Cue the smallest violin in the world. This piece will be called “Rant in C major”.
Recently I have come into a ton of problems while farming chia. Admittedly my setup is not the most effective and running Windows period could be considered sacrilegious when it pertains to the chia sphere. (editor’s note: I run Windows for my Chia farm)
However, the Windows GUI is going to be the option most of your everyday average joe farmer is going to use. And in this farmer’s opinion, it breaks a little too easily.
There are seemingly very few of us non technically minded farmers around scraping by on tossed code and relying heavily on the community for support. Without you guys honestly even farming a simple windows GUI setup would be impossible and I’m certainly grateful!
But that is also the problem. It is very finicky to run a farm at this stage; it is not a stretch to think someone might just say “screw it!”.
I’ve been at this point a few times over my chia farming career and can attest that having to resync the wallet or the full DB once or twice a month after a power outage; or some stupid unannounced Windows update that pushes a restart. Is very, very, very annoying. Obviously these things are avoided but it takes time and sometimes money I don’t want to spend. At least not at my farm size. I’m also not super technically inclined so it’s not as straightforward to me how to fix the little things constantly; and little things can snowball very quickly it seems.
I’m happy tossing a node into the mix; the allure of farming chia to me is the fact I can. But I also don’t want to be constantly scraping my head around troubleshooting something I’m only just starting to understand. Personally I’m a buy low sell high crypto investor so farming is not my personal forte. I also have no idea how to make it easier and I’m not suggesting anything other than, it’s currently a lot harder to farm than maybe it can be. I feel like a bit of an outcast as a simple chia farmer; in what seems like a sea of dwindling simple minds. If I feel this way. I wonder who else does? It’s certainly harder to keep a node running with so many little issues to solve constantly.
I’m not saying I’m going to quit, it just makes me work harder to hone the skill… but I’m not also everyone. There’s a long road to go for Chia to be stable enough for someone with lesser patience. We need that place. More options to farm is going to be necessary if the new POST algorithm is going to work. Ease of use is more important than the price of Chia 100% if Chia is going to be a good investment. Maybe things like flex farmer aren’t so bad if it helps make farming stupid simple and is more stable than the current full node.
When it rains it pours especially when it comes to farming chia. It’s just an average farmer being frustrated at the learning curve for something seemingly so point-click it’s almost perfect.
I guess It’s just sometimes not easy choring in the chia fields. Here we are another day of downtime for me having to resync the db again. The worst part being I don’t know why; and I really don’t want to know, I just want it to work. Need the patience of a saint to farm chia and I am not a Saint. Hopefully at minimum I can be a voice for the people scraping by with constant issues with no idea on who,what, where, when, why or how it’s going on. And I also want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has helped me out with fixes. Without you I’d be helpless!. Hopefully chia network can take some of the pressure off of you in the future.
It’s not that hard to make a copy of the database once or twice in a month, it’s the best option right now.
Get an old computer, install Ubuntu Desktop and the Chia GUI to farm. It’s green, it’s stable and easy as peas.
Wow, I run Chia and 13 clones of a 7 year old computer, And the machine also has 2x 6600xt mining Eth.
When the power goes I just start up the mining cards, then sync 2 clones at a time.
The Blockchain is remarkably stable.
I’ve had numerous issues, corrupted database, corrupted config, slight typo in the config causes a spinning circle. I’ve learnt how to approach this and keep regular backups, and resolve the issues, but it is a real chore and time hog. I’ve disabled Windows Update, so that’s now a non issue. Only this morning I found all my forks stopped syncing overnight at different times, tried to restart one which just resulted in some weird numbers message and an OK to click. Luckily a reboot of the VM cured it. And no Linux is not an option, had enough trouble/steep learning curve getting Ubuntu working for plotting. On the other hand, my Nicehash rig just works, sits there day after day earning it’s keep. Chia has a very long way to go to mature.
I feel for you, but honestly, you’re overstating the difficulties a bit. Perhaps back on the “early days” of Chia, the Windows GUI was more of a chore, but much has advanced since. I too realize Windows is not the favored platform, but it seems to me, Linux is far from straightforward either, with the vast majority of difficulties coming from Linux users in forums, not Window’s users.
By now, however, farming and plotting Chia is pretty much old news, it simply another program running. I plot when I get new drives, and farm 7/24. I haven’t resynced in months, nor had other difficulties, aside from wishing I was getting more XCH rewards!
I’ve been thinking recently.. Chia doesn’t even have an official logo for their app.
I have 37 forks running with 0 issues on Ubuntu for more than a month now. Never had to delete any db. If that’s not stable dunno what is.