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Gupax is a GUI for mining Monero on P2Pool, using XMRig.

To see a 3-minute video guide on how to set-up Gupax: click here.

CI gupax.io Remote Node Ping

Contents

What is Monero/P2Pool/XMRig/Gupax?

Monero is a secure, private, and untraceable cryptocurrency.

Monero GUI allows you to run a Monero node (among other things).

P2Pool allows you to create/join decentralized peer-to-peer Monero mining pools.

P2Pool as a concept was first developed for Bitcoin although failed to stay relevant for various reasons.

In late 2021, SChernykh rewrote P2Pool from scratch for Monero.

P2Pool combines the best of solo mining and traditional pool mining:

  • It's decentralized: There's no central server that can be shutdown or pool admin that controls your hashrate
  • It's permissionless: It's peer-to-peer so there's no one to decide who can and cannot mine on the pool
  • It's trustless: Funds are never in custody, all pool blocks pay out to miners directly and immediately
  • 0% transaction fee, 0 payout fee, immediate ~0.0003 XMR minimum payout

XMRig is an optimized miner that can mine Monero.

Both Monero and P2Pool have built in miners but XMRig is quite faster than both of them. Due to issues like anti-virus flagging, it is not feasible to integrate XMRig directly into Monero.

Gupax is a GUI that helps manage P2Pool & XMRig (both originally CLI-only).

XMRig mines to P2Pool

P2Pool fetches blocks from a Monero node

Monero GUI runs the Monero node

Gupax runs P2Pool/XMRig


By default, Gupax will use a Remote Monero Node so you don't have to run your own Monero node to start mining on P2Pool.


Guide

video.mp4
  1. Download the bundled version of Gupax
  2. Extract
  3. Launch Gupax
  4. Input your Monero address in the P2Pool tab
  5. Select a Remote Monero Node (or run your own local Monero Node)
  6. Start P2Pool
  7. Start XMRig

You are now mining to your own instance of P2Pool, welcome to the world of decentralized peer-to-peer mining!

Simple

The Gupax/P2Pool/XMRig tabs have two versions, Simple & Advanced.

Simple is for a minimal & working out-of-the-box configuration.

Status

This tab has 3 submenus.

Processes:
This submenu shows:

  • General PC stats
  • General P2Pool stats
  • General XMRig stats

P2Pool:
This submenu shows:

  • Permanent stats on all your payouts received via P2Pool & Gupax
  • Payout sorting options
  • Share/block time calculator

Benchmarks:
This submenu shows:

  • Your hashrate vs others with the same CPU
  • List of similar CPUs and their stats
  • Data source: here

Gupax

This tab has the updater and general Gupax settings.

If Check for updates is pressed, Gupax will update your Gupax/P2Pool/XMRig (if needed) using the GitHub API.

Below that, there are some general Gupax settings:

Setting What does it do?
Update via Tor Causes updates to be fetched via the Tor network. Tor is embedded within Gupax; a Tor system proxy is not required
Auto-Update Gupax will automatically check for updates at startup
Auto-P2Pool Gupax will automatically start P2Pool at startup
Auto-XMRig Gupax will automatically start XMRig at startup
Ask before quit Gupax will ask before quitting (and notify if there are any updates/processes still alive)
Save before quit Gupax will automatically saved any un-saved setting on quit

P2Pool

P2Pool Simple allows you to ping & connect to a Remote Monero Node and start your own local P2Pool instance on the Mini sidechain.

To start P2Pool, first input the Monero address you'd like to receive payouts from. You must use a primary Monero address to mine on P2Pool (starts with a 4). It is highly recommended to create a new wallet since addresses are public on P2Pool!

Warning: There are negative privacy/security implications when using a Monero node not in your control. Select a remote node that you trust, or better yet, run your own node. If you'd like to manually specify a node to connect to, see Advanced.

XMRig

XMRig Simple has a log output box, a thread slider, and Pause-on-active setting.

If XMRig is started with Pause-on-active with a value greater than 0, XMRig will automatically pause for that many seconds if it detects any user activity (mouse movements, keyboard clicks). This setting is only available on Windows/macOS.

