sota

I'm a die hard HP guy. my Production server is an HP, my unRAID box is an HP (as my sig shows ), all my desktops and laptops are HP, even my mopier is an HP (just worked out that way on that one.) I get the proprietary problem though: for example there's only ONE USB 3.0 card I've found that works in an HP DL380G6 and up boxes, without pissing off iLO such that it turbo boosts all the fans (PEXUSB3S44V). Also had a couple SATA HDDs that would I guess report invalid temperature data to iLO (it would report the drives as overheating almost immediately), also pissing it off and cranking up the fans. Is that really an HP server fault though? Or more likely a drive manufacturer being silly/proprietary. The fix was to get some HP branded ones, that actually didn't cost any more than the non-HP stickered units, and that problem was solved. I balance those... quirks... with the fact that in the past 17 years of having HP servers for my production work, they've NEVER failed of their own volition. The lightning strike a block over that blew out half of a ProLiant 1850R, fried a UPS, and melted down the DSL modem, doesn't really count.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/373600276463 plotting engine?

I could get to 24/day, but i don't have enough disks to put into the one system.

revamped my plotter setup. only running the three DL380G6 boxes now. 2x8 and 1x4 plot sets. looking like 20 plots every 24 hours or so.

I see one post over on reddit, that costco will take HDDs back up to a year, instead of 90 days since it's not a computer. Next time I go over there with a buddy of mine, I should see about talking to the GM of that store. Find out what happens to such returns (do they get binned? manufacturer return? etc.) and if there isn't some way to get drives at pennies on the dollar. I need space for things OTHER than chia, hence why I already HAVE like 60 4TB drives here.

I guess the way i'm reading it, I'll keep plotting solo for the time being, then when pools/portable plots become available, switch over to portable plots. That way I can either keep them solo, or join them to a pool, or move them around as i see fit/desire. Once i fill up my current space, I'll replot/replace the earlier solo-only ones. I'm not going to wind up with an ever expanding array of disks, I don't think. So for a period of time, I'll be solo and posslbly pooled at the same time.

and I'm kind of 2 minds on pools. since I'm about to split out 8 of the 16 drives from the one machine (since it can't effectively use them) and stick them in another identical machine, I may split my plotting between personal and pools. i dunno yet.

I did, something, that netted me 0.0000000001 chia. that right?

on a good note, it appears my farm is working correctly... 2021-06-02T17:05:25.332 harvester chia.harvester.harvester: INFO 1 plots were eligible for farming a6ac75822c... Found 0 proofs. Time: 0.19568 s. Total 81 plots 2021-06-02T17:05:33.364 harvester chia.harvester.harvester: INFO 1 plots were eligible for farming a6ac75822c... Found 0 proofs. Time: 0.18119 s. Total 81 plots 2021-06-02T17:05:43.342 harvester chia.harvester.harvester: INFO 1 plots were eligible for farming a6ac75822c... Found 0 proofs. Time: 0.08190 s. Total 81 plots 2021-06-02T17:05:52.879 harvester chia.harvester.harvester: INFO 0 plots were eligible for farming a6ac75822c... Found 0 proofs. Time: 0.04482 s. Total 81 plots 2021-06-02T17:06:00.708 harvester chia.harvester.harvester: INFO 0 plots were eligible for farming a6ac75822c... Found 0 proofs. Time: 0.05575 s. Total 81 plots 2021-06-02T17:06:09.485 harvester chia.harvester.harvester: INFO 0 plots were eligible for farming a6ac75822c... Found 0 proofs. Time: 0.03305 s. Total 81 plots 2021-06-02T17:06:18.858 harvester chia.harvester.harvester: INFO 0 plots were eligible for farming 57c2a69fb1... Found 0 proofs. Time: 0.33405 s. Total 81 plots 2021-06-02T17:06:27.611 harvester chia.harvester.harvester: INFO 0 plots were eligible for farming 57c2a69fb1... Found 0 proofs. Time: 0.04072 s. Total 81 plots 2021-06-02T17:06:37.191 harvester chia.harvester.harvester: INFO 1 plots were eligible for farming 57c2a69fb1... Found 0 proofs. Time: 0.28098 s. Total 81 plots 2021-06-02T17:06:49.360 harvester chia.harvester.harvester: INFO 0 plots were eligible for farming 57c2a69fb1... Found 0 proofs. Time: 0.03999 s. Total 81 plots 2021-06-02T17:06:58.574 harvester chia.harvester.harvester: INFO 0 plots were eligible for farming 57c2a69fb1... Found 0 proofs. Time: 0.04503 s. Total 81 plots haven't won anything yet, but it at least it looks like I could.

