Boinc-client-nvidia - No usable GPU

[seasoned_geek]

I just downloaded and installed the latest Leap and installed the NVidia drivers via Yast software. They were auto-selected for me first time I opened that, thanks for doing that!

I run BOINC on my “spare” machines until I need to bring them into a project. Installed BOINC no problem. Added projects, then checked the event log.

No Usable GPU

NVidia is there (your 05 package) and that is all well and good. What appears to be missing is boinc-client-nvidia. Debian, Arch, and a few other different distro bases always have a client named much like boinc-client-nvidia which contains the boinc client capable of using CUDA. The default client doesn’t look for it, or it only looks for Radeon which nobody has. There are a couple other boinc-client-gpu-brand packages floating around for different cores.

Where do I find the NVidia specific BOINC client for OpenSuSE? Some of the projects I support to cure cancer, fight HIV, and generally improve the human species need CUDA core to properly crunch.

Thanks,

[hui]

@seasoned_geek

Where do I find the NVidia specific BOINC client for OpenSuSE?

There is no special Cuda Boinc client…

But du you have nvidia-computeG05 installed?

[seasoned_geek]

Well on every other Linux platform I’ve used for the past 15 years there are gpu specific packages for boinc-client. To answer your question though.

[tckosvic]

I have been running boinc on opensuse leap15.5 using nvidia proprietary drivers for years. Just install boinc client, boinc manager, libboinc7, and couple of lang files. Set up boinc client to start on boot. Might need a reboot but might also start from a log out/in.

No issues with nvida for me. Never seen a nvidia-boinc client. Might make sure that nvidia drivers are right ones for your graphics card. Boinc has worked with nvidia driver out of date.

tom kosvic

[tckosvic]

@seasoned_geek, looking more into your thread regarding gpu usage in boinc, I see that there are settings in the linux nvidia server gui to set up gpu usage for various specific apps. I don’t see any examples to see what they look like nor do I see any specifically for boinc. This might be worth a deeper look.

In looking at the boinc webpage info under gpu search (GPU computing - BOINC) , I see that some projects utilize nvida-gpu, and/or intel-gpu, and/or amd-gpu specially. and some do not use gpu, it appears. gpu usage seems set by each individual project. Main project I am running now does not include any of these gpu preferences.

Looks like use of gpu is determined by graphics people (e.g., nvidia) and project and not by OS. Appears that there is more to look up and explore regarding gpu usage in boinc.

This may be of some help, tom kosvic

[seasoned_geek]

@tckosvic
But do your projects actually use NVidia? Heavy crunchers do, the light and airy projects don’t. As far as never having seen a GPU specific boinc client, I don’t know what to say.

Arch roles in opencl-nvidia
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/BOINC

I used to use SuSE all the time when it came on a box of floppies with two printed manuals. Have only touched it twice