It's really nice to add more features to nvOC and I would encourage everyone to try and contribute to this great project but I would strongly advice against using unnecessary extreme writing in logs to accomplish the proposed feature. Especialy recording the screen in screenlog...
You see people complainig every day of corrupted USB sticks, freezing, running out of space, boot problems, etc. USB stick as a medium is not designed for such operations, constant writing to USB stick is not recommended, it messes the controller, makes USB perform very slow after a while and kills memory cells which leads to corruption and lock-ups.
If nvOC was explicitly recommended as SSD/HDD OS, the logs would be fine but the reality is that 90% of people use nvOC from USB sticks.
To all devs: please avoid usage of logs as much as possible or at least log as little as possible.
Hint: if you want to show output from the miner in your script/program/telegram/web page (definetely a nice feature to show), record the output from the miner (or nvidia api) into memory then show it in your program on a per need basis. This is more easily done with PHP and Perl but it can be accomplished in Bash as well. Record stdout and stderr into rotating array (you can use shift for the array). You can record 10, 20, 100, even 500 lines and you won't run out of memory, then show the live output from the array into your featured program.
We miners are spending thousands on our rigs and when it comes to stability and life span we forget the most important part and thats where the OS is installed on, we think small and go cheap with a 5-10$ USB when we can have much smoother system with a 30$ SSD.
Using USB as daily use is not recommended in any distro, The most important difference other than USB read/write limit is there's no way for a USB drive to mark bad cells as 'do not use' whereas the SSD may develop bad areas it can ignore them. With a USB drive one cell goes bad and the whole drive is useless.
I'm Not saying that you shouldn't use a USB for bootable OS, just that it's not a good idea to have it as your main boot drive and only use them for diagnostic / testing purposes.
No mining system should be run from USB as a daily hardcore mining system, but run it on usb, test OS and see if you like it, then install it on SSD.
I think mining with nvOC on USB is only good for those who want to mine when their pc is not in use, so they boot with usb, mine for a while then reboot back to their main OS...
I agree. I have to say that if system is using a hdd or ssd (better) it should not have any problem with log files as long as the system is healthy. If system has a very high cpu load/gpu instability etc, then is better not to log, at less in a productive system.
Linux is good at login but system must be healthy.
Got a rig (installed in a old hdd) with high cpu load (2 cores and 2.5 cpu load average) and log files for miners go around 150MB+... no problem. I don't think this would work on a usb stick.
I agree, nvOC should be run from SSD and USB sticks should be used for evaluation or short term use only. Maybe fullzero should note/recommend this in the OP.
However, as a programmers we should do due diligence and optimize the code to run as smooth as possible including running off USB sticks
I agree with this. I have added the following to the OP:
Quote
Image to a 16gb or larger USB key or SSD
I recommend using these USB to Sata power and data adapters:
https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-SATA-Drive-Adapter-Cable/dp/B00HJZJI84
with an SSD
This is what I will be doing from now on with my rigs. An ssd will usually image in 4 minutes or less; and is easy to attach / remove or swap with the usb adapter. I have had a lot of USB keys die over time; and really like how fast I can deploy a new image to a rig with SSD + sata-to-usb adapter.
USB keys are good for testing different versions; or for trying out nvOC for the first time. But in the long run an SSD will likely outlast multiple USB keys.
I recommend using these USB to Sata power and data adapters:
https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-SATA-Drive-Adapter-Cable/dp/B00HJZJI84
with an SSD
This is what I will be doing from now on with my rigs. An ssd will usually image in 4 minutes or less; and is easy to attach / remove or swap with the usb adapter. I have had a lot of USB keys die over time; and really like how fast I can deploy a new image to a rig with SSD + sata-to-usb adapter.
USB keys are good for testing different versions; or for trying out nvOC for the first time. But in the long run an SSD will likely outlast multiple USB keys.