bfgminer/debian/changelog

bfgminer (3.1.2-0precise1) precise; urgency=low

  * TUI: The "GPU management" interface has been replaced with a new generic "Manage devices" interface, allowing easy enable and disable of non-GPU devices.
  * Major CPU usage reduction for faster mining rigs (on my minirig host system, from 35% down to 13%!).
  * erupter: New icarus-based driver to handle autodetection of (branded) Block Erupter devices.
  * opencl: Add support for AMD Catalyst 13.2+ drivers.
  * The device statlines have been condensed by reducing the device-specific space down to a single temperature reading. More detailed information (such as GPU fan speeds) is still available via RPC and the new "Manage devices" interface.
  * RPC: New "devscan" command to probe for new devices on demand. The effect is the same as starting BFGMiner with -S noauto -S <parameter>.
  * TUI: Display percentage invalid of found nonces with hw errors.
  * cpu & opencl: These legacy drivers now respect the --scan-serial auto/noauto directives, and the old -C (enable CPU) and -G (disable GPU) options are now deprecated.

 -- Luke Dashjr <luke+bfgminer@dashjr.org>  Mon, 08 Jul 2013 18:46:53 -0000

bfgminer (3.1.1-0precise1) precise; urgency=low

  * bitforce: Support for Little Single boards, and Jalapenos with 1.2 firmware.
  * avalon: Support new overclocking speeds (325, 350 and 375).
  * Fixed a bunch of bugs, including GPU mining and at least one stratum-related crash.

 -- Luke Dashjr <luke+bfgminer@dashjr.org>  Thu, 22 Jun 2013 17:41:21 -0000

bfgminer (3.1.0-1precise1) precise; urgency=low

  * Properly added in new submodules to Debian packaging.
  * Added missing fpgautils.h include.

 -- graeme <graeme@sudo.ca>  Fri, 14 Jun 2013 09:52:55 -0700

bfgminer (3.1.0-0precise1) precise; urgency=low

  * BitForce: Support for new long-board job-per-chip protocol.
  * Reformatted TUI summaries, including percentage of shares rejected or stale.
  * Icarus-compatible devices: Autodetect work_division by default (eg, for Block Erupter USB ASICs).
  * Avalon: Driver is now compiled in by default, including in official binaries
  * Avalon: Will only configure with specific -S avalon:/dev/ttyUSBn option (note the driver name must be included), since there is no reliable probe for it.
  * Avalon: Full data for 4-module devices in RPC.
  * OpenCL: Support for reading temperature from free software radeon drivers via libsensors.
  * Fixes for writing configuration files when --device and/or --remove-disabled are specified.
  * Faster startup now when pools are slow, connecting to the first pool available!
  * Adding a pool now from the menu will return quickly while it leaves probing it to the background.
  * Scrypt: Fixed the failure to create high thread concurrencies.
  * Scrypt: Intensities above 13 will not lead to garbage being generated on GCN (7xxx) hardware now.
  * Scrypt: Decreased default GPU threads to 1. Intensities above 13 cannot handle more.
  * Scrypt: Changed the default choice of thread concurrency if no options are passed as a hint, based on amount of available GPU RAM.
  * Scrypt: Extensive updates to the SCRYPT-README file in line with changes to the code and new information.
  * Scrypt: Slightly larger buffer which may lead to less hardware errors on very fast GPUs.
  * CPU mining: Numerous improvements to portability.

 -- Luke Dashjr <luke+bfgminer@dashjr.org>  Thu, 13 Jun 2013 20:05:29 -0000

bfgminer (3.0.2-1precise1) precise; urgency=low

  * Added scrypt build option.
  * Fixed dependancies on raring.

 -- Luke Dashjr <luke+bfgminer@dashjr.org>  Sun, 28 Apr 2013 05:22:53 -0000

bfgminer (3.0.2-0precise1) precise; urgency=low

  * Fix stratum on Windows.

