Before starting

Before starting the troubleshooting, please see the information in the guide about Getting started with ASIC mining. This guide explains general concepts and API access. Many issues can be resolved by knowing these general concepts.

Also note the following:

• Awesome Miner connects to the management interface (API) running on port 4028 on the ASIC miner. The ASIC device returns information about the mining like hashrate and pools via this interface.
• Even if the ASIC miner is mining perfectly fine, and even if the web interface of the ASIC miner can be accessed and indicate mining status, the ASIC miner may still not be configured correctly for applications like Awesome Miner to connect via the management interface (API).
• If a miner that is officially supported by Awesome Miner shows up as Disconnected in Awesome Miner - it's extremely unlikely to be an issue related to Awesome Miner. Please consider the configuration of the miner (the most common source for issues), network connectivity, routers and firewalls while doing the troubleshooting.

ASIC miner shows up as Disconnected

• Right click on the miner in Awesome Miner and select Properties. Verify the IP address and use the Test connection button.
• If the miner is on a remote network, make sure that Awesome Miner is able to connect to port 4028 on the ASIC miner, and make sure no routers or firewalls prevents this connection. If needed, use external port scanning tools to verify if the connection can be established on port 4028 on the ASIC miner.
• Run the Diagnostics on the ASIC miner via the toolbar: Tools -> ASIC Tools -> Diagnostics.
  • The output of the Diagnostics is important when contacting the Awesome Miner support for guidance.
  • The Diagnostics will make two connections. The first one is over SSH (port 22) on the miner to get the configuration file. The second connection is for the API (port 4028) of the miner.
  • For any issues with the SSH connection, please see the section Connect via SSH below.
  • The ASIC miner might be configured with an IP access rule for the API where it refuse connections from the IP address where Awesome Miner is running. This can be re-configured in the same way as when going from Restricted API to Privileged API mode. See the section ASIC miner is running in Restricted API access mode below.
• There can be instances where the management interface (API) of the miner has failed and a full reboot of the ASIC miner is required for it to work again.
• Mining on some pools can cause delays in the ASIC miners where it doesn't respond to any API requests. Please try a different pool to see if the miner works better.

Network scan cannot find miner

• The network scan will by default require the ASIC miner to respond to API requests (port 4028). If a miner doesn't respond to these requests, it will not be listed by the network scan.
• If the API of the miner isn't responding, please enable Include disconnected API and start the scan again where Awesome Miner will try to detect miners via their web server (port 80) instead
  • The miners will however show up as Disconnected once added by the network scan
  • See the section ASIC miner shows up as Disconnected for further troubleshooting.
• If the miner still cannot be found by the network scan, please add the miner manually as an External Miner.
  • The miner will show up as Disconnected once added.
  • See the section ASIC miner shows up as Disconnected for further troubleshooting.

ASIC miner is running in Restricted API access mode

• For general information about API access on ASIC miners, please see the guide API access.
• While troubleshooting, always set the IP access rule to Any IP address (or W:0/0). Specifying a custom rule that turns out to be incorrect will only make the troubleshooting more difficult.
• For Antminers, please use the feature in Awesome Miner: Configure privileged API access for Antminer
  • See the section Connect via SSH for any issues using the API access feature.

ASIC miner changes between Mining and Disconnected

Awesome Miner is by default using a 5 second timeout for all monitoring requests sent to an ASIC miner. If the miner isn't responding within 5 seconds, Awesome Miner will consider the miner to be Disconnected until it get a response next time.

If the miners are located on a remote site where the network connectivity or VPN setup isn't fast and stable enough, the miner can be indicated as Disconnected in Awesome Miner for a short period of time before it's showing as Mining again. Awesome Miner can be configured to better handle this scenario by waiting a longer period of time for the ASIC miner to respond.

1. Go to the Options dialog, Advanced section, and increase the value for Miner API connection timeout
2. If the above doesn't resolve the network connectivity issues, please also set Enable retry, next to the setting above.

In case the network connection is really poor and the miner still show up as Disconnected every now any then, the recommendation is to review the Rules configuration if the Offline Detection rule is used. By default the Offline Detection rule will provide a notification if a miner is offline for more than 30 seconds. To avoid getting notifications too fast this time can be increased to for example 300 seconds (5 minutes). This can be configured in the Options dialog, Rules section, by modifying the predefined rule for Offline detection and then modify the Detect offline trigger.

Connect via SSH

• To change to privileged API access, change default pools or to run the Diagnostics on an ASIC miner, Awesome Miner will make a SSH connection (port 22) to the miner.
• For Antminers, the default SSH username and password is: root / admin
  • Note that the SSH password is not related to the password for the Antminer web interface
• If an error message is given while connecting via SSH, please check if it's a connection failure or authentication (invalid password) failure
• A good way of testing the SSH connection and different passwords is to download an SSH client like PuTTY (see PuTTY web site).
  • If an SSH client like PuTTY is unable to establish an SSH connection to the ASIC miner, the issue is related to the ASIC miner itself and not Awesome Miner
    • Try to reboot the miner
    • Contact the manufacturer or reseller of the miner for support on how to resolve the issue
    • SSH connectivity issues cannot be resolved from an Awesome Miner point of view. The SSH connection feature of the miner must be functional in order to be used by Awesome Miner.
  • If an SSH client like PuTTY is unable to login via SSH (due to invalid or unknown password), the issue must also be resolved from the ASIC miner point of view.
    • Try to reboot the miner
    • If the miner is new, contact the manufacturer or reseller of the miner for support on how to resolve the issue. If the miner was used, contact the previous owner about the password.
    • SSH password issues cannot be resolve from an Awesome Miner point of view. The SSH password must be known in order to be used by Awesome Miner.

Testing connections with Microsoft PsPing

Microsoft provides a free tool called psping:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/psping
Instead of just sending a ping to an IP address, psping is making a TCP connection attempt which is a good way to detect if a connection can be established.

See the example below, where 4028 is the default port for the Antminer monitoring interface (API). Change the IP address to match the IP of your ASIC miner to test:

psping -t 192.168.0.123:4028

What to report?

• In case the problem cannot be resolved, please contact the Awesome Miner support
• Select the miner and include the following information together with a description of the issue and the time of the issue:
  • Diagnostics output (toolbar: Tools -> ASIC Tools -> Diagnostics)
  • API report (toolbar: Tools -> API Report)
  • Awesome Miner log file (toolbar: Tools -> Log File)
• Also include information about the troubleshooting steps that have been followed and the result of those.