Guide
Reading miner logs without panic
On day three of the beginner Bitcoin mining bootcamp we project a live miner log and ask students to narrate what they see before touching any settings.
Start with temperature, not hashrate
Hashrate numbers fluctuate while fans ramp. Intake and chip temperatures tell you whether the room and heatsinks are keeping pace. In our Silom lab we mark a comfort band on the whiteboard; if a student sees a chip climb past that band during a walkthrough, we pause and check fan orientation before blaming the pool.
Rejected shares are usually configuration
A burst of rejects after a firmware flash often means the pool URL or worker name has a typo. We have learners read the worker string aloud character by character. Only after that do we inspect network cables. This habit prevents needless board reseating.
Chip status pages
Many ASICs show per-chip health. A single red chip with stable neighbors points to seating or a local heatsink issue. A whole board red after a move usually means a data cable. During the fault-injection exercise we deliberately loosen one board so the pattern becomes familiar.
Keep a paper log for the first week at home
We hand out a one-page sheet: time, intake °C, rejects in the last hour, and any audible change in fans. Students who fill it for seven days rarely email us in a panic; they arrive at open lab with a clear timeline instead.