Stability at last.

I've seen and added to the pile of griefing about this pool. Now on a more positive note, I hope that this post
adds to a better experience for some of you. I like the fee setup and mined along for the very first block on this pool.
'd like to see it stay this way.

Here's my story on how I zero'd-in on the most stable setup yet that handles this pool's issues and growing pains rather well.
Having said that, the following setup could be used anywhere else to minimize stales and
rejected shares as well. I have a few miners pointing at it with some
on windows and some on linux boxes.

I avoid the US server altogether. cgminer connected to it directly will behave badly.
I've experienced 'mysql has gone away errors', rejected and stale shares in various quantities etc.

I don't point the proxy at it as well.
All workers connect via the proxy to the eu.wemineltc.com server.This might change
when the US server stops causing me to lose LTC


Proxy:
  The most important part to keep the workers running and reconnected properly is to use
  an intermediary proxy. Note, I do not use the proxy provided on wemineltc.com website.
  I'm running this proxy on a linux box. This proxy connects to the eu.weminltc.com server.
  Information on running and deploying the proxy:

  On Windows:
    download: https://mining.bitcoin.cz/media/download/mining_proxy.exe
    run: mining_proxy.exe -pa scrypt -o eu.wemineltc.com -p 3333

  On Linux:
    download: https://github.com/slush0/stratum-mining-proxy/tarball/master
    unpack: tar xf slush0-stratum-mining_proxy*.tar.gz
    to make sure, install Python required libraries:
      sudo apt-get install python-dev
    inside the unpacked directory:
      sudo python setup.py install
    run: python ./mining_proxy.py -pa scrypt -o eu.wemineltc.com -p 3333

    additionally on linux, install 'screen' so that you can run the proxy in the background
    disconnect and reconnect to your terminal session.

    to install screen:
      sudo apt-get install screen
    start a screen session:
      screen
      press enter when a notice message is shown
      then run the proxy as above
      to disconnect from the screen session, press ctrl+a then d
   
    there's a lot of resources and manpages related to screen usage such as reconnecting, listing etc.
   
    Steps below presume that the proxy is running.

Minerd/cpuminer:
  There's already a great post on litecoinpool.org website on how to run it on linux/windows and osx: https://www.litecoinpool.org/help

  For example, if the proxy is running on IP 5.5.5.5, i would connect to it as such:
    ./minerd --algo scrypt -s6 --threads 4 --url http://5.5.5.5:8332 --userpass username.workername:workerpassword
    --threads parameter is equal to number of CPU cores

Cgminer:
  Using cgminer scrypt:

  Windows:
    download: http://ck.kolivas.org/apps/cgminer/cgminer-2.11.4-windows.zip
    run example:
      cgminer.exe -o http://5.5.5.5:8332 -u username.workername -p workerpassword -I 13 --scrypt

      look for cgminer optimal settings elsewhere, but it is quite possible for my 7950 cards to
      generate 550 - 600 kHs and 0.005 rejected rate.

  Linux:

    There's already a great step-by-step article here on Github and it's too long for this tutorial:
      https://github.com/ckolivas/cgminer


Parting words,

If push comes to shove and the pool goes down repeatedly, I will simply point the proxy somewhere else.
Until that point, I'll stick around as long as LTC/kWh is highest here.

cheers,

- offbyone