minerstat mining tutorial #13: Worker configuration

minerstat
minerstat
Published in
8 min readSep 3, 2018

One of the things that are different about minerstat is a unique approach to worker configuration. When we designed it, our goal was to make a system that is:

  • Easy to use;
  • Easy to apply to multiple workers and/or groups;
  • Easy and quick to apply changes;
  • Advanced to the point that both hobby miners and farm managers can tweak it to fit their needs;
  • Offering support for a wide range of mining clients.

The system might look complex when you first look at it, mainly because of the vast amount of functionalities it offers. However, after you read this tutorial and try it for two or three times, you will know exactly where everything is and what to do.

Address editor

We won’t start with the worker’s config, but with address editor. If you check the menu, you can see that the address editor is listed before worker config, and the main reason for that is because you can only reach the full potential of worker config if you use the address editor. Of course, worker config will work even if you ignore the address editor, but if you have more than 5 workers and managing is already becoming more complex, the address editor will save you a lot of time.

The address editor is your address book of pools and wallets. When you use minerstat for the first time, you will see that there is already a list of pools that are pre-defined and saved under different tags. You can keep them, you can delete them, or you can edit them to fit your needs.

The basic idea of the address editor is to save different pools and wallets under different tags. In this way, you are able to quickly access the pool and wallet from the config editor (or profit switch) while at the same time keeping flexibility when you decide to change the pool or wallet. If you edit the tag and change the value of the pool or wallet, the change will be applied automatically to all workers that are using this pool tag and/or wallet tag.

When you are deciding how to name your pools and wallets, try to choose something that you will easily remember. For example, POOL:SUPR-ETH, POOL:NH-ETH, POOL:ETHERMINE, POOL:2MINERS, WALLET:BTC, WALLET:ETH, WALLET:NH, etc. The name is limited to 10 characters.

When you are entering new values for pools and wallets, make sure that the pool has defined the correct port and the wallet address is fully defined (for example, ETH address should include 0x at the beginning).

If you are doing this for the first time, start with something simple. Define the Ethereum pool and ETH wallet or NiceHash pool and wallet you use there, so you will easier see how the things work.

Worker config

When you have defined the initial pools and wallets, it is time to navigate to worker config.

Usually, worker config is set right after you have created a new worker, installed and set up minerstat software, and prepared pools and wallets in address editor. You can, however, set up mining software after - it is up to you, but note that for mining to properly work, you will need to prepare the worker config.

Target

Target section is pretty straightforward - you click on Add workers or groups and the menu will open. In this menu, you can check all groups or individual workers to which you want to apply the configuration. In this tutorial, we will apply the configuration to all of our rigs with the group name GTX1080.

General

In the general section, we have different things we can configure.

Groups: If we want to change the groups of selected workers. All workers will be assigned to the groups you enter here - and unassigned from any other groups that weren’t defined in this step. Read more about managing groups.

Default client: All selected workers will start to mine with selected default client (unless profit switch is enabled or scheduler is in action).

Default CPU client: All selected workers will start to mine with selected default CPU client. By selecting CPU mining disabled, CPU mining will be disabled for all selected workers.

ClockTune profile: All selected workers will be overclocked to the selected ClockTune profile. By selecting Don't change, the overclocking settings will stay untouched. Read more about ClockTune.

Profit switch: For all selected workers the profit switch will be enabled or disabled. If you enable profit switch, this will over-ride Default client setting and the client for mining will be selected in regard to what you have defined in profit switch. Read more about profit switch.

As you can see there are light gray squares beside each option. If you click on this square, it will change to a green one with a tick inside and will denote that any change will be included in the update. These check-boxes allows you to take control over what you want to change with each update and what not.

Leaving the check-box greyed-out doesn’t mean that the setting will be deleted, but it means that the setting will remain unchanged.

Clicking on the check-box to include the changes means that the setting will be changed for all selected workers.

Clients’ configuration

Under the client’s configuration, there is a list of all supported mining clients. Each client is defined with tags that denote:

  • Hardware for which is available: Nvidia, AMD, CPU, ASIC
  • Software for which is available: msOS, Windows, Baikal, Antminer, DragonMint

There is also a list of all algorithms supported by this mining client available.

Each client has its own text area where you can edit or paste your mining configs. Inside the text area, there is regular text and there are tags. The tags denote the area that can be clicked and an option can be selected from the drop-down menu. If the tag is colored red, this means that the tag hasn’t been defined in the address editor yet. You can still leave it in the config and if you add it later, it will be automatically detected as correct and colored in blue the next time you visit config page.

Currently, we support the following tags:

  • (WORKER) which will replace the configuration automatically with your worker’s name
  • (EMAIL) which will replace the configuration automatically with your e-mail
  • (MODE:SINGLE) or (MODE:DUAL) can be used to switch between single mining and dual mining in Claymore’s ETH miner
  • (POOL:TAG) which will replace the configuration automatically with the pool address defined under the tag in your address editor
  • (WALLET:TAG) which will replace the configuration automatically with the wallet address defined under the tag in your address editor

If you click on any of the tags, the drop-down will show you which options are available to select. The same will happen if you start typing the name of any tag and our system detects that there are some options available.

If at any point you mess up the configs and you see that half of the tag is on one side of the screen and the other half at the other side of the screen, just click on Reset to default (right bottom corner, below text area) and you will get perfectly working configs back.

You can also skip the tags and just paste plain config to your text area, but in this case, switching to different pools or addresses might be a little bit more time-consuming.

The same as for other settings, if you decide to include mining clients in the update, click on the checkbox. No changes will be applied to the clients that aren’t checked.

After you have everything ready and set, don’t forget to click on Save changes.

💡 Tip for mass editing

We suggest you to first try config editor with one worker and when everything is set as you want it, continue with mass-editing.

When you have set everything as you want for one worker and you want to copy these configs to other workers as well, follow these steps:

  1. Target: Select the worker that is fully edited and has settings you want and confirm the selection. This will load the settings of your worker to the config editor.
  2. Click once again on target field and add other workers you want to copy the settings to and confirm the selection.
  3. This will keep the loaded configs of the first worker and if you click save, these configs will be saved to other workers as well.

Happy mining!

More from this series:

--

--

minerstat
minerstat

minerstat® is the top platform for ASIC and GPU crypto mining monitoring and management. Enjoy hassle-free mining with our cutting-edge software.