Installing 64bit Ubuntu 7.1 linux

[biodoc]

I've had some questions about problems installing 64-bit unbuntu 7.1 ("Gutsy Gibbon") because of the increased speed observed when running the F@H SMP client:

Windows Vista Q6600@2.4GHz: WU 2653: 12 min 30 sec per step
64-bit Unbuntu 7.1 Q6600@2.4GHz: WU 2653: 9 min 30 sec per step

Before I start, I know many people have had problems with Unbutu (Insidious, for example) & his points are absolutely correct. If you want seamless installation and support for high end video, wireless access, HD sound, be prepared to spend hours if not days getting all that stuff to work at some level if at all.

If you have a dedicated, stripped box for crunching and are using a 64-bit AMD or Intel processor, you may want to give 64-bit linux a shot and get some extra points. It's your call

Step 1: Get an installation CD image here. Important: remember to click on the 64bit AMD and Intel button. Choose a location: I downloaded successfully from Northeastern U computer science lab.

Step 2: Burn the image on a CD (you also may want to try a USB memory stick if your bios supports booting from one of these).

Step 3: You may want to consider rolling back your bios settings to "stock" from OC'd.

Step 4: check out installation instructions here and hardware support here and many other useful links here including installation w/o a CD.

Comment: I had a heck of a time installing from my internal CDROM/DVD drive. What did work was booting from a USB CDROM drive

Step 4: Booting and installing (check out link above). When you get to the initial menus, make sure you start by with "check CD for defects"

EDIT:Step 5: choose F6 (other options; bottom of screen); use backspace or delete key to remove 'quiet splash' and then hit return.

Edit begin; Comment: After doing some research on the ubuntu forums, it is apparent that the 'quiet splash' "switch" tries to project a pretty progress bar during the boot process. At this point, the proper drivers for Nvidia and ATI cards are not loaded so the computer hangs trying to display this his res image. I tried this F6 option on a computer with a nvidia 8800 GTS card and deleting 'quiet splash" allowed me to boot and install the system. You will still see a dark screen but you will see CDROM light activity and eventually it boots into the desktop. At this point the install process worked on my machine. Note:ATI cards are much more problematic than Nvidia cards (source:ubuntu forums). The F6 option may allow more of you to install unbutu on your machines. Edit end

Step 6: If it locks up during boot, try another installation method (USB stick or USB CD drive) and also consider rolling bios back to stock. If you can't make it past this step, you must have hardware that unbutu doesn't support.

step 7: If you do get a successful boot to a desktop continue to follow the instructions here. I did have problems during the format/installation step with the internal IDE drive on my system. Using my USB CDROM drive for installation was successful.

step 8: Installing and running the F@H 64bit client (You've had a succesful install and system has rebooted!

- go to applications menu (upper left hand corner), then "accessories", then choose "terminal". This opens up a command line terminal window.

-you are in your home directory now. Let's make a fah directory. type mkdir fahsmp & hit return (keep the dir name simple; linux does not allow spaces for directory names and is case sensitive).

-change into your fahsmp directory: type cd fahsmp & hit return (I'm going to assume from now on you will hit return after you type a command)

-open up the internet browser and go to f@h and download the linux 64bit SMP client and save it in your new fahsmp directory. This is a ver 6 client so you will also need a "passkey" (the passkey FAQ is here

-you'll need the 32libs to run the 64bit fah client so let's install them: go back to your terminal window and type sudo apt-get install ia32-libs & hit return. You'll get a password request so type in your login password and click ok.

-In the terminal window type ls & hit return. you should see the tar archive file FAH6.00beta1-Linux.tgz

-unpack the archive file: type tar -xvf FAH6.00beta1-Linux.tgz & hit return (remember linux is case-sensitive).

-type ls & hit return and you should see all the files you need: the file fah6 should be colored green (executable). Type ls -al to be sure and you should see "rwx" for permissions. If not, you need another command: chmod +x fah6

-type ./fah6 -configonly (the ./ is necessary for bash to find fah6 in your current directory) (-configonly is important because we want to start fah6 with other switches).

-after config is done then type ./fah6 -smp -verbosity 9 & then hit return (the -smp switch is necessary to run only SMP workunits).

-if you want to run another client then repeat this process in ANOTHER directory (fahsmp2) or whatever.

-if you'd like to check the cpu activity there is a system monitor in one of the menus or you could open up another terminal window and type: top <return>

Edit1: Corrected broken links

Edit2: corrected misspellings

 

[natethegreat]

Great Walkthrough! :thumbsup:

I just might put Ubuntu on a partition again...

 

[Insidious]

Great tout. Biodoc!

When I did the Linux 64-bit SMP client (before the wiindows client existed), the current version of Ubuntu was Fiesty Fawn.

I used a install script written by one of the F@H gurus. It was great. It even included a monitoring tool.

You can see the page of iinstructions and d/l locations I used by following this link

It has been almost a year since I did this, so I don't know if they've kept it up to date or not, but it sure was easy!

-Sid

(And like biodoc said: The Linux SMP client is the only way to go for a multiprocessor machine that doesn't need to run "all the extras" )

 

[Neurodog]

Thanks Biodoc and Sid

I might have to try it also.