Windows:
Gupax will automatically launch XMRig with administrator privileges to activate mining optimizations. XMRig also needs a signed WinRing0 driver (© 2007-2009 OpenLibSys.org) to access MSR registers. This is the file next to XMRig called WinRing0x64.sys. This comes in the bundled version of Gupax. If missing/deleted, a copy is packaged with all Windows XMRig releases. A direct standalone version is also provided, here.

macOS/Linux:
Gupax will prompt for your sudo password to start XMRig with and do all the things above.

XMRig Simple will always mine to your own local P2Pool (127.0.0.1:3333), if you'd like to manually specify a pool to mine to, see Advanced.

Advanced

Verifying

It is recommended to verify the hash and PGP signature of the download before using Gupax.

Download the SHA256SUMS file, download and import my PGP key, and verify:

sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS
gpg --import hinto-janai.asc
gpg --verify SHA256SUMS

Q: How can I be sure the P2Pool/XMRig bundled with Gupax hasn't been tampered with?
A: Verify the hash.

You can always compare the hash of the P2Pool/XMRig binaries bundled with Gupax with the hashes of the binaries found here:

Make sure the version you are comparing against is correct, and make sure you are comparing the binary to the binary, not the tar/zip. If they match, you can be sure they are the exact same. Verifying the PGP signature is also recommended:

Running a Local Monero Node

Running and using your own local Monero node improves privacy and security. It also means you won't be depending on one of the Remote Monero Nodes provided by Gupax. This comes at the cost of downloading and syncing Monero's blockchain yourself (currently 155GB).

If you'd like to run and use your own local Monero node for P2Pool, follow these steps:

  1. In the Monero GUI, go to Settings
  2. Go to the Node tab
  3. Enable Local node
  4. Enter --zmq-pub=tcp://127.0.0.1:18083 into Daemon startup flags
  5. (Optionally) enter --disable-dns-checkpoints --enable-dns-blocklist into Daemon startup flags

After syncing the blockchain, you will now have your own Monero node.

The 4th step enables ZMQ, which is extra Monero node functionality that is needed for P2Pool to work correctly.

The 5th step:

  • --disable-dns-checkpoints avoids periodical lag when DNS is updated (it's not needed when mining)
  • --enable-dns-blocklist bans known bad nodes

For more detailed information on configuring a Monero node, click here.

Command Line

By default, Gupax has auto-update & auto-ping enabled. This can only be turned off in the GUI which causes a chicken-and-egg problem.

To get around this, start Gupax with --no-startup. This will disable all auto features for that instance.

USAGE: ./gupax [--flag]

    --help            Print this help message
    --version         Print version and build info
    --state           Print Gupax state
    --nodes           Print the manual node list
    --payouts         Print the P2Pool payout log, payout count, and total XMR mined
    --no-startup      Disable all auto-startup settings for this instance (auto-update, auto-ping, etc)
    --reset-state     Reset all Gupax state (your settings)
    --reset-nodes     Reset the manual node list in the [P2Pool] tab
    --reset-pools     Reset the manual pool list in the [XMRig] tab
    --reset-payouts   Reset the permanent P2Pool stats that appear in the [Status] tab
    --reset-all       Reset the state, manual node list, manual pool list, and P2Pool stats

Key Shortcuts

The letter keys (Z/X/C/V/S/R) will only work if nothing is in focus, i.e, you are not editing a text box.

An ALT+F4 will also trigger the exit confirm screen (if enabled).

*---------------------------------------*
|             Key shortcuts             |
|---------------------------------------|
|             F11 | Fullscreen          |
|          Escape | Quit screen         |
|              Up | Start/Restart       |
|            Down | Stop                |
|               Z | Left Tab            |
|               X | Right Tab           |
|               C | Left Submenu        |
|               V | Right Submenu       |
|               S | Save                |
|               R | Reset               |
*---------------------------------------*

Resolution

The default resolution of Gupax is 1280x960 which is a 4:3 aspect ratio.

This can be changed by dragging the corner of the window itself or by using the resolution sliders in the Gupax Advanced tab. After a resolution change, Gupax will fade-in/out of black and will take a second to resize all the UI elements to scale correctly to the new resolution.