I set the mem flag in my container, to keep it no larger than 8GB, otherwise it'll run away and steal all 96GB of the system

so i'm not going to gleen and post the needed data, but the results of what i'm seeing, are telling me this thing can't be scheduled to do 16 plot lots efficiently. it looks like it's 8 or less, even with staggered start. and as for scheduling of plot runs, trying to keep timing clear is like herding cats... impossible. So, once this thing finishes with the plots already processing, I'm setting up a 60 minute staggered start for 8 plots, and let each each one run in sequence. they'll diverge and converge as they will. Start 'em all and let GOD sort it out.

So I looked up something, and it turns out you can mark a disk or volume as read-only, in windows (hint: diskpart, select disk, attributes disk set readonly) cool. so I tested it against one of my plot drives, then tried to create a new file on the disk. damn, son!

Yea it's one thing to raise prices, but if i'm obligated to fulfill my end of the transaction (paying for it) they're obligated to sell it at the price agreed. If it's less than they could have gotten it for, oh well. There was an agreement. I'd be leaving them a NEGATIVE review ASAP, after giving them one final "send 'em" demand.

info nugget: 64 buckets need blocks (memory) set to at least 6750, to keep sort in uniform, except for sorts that are forced to quick by the program. 6000s delay, 10 plots have not started, 6 however are showing 5 threads in resource monitor. 3 are in phase 3. 1 is in phase 2. 6 are in phase 1 (probably the 6 w/ 5 threads.) note: I told the process to use 4 threads. I'm guessing it's +1 for some kind of management? CPU is showing on the chart at about 91% utilization. thinking that 6000 needs to be bigger, or I need to put a delay in between the 2 "natural" groups of 8 for the drives (2 drive controllers, 8 disks on each, temp drives/folders are labeled 11-18 and 21-28) a delay between groups could keep phase 1 down to 4 with any luck. i'll look a the time delta between the start of #18 and the end of #11, and toss in a delay of at least that value. Of course at that point, I could probably just start a new plot on #11, and forgo even plotting on 21-28. I'll have to see how many plots/day this winds up with though, before I make that determination. looking at the resmon, I can see that it's starting to pull a Scotty... system's overloading, captain! think i'll kill the script for the rest of the 20-series plots, and let this settle out a bit.

I've honestly never had a UPS ever puke like that, ever. Now, this unit, and a twin I have in storage, were pulled out of service after over 20 years of use, because the battery gauge gets weird after the load goes over 30%, yet still would provide power to the load for the appropriate estimated time. I'm taking this as proof that I should *permanently* retire both these old units. Oh, they're all APC SmartUPS units.

well, I won't be finding out the results of this test. had to move the power cord the UPS everything is plugged into, and for some reason the UPS puked when I pulled the mains. but ONLY the DL380 barfed... all the PCs were unaffected. FML.