 

[biodoc]

Originally posted by: Insidious
Great tout. Biodoc!

When I did the Linux 64-bit SMP client (before the wiindows client existed), the current version of Ubuntu was Fiesty Fawn.

I used a install script written by one of the F@H gurus. It was great. It even included a monitoring tool.

You can see the page of iinstructions and d/l locations I used by following this link

It has been almost a year since I did this, so I don't know if they've kept it up to date or not, but it sure was easy!

-Sid

Thanks for the link...I didn't see that or I might have tried installing Fah as a service. Sounds especially good for dual core systems where you run just one smp client. On quad core systems, running 2 smp clients seems to give me the most points

Q6600@3GHz with 2 SMP clients (about 20 hrs for each to run= 4200ppd w/1760 point WUs according to fahmon).

Since I just set this up yesterday morning time will tell.
:beer:

 

[GLeeM]

Thanks for taking the time to do this, biodoc

 

[biodoc]

If the install doesn't go quickly and smoothly, don't waste too much time on it.

Linux installation can be very frustrating and time consuming

I'm obsessive/compulsive so I don't mind losing time/effort

 

[dajeepster]

I can load one of my computers with the 32bit Ubuntu 7.10 with no problems... but if I try the 64bit Ubuntu 7.10, my computer screen goes blank after I hit install.
what I have:
P5K-E
E4300
2gig crucial ram
X850XT
36 gig raptor.

I can load vista64 on it with no problems.
Any one have any ideas?

 

[biodoc]

Originally posted by: dajeepster
I can load one of my computers with the 32bit Ubuntu 7.10 with no problems... but if I try the 64bit Ubuntu 7.10, my computer screen goes blank after I hit install.
what I have:
P5K-E
E4300
2gig crucial ram
X850XT
36 gig raptor.

I can load vista64 on it with no problems.
Any one have any ideas?

Probably the ATI video card. Check out the 64-bit ubuntu forum for potential solutions here but be prepared to spend a ton of time trying to sort out these types of problems.

I have a MB with onboard intel video, so installation was more straightforward.

It's kind of a bummer...I thought these Live CD linux distributions had come a long way but apparently ATI & Nvidia linux drivers can be problematic.

 

[dajeepster]

Originally posted by: biodoc

Originally posted by: dajeepster
I can load one of my computers with the 32bit Ubuntu 7.10 with no problems... but if I try the 64bit Ubuntu 7.10, my computer screen goes blank after I hit install.
what I have:
P5K-E
E4300
2gig crucial ram
X850XT
36 gig raptor.

I can load vista64 on it with no problems.
Any one have any ideas?

Probably the ATI video card. Check out the 64-bit ubuntu forum for potential solutions here but be prepared to spend a ton of time trying to sort out these types of problems.

I have a MB with onboard intel video, so installation was more straightforward.

It's kind of a bummer...I thought these Live CD linux distributions had come a long way but apparently ATI & Nvidia linux drivers can be problematic.

I've got an old 6800GT that I can pop in... I'll try that tonight when I get home... I've got a whole slew of cards that I can try.... 8800GT, 3870, 3850, 1900XT, 1900XT crossfire, 6800GT, 850XT, 800XT, 9800XT, 9600XT, 1550(pci-e x1).... i'll keep trying til I find one that works in Ubuntu 64 bit... from low end up... the high cards need to stay in my main systems

 

[Insidious]

Linux can't run the high end cards properly anyway. A great place for the lowest POS video card you have.

-Sid

 

[dajeepster]

Originally posted by: Insidious
Linux can't run the high end cards properly anyway. A great place for the lowest POS video card you have.

-Sid

I'm working on setting up two matched testing platform... I'm actually limited in the cards I have available... I've got two 6800GT, two 1900XT, and i'll have two 3750 (which aren't going to be in this system).
whether linux can or cannot run high end cards is irrelevant since i'm not using these systems for high end graphics.
The thing that is important, is that I have two matched systems... because if the systems are not matched, any data I get would be inconclusive.

 

[Insidious]

^^^

 

[Markfw]

Originally posted by: Insidious
Linux can't run the high end cards properly anyway. A great place for the lowest POS video card you have.

-Sid

I tried it with a 1 meg PCI video card, and it doesn't support that either. Then I tried X1900XT, and that locked up. I gave up.

 

[mgpaulus]

Just wanted to add a bit of confusion to the mix.

I have an AMD64 3800+ system running 32-bit Debian etch. However, I was able to install an -amd64 flavor 64-bit kernel, and then create a 64-bit chroot environment. I was also able to run the new 6.0 beta SMP client in the 64-bit chroot environment, and it's running the newer core. So, there's another option for those who have migrated older linux systems along on the 32-bit path, but haven't wanted to totally rebuild their systems into 64-bit systems. FAH will run in a chroot environment, and the setup isn't too hard.

 

[NicColt]

Originally posted by: biodoc
If the install doesn't go quickly and smoothly, don't waste too much time on it.