If you have changed your OS's pixel scaling, you may need to resize Gupax to see all UI correctly.

The minimum window size is: 640x480
The maximum window size is: 3840x2160
Fullscreen mode can also be entered by pressing F11.

Tor/Arti

By default, Gupax updates via Tor. In particular, it uses Arti, the official Rust implementation of Tor.

Instead of bootstrapping onto the Tor network every time, Arti saves state/cache about the Tor network (circuits, guards, etc) for later reuse onto the disk:

State:

OS Data Folder
Windows C:\Users\USER\AppData\Local\torproject\Arti\data
macOS /Users/USER/Library/Application Support/org.torproject.Arti
Linux /home/USER/.local/share/arti

Cache:

OS Data Folder
Windows C:\Users\USER\AppData\Local\torproject\Arti\cache
macOS /Users/USER/Library/Caches/org.torproject.Arti
Linux /home/USER/.cache/arti

Disk

Long-term state is saved onto the disk in the "OS data folder", using the TOML format. If not found, default files will be created.

Given a slightly corrupted state.toml file, Gupax will attempt to merge it with a new default one. This will most likely happen if the internal data structure of state.toml is changed in the future (e.g: removing an outdated setting). The node/pool database cannot be merged.

If Gupax can't read/write to disk at all, or if there are any other big issues, it will show an unrecoverable error screen.

OS Data Folder Example
Windows {FOLDERID_RoamingAppData} C:\Users\USER\AppData\Roaming\Gupax
macOS $HOME/Library/Application Support /Users/USER/Library/Application Support/Gupax
Linux $XDG_DATA_HOME or $HOME/.local/share /home/USER/.local/share/gupax

The current files saved to disk:

  • state.toml Gupax state/settings
  • node.toml The manual node database used for P2Pool advanced
  • pool.toml The manual pool database used for XMRig advanced
  • p2pool/ The Gupax-P2Pool API files

Logs

Gupax has console logs that show with increasing detail, what exactly it is is doing.

There are multiple log filter levels but by default, INFO and above are enabled. To view more detailed console debug information, start Gupax with the environment variable RUST_LOG set to a log level like so:

RUST_LOG=(trace|debug|info|warn|error) ./gupax

For example:

RUST_LOG=debug ./gupax

In general:

  • ERROR means something has gone wrong and that something will probably break
  • WARN means something has gone wrong, but things will be fine
  • INFO logs are general info about what Gupax (the GUI thread) is currently doing
  • DEBUG logs are much more verbose and include what EVERY thread is doing (not just the main GUI thread)
  • TRACE logs are insanely verbose and shows very low-level logs

Swapping P2Pool/XMRig

If you want to use your own P2Pool/XMRig binaries you can:

  • Edit the PATH in Gupax Advanced to point at the new binaries
  • Change the binary itself

By default, Gupax will look for P2Pool/XMRig in folders next to itself:

Windows:

Gupax\
├─ Gupax.exe
├─ P2Pool\
│  ├─ p2pool.exe
├─ XMRig\
   ├─ xmrig.exe

macOS (Gupax is packaged as an .app on macOS):

Gupax.app/Contents/MacOS/
├─ gupax
├─ p2pool/
│  ├─ p2pool
├─ xmrig/
   ├─ xmrig

Linux:

gupax/
├─ gupax
├─ p2pool/
│  ├─ p2pool
├─ xmrig/
   ├─ xmrig

Status

The [P2Pool] submenu in this tab reads/writes to a file-based API in a folder called p2pool located in the Gupax OS data directory:

File Purpose Specific Data Type
log Formatted payout lines extracted from P2Pool Basically a String that needs to be parsed correctly
payout The total amount of payouts received via P2Pool & Gupax u64
xmr The total amount of XMR mined via P2Pool & Gupax Atomic Units represented with a u64

The log file contains formatted payout lines extracted from your P2Pool:

<DATE> <TIME> | <12_FLOATING_POINT> XMR | Block <HUMAN_READABLE_BLOCK>

e.g:

2023-01-01 00:00:00.0000 | 0.600000000000 XMR | Block 2,123,123

The payout file is just a simple count of how many payouts have been received.