well the #s aren't looking good. Despite F1 getting cut in half... 16 plots 2 threads each 10 minute stagger, is trending on par with the 16 plot 1 thread no stagger run, for phases 1 and 2; in fact it's actually worse. ironically, 16p1t netted the lowest average/plot time. Also not helping that the divergence factor is all over the map. Look at this phase 2 raw data: Time for phase 2 = 13220.033 seconds. CPU (83.780%) Mon May 31 05:22:54 2021 Time for phase 2 = 13316.910 seconds. CPU (84.310%) Mon May 31 06:57:34 2021 Time for phase 2 = 14220.194 seconds. CPU (86.660%) Mon May 31 10:13:00 2021 Time for phase 2 = 14019.073 seconds. CPU (87.010%) Mon May 31 10:32:41 2021 Time for phase 2 = 14285.967 seconds. CPU (85.510%) Mon May 31 09:49:14 2021 Time for phase 2 = 14032.774 seconds. CPU (86.510%) Mon May 31 10:16:04 2021 Time for phase 2 = 13596.761 seconds. CPU (88.550%) Mon May 31 10:48:26 2021 Time for phase 2 = 13008.823 seconds. CPU (85.090%) Mon May 31 07:40:23 2021 Time for phase 2 = 13336.768 seconds. CPU (83.860%) Mon May 31 08:16:38 2021 Time for phase 2 = 13390.092 seconds. CPU (84.170%) Mon May 31 08:41:18 2021 Time for phase 2 = 13803.076 seconds. CPU (87.850%) Mon May 31 10:57:42 2021 Time for phase 2 = 13712.558 seconds. CPU (87.930%) Mon May 31 11:07:54 2021 Time for phase 2 = 13412.157 seconds. CPU (89.040%) Mon May 31 11:48:23 2021 Time for phase 2 = 13329.389 seconds. CPU (85.170%) Mon May 31 09:14:13 2021 Time for phase 2 = 13551.145 seconds. CPU (88.570%) Mon May 31 11:20:38 2021 Time for phase 2 = 13437.263 seconds. CPU (84.400%) Mon May 31 09:13:53 2021 Starting to think I'm going to be better off kicking off X loop processes and have them iterate each time their respective plot ends, and to hell with trying to "manage" the timing.

I haven't figured out where they bury the nmemonic key, so you don't have to re-enter that. also haven't looked that hard.

was hoping to get at least a rough idea when I can run the next metric extraction. guess not. oh... and did you know... you can copy the whole '.chia' between installs, to at least NOT have to rebuild from scratch if needed? I figured that out recently.

can also now say with absolute certainty, looking at the intermediate time stamps of the various stages, is utterly useless for attempting to gleen any meaningful estimates of completion time or performance. I've got plots hitting same marker points, that were started 30 minutes later, but are ending 10+ minute sooner!

after the absolute walloping WD got for their CMR/SMR shenanigans, I doubt any major manufacturer will obfuscate their drive's condition again any time soon. plus I've read enough white papers to know, that 20TB CMR in a 3.5" form factor is about as far as they can go. Anything bigger is going to have to be SMR, without some major breakthrough that will get touted massively.

some unconfirmed noise about seagate making "chia" oriented drives. possibly some really big, slow SMR disks. honestly, SMR is a PERFECT marriage for Chia, and any future coin like it. maybe if they did and it's priced right it'll take pressure off the rest of the drive supply.

I just learned I cannot power up the MD1000 at this point; it pisses off the UPS everything is connected to. might have to "tweak" how and where things are plugged into, it looks like.

looks like I've also resurrected Chia9 (memory tests came up clean, and now it's booting fine) but Chia6 just decided to throw the infamous HP 5 beeps/red flashes, which also indicates a memory problem. starting to think these old boxes don't want to do the work.

pretty sure i'm maxing out CPU right now. 16 plots, 2 threads each. here's some raw data: F1 complete, time: 197.843 seconds. CPU (187.92%) Sun May 30 08:49:38 2021 F1 complete, time: 230.411 seconds. CPU (184.9%) Sun May 30 09:00:04 2021 F1 complete, time: 204.651 seconds. CPU (185.32%) Sun May 30 09:09:39 2021 F1 complete, time: 228.132 seconds. CPU (186.65%) Sun May 30 09:20:02 2021 F1 complete, time: 257.852 seconds. CPU (185.06%) Sun May 30 09:30:32 2021 F1 complete, time: 281.433 seconds. CPU (184.08%) Sun May 30 09:40:56 2021 F1 complete, time: 281.054 seconds. CPU (183.65%) Sun May 30 09:42:39 2021 F1 complete, time: 289.449 seconds. CPU (179.14%) Sun May 30 09:52:47 2021 F1 complete, time: 304.029 seconds. CPU (173.73%) Sun May 30 10:03:02 2021 F1 complete, time: 350.178 seconds. CPU (150.61%) Sun May 30 10:12:21 2021 F1 complete, time: 345.094 seconds. CPU (155.06%) Sun May 30 10:12:17 2021 F1 complete, time: 389.805 seconds. CPU (133.09%) Sun May 30 10:20:39 2021 F1 complete, time: 449.83 seconds. CPU (115.89%) Sun May 30 10:31:43 2021 F1 complete, time: 403.385 seconds. CPU (125.08%) Sun May 30 10:41:05 2021 F1 complete, time: 588.592 seconds. CPU (88.76%) Sun May 30 10:54:15 2021 F1 complete, time: 512.601 seconds. CPU (100.09%) Sun May 30 11:03:06 2021 you can see the times degraded as more plots were brought online. the start times got a little weird in the middle, as I accidentally killed the window that was managing the timing. what's interesting though the time delta between each ending plot, as if you "filter" the noise in your head you can see they're pretty darn consistent. average was still 332.146, which is -410.03 from the baseline 8p2t blob storage run. Curious to see what might be going on, I dumped the Phase 1 start times: Starting phase 1/4: Forward Propagation into tmp files... Sun May 30 08:46:21 2021 Starting phase 1/4: Forward Propagation into tmp files... Sun May 30 08:56:14 2021 Starting phase 1/4: Forward Propagation into tmp files... Sun May 30 09:06:14 2021 Starting phase 1/4: Forward Propagation into tmp files... Sun May 30 09:16:14 2021 Starting phase 1/4: Forward Propagation into tmp files... Sun May 30 09:26:14 2021 Starting phase 1/4: Forward Propagation into tmp files... Sun May 30 09:36:15 2021 Starting phase 1/4: Forward Propagation into tmp files... Sun May 30 09:37:58 2021 Starting phase 1/4: Forward Propagation into tmp files... Sun May 30 09:47:58 2021 Starting phase 1/4: Forward Propagation into tmp files... Sun May 30 09:57:58 2021 Starting phase 1/4: Forward Propagation into tmp files... Sun May 30 10:06:30 2021 Starting phase 1/4: Forward Propagation into tmp files... Sun May 30 10:06:32 2021 Starting phase 1/4: Forward Propagation into tmp files... Sun May 30 10:14:09 2021 Starting phase 1/4: Forward Propagation into tmp files... Sun May 30 10:24:13 2021 Starting phase 1/4: Forward Propagation into tmp files... Sun May 30 10:34:21 2021 Starting phase 1/4: Forward Propagation into tmp files... Sun May 30 10:44:26 2021 Starting phase 1/4: Forward Propagation into tmp files... Sun May 30 10:54:33 2021 Doing a little excel wizardy I get this: start end delta 8:46:21 AM 8:49:38 0:03:17 8:56:14 AM 9:00:04 0:03:50 9:06:14 AM 9:09:39 0:03:25 9:16:14 AM 9:20:02 0:03:48 9:26:14 AM 9:30:32 0:04:18 9:36:15 AM 9:40:56 0:04:41 9:37:58 AM 9:42:39 0:04:41 9:47:58 AM 9:52:47 0:04:49 9:57:58 AM 10:03:02 0:05:04 10:06:30 AM 10:12:21 0:05:51 10:06:32 AM 10:12:17 0:05:45 10:14:09 AM 10:20:39 0:06:30 10:24:13 AM 10:31:43 0:07:30 10:34:21 AM 10:41:05 0:06:44 10:44:26 AM 10:54:15 0:09:49 10:54:33 AM 11:03:06 0:08:33 So the run time for F1 matches what's being reported by the system, but there doesn't seem to be a major effect on the end time of the F1 process, even with nearly all plots deep into Table 2 bucket sorts. Still waiting on Phase 1 times to see what happens, which I estimate to be as early as 6:30pm today. Probably a lot later than that though