 -- Luke Dashjr <luke+bfgminer@dashjr.org>  Sun, 28 Apr 2013 05:22:53 -0000


bfgminer (3.0.1-0precise1) precise; urgency=low

  * Bitforce SC: Switched to using bulk queue mode for all ASIC-based devices.
  * Bitforce SC: Fix reinitialization-on-failure, so devices can autorecover from some problems.
  * OpenCL: Support for mining with completely free (non-proprietary) Mesa/LLVM OpenCL on Linux (requires git Mesa/LLVM).
  * OpenCL: Include platform in kernel binary filenames to avoid using stale binaries from other SDK installs.
  * Added network hashrate (based on block difficulty) to block status line.

 -- Luke Dashjr <luke+bfgminer@dashjr.org>  Wed, 24 Apr 2013 02:40:23 -0000


bfgminer (3.0.0-0precise1) precise; urgency=low

  * New device driver for ASIC devices, including both Butterfly Labs' BitForce SC and Avalon.
  * Enhanced device driver API, enabling devices to asynchronously handle multiple slave processors. Use --show-processors to view each individually (not yet supported for Avalon).
  * You can now use --request-diff <difficulty> to ask for a specific share target from pools that support BIP 23 GBT Basic Pool Extensions.
  * Support for submitting found blocks to a local Bitcoin GBT server (bitcoind or Bitcoin-Qt with -server flag): just append #allblocks to the end of your bitcoind's URI.
  * Stratum connection resuming support - if you lose an active stratum connection, BFGMiner will attempt to resubmit any lost shares when it reconnects.
  * Android target support. You will have to compile it yourself, but it should just work - no patching needed.
  * New Python RPC client example from Christian Berendt.

 -- Luke Dashjr <luke+bfgminer@dashjr.org>  Fri, 05 Apr 2013 17:12:20 -0000


bfgminer (2.10.5-0precise1) precise; urgency=low

  * Fix critical solo mining bug.

 -- Luke Dashjr <luke+bfgminer@dashjr.org>  Fri, 08 Feb 2013 06:43:27 -0000


bfgminer (2.10.4-0precise1) precise; urgency=low

  * Better big-endian compatibility.
  * Kano's RPC example is now included as the bfgminer-rpc program.
  * Improved bitstream for ModMiners, with gains of about 10 Mh/s on average. This was originally supposed to be part of BFGMiner 2.9.2, but somehow slipped through the cracks! You'll need to power cycle your board, or use the --force-dev-init option to upload the new bitstream.
  * Many bugfixes and some small improvements all over.

 -- Luke Dashjr <luke+bfgminer@dashjr.org>  Thu, 07 Feb 2013 04:49:38 -0000


bfgminer (2.10.3-0precise1) precise; urgency=low

  * Current block display shows end of the previous block hash and (when GBT or Stratum servers are active) the next block's (that you're looking for) height.
  * miner.php and RPC API updates from Kano, including multiuser support for miner.php
  * Finally fix long-standing scrypt difficulty and u-hashrate calculation bugs.

 -- Luke Dashjr <luke+bfgminer@dashjr.org>  Tue, 22 Jan 2013 00:20:02 -0000


bfgminer (2.10.2-0precise1) precise; urgency=low

  * There is now a [Z]ero stats option under the display menu which resets all the visible statistics.
  * The current pool and block target difficulties are now shown in the status lines.
  * Block solve detection is now supported with scrypt mining as well (BLOCK! written at end of share and solved blocks listed under pool stats).
  * Stratum support for scrypt mining.
  * Numerous subtle bugfixes.

 -- Luke Dashjr <luke+bfgminer@dashjr.org>  Thu, 27 Dec 2012 11:20:53 -0000


bfgminer (2.10.1-0precise1) precise; urgency=low

  * modminer: Enable frequency adjustments up to 230 MHz, and allow changing the frequency (non-sticky) via the new "pgaset" RPC command.
  * Numerous stratum fixes, including failover recovery. Also allow using stratum with scrypt.
  * Replaced the work-based efficiency with new bandwidth-based efficiency.