The xmr file is the sum of XMR mined as Atomic Units. The equation to represent this as XMR is:

XMR_ATOMIC_UNITS / 1,000,000,000,000

e.g:

600,000,000,000 / 1,000,000,000,000 = 0.6 XMR

Gupax interacts with these files in two ways:

  • Reading the files when initially starting
  • Appending/overwriting new data to the files upon P2Pool payout

These files shouldn't be written to manually or Gupax will report wrong data.

If you want to reset these stats, you can run:

./gupax --reset-payouts

or just manually delete the p2pool folder in the Gupax OS data directory.

Gupax

Along with the updater and settings mentioned in Simple, Gupax Advanced allows you to change:

  • The PATH of where Gupax looks for P2Pool/XMRig
  • The selected tab on startup
  • Gupax's resolution

Warning: Gupax will use your custom PATH/binary and will replace them if you use Check for updates in the [Gupax] tab. There are sanity checks in place, however. Your PATH MUST end in a value that appears correct or else the updater will refuse to start:

Binary Accepted values Good PATH Bad PATH
P2Pool P2POOL, P2Pool, P2pool, p2pool P2pool/p2pool Documents/my_really_important_file
XMRig XMRIG, XMRig, Xmrig, xmrig XMRig/XMRig Desktop/

If using Windows, the PATH must end with .exe.

P2Pool

P2Pool Advanced has:

  • Terminal input
  • Overriding command arguments
  • Manual node list
  • P2Pool Main/Mini selection
  • Out/In peer setting
  • Log level setting

The overriding command arguments will completely override your Gupax settings and start P2Pool with those arguments. Warning: If using this setting, use --no-color and make sure to set --data-api <PATH> & --local-api so that the [Status] tab can work!

The manual node list allows you save and connect up-to 1000 custom Monero nodes:

Data Field Purpose Limits Max Length
Name A unique name to identify this node (only for Gupax purposes) Only [A-Za-z0-9-_.] and spaces allowed 30 characters
IP The Monero Node IP to connect to with P2Pool It must be a valid IPv4 address or a valid domain name 255 characters
RPC The RPC port of the Monero node [1-65535] 5 characters
ZMQ The ZMQ port of the Monero node [1-65535] 5 characters

The Main/Mini selector allows you to change which P2Pool sidechain you mine on:

P2Pool Sidechain Description Use-case
Main More miners, finds blocks faster, has a higher difficulty Suitable for miners with MORE than 50kH/s
Mini Less miners, finds blocks slower, has a lower difficulty Suitable for miners with LESS than 50kH/s

Given enough time, both Main and Mini will result in the same reward (as will solo mining):

Mining Method Share Behavior Payout/Output Behavior Example Total (it's the same)
P2Pool Main LESS frequent shares that are MORE valuable Results in MORE outputs worth LESS 20 shares, 100 outputs worth 0.006 XMR 0.6 XMR
P2Pool Mini MORE frequent shares that are LESS valuable Results in LESS outputs worth MORE 100 shares, 20 outputs worth 0.03 XMR 0.6 XMR
Solo mining No shares, only payouts 1 output 1 output worth the block reward: 0.6 XMR 0.6 XMR

In the end, it doesn't matter too much which sidechain you pick, it will all average out. Getting LESS but more valuable outputs may be desired, however, since the transaction cost to combine all of them (sweep_all) will be cheaper due to being comprised of less outputs.

The remaining sliders control miscellaneous settings:

Slider Purpose Default Min/Max Range
Out peers How many out-bound peers P2Pool will connect to 10 10..450
In peers How many in-bound peers P2Pool will allow to connect to you 10 10..450
Log level Verbosity of the P2Pool console log 3 0..6

XMRig

XMRig Advanced has:

  • Terminal input
  • Overriding command arguments
  • Custom payout address
  • CPU thread slider
  • Manual pool list
  • Custom HTTP API IP/Port
  • TLS setting
  • Keepalive setting

The overriding command arguments will completely override your Gupax settings and start XMRig with those arguments.

Warning: If using this setting, use [--no-color] and make sure to set [--http-host <IP>] & [--http-port <PORT>] so that the [Status] tab can work!

