How To Ubuntu & F@H: Can't get GPU to fold...

[JWMiddleton]

I installed F@H on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. It never asked how I wanted to run it. I noticed that it is only running on 1 core on 15-3590. I have gone nutz trying to get it to run on GPU, which is a GTX 1650 OC D6. I Googled and tried stuff for hours with no luck. I could not get FAHControl to work!! I even created a fake Gnome-phython2 package based on one persons experiece on 19.04. I stopped the client, edited /etc/fahclient/config.xml to change <gpu v='false'/> to <gpu v='true'/>, then rebooted. I found that config.xml had been reset. I did chmod on the file to give rw permissions to the file before editing. The permissions had reverted as well.

Any idea?

John

 

[Mike_F]

There are some really helpful instructions for Mint (Ubuntu based, I think) in the environment of p. 7 (specifically post #156) of the "Anandtech vs Tom's Hardware Folding@Home Coronavirus Race thread".
Otherwise, biodoc, StefanR5R and others are very knowledgeable and helpful regarding Linux.

 

[biodoc]

I'm assuming you have the Nvidia drivers installed. The latest version of FAHControl works on Mint 19.3 but i"m not sure about Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.

Here's the instructions for getting a GPU going on Mint 19.3

sudo apt install ocl-icd-libopencl1
sudo apt install ocl-icd-opencl-dev
cd /var/lib/fahclient
sudo wget http://fah-web.stanford.edu/file-releases/public/GPUs.txt

Now restart the FAHClient:
sudo service FAHClient restart

Open up FAHControl:

Click the Configure button (on toolbar).
Select the Slots tab.
click on the cpu slot and then click on remove. <----optional but you'll need one logical core to support each GPU.
click on "add" a slot.
click on the radio button to add a GPU slot.
click OK.
You should see the new gpu slot in the slot list.
click on save.
A new task should download and start folding on one of your GPUs.
repeat the above to add another gpu slot for your second GPU.

 

[StefanR5R]

I could not get FAHControl to work!! I even created a fake Gnome-phython2 package based on one persons experiece on 19.04.

Some time ago I tried to get FAHControl going on another distribution at which FAHControl isn't supported (Gentoo Linux). I tried twice (but perhaps not very hard), and failed twice.

If you have a second computer which is able to run FAHControl (e.g. a Windows computer, or a Linux Mint computer), you can run FAHControl there and control FAHClient on the dGPU-equipped computer via your LAN. It is fairly easy to add another computer in FAHControl. One caveat: If the computer which is running FAHClient has got a "firewall" on it, you need to configure it to accept TCP traffic at port 36330 from the computer which runs FAHControl to the computer which runs FAHClient.

As for FAHClient, the first part of @biodoc's instructions should get you going on many Debian based distributions at least for the client.

I stopped the client, edited /etc/fahclient/config.xml to change <gpu v='false'/> to <gpu v='true'/>, then rebooted. I found that config.xml had been reset. I did chmod on the file to give rw permissions to the file before editing. The permissions had reverted as well.

If the client finds itself in various troublesome situations, it tends to rewrite config.xml.

For troubleshooting, you can also run FAHClient life in a console window, rather than as a background daemon:

sudo service FAHClient stop — in case if it is currently running as a background service
sudo service FAHClient status — just to check that it's down now
cd /var/lib/fahclient — or wherever the data directory is on your computer
ls -la . — just to check which user is owning the directory and its contents; usually the user is named "fahclient"
sudo -u fahclient FAHClient — impersonate user "fahclient" (correct this for your system) and start FAHClient in the foreground​

The terminal will now be occupied by FAHClient and show its log output, until FAHClient crashes or quits by itself, or you tell it to quit with [Ctrl][c].

 

[JWMiddleton]

Thanks for all the information! BUT, there are some dependencies that are messed up with the install and it isn't worth it to try and fix it. I'll wait a month and try it again as GitHub is working on updating the package.

John