 -- Luke Dashjr <luke+bfgminer@dashjr.org>  Fri, 21 Dec 2012 07:29:23 -0000


bfgminer (2.10.0-0precise1) precise; urgency=low

  * Avoid fetching more GBT jobs when we already have a usable one, or are already in the process of getting a new one that will suffice. This drastically improves efficiency on GBT pools and reduces unnecessary bandwidth waste.
  * Share submissions are now processed asyncronously in parallel, in a single dedicated thread, instead of spawning a new thread for every submission. This makes BFGMiner scale better to bigger rigs with more shares, and enables it to react to network outages better. Additionally, a new "AS" (Active Submissions) number has been added to the status line to make it easy to see at a glance what's going on.
  * New --skip-security-checks option to allow miners to skip checks when it saves bandwidth (stratum).
  * Additional extranonce to count template requests for GBT solo mining, to ensure we never work on hashing the same data redundantly.
  * Con's new work scheduler: The old work scheduler would spawn threads that all tried to grab work as best as they could, and this would lead to much more work than necessary being grabbed from getwork pools, and potentially hitting the pool at precisely the same time from multiple threads making a getwork failure more likely. It was also very difficult to track how much work was really available at any one time since all the threads were off doing their own thing. Centralising the work creation means it is strictly tracked now and as soon as one work item is taken, the scheduler will generate or download another one. The advantage here is to maximise the efficiency of work we get from any getwork source, be it with or without rolltime. It is also much less likely to have dips in providing work, should lead to less getwork failures, and scale to higher hashrates even with the old getwork protocols.
  * When the primary pool is stratum, GBT, or getwork in failover mode, no backup connections will be maintained to backup pools. The total number of unused stratum connections now should be extremely small.
  * Ztex driver improvements courtesy of Denis and Peter.
  * Lots of work under the hood and other minor goodies. Check full changelog.

 -- Luke Dashjr <luke+bfgminer@dashjr.org>  Tue, 11 Dec 2012 05:28:02 -0000


bfgminer (2.9.5-0precise1) precise; urgency=low

  * Bug fixes only.

 -- Luke Dashjr <luke+bfgminer@dashjr.org>  Tue, 11 Dec 2012 03:11:49 -0000


bfgminer (2.9.4-0precise1) precise; urgency=low

  * Documented solo mining in README.
  * Lots of small bugfixes everywhere.

 -- Luke Dashjr <luke+bfgminer@dashjr.org>  Tue, 04 Dec 2012 03:13:43 -0000


bfgminer (2.9.3-0precise1) precise; urgency=low

  * Many stratum bugfixes, including support for fractional difficulties.
  * Fix GBT to work properly with very short expiration times.

 -- Luke Dashjr <luke+bfgminer@dashjr.org>  Fri, 16 Nov 2012 03:49:51 -0000


bfgminer (2.9.2-0precise1) precise; urgency=low

  * modminer & x6500: New bitstream, improving functional performance by about 10 Mh/s on average. You'll need to power cycle your device, or use the new --force-dev-init option to upload the new bitstream.
  * x6500: Support for temperature sensors, including --temp-target & co.
  * x6500: Extended per-FPGA details in RPC API.
  * x6500: Support for older X6500 devices by manually specifying their serial numbers as --scan-serial x6500:serialnumber.
  * Some basic stratum transparency checks to help keep pools accountable using new mining.get_transactions method.

 -- Luke Dashjr <luke+bfgminer@dashjr.org>  Wed, 07 Nov 2012 18:46:00 -0000


bfgminer (2.9.1-0precise1) precise; urgency=low

  * RPC: Add support for X6500 FPGAs.
  * Enforce --expiry option to make solo mining without longpoll move on eventually.
  * Always detect non-scrypt if Stratum is in use.
  * Various other bug fixes, including a number of memory leaks.

