My Windows computer recently died and I decided that if I was ever going to make the transition to Linux, this would be the perfect time to do it. So I built myself a new Linux desktop machine, and I'm currently in the process of trying to get BOINC back up and running.
Unfortunately, I've hit a snag. The BOINC Manager is not detecting my gpu. It reports, "No usable gpus found."

This is my system setup:
BOINC Manager version 7.6.31 (x64)
OS - Linux Mint 18.3 64-bit, kernal 4.13.0-36-generic
GPU - Gigabyte Aorus GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Xtreme
Installed NVIDIA driver: 390.25

Here is a screenshot of what the BOINC Event Log reports:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/8hcdq6wv1a79sdo/Screenshot.png?dl=0

And here is a screenshot of the Synaptic Package Manager, showing what has already been installed for BOINC:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1byuqn7osd9dzww/Synaptic.png?dl=0

Does anybody have a suggestion as to what I should do in order to get BOINC to see my gpu?

Thanks!

Wondering if I should try installing the nVidia CUDA Toolkit 9.1?
https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-downloads?sid=480386&target_os=Linux&target_arch=x86_64&target_distro=Ubuntu&target_version=1604&target_type=debnetwork

Does the system actually use the Nvidia drivers for the X.org server? Could you still be on Nouveau drivers? What does nvidia-smi show in a Terminal. Did you install nvidia-settings in Synaptic? Did you install the OpenCL-icd drivers?

What SETI graphics application do you intend to run. The normal SoG app or the special CUDA90 app by TBar and Petri?

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Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

Wondering if I should try installing the nVidia CUDA Toolkit 9.1?
https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-downloads?sid=480386&target_os=Linux&target_arch=x86_64&target_distro=Ubuntu&target_version=1604&target_type=debnetwork

You might try reinstalling the driver about 3 or four times. I think it took 4 times to get the driver to see the GPU for me with Mint 18.2. But then it had a bad habit of losing the DeskTop, and I had trouble restarting BOINC after stopping it. After about two weeks I trashed it. I recommend this Windows Look-a-like, https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Lubuntu. No problems with that one, and it ran BOINC from the Home folder like a Champ. I still have it installed on one of my partitions.

nvidia-smi shows the following:

benji@benji-MS-7A33 ~ $ nvidia-smi
Sat Mar 10 20:47:25 2018
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 390.25 Driver Version: 390.25 |
|-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
| GPU Name Persistence-M| Bus-Id Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan Temp Perf Pwr:Usage/Cap| Memory-Usage | GPU-Util Compute M. |
|===============================+======================+======================|
| 0 GeForce GTX 108... Off | 00000000:26:00.0 On | N/A |
| 0% 46C P2 59W / 250W | 149MiB / 11177MiB | 1% Default |
+-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes: GPU Memory |
| GPU PID Type Process name Usage |
|=============================================================================|
| 0 1380 G /usr/lib/xorg/Xorg 94MiB |
| 0 2044 G cinnamon 49MiB |
| 0 2709 G /usr/lib/firefox/firefox 2MiB |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

While composing this reply, I checked and the OpenCL-icd drivers had not yet been installed. I just downloaded/installed the nvidia-opencl-icd-390 drivers via Synaptic and restarted the boinc manager, but it still does not find the gpu.
Here is an updated screenshot of the Event Log:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/tttwi6w82e3y8mj/Screenshot%20from%202018-03-10%2021-04-21.png?dl=0

Being brand new to the Linux environment, the filing system and use of the terminal is still very confusing to me, so please excuse my mistakes and silly questions.
How would I go about checking to see if I installed the nvidia settings in Synaptic? Which settings exactly would these be?

As to which graphics application I would like to run; Once I have the basics running as they should, I would like to run the special CUDA90 app by TBar and Petri.

TBar,
Prior to installing this nVidia gpu this weekend, I had an AMD r9 280x which was using the Nouveau driver, and I could start/restart the BOINC Manager without any issues. But since installing this nVidia gpu and drivers, as you mentioned, I too am having trouble getting BOINC to restart (It will restart, but will not show any work tasks. It will just sit there with an empty screen, no matter how many times I try to restart the program, and I finally have to reboot the computer in order to get BOINC to resume working on the existing work tasks that it has (CPU tasks).