The manual pool list allows you save and connect up-to 1000 custom Pools (regardless if P2Pool or not):

Data Field Purpose Limits Max Length
Name A unique name to identify this pool (only for Gupax purposes) Only [A-Za-z0-9-_.] and spaces allowed 30 characters
IP The pool IP to connect to with XMRig It must be a valid IPv4 address or a valid domain name 255 characters
Port The port of the pool [1-65535] 5 characters
Rig An optional rig ID; This will be the name shown on the pool Only [A-Za-z0-9-_] and spaces allowed 30 characters

The HTTP API textboxes allow you to change to IP/Port XMRig's HTTP API opens up on:

Data Field Purpose Default Limits Max Length
HTTP API IP The IP XMRig's HTTP API server will bind to localhost/127.0.0.1 It must be a valid IPv4 address or a valid domain name 255 characters
HTTP API Port The port XMRig's HTTP API server will bind to 18088 [1-65535] 5 characters

The remaining buttons control miscellaneous settings (both are disabled by default, as P2Pool does not require them):

Button Purpose
TLS Connection Enables SSL/TLS connections (needs pool support)
Keepalive Enables sending keepalive packets to prevent timeout (needs pool support)

Connections

For transparency, here's all the connections Gupax makes:

Domain Why When Where
https://github.com Fetching metadata information on packages + download [Gupax] tab -> Check for updates update.rs
Remote Monero Nodes Connecting to with P2Pool, measuring ping latency [P2Pool Simple] tab node.rs
DNS DNS connections will usually be handled by your OS (or whatever custom DNS setup you have). If using Tor, DNS requests for updates should be routed through the Tor network automatically All of the above All of the above

Remote Monero Nodes

These are the remote nodes used by Gupax in the [P2Pool Simple] tab.

IP/Domain Location RPC Port ZMQ Port
monero.10z.com.ar 🇦🇷 Argentina 18089 18084
monero1.heitechsoft.com 🇨🇦 Canada 18081 18084
node.monerodevs.org 🇨🇦 Canada 18089 18084
node.cryptocano.de 🇩🇪 Germany 18089 18083
p2pmd.xmrvsbeast.com 🇩🇪 Germany 18081 18083
fbx.tranbert.com 🇫🇷 France 18089 18084
node2.monerodevs.org 🇫🇷 France 18089 18084
home.allantaylor.kiwi 🇳🇿 New Zealand 18089 18083
p2pool.uk 🇬🇧 United Kingdom 18089 18084
xmr.support 🇺🇸 United States 18081 18083
sf.xmr.support 🇺🇸 United States 18081 18083
xmrbandwagon.hopto.org 🇺🇸 United States 18081 18084
xmr.spotlightsound.com 🇺🇸 United States 18081 18084
node.richfowler.net 🇺🇸 United States 18089 18084

Build

General Info

You need cargo, Rust's build tool and package manager.

There are 41 unit tests, you should probably run:

cargo test

before attempting a full build.

Linux

The pre-compiled Linux binaries are built on Debian 11, you'll need these packages to build:

sudo apt install build-essential cmake libgtk-3-dev

After that, run:

cargo build --release

The Linux release tars come with another file next to the Gupax binary: Gupax.AppImage.

This is not an actual AppImage, it is just a text file that contains: ./gupax. This allows users to double-click and execute Gupax in file explorers like Nautilus in Ubuntu/Debian.

Building for a distribution

Gupax has a build flag for use as a package in a Linux distribution:

cargo build --release --features distro

This is the same as the --release profile, but with some changes:

Change Reason
Built-in Update feature is disabled Updates should be handled by the native package manager
Default P2Pool/XMRig path is /usr/bin/ P2Pool/XMRig exist in some repositories, which means they'll be installed in /usr/bin/

macOS

You'll need Xcode and brew.

Due to an issue with some TLS code, Arti (Tor) needs to fall back to using OpenSSL instead of the native TLS.

These are statically linked into Gupax, so you'll need to have them on your system:

brew install pkg-config openssl xz

If you want the binary to have an icon, you must use cargo-bundle:

cargo install cargo-bundle
cargo bundle --release

This bundles Gupax into a Gupax.app, the way it comes in the pre-built tars for macOS.

