Add a backup pool to your miner!

[SnowLeopard]

Every pool is susceptible to various kinds of downtime in spite of every effort made by the operator... it's just the nature of the internet, a bit like catching a cold is part of being human.   No one wants to waste mining time because their favourite pool is unreachable, but since it will probably happen at some point, I recommend configuring at least one backup mining pool (MNC of course).

First sign-up to a different MNC pool than the one you already use and create a worker account.

 

Adding a failover pool from within cgminer/sgminer:

• From the main cgminer/sgminer screen hit 'P' to access the Pool Management menu.
• If it says "Failover only disabled", hit 'F' to enable failover only.
• Press 'A' to add another pool.
• Enter the information that it asks for.  Complete URL including port,  ie:
• You can save the new config ('S' from the main menu, then 'W'rite config file)

If you make a mistake, you cannot go back but you use the 'R'emove function and start over.

 

Add additional lines to your cgminer/sgminer .conf file:

 

If you prefer to edit the config file by hand, add the backup pool below your primary pool (order is important):

"pools" : [
{
"user" : "USERNAME.WORKER",
"pass" : "PASSWORD"
},
{
"user" : "USERNAME.WORKER",
"pass" : "PASSWORD"
}
]

Also make sure the failover setting is set true:

"failover-only" : true,

You can even add a third and fourth backup using the same instructions.  If the primary pool fails, the miner will try the backup pools in order until it finds a working one.  When the primary pool becomes available again, the miner will automatically switch back.

 

Unfortunately for those using cudaminer for NVidia cards, it does not [yet] have fail-over support built-in, but it is on the author's TODO list.