PowerPool Agent

A statistics collection agent for the PowerPool mining server. It was built to work with Simple Multi . Runs on Windows, Ubuntu Linux and Debian Linux. Tested on cgminer 3.7.2 sgminer 4.1.0 and vertminer 0.5.3, should also work on other derivatives.

Table of Contents

• Installation
• Configuring Email (or Text) Notifications
• Upgrading
• Troubleshooting
• Non-Standard Configurations

Installation

Make sure your cgminer or sgminer is running with the api port enabled. ThiFs can be done on command line with the --api-listen argument, or in your configuration file with "api-listen": true.

Ubuntu:

# Install python and python package manager pip (frequently already installed)
sudo apt-get install python python-pip
sudo pip install ppagent
sudo ppagent install upstart

ppagent will now start with your computer automatically.

Windows:

1. Download latest exe.
2. Run the binary when connected to stratum.simplemulti.com and status will be automatically reported.

To make ppagent start on boot, see this post.

Debian (for BAMT or SMOS):

# Install python and python package manager pip (frequently already installed)
sudo apt-get install python python-pip
sudo pip install ppagent
sudo ppagent install sysv

ppagent will now start with your computer automatically.

---

Now when your miner is running against stratum.simplemulti.com the daemon will automatically start sending statistics to the server as well. Check your stats page on Simple Multi to see that it's working. You should see something similar to this:

If it's not working checkout the Troubleshooting section.

Configuring Email (or Text) Notifications (Deprecated)

NOTE: This is now deprecated with the upgrade to SimpleMulti. A similar feature will be available via message signing in the future.

ppagent has the ability to send you an email if your worker meets hits certain thresholds. This is configured per-worker in the ppagent configuration file.

On Linux, the configuration file is in:

/etc/ppagent/config.json

On Windows it will automatically look in the same folder as the executable, and it will be named ppagent.json.

Your default configuration file should look like this:

[
    {"miner":
        {
            "type": "CGMiner"
        }
    }
]

The worker name will be automatically pulled from CGMiner, so there's no need to set it here. To receive a notification when you're worker goes offline for at least 5 minute adjust your configuration to look like this:

[
    {"miner":
        {
            "type": "CGMiner",
            "thresholds": {
                "offline": 5,
                "emails": ["winston@simplemulti.com"]
            }
        }
    }
]

To detect overheat conditions on any of the cards, simply specify "overheat". To report low hashrate conditions specify "lowhashrate" with a number in KH/s. So with the below configuration myself and fred get notified if my worker is offline for 15 minutes, goes below 2 MH/s, or rises above 85 C.

[
    {"miner":
        {
            "type": "CGMiner",
            "thresholds": {
                "offline": 15,
                "lowhashrate": 2000,
                "overheat": 85,
                "emails": ["winston@simplemulti.com", "fred@simplemulti.com"]
            }
        }
    }
]

By default you will also get notified when this condition is resolved (ie card no longer overheating), however this can be disabled by setting "no_green_notif": true. Also note that a maximum of 6 emails per hour will be automatically imposed to prevent repeated emailing.

Text Messaging

While ppagent doesn't support direct text messaging, almost all wireless carriers now support email to text message services by emailing a special email address that your carrier provides. Alerts from ppagent monitoring are designed to fit in one text message length already.

A good list of email addresses and carriers can be found here.

Upgrading

Ubuntu:

sudo pip install --upgrade --ignore-installed ppagent==0.3.5
sudo service ppagent restart
# now confirm that the right version is installed
ppagent --version

Debian (for BAMT or SMOS):

sudo pip install --upgrade --ignore-installed ppagent==0.3.5
sudo /etc/init.d/ppagent stop
sudo /etc/init.d/ppagent start
# now confirm that the right version is installed
ppagent --version

Windows:

Simply Download latest exe and replace your old one.

Troubleshooting Upgrade

On ubuntu, sometimes pip (python package manager) will refuse to install a new version. Frequently clearing the cache will fix this:

sudo rm -rf /tmp/pip-build-root

You can also try uninstalling and reinstalling it. This will not remove you're configuration files.

sudo pip uninstall ppagent
sudo pip install ppagent

If you still can't get it you're welcome to come bug us on IRC, we're usually on during the day.

Troubleshooting

If stats aren't showing up after a minute or two you should first check the logs.

On debian these are at:

/var/log/ppagent.log

On Ubuntu:

/var/log/upstart/ppagent.log

On Windows they're in the console that appears when you launch the client.

The error messages should give you a clue why it's not working. If not, login to the simplecrypto IRC and we'll try to help you get is straightened out.

If the logs are mentioning that it's unable to connect to valid pool it's likely a problem with our automatic pool detection, something that we are currently working to improve. To fix this, simply modify your configuration to explicitly define which pool information like so:

[
    {"daemon":
        {
            "address": "stratum.simplevert.com",
            "port": 4454
        }
    },
    {"miner":
        {
            "type": "CGMiner"
        }
    }
]

The port that PPAgent connects to is your stratum port + 1111. So for our vertcoin stratum port of 3343 you'll want to connect to 4454. For our dogecoin stratum port of 3333 you'll want to connect to 4444.

Non-Standard Configurations

If you're not running cgminer on the same computer as ppagent, or you're running on a non-standard port you'll have to tweak the configuration file a little bit.

However, this is automatically getting filled in with defaults. If all the defaults were defined here, they would look something like this:

[
    {"miner":
        {
            "type": "CGMiner",
                    "port": 4028,  # port to connect to cgminer api
                    "address": "127.0.0.1",  # address to connect to cgminer api
                    "collectors": {  # list of data collectors and their configurations
                            "status": {
                                    "enabled": true,
                                    "temperature": true,
                                    "mhps": true,
                                    "details": true,
                                    "interval": 60
                            },
                            "temp": {
                                    "enabled": true,
                                    "interval": 60
                            },
                            "hashrate": {
                                    "enabled": true,
                                    "interval": 60
                            }
                    }
            }
    }
]

For example, if you wanted to change the port your cgminer was running on, you would enter something like this:

[
    {"miner":
        {
            "type": "CGMiner",
            "port": 4029  # this is not the default!
        }
    }
]

Or if you wanted to report the status of two different cgminer instances

[
    {"miner":
        {
            "type": "CGMiner",
            "port": 4028  # first one is running on the default port
        }
    },
    {"miner":
        {
            "type": "CGMiner",
            "port": 4029  # second one is running on a non-standard port
        }
    }
]

Both miners will be assumed to be running locally, but that too can be overriden by specifying a non-default "address" value.

Uninstalling

On windows it never was installed, so simply delete the exe.

On Ubuntu:

sudo pip uninstall ppagent
sudo rm -rf /etc/ppagent
sudo rm /etc/init/ppagent.conf

On Linux Debian (SMOS or BAMT):

sudo pip uninstall ppagent
sudo rm -rf /etc/ppagent
sudo rm /etc/init.d/ppagent