Not getting merged mined coins on p2pool

Question

I have been able to mine successfully on my bitcoin p2pool. I set up merge mining according to the guide found here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=62842.0 and everything seems to be running fine. Looking at the screen running p2pool I get messages as such: 2014-01-29 00:18:32.797966 Got new merged mining work!

However, I have been mining and have found at least 15 shares for bitcoin since I have installed, but nothing for the merge mined coins I added:

root@p2pool:~# namecoind listtransactions [ ] root@p2pool:~# ixcoind listtransactions [ ]

I have been mining to a different address as the user, e.g. cgminer -o mypool.com -u -p x

Would this be the reason why I am not getting any merged coins? Thanks in advance for your help!

Answer 1

I also do merged mining with p2pool. Keep in mind that you are essentially solo mining for namecoin and iXcoin--when another member of p2pool (not you) finds a winning share that exceeds the target difficulty for bitcoin it isn't usable by you as a winning share for the other coins. So you can't leverage the efforts of the rest of the pool to help you find the other coins.

However if you (or other clients connected to your p2pool node) generate a winning share then you will see the altcoin blocks get generated. Given that you are solo mining for those coins it can take quite awhile before you get a share with high enough difficulty. But I assure you that it works.