Another question: What's the purpose of configuring up to 3 pools in MinePeon? Is it a failsafe, e.g. if pool 1 is down, then pool 2 is used instead?
Yep.
Recommendation: Regarding the new "minutes per 24 hours" donation feature, I recommend that you allow this to be configured as the 4th pool on the settings page that says "donations pool" which shows (and even lets you edit) the donations pool. Probably a good place to include the # minutes option as well. Here's why:
That was my first thought but in the end it proved to be too unreliable. About 1 time in 20 it would end up doing the wrong thing. While the miner API allows you to add and remove and switch pools you add a pool by using the pool details and remove and switch polls by using their ID number with no mention of what the pool details are. Even with all of the pools in there are there is no command to order the pool priorities as you would like (i.e. pool 4, 1, 2, 3 or pool 1,2,3,4).
I have spent the best part of 2 months thinking and working on this and have tried multiple ways of making sure it works as intended and this is by far the best way of doing it, it has yet to fail on me.
In the end though if you still are worried about it the solution is simple, just set it to 0 and dont donate or help me test and improve it.
Neil
Maybe you could add mining pool / worker /etc parameters on the settings page for the donations. That way if you change your mind on which pool you want to use it can be changed without a new release.
also - is there any coding dependent on "root". I'd prefer to change the password once my miner is in production.