apoclypsebm 1.1.0

The ApoCLypse Bitcoin Miner

# apoclypsebm - The ApoCLypse Bitcoin Miner
## Background
This hobby project maintained by [Justin T. Arthur](https://github.com/JustinTArthur) undertakes the quixotic task of maintaining a modern Bitcoin miner for programmable compute
devices like GPUs. It was forked from the PyOpenCL Bitcoin Miner (poclbm), a project authored by
[m0mchil](https://github.com/m0mchil) and contributors.

It features an OpenCL Kernel that has incorporated ideas or code from:
* [diapolo](https://github.com/diapolo)
* [m0mchil](https://github.com/m0mchil)
* [neurobox](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=106397)
* [phataeus](https://sourceforge.net/u/phateus/)
* [rethaw](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=18618)

If your work is represented herein and I didn't give you credit, please let me know. At the moment, I reserve no rights
to the mining driver or the OpenCL kernel. They were derived from public domain works.

## Economy
At the time of writing, on-chip implementations of the Bitcoin mining algorithm will outperform this
software in both time and joules expended. Under most conditions, mining blocks on a Bitcoin chain where
on-chip implementations are competing would be at a tremendous waste of expended resources.

## New in Version 1.1.0
This release focused on supporting the `getblocktemplate` call proposed in
BIP 22 and BIP 23 and implemented by Bitcoin Core and btcd. This finally allows
mining without a pool if you supply an address to mine coins to at the command
line.

HTTP work sources now default to using `getblocktemplate` instead of `getwork`.
This feature is new and might have bugs that could lead to loss of potential
mining rewards.

It looks like the work sourcing threads run into i/o issues occasionally due to
using the not-thread-safe Python http lib. I don't aim to address this as most
of the threaded communication ought to be completely replaced by an event runner
like asyncio or trio at some point.

Thanks to @momchil for the original `getwork` code, @luke-jr @sipa and @vsergeev
for helping me understand getblocktemplate.

## Installation
In an environment with Python 3.5+:

pip3 install apoclypsebm

## Usage
apoclypse [OPTION]... SERVER[#tag]...

`SERVER` is one or more [http[s]|stratum://]user:pass@host:port (required)
[#tag] is an optional per server user-friendly name displayed in stats.

### Options
```
--version show program's version number and exit
-h, --help show this help message and exit
--verbose verbose output, suitable for redirection to log file
-q, --quiet suppress all output except hash rate display
--proxy=PROXY specify as
[[socks4|socks5|http://]user:pass@]host:port (default
proto is socks5)
--no-ocl don't use OpenCL
--no-bfl don't use Butterfly Labs
--stratum-proxies search for and use stratum proxies in subnet
-d DEVICE, --device=DEVICE
comma separated device IDs, by default will use all
(for OpenCL - only GPU devices)
-a ADDRESS, --address=ADDRESS
Bitcoin address to spend the block reward to if
allowed. Required for solo mining, ignored with
stratum or getwork sources.
--coinbase-msg=COINBASE_MSG
Custom text to include in the coinbase of the
generation tx if allowed, encoded as UTF-8.
default=ApoCLypse


Miner Options:
-r RATE, --rate=RATE
hash rate display interval in seconds, default=1 (60
with --verbose)
-e ESTIMATE, --estimate=ESTIMATE
estimated rate time window in seconds, default 900 (15
minutes)
-t TOLERANCE, --tolerance=TOLERANCE
use fallback pool only after N consecutive connection
errors, default 2
-b FAILBACK, --failback=FAILBACK
attempt to fail back to the primary pool after N
seconds, default 60
--cutoff-temp=CUTOFF_TEMP
AMD GPUs, BFL only. For GPUs requires
github.com/mjmvisser/adl3. Comma separated
temperatures at which to skip kernel execution, in C,
default=95
--cutoff-interval=CUTOFF_INTERVAL
how long to not execute calculations if CUTOFF_TEMP is
reached, in seconds, default=0.01
--no-server-failbacks
disable using failback hosts provided by server

OpenCL Options:
Every option except '-p' and '-v' can be specified as a
comma separated list. If there aren't enough entries specified, the
last available is used. Use --vv to specify per-device vectors usage.

-p PLATFORM, --platform=PLATFORM
use platform by id
-w WORKSIZE, --worksize=WORKSIZE
work group size, default is maximum returned by OpenCL
-f FRAMES, --frames=FRAMES
will try to bring single kernel execution to 1/frames
seconds, default=30, increase this for less desktop
lag
-s FRAMESLEEP, --sleep=FRAMESLEEP
sleep per frame in seconds, default 0
--vv=VECTORS Specifies size of SIMD vectors per selected device.
Only size 0 (no vectors) and 2 supported for now.
Comma separated for each device. e.g. 0,2,2
-v, --vectors Use 2-item vectors for all devices.
```