How Do You Set Up Automatic Restart for a Failed Mining Rig?

Core Script Architecture

1. A functional mining rig automation script must include three essential layers: process supervision, error classification, and recovery logic.

2. The base XMRig binary alone cannot sustain operation during network disconnections or GPU thermal throttling events.

3. Exit codes returned by XMRig binaries serve as primary indicators—code 2 signals configuration failure while code 1 often reflects transient pool rejection.

4. Logging must capture timestamps, exit codes, and memory utilization snapshots to enable forensic analysis after repeated failures.

5. Environment variables such as WALLET, POOL, and CONFIG_FILE must be declared outside the main loop to prevent accidental overwrites during restart cycles.

Windows Batch Implementation

1. The xmrig_guard.bat file initiates with @echo off and setlocal enabledelayedexpansion to ensure stable variable handling across iterations.

2. A counter variable restart_count is initialized before entering the monitoring loop to enforce hard limits on consecutive restart attempts.

3. Each invocation of xmrig.exe is wrapped in redirection syntax >> %LOG_FILE% 2>&1 to unify stdout and stderr into a single traceable stream.

4. Conditional branching evaluates %errorlevel% immediately after execution to determine whether to increment the error counter or reset it.

5. Delayed restart intervals use timeout /t %RESTART_DELAY% /nobreak >nul instead of ping hacks to avoid spawning unnecessary child processes.

Failure Classification Logic

1. Network-related exits (e.g., connection timeout, DNS resolution failure) trigger immediate retry without delay escalation.

2. Hardware-induced crashes—detected via Windows Event Log entries containing WHEA-Logger or nvlddmkm—invoke a 5-minute cooldown before restarting.

3. Memory exhaustion patterns are identified when PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA appears alongside high committed memory readings from tasklist /fi 'imagename eq xmrig.exe'.

4. Configuration mismatches are isolated by validating JSON integrity using jq.exe prior to launching the miner, preventing repeated startup failures.

5. Pool-side rejections due to stale shares are handled by rotating between three preconfigured stratum endpoints stored in an array structure within the batch file.

Log Rotation and Diagnostic Capture

1. Daily log rotation is enforced by appending date stamps to filenames using %date:~-4,4%%date:~-7,2%%date:~-10,2% syntax.

2. Critical diagnostic data—including GPU temperature, fan speed, and power draw—is pulled every 90 seconds via nvsmi -q -d TEMPERATURE,POWER,FAN and appended to a parallel diagnostics log.

3. When restart count exceeds seven, the script triggers msinfo32 /nfo system_diagnostic.nfo to generate a full hardware profile snapshot.

4. All logs are written with UTF-8 BOM headers to ensure compatibility with PowerShell-based log analyzers and Splunk forwarders.

5. Log retention policy enforces deletion of files older than 14 days using forfiles /p '%~dp0logs' /s /d -14 /c 'cmd /c del @path'.

Common Questions

Q: Can this script handle dual-GPU rigs with mismatched clock profiles?A: Yes. The script reads per-GPU clock offsets from a gpu_profiles.json file and applies them using nvoclock.exe --gpu=0 --mem=1200 --core=1500 before launching XMRig.

Q: Does the script interfere with Windows Update automatic reboots?A: No. It checks sc query wuauserv | findstr 'RUNNING' before initiating any restart and pauses recovery actions for 30 minutes if Windows Update service is active.

Q: How does it respond to driver crashes flagged by Display Driver Recovery (TCC)?A: It detects TCC events via wevtutil qe System /q:'[System[(EventID=4101)]]' /f:text and forces a full GPU reset using devcon disable '@PCI\VEN_10DE' & devcon enable '@PCI\VEN_10DE*'.

Q: Is there support for AMD GPUs using ROCm drivers?A: Yes. The script includes a detection branch that executes rocm-smi --showtempovr and applies voltage/frequency offsets via rocm-smi --setfan 80 --setclock 1200 before starting the miner.