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/
Most servers require (free) registration; to register go to the server website
and follow their instructions.
Once you've registered, you can enter your login information in the fields of
the GUI. The "Extra flags" field is optional and can be used to fine-tune GPU
performance.
Click "Start mining!" to connect to the server. The miner should connect and start
showing your hash rate. This is the number of attempts per second to solve the
current block. After a while the miner will also show "shares" accepted
by the pool. The more shares you have, the larger your share will be of
the 50 Bitcoins when the block is solved.
To see if your hashing rate is comparable to others, you can look up your GPU on
this chart:
http://pastebin.com/AvymGnMJ
You can save your login info for next time by using File -> Save. Next time
you open the GUI your login will be remembered.
You can run multiple CPUs/GPUs in separate tabs by using File -> New and entering
the new miner's login info. Remember to save your login info after it's entered.
Solo Mining
-----------
Solo mining is recommended for users with a lot of computing power available,
or if you can't find or connect to any pools. It doesn't give any award at
all unless you find a block (which takes weeks to months), at which point you
get 50 BTC all at once.
For solo mining, instead of connecting to a pool server you connect to your own
local machine's copy of 'bitcoin.exe'. Instead of registering with the pool
server, you put your login info in a special file called 'bitcoin.conf'.
GUIMiner has utilities to help with these tasks. To create the bitcoin.conf,
choose "Solo utilities -> Create solo password..." and create a user and
password. It should show a message saying that it was successful.
To launch bitcoin.exe in server mode, you might need to point GUIMiner to
the location of bitcoin.exe. If you installed Bitcoin in the regular location
of Program Files/Bitcoin, you can skip this step. Otherwise choose "Solo
utilities -> Set Bitcoin client path".
Then make sure bitcoin.exe is not running already and choose "Solo
utilities -> Launch Bitcoin client". This should bring up the official
Bitcoin client. You will need to leave this open while you are solo mining.
You will need to be connected to the Bitcoin network before you can mine;
in the official client this is shown in the status bar as "6 connections"
or similar.
If this is the first time you've launched the official Bitcoin client, you
will also need to wait while the block chain is downloaded. This can take
a long time on slower computers.
Now you can enter your information in the text boxes. Make sure the "Host"
option reads "localhost" since the server is on your own machine. Put your
username and password that you chose earlier. Then press "Start mining!" to
connect and start mining.
Useful OpenCL flags
-------------------
These flags can be entered in the Extra Flags field when using the OpenCL
miner to tweak the miner settings:
-v Enable vectors, which is faster on some cards.
-f30 Set priority to the specified number (default 30).
A higher number is lower priority. Increase this to reduce desktop
lag or to make a miner yield GPU control to other miners or games.
-s0.01 Sleep for the specified number of seconds between iterations (default 0).
Increase this to reduce hashing performance if your temperatures are
too high.
These are the most useful flags; for a complete list, see here:
http://forum.bitcoin.org/?topic=4122.0
Running From Source
-------------------
Running GUIMiner from source requires:
- Python 2.6 or higher (Python 3 not supported)
- wxPython
Mining using OpenCL with poclbm also requires:
- PyOpenCL
- numpy
Once these are installed run "guiminer.py" to start.
Bug Reporting
-------------
This is very early software, so any bug reports are appreciated. Issues and
forks can be created at:
https://github.com/Kiv/poclbm