Well BOINC is seeing the OpenCL driver now for the 1080Ti. Still isn't reporting the CUDA driver. If you put nvidia* into the Search box in Synaptic, it should list every application with nvidia in the name.

You also should install the nvidia-xserver application, but that should have been automatically installed with the 390.25 driver. I don't know what the equivalent of the Dash widget is for Mint, but you should be able to search your installed Desktop apps and find the nvidia-xserver app. I lock that to the Launchpad so it is always available for checking on fan and clock speeds.

If you are still having issues seeing the card, I probably would do a purge Nvidia*, reboot, auto update and another try at installing the nvidia drivers. I also would use the graphics-driver ppa repository instead of Main, but I think you likely are if you are installing the 390.25 drivers. Main is still at 384.111.

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Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

Which driver does Software and Updates show in use in the Additional Drivers tab. Are you still running the X.Org driver by chance. Do you see the radio button for the 390.25 proprietary driver. Is is checked and selected?

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Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

Success!!

I found and installed libcuda1-390, replacing libcuda1-340. Upon restarting BOINC, it sees and is using the gpu!
https://www.dropbox.com/s/8dmgwo2ibkzwbmh/Screenshot%20from%202018-03-10%2022-04-17.png?dl=0

Thank you so very much for your assistance!

I have many more questions now about optimizing the settings for maximum performance, but I think that will have to wait until tomorrow.

Thank you again.

Woohoo!! Happy you got it running. Lots of good information and tunings in the Setting up a Linux machine to crunch CUDA80 for Windows users thread. Lots to read but if you skim past the help in getting Linux installed and focus on the success posts, there is some good information.

First I would start with the good docs that TBar has provided in the download for the BOINC-All-In-One installation file as well as the CUDA80 and CUDA90 applications. There really isn't much tuning to do on the special app since -autotune pretty much does all you need.

BOINC All-In-One Build to run zi3v CUDA 8.0 in Ubuntu 12.04 to 17.04

Linux_zi3v-CUDA90_Special App

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Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

Well, it seems that I'm not quite out of the woods yet with my gpu issues.
Seti@Home won't utilize my gpu, but my backup project, Amicable Numbers, will. S@h is only utilizing my cpu.

These are the things that I've checked & done so far to try to correct the problem:
- Checked the preferences on my s@h account page. "Use nvidia gpu" is checked. I even unchecked it, updated preferences, then rechecked it and updated again, just in case there might be a hitch in it recognizing my selection. No change.
- Within preferences, Resource Share for s@h is set at 100, Amicable Numbers is set to 0. Amicable Numbers is only getting the gpu work because s@h isn't utilizing it.
- Within the Boinc Manager, I have selected the s@h project and then clicked on "Update." This results in a "Communication deferred" message. It counts down from 5 minutes, retries, and then repeats the same message again. This has been going on for the past 24 hours now. (But I continue to receive new cpu tasks for s@h.)
- I have "Reset project," but no change. (I have not yet tried removing & then reinstalling the project. Thought I'd do that only as a last resort.)
- I have reinstalled boinc-manager via Synaptic. No change.

This is what the Event Log is showing me:
Sun 11 Mar 2018 07:25:35 PM PDT | SETI@home | Sending scheduler request: To fetch work.
Sun 11 Mar 2018 07:25:35 PM PDT | SETI@home | Requesting new tasks for CPU
Sun 11 Mar 2018 07:25:40 PM PDT | SETI@home | Scheduler request completed: got 0 new tasks
Sun 11 Mar 2018 07:25:40 PM PDT | SETI@home | No tasks sent
Sun 11 Mar 2018 07:25:40 PM PDT | SETI@home | No tasks are available for AstroPulse v7
Sun 11 Mar 2018 07:25:40 PM PDT | SETI@home | No tasks are available for SETI@home v8
Sun 11 Mar 2018 07:25:40 PM PDT | SETI@home | Tasks for AMD/ATI GPU are available, but your preferences are set to not accept them
Sun 11 Mar 2018 07:25:40 PM PDT | SETI@home | Tasks for Intel GPU are available, but your preferences are set to not accept them
Sun 11 Mar 2018 07:25:40 PM PDT | SETI@home | This computer has reached a limit on tasks in progress
Sun 11 Mar 2018 07:25:43 PM PDT | Amicable Numbers | [coproc] NVIDIA instance 0; 1.000000 pending for amicable_10_20_7737_1520811901.813643_800_1


When I select the s@h project in Boinc, and then click on "Properties," down near the bottom of the screen, under the heading of "Scheduling," is a line which reads, "Don't request tasks for NVIDIA GPU Project has no apps for NVIDIA GPU"

Does this message indicate that I'm still missing a library of some sort?
Why will Seti@Home not use my gpu, but another project will?