To build only the binary:

cargo build --release

Windows

You'll need Visual Studio.

There is a build.rs file in the repo solely for Windows-specific things:

  1. It sets the icon in File Explorer
  2. It statically links VCRUNTIME140.dll into Gupax (the binary will not be portable without this)

After installing the development tools, run:

cargo build --release

This will build Gupax with the MSVC toolchain (x86_64-pc-windows-msvc). This is the recommended method and is how the pre-compiled release binaries are built.

License

The GUI library Gupax uses is egui. It is licensed under MIT & Apache 2.0.

Many other libraries are used that have various licenses.

Gupax, P2Pool, and XMRig are licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0.

FAQ

System requirements

Gupax may not run on machines with:

  • a deprecated OS (Windows 7, Ubuntu 18.04, etc)
  • an older CPU (<2010)

Anything more recent than this should be okay.

Gupax does not start

Windows

Gupax may have issues with machines with older CPUs (~14 years old, <3.3 OpenGL) on Windows.

Gupax may also be flagged by antivirus, adding an exception to the Gupax folder should fix this.

macOS

Gupax may fail to start on macOS due to Apple's security features. Apps downloaded from the internet may be flagged as 'unsafe' if they lack proper notarization by Apple.

As a workaround you can remove the quarantine flag on the .app file by running the following command in your terminal:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine Gupax.app

Linux ARM

Gupax only supports ARM for macOS, not Linux.

Linux ARM is not supported as XMRig does not provide official binaries. This means machines like Raspberry Pis will not work.

Where are updates downloaded from?

The latest versions are downloaded using GitHub's API.

GitHub's API blocks request that do not have an HTTP User-Agent header.

Gupax uses a random recent version of a Wget/Curl user-agent.

P2Pool connection errors

TL;DR: Run & use your own Monero Node.

If you are using the default P2Pool settings then you are using a Remote Monero Node. Using a remote node is convenient but comes at the cost of privacy and reliability. You may encounter connections issues with these nodes that look like this:

2023-01-05 12:27:37.7962 P2PServer peer 23.233.96.72:37888 is ahead on mainchain (height 2792939, your height 2792936). Is your monerod stuck or lagging?

To fix this you can select a different remote node, or better yet: Run your own local Monero Node.

Running and using your own local Monero node improves privacy and ensures your connection is as stable as your own internet connection. This comes at the cost of downloading and syncing Monero's blockchain yourself (currently 155GB). If you have the disk space, consider using the P2Pool Advanced tab and connecting to your own Monero node.

For a simple guide, see the Running a Local Monero Node section.

Can I quit mid-update?

If you started an update, you should let it finish. If the update has been stuck for a long time, quitting Gupax is probably okay. The worst that can happen is that your Gupax/P2Pool/XMRig binaries may be moved/deleted. Those can be easily redownloaded. Your actual Gupax user data (settings, custom nodes, pools, etc) is never touched.

Although Gupax uses a temporary folder (gupax_update_[A-Za-z0-9]) to store temporary downloaded files, there aren't measures in place to revert an upgrade once the file swapping has actually started. If you quit Gupax anytime before the Upgrading packages phase (after metadata, download, extraction), you will technically be safe but this is not recommended as it is risky, especially since these updates can be very fast.

Bundled vs Standalone

Bundled Gupax comes with the latest version of P2Pool/XMRig already in the zip/tar.

Standalone only contains the Gupax executable.

How much memory does Gupax use?

Gupax itself uses around 100-400 megabytes of memory.

Gupax also holds up to 500,000 bytes of log data from P2Pool/XMRig to display in the GUI terminals. These logs are reset once over capacity which takes around 1-4 hours.

Memory usage should never be above 500~ megabytes. If you see Gupax using more than this, please send a bug report.

How is sudo handled? (on macOS/Linux)

See here for more info.

Why does Gupax need to be Admin? (on Windows)

See here for more info.

About

GUI Uniting P2Pool And XMRig

gupax.io

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v1.3.9 Latest
Jul 8, 2024
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