 -- Luke Dashjr <luke+bfgminer@dashjr.org>  Sun, 30 Oct 2012 16:16:22 -0000


bfgminer (2.9.0-0precise1) precise; urgency=low

  * X6500: New driver for mining on FPGA Mining LLC's X6500 coprocessor.
  * Support for solo mining against bitcoind 0.7's GBT interface using new --coinbase-addr option (powered by libblkmaker 0.2.0).
  * OpenCL: Rewritten dynamic intensity code should fix remaining issues with it.
  * BFGMiner now displays the share's best difficulty as well as the current pool difficulty.
  * Support for saving and restoring pool priorities in config file, as well as changing them all at once in the curses TUI (by "blinkier").
  * OpenCL: Updated kernels which should allow ultra low memory speeds once again (idea courtesy of Vbs).
  * Stratum support by Con.
  * BFGMiner now tries to actually catch crashes and unless the --no-restart option is given, it will try to restart cleanly.
  * OpenCL: Scrypt will now not fail when setting high thread concurrency values that still return some RAM even if OpenCL returns an error on that RAM allocation.

 -- Luke Dashjr <luke+bfgminer@dashjr.org>  Sun, 28 Oct 2012 10:39:56 -0000


bfgminer (2.8.3-0precise1) precise; urgency=low

  * Various bugs fixed, no new features.

 -- Luke Dashjr <luke+bfgminer@dashjr.org>  Mon, 18 Oct 2012 12:56:56 -0000


bfgminer (2.8.2-0precise1) precise; urgency=low

  * Numerous fixups for Enterpoint's Cairsmore dynamic clocking; it has actually been tested this time. :)
  * Support for --temp-target and --temp-hysteresis controls on ModMiner FPGA devices.
  * Generic failure management for all devices, including automatically attempting to restart dead devices.
  * Improved portability to new platforms, partially including Cygwin.
  * Various minor error handling improvements and bugfixes.

 -- Luke Dashjr <luke+bfgminer@dashjr.org>  Mon, 08 Oct 2012 23:13:01 -0000


bfgminer (2.8.1-0precise1) precise; urgency=low

  * Many improvements for Enterpoint's Cairsmore, including (experimental) support for Glasswalker's dynamic frequency bitstream.
  * New --coinbase-sig option that lets you embed a short tidbit in any blocks you personally find (only on GBT-enabled pools).
  * Generic dynamic clocking framework based on the Ztex driver's (written by nelisky), now used by ModMiner and (Glasswalker) Cairnsmore.
  * New RPC "identify" command to flash LEDs on some FPGAs (currently BitForce and GW Cairnsmore).
  * Include share difficulty information in log and RPC.
  * Lots of other various bugfixes and small improvements.

 -- Luke Dashjr <luke+bfgminer@dashjr.org>  Thu, 27 Sep 2012 06:20:05 -0000


bfgminer (2.8.0-0precise1) precise; urgency=low

  * Basic getblocktemplate decentralized mining protocol support, including rolling extranonce (based on libblkmaker 0.1).
  * New Cairnsmore driver, including autodetection (based in part on Kano's Icarus "timing" feature).
  * Support for per-pool proxies, based in part on Kano's similar work (but cleaned up and not compatible).
  * Numerous minor fixups to Ztex driver.
  * Minor improvements to Icarus driver, including the ability to disable the reopen quirk and detection when the default hash speed is wrong.
  * Updated RPC API from Kano to include debug and setconfig methods.
  * Updated miner.php from Kano to hide IP addresses for security (configurable).

 -- Luke Dashjr <luke+bfgminer@dashjr.org>  Sat, 15 Sep 2012 20:57:28 -0000


bfgminer (2.7.5-0precise1) precise; urgency=low

  * ModMiner: Revamped the dynamic clocking algorithm to keep FPGAs at higher speeds with fewer hardware errors.
  * OpenCL: Restored old default for Cypress (Radeon 58xx) worksize, to fix performance regression introduced in 2.7.2.
  * Failover is now fixed, courtesy of Con.
  * FPGAs: "-S all" option to try probing all enumerated serial ports on systems without non-miner serial devices.
  * Reverted "restart on ADL failure" feature that never did anything useful (if I'm wrong, complain and I'll make a switch to add it back)

 -- Luke Dashjr <luke+bfgminer@dashjr.org>  Thu, 27 Aug 2012 17:12:09 -0000


bfgminer (2.7.4-0precise1) precise; urgency=low

  * More fixes.

