What does "PROOF OF WORK RESULT: false (booooo)" mean when mining?

I'm mining (Litecoin miner, shouldn't matter) with minerd, and got this in the output:

[2011-10-13 07:12:02] thread 1: 5524 hashes, 0.96 khash/sec
[2011-10-13 07:12:02] thread 0: 5415 hashes, 0.95 khash/sec
[2011-10-13 07:12:04] thread 0: 1588 hashes, 0.94 khash/sec
[2011-10-13 07:12:04] PROOF OF WORK RESULT: false (booooo)
[2011-10-13 07:12:04] thread 6: 5319 hashes, 0.95 khash/sec
[2011-10-13 07:12:04] thread 5: 6026 hashes, 0.96 khash/sec

What does the "Proof of work result: false" mean? Is it a stale block, meaning a block I just solved, but someone else beat me to it and published it first?

ripper234

Posted 2011-10-13T05:17:52.613

Reputation: 25 192

Are you solo mining or mining with a pool? – David Schwartz – 2011-10-13T11:18:19.823

@DavidSchwartz - Solo. I believe there are no pools yet for Litecoin, it was just launched this morning. I found 2 good blocks in about 6 hours. – ripper234 – 2011-10-13T13:19:09.893

Answers

You're solo mining. So there's nothing useful you can do with a share -- there's nothing for you to share in. Every share you find will be rejected, unless you actually mine a block.

David Schwartz

Posted 2011-10-13T05:17:52.613

Reputation: 46 931

I have no idea what a share is. I knew it was related to pooled mining, but I thought it's not relevant when I'm mining solo http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/1505/what-is-a-share-can-i-find-it-while-mining-solo-or-only-when-pool-mining

– ripper234 – 2011-10-13T15:41:05.513

1Exactly, it's not. That's why every time you try to submit a share it fails. There is nothing for you to get a share of. Until and unless you actually mine a block, all of your submissions will, and should, fail. – David Schwartz – 2011-10-13T15:52:13.930

Now I understand a little bit more, thanks! – ripper234 – 2011-10-13T16:34:05.250

2However, your answer should at least say that I've found a share (and perhaps link to my other question). Odds are people reading this question will not know what a share is, and why your answer is relevant. – ripper234 – 2011-10-13T16:35:15.483

It seems false means that the found block was already stale when it was found (submitted). Note that true doesn't mean it's not stale, there is still a race condition between different clients. On LiteCoin launch some people reported 90% stales until the first difficulty retarget.

ripper234

Posted 2011-10-13T05:17:52.613

Reputation: 25 192