Quote from: jsgarvin on January 31, 2012, 06:25:41 AM

Quote from: twmz on January 31, 2012, 05:08:20 AM

Quote from: btc_artist on January 31, 2012, 04:44:53 AM

Does bitcoind have to be caught up downloading the block chain before starting P2Pool?

Yes

Is there a convenient way to ensure this happens unattended?

I'm not currently on p2pool. I currently have my (linux) mining rig configured to run a script on boot that automatically gets cgminer going pointed at the right pools. So, if the power goes out while I'm away, and then comes back on, everything (in theory), just fires right back up again.

So, if I were to switch to p2pool, I'd need some way of automatically launching bitcoind (I guess), monitoring it to see when it's caught up, and then launching the p2pool client.

Or, better yet, to make things easier on everyone, it would be nice if the p2pool client managed that itself so that one could launch it right away and it would monitor bitcoind and not start actually mining until the time was right. But, not knowing what goes on between bitciond and p2pool, I admit that that might not be technically feasible.

I think its fine to launch p2pool even while bitcoind is out of date. Your shares will be rejected until it gets up to date, but once its up to date it should start working fine.