Running Seti@Home on Ubuntu 13.10 x64

Questions and Answers : Unix/Linux : Running Seti@Home on Ubuntu 13.10 x64
Message board moderation

To post messages, you must log in.

AuthorMessage
Tomasz Mrugalski

Send message
Joined: 28 Aug 99
Posts: 1
Credit: 13,401
RAC: 0
Poland
Message 1455702 - Posted: 20 Dec 2013, 10:44:46 UTC

Hi,
I got a mail today. Seti@Home told me that I haven't returned any units in the last 970 days. Yikes! I joined S@H in 1999. The old Seti@Home classic was working great, but I had issues with early boinc builds and somehow never got it working.

So I decided to get back to crunching! I'm currently using Ubuntu 13.10 x64. Here are my notes and tips. Some of them are not trivial, so hopefully they may be useful for others.

1. BOINC installation as explained on main setiathome page (http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/index.php)

2. Show graphics didn't work for me out of the box. Here's how I fixed it:
sudo apt-get install freeglut3 libssl1.0.0

This will install necessary libraries to run setigraphics_7.01_x86_64-pc-linux-gnu. Unfortunately, that build expects the libraries to be called differently than in Ubuntu. That's easy to fix. Issue this commands as root:

cd /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu
ln -s libssl.so.1.0.0 libssl.so.10
ln -s libcrypto.so.1.0.0 libcrypto.so.10

As a general rule, never trust anyone who tells you to do something as root before you understand what the commands do. Those commands changing active directory to /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu and then create symbolic links, so existing libraries as also visible under the names expected by setiathome graphics.

If you are using 32-bit Ubuntu, the path will be slightly different (the libs may be in /lib directly or in /lib/i386-linux-gnu).

This makes the "Show graphics" working!

3. How to use GPU. I haven't figured that out yet. I did switches, BOINC manager to advanced mode, then went to Tools->Computing preferences and enabled "Use GPU while computer is in use". Then I investigated event log. It shows info about my GPU being detected:
CUDA: NVIDIA GPU 0: GeForce GTX 550 Ti (driver version unknown, CUDA version 5.5, compute capability 2.1,....)
OpenCL: NVIDIA GPU 0: GeForce GTX 550 Ti (driver version 319.60, device version OpenCL 1.1 CUDA, 1023MB, ...)

So it seems that my GPU is detected properly. But I still get no indication that the workloads are computed on GPU. Before I enabled GPU, the estimated time to compute one workunit was 3h12min. It is the same after enabling GPU, thus I presume that GPU is not used.

I'm also monitoring GPU temp and there's no noticeable increase.

What am I doing wrong? How can I enable GPU?
ID: 1455702 · Report as offensive
Profile arkayn
Volunteer tester
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 14 May 99
Posts: 4438
Credit: 55,006,323
RAC: 0
United States
Message 1455754 - Posted: 20 Dec 2013, 16:18:05 UTC - in response to Message 1455702.  

Right now, there is only a OpenCL app for Astropulse available as stock for Linux.

Make certain that you have added Astropulse in your preferences.
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/prefs.php?subset=project

A Multibeam CUDA app has not been released as of yet.

ID: 1455754 · Report as offensive
Marnix

Send message
Joined: 25 Aug 10
Posts: 1
Credit: 9,630,344
RAC: 0
United States
Message 1468903 - Posted: 25 Jan 2014, 22:36:17 UTC - in response to Message 1455702.  

I'm using a PC with an i7-4770K CPU and an Nvidia GTX650 video card and I'm running Ubuntu 13.10 . I enabled "Use GPU while computer is in use" OK. I see it in the "Tasks" tab. But it's just one of the 9 jobs running which happens to be Milkyway@Home . The status column shows "Running(0.224 CPUs + 1 NVIDIA GPU)". Possibly the GPU cannot used for all projects. Perhaps it is only used for some. Maybe try the milkyway@home project and see if that will make use of your GPU.

Thanks for your tips about linking those libraries to new names. Very helpful. Makes me wonder if someone isn't following a proper naming convention or standard.

Marnix A. van Ammers
ID: 1468903 · Report as offensive
Wade Smart

Send message
Joined: 1 Sep 00
Posts: 7
Credit: 3,228,148
RAC: 4
United States
Message 1489568 - Posted: 15 Mar 2014, 23:33:50 UTC

Im on 13.10 x32 and followed your instructions - found the correct folder, but still no graphics. I did restart the app. Any other suggestions?
ID: 1489568 · Report as offensive
Wade Smart

Send message
Joined: 1 Sep 00
Posts: 7
Credit: 3,228,148
RAC: 4
United States
Message 1489570 - Posted: 15 Mar 2014, 23:35:19 UTC - in response to Message 1489568.  

Im on version 7.2.46, wxWidgets Version 2.8.12
ID: 1489570 · Report as offensive

Questions and Answers : Unix/Linux : Running Seti@Home on Ubuntu 13.10 x64


 
©2024 University of California
 
SETI@home and Astropulse are funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, NASA, and donations from SETI@home volunteers. AstroPulse is funded in part by the NSF through grant AST-0307956.