Not sure what is going on. First thing I would suggest is setting the <use_all_gpus>1</use_all_gpus> parameter in cc_config.xml in the /Boinc directory. It shouldn't be necessary with two completely different gpu manufacturers installed. But on the chance that it thinks that the ATI card is the only viable compute option and you have it disabled in Preferences, you could set it anyway and see what happens. It won't hurt anything one way or the other.

The other option is to write your own app_info under the Anonymous platform and call out your preferred apps. You could download the apps from the direct download directory. If the app_info calls out the existing apps in your projects folder it will download work for the app.

Are you just trying to get the card running stock apps so far? If you don't want to run the stock apps, you could jump straight to the special app. The app_info is already written for the apps provided in the All-In-One zip file I linked previously. That would be the SSE41 cpu app and the CUDA80 app. You can always install the CUDA90 app later from its zip file I linked.

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Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

Sorry for the confusion on this, but just for clarification, I am currently only using one gpu (the nvidia). The AMD gpu that I mentioned earlier was pulled and is not being used at this time.

I adjusted the <use_all_gpus>1</use_all_gpus> parameter in cc_config.xml as you suggested and restarted boinc, but I'm not seeing any effect.

I think that I'll take your advice, and just jump right into the special app.
My head was beginning to get sore from banging it against the wall anyway. :)

Don't you forget to install nvidia-modprobe ?

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Yes, check to see if the nvidia-modprobe is loaded. This link describes what you are seeing nvidia-drivers-installed-but-not-used

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Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

I double checked, and nvidia-modprobe is installed. It is listed as version 361.28-1.

Version number for everything Nvidia related should match the installed driver version level. Just as you discovered with the OpenCL-icd, the modprobe needs to be at 390.25 level also.

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Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

I double checked, and nvidia-modprobe is installed. It is listed as version 361.28-1.

I think part of the problem is you had the ATI driver installed previously and there are still parts of it left. This screen shot shows part of the ATI driver mentioned,



If it were me, at this point, I'm save the boinc-client folder to a safe location and preform a clean install of Lubuntu. Then place the boinc-client folder in your new Home folder, change the name to BOINC, and install one of My BOINC builds into the BOINC folder and run BOINC from the Home folder. But, that's just me.

You might try making sure All of the AMD/ATI driver is removed, and run sudo apt-get autoremove.
The only way to be sure is with a clean install. All it takes to run BOINC is a fresh OS install, the repository GPU driver, and the BOINC All-In-One from Crunchers Anonymous.

Thank you for all of the ideas and suggestions!

Reinstalling Linux would likely be the best route to take, but I'm going to hold out on that option as a last resort.

I removed the nvidia-modprobe ver. 361.28-1.
Unfortunately, Synaptic doesn't list a version 390.25 to install/use in it's place; And I am using the graphics-drivers PPA repository, where I acquired the nvidia 390.25 graphics driver.
Any suggestions on how/where I might go to find this version of the modprobe?

I removed the portion of the old AMD/ATI driver that had previously been left behind.

It's still a no-go on gpu work for seti@home, but at this point I think that's to be expected.

This weekend, when I will have ample time to troubleshoot if need be, I will try installing the BOINC All-In-One from Crunchers Anonymous.

Probably the easiest thing to do IMHO at this time. For example I just brought a new system online with BOINC and the special app installed up and running in about 30 minutes just by installing the BOINC All-In-One from Crunchers Anonymous and the CUDA90 Special app from CA. I already had loaded Ubuntu 16.04 earlier in the afternoon which took about an hour to get settled in my normal configuration with all my apps and utilities loaded and my normal Desktop configured. I think the longest single activity was the 360MB Nvidia 390.25 driver download from the ppa.

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Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)