 -- Luke Dashjr <luke+bfgminer@dashjr.org>  Thu, 23 Aug 2012 21:48:02 -0000


bfgminer (2.7.3-0precise1) precise; urgency=low

  * Bugfixes for networking, new kernels, and updated miner.php.

 -- Luke Dashjr <luke+bfgminer@dashjr.org>  Thu, 23 Aug 2012 08:05:32 -0000


bfgminer (2.7.1-0precise1) precise; urgency=low

  * The occasional strange behaviour where lots of work would end up on backup pools in failover mode should be fixed.
  * The occasional scenario where one pool dies and the others behave like they're slow to provide work should be fixed.
  * Very high hashrate (U > 100) machines should now be able to work unhindered even on pools that don't support rolltime.
  * The --retry-pause/-R option no longer does anything and is deprecated in preference for faster communications and simpler code.
  * -r was removed as a shortcut for --retries.
  * Hopefully the dynamic mode for GPUs is fixed on windows.
  * Hopefully the 7 day windows crash bug has been fixed

 -- Luke Dashjr <luke+bfgminer@dashjr.org>  Tue, 21 Aug 2012 16:43:09 -0000


bfgminer (2.7.0-0precise1) precise; urgency=low

  * The main change in this version is a complete rewrite of the getwork requesting mechanism. Con had been slowly hacking away at the old one for some time, but finally gave up in disgust and has rewritten it to some extent. Previously, mining threads would occasionally throw out a request for more work, some arbitrary test would be done on whether more work should be requested, and it handed off the message to another thread which spawned another thread and that then sent the request and so on. Worse yet it was hard to find the right place to reuse work and so it was never reused to its utmost potential. The rewrite involves scheduling a new request based on the rate the old work items get used up, and is much better at predicting when it needs to leak work to backup pools and less likely to throw a "pool is not providing work fast enough" message. Overall you should now see much more Local Work (LW), the efficiency will be higher on pools that support rolltime, less work will be discarded, any magnitude rig will be kept solidly busy - note this MAY mean your overclocks will become that much more stressed if you have set clocks very aggressively. Thanks to Con and the numerous people who tested this during its development phase.
  * New pool strategy: Balance.
  * With the change to queueing and more roll work being possible than ever before, the imbalance between pools that support rolltime and those that don't will now be extreme in load balance strategy. To offset that, and since the number of people using load balance has been increasing, the new strategy was added to try and give roughly the same number of shares to each pool.
  * Other minor bugfixes.

 -- Luke Dashjr <luke+bfgminer@dashjr.org>  Tue, 21 Aug 2012 01:50:33 -0000


bfgminer (2.6.5-0precise1) precise; urgency=low

  * New BitFORCE firmware flash utility. When compiled with BitFORCE support, run `bitforce-firmware-flash` to get usage.
  * Fixed hanging when using "Switch User" on Windows. This feature still kills ADL, though, so use --no-restart (and don't enable fan control or overclocking) if you plan to use it.
  * Fixed dynamic mode on Windows. By default, Windows timer resolution is only 15ms and we're trying to sample much smaller than that. This was leading to the time taken to do GPU work appearing as zero for many samples. Now, a Windows multimedia timing API will be used to request more precision.
  * gpu-memdiff should now take effect when you change gpu engine clock from the menu as well.
  * The ADL gpu-map feature should work now when you have more ADL devices than OpenCL (eg, ATI cards that don't support OpenCL).
  * More tweaks to the queueing mechanism to increase efficiency and keep minirigs fully work laden.
  * Failover-only can now be changed via the RPC API.
  * Updated miner.php from Kano