Linux installation can be very frustrating and time consuming

Ummm yea, I second that. I have two boxes running ubuntu and I may still be a noob at this linux thing but all I did with ubuntu was add some automatic updates and then my nightmare began when I tried to change the vid from 800 to 1024 and everything went to hell from there.

I still can't get the second box to run right, but since it's a dedicated box I'm just not touching it anymore.

in the end I had to
sudo dpkg-reconfigure-phigh xserver-xorg

If this is what happens when you change the vid size, gawd help you when you try more complicated things.

 

[Slider76]

I spent all day yesterday installing 7.10 as a virtual machine (as I only have 1 pc this means I can still surf the net to fix any problems, before I go all out and install it on a drive) I am having lots of trouble getting the ia32-libs package installed. also only have a dial up connection, so that makes it fun downloading updates!

 

[Insidious]

What happened when you typed the following in a command window and then hit return....

sudo apt-get install ia32-libs

-Sid

 

[biodoc]

All, I've made some changes to the install process that may give a higher rate of success. See Step 5.

:beer:

Sid, I'll get back to responding to you and others later in the evening (east coast, USA).

Thanks all for your interest in this thread.

 

[Slider76]

Sid, i put in a password then it fails to find the file. I'm in the process of downloading the updates, to see if that will fix the problem

 

[biodoc]

I was able to install ubuntu 64bit 7.1 on a Q6600 machine running Vista home premium (dual boot) using the edited install instructions (Step5).

This machine is from HP and it was purchased from Circuit City several months back and at the time I thought it was a good deal compared to building my own. This is a family room computer so everyone in my family uses it.:shocked: It came with a couple of 320 gig SATA drives, 3 gigs 667MHz RAM, wireless, and a TV tuner. The MB is from ASUS but no details are known. I also upgraded the video card to an Nvidia 8800 GTS.

Downside: No useful bios editing options

I installed ubuntu 64bit 7.1 using the "liveCD" with the install sequence described above. Without the F6 option (step5), the install failed with a locked blank screen similar to what others have described here and on the ubuntu forums.

Here's the F@H linux smp results comparing vista vs ubuntu 64bit linux.

Vista smp client (one client): 12 min 30 sec per step (WU 2653; 1760 points)
ubuntu 64 bit (one client): 14 min 15 sec (WU 2653; 1760 points)
unbutu 64 bit (2 clients): 22 min 30 sec (WU 2653; 1760 points)

Needless to say, I was disappointed in the results (only slight benefit with ubuntu with 2 clients).

Caveats: on another machine (home built) Q6600 w/ Asus p5K-VM, I initally had disappointing results with ubuntu but when I disabled intel speedstep in the bios, I got a big boost in F@H smp performance.

This machine, when OC'd to 3 GHz, now generates 4200 PPD with 2 SMP clients running

Clearly, I need to install windows on this machine too (dual boot w/ ubuntu 64 bit) and then compare F@H performance (windows & ubuntu) with different bios settings to get a fair comparison

This will have to wait until the Christmas race is over!!

 

[Insidious]

I don't remember the details, but I do remember that you had to enable different sources of updates. I know this isn't much help because I don't remember any of the terminology, but you can tell the automatic update thing where it is allowed to get updates from. I think that might be what is stopping you.

If anyone knows what I'm talking about, please help!

-Sid

 

[Insidious]

OK, I've got ubuntu running from the disk.

First click Applications icon (upper left of screen)
then click on add/remove....
then at the bottom of the window that opens, you will see a button for preferences
click it and you'll get another window.
click the Ubuntu software tab and then enable all of the software choices (I think it is Universe that you need, but do them all.)
I also recommend under the updates tab, to enable all of the update sources.

try this and then try to get the libraries again and see if that works.

-Sid

 

[biodoc]

Originally posted by: Insidious
I don't remember the details, but I do remember that you had to enable different sources of updates. I know this isn't much help because I don't remember any of the terminology, but you can tell the automatic update thing where it is allowed to get updates from. I think that might be what is stopping you.

If anyone knows what I'm talking about, please help!

-Sid

I don't know what it was like on previous versions of ubuntu but the current version is pretty cool. After the install and reboot, after a few minutes you get a popup wih a little light bulb icon and it says there are 187 updates available...do you want to install? Click yes and the updates are downloaded and installed automatically!

This has got to be painful over a dial-up connection though

:beer:

 

[biodoc]

Originally posted by: NicColt

Originally posted by: biodoc
If the install doesn't go quickly and smoothly, don't waste too much time on it.

Linux installation can be very frustrating and time consuming

Ummm yea, I second that. I have two boxes running ubuntu and I may still be a noob at this linux thing but all I did with ubuntu was add some automatic updates and then my nightmare began when I tried to change the vid from 800 to 1024 and everything went to hell from there.

I still can't get the second box to run right, but since it's a dedicated box I'm just not touching it anymore.

in the end I had to
sudo dpkg-reconfigure-phigh xserver-xorg

If this is what happens when you change the vid size, gawd help you when you try more complicated things.

Agreed!! If you can read the text on the screen, don't mess with the vid settings! Especially if you are using the box as a dedicated crunching machine.

If you want to use a linux box as your main machine, be prepared for a lot of failure and frustration There are a few of us that like it that way!

:beer: