Can I set up cgminer to mine in different pools, by a defined ratio?

Question

I'm mining in different pools, one is main and I would like to dedicate 80% off the time spent mining on it, but I'm also mining in another and would like to dedicate 20% on that. I know you can set up the config as following:

"pools" : [
    {
        "url" : "http://pool1",
        "user" : "user1",
        "pass" : "123"
    },
    {
        "url" : "http://pool2",
        "user" : "user2",
        "pass" : "123"
    }
]

But is there a way you could define a 80/20 // 70/30 mining setup between the pools so that it mines the first pool for 19 hours, then the second pool for 5 hours (or days)

Answer 1

You can run cgminer --help to see the options or you can just research them online. A good example is this website: https://github.com/pshep/cgminer

I've never done it but I think you can add a rotate option: --rotate <arg> Change multipool strategy from failover to regularly rotate at N minutes (default: 0)

80% / 20% would be roughly 19 hours / 5 hours or 1140 minutes / 300 minutes

Now, with the --rotate <arg> you will rotate the pools regularly, so it's easy to set it to 50/50on two pools, 33/33/33 on three pools etc.

I think you could achieve an 80/20 split by using a scheduled start and stop times.

--sched-start <arg> Set a time of day in HH:MM to start mining (a once off without a stop time) --sched-stop <arg> Set a time of day in HH:MM to stop mining (will quit without a start time)

Say, you start mining at 00:01, you set the rotate setting to 19 hours (1140 minutes), at 7 PM the pools will switch, set a stop time for 23:59 and 2 minutes later the miner should start mining using the first pool again. The only problem could be if after the miner stops, it could start mining still on the second pool, in which case you should start at midnigh, only use the --rotate 1140 and always restart cgminer at midnight manually or maybe using a shell script (or bat if on Windows).

Answer 2

I think these are the settings you are looking for. Changing "url" to "quota" and specifying the amounts in the format "AMOUNT;URL". It makes it easier to use percents, but it isn't a requirement. For example you could use a quota of 8 for pool1 and 2 for pool2.

...
"pools" : [
    {
    "quota" : "80;http://pool1",
    "user" : "user1",
    "pass" : "123"
    },
    {
    "quota" : "20;http://pool2",
    "user" : "user2",
    "pass" : "123"
    }
]
,
"load-balance" : true,
...

Answer 3

Set up 5 pools and set your pool management to rotate. You rotate every 144 minutes (or 2.4 hours). Pool 0, 1, 2, 3 are the same entries. Pool 4 is the one you are mining 20% of the time. Here's what your day would look like:

Day 0.1 - Pool 0
Day 0.2 - Pool 1
Day 0.3 - Pool 2
Day 0.4 - Pool 3
Day 0.5 - Pool 4

Rotation goes back to pool 0 afterwards

Day 0.6 - Pool 0
Day 0.7 - Pool 1
Day 0.8 - Pool 2
Day 0.9 - Pool 3
Day 1.0 - Pool 4

I don't know how much time switching pools will affect your total hash rate, but you might consider making the pool management list longer and sprinkle in your 20% pool more frequently. This way your accepted submitted shares actually pay out when a block is found.

Answer 4

Actually you can't. By default CGMiner uses the second pool as a failover, so it won't mine on the second if the first pool is up. You can add :

"load-balance" : true,

to make it mine on 2 pools (50/50 if think).

If you really want to balance with 80/20 you just have to launch it at different hours, on Windows use the task launcher to kill it, then relaunch it with different parameters, on Linux you could use crontab to do the same thing :)

Answer 5

According to the manual page there are 5 modes for multipool which are:

1. FAILOVER
2. ROUND ROBIN
3. ROTATE
4. LOAD BALANCE
5. BALANCE

Maybe load balance with quotas can do what you want. Check the documentation here at the bottom of the page where the readme starts.

Answer 6

For 80/20 You can set multipool strategy to "rotate", and add pool1 8 times, then add pool2 2 times. Then rotate at any time interval. It will end up mining both pools at the ratio u want. Even easier, just add pool1 4 times, then pool2 1 time for 80/20 (4/1 same thing). Then rotate them.

Or, if u want to do it at the same time, use the same setup and set mutipool strategy to "balance".

Answer 7

You could also make a single folder example MINED and copy CGminer x number of times with differing categories example (CGminer 1, CGminer 2, CGminer 3) then edit each of those folders separately for different mining servers and create a single bat to launch all of them.