 -- Luke Dashjr <luke+bfgminer@dashjr.org>  Mon, 20 Aug 2012 23:59:19 -0000


bfgminer (2.6.4-0precise1) precise; urgency=low

  * More drastic improvements to ModMiner clock adjustment algorithm. Downclocking should be more conservative, and BFGMiner will even raise the clock speed when it's doing well.
  * ModMiners are now kept busier (less idle time) and nonces are checked against the previous work to catch races. This may result in a higher utility (effective hashrate).
  * Tested and fixed problems managing throttling BitFORCE Singles. An 880 MH/s Single that was throttling to 440 MH/s before (and throwing lots of garbled errors) is now working cleanly at 590 MH/s - a 34% improvement in hashrate!
  * A bunch of annoying crashes were fixed:
  * * With high-share devices when network connectivity is lost.
  * * GPU mining not functional when any OpenCL platform fails.
  * * Occasional deadlock/hang during exit.
  * New --debuglog option to include debug information in log file (see README) but not in main console.
  * The scrypt code was updated - now ALL results from a GPU are checked to see if they're valid and if not, instead of being submitted where they are guaranteed to be rejected, they register as hardware errors. This will make tuning your scrypt parameters easier as HW error count will rise if you've set the parameters too high.
  * Updated miner.php from Kano

 -- graeme <graeme@sudo.ca>  Thu, 09 Aug 2012 10:39:00 -0700


bfgminer (2.6.3.2-0precise2) precise; urgency=low

  * Switched to a Debian native package so that building minor packaging versions is easier.
  * Dropped debhelper reqs to version 7, so we can build on Lucid.

 -- graeme <graeme@sudo.ca>  Thu, 09 Aug 2012 10:39:00 -0700


bfgminer (2.6.3.2-0precise1) precise; urgency=low

  * Added modprobe config for bitforce devices.

 -- graeme <graeme@sudo.ca>  Wed, 08 Aug 2012 11:56:28 -0700


bfgminer (2.6.3.1-0precise1) precise; urgency=medium
  Version 2.6.3.1 - August 8, 2012

  * Added minor version increment so that Launchpad will accept new orig.tar.xz upload. :/

 -- graeme <graeme@sudo.ca>  Wed, 08 Aug 2012 11:11:28 -0700

bfgminer (2.6.3-1precise1) precise; urgency=medium
  Version 2.6.3 - August 6, 2012

  * First release to attempt Debian packaging.
  * Complete rewrite of the queueing mechanism which gets new work from the pools. The code in that section had gotten out of hand and become a "state machine" that was difficult to model its behaviour and occasionally led to stalls during startup and what-not without work and perhaps queued too much work in general. Now it monitors carefully the amount of queued and available work on a pool-by-pool basis and only queues when needed, but tries hard to make sure it doesn't run empty. You will notice the the TQ value now hovers around zero when all is well, and only jumps up transiently, all going well. Hopefully the efficiency is even higher now too. Detection of pool lag should be more accurate now, and less shares should leak to backup pools now as well.
  * Numerous bugfixes and workarounds for ModMiner driver, bringing it to a functional level even on Windows.
  * Scrypt support enabled for Windows binaries.
  * Can set failover-only mode now from the menu during runtime.
  * One-shot schedules (exactly one of --sched-stop or --sched-start) now handle times beyond midnight properly.
  * ModMiner now shows bitstream upload in summary line rather than spamming the log (progress is still logged every 10% for timestamps).
  * The RPC API should be able to bind to the port immediately on linux now instead of having to wait 60 seconds as it used to.
  * Proper big endian (routers) support, including fixing and enabling functionality that crashed before.
  * Minimal support for the Enterpoint's Cairnsmore1 FPGA mining board.
  * Throttling episodes on bitforce devices will now perform reasonably (given the circumstances) and/or register as HW errors.
  * Support for all FPGA drivers enabled by default when compiling from source.

 -- graeme <graeme@sudo.ca>  Tue, 07 Aug 2012 10:51:00 -0500