Here is a pro-tip.

Create a droplet, get it up and running. Make sure that the bitcoind starts when you boot the computer.
Poweroff the instance
Create a snapshot
When it makes sense to start running again, use this snapshot to get your instances up and running again. If you want to be really high speed, you can use their API.

Exactly what I have been doing

I just found lots of 'generated block is stale' in my debug logs.  Is this normal?  I'm assuming this means the miner found a block but right before it found it someone else found a block.  I wouldn't expect to see this very often unless blocks were comin g really fast?  But I found like 10 of these errors.

This is the nature of the proof of work.   Unlike all existing POW systems, this system has momentum to it and so it cannot 'turn on a dime' when a new block comes in.   Some of these things may be because of fast proof-of-concept implementation, but some of it is the nature of the hash search taking several seconds to get any result.   

When I try to do importprivkey, QT gives me:

Code: [Select]

Invalid private key (code -5)
I got the private key from another machine. And I am sure the it is correct.

Looks like there might be some checks against Bitcoin magic numbers that need to be updated...

Submit a working patch that is merged with the main chain to collect the bounty.

I mined 50 PTS but it was not accepted (Unconfirmed 0 of 6 confirmations.  Generated but not accepted.)  It was mined three hours ago and I have 8 active connections and it is up to date.

With a block production rate near 1 per minute, a hashing algorithm that takes 10-40 seconds to find a single result you would expect a lot of orphans.   If it were not for the orphans the block rate would probably be 2x what it is now.  My guess is that 50% of every thing mined right now is orphaned.

DO cannot find blocks while the production rate is less than 1 per minute because it takes over a minute on those machines just to find a single hash.

Quote from: bytemaster on November 05, 2013, 08:19:09 pm

Quote from: td services on November 05, 2013, 07:47:24 pm

tried switching directly from 3 processes to 2, crashed protoshares-qt

tried switching mining off, then switching from 3 processes to 2, crashed protoshares-qt

does "genproclimit" : 1, mean limited to 1 process? I selected 3. also, hash rate dropped from 2.99 to 2.08

(windows client, xp 64 bit)

This is a bug I have experienced as well.. I will work with FreeTrade to get this addressed and also build a standalone miner that doesn't crash!

Thank you, standalone like a modified cpuminer would be superb, with linux to windows availability.  I will look into it as well and will message you if I get something together soon.

I modified the getwork byte order to avoid unnecessary swapping... I already have a rough cpuminer but it is not ready for distribution yet.   It will be out in a week hopefully with better mining performance and lower memory usage.

tried switching directly from 3 processes to 2, crashed protoshares-qt

tried switching mining off, then switching from 3 processes to 2, crashed protoshares-qt

does "genproclimit" : 1, mean limited to 1 process? I selected 3. also, hash rate dropped from 2.99 to 2.08

(windows client, xp 64 bit)

This is a bug I have experienced as well.. I will work with FreeTrade to get this addressed and also build a standalone miner that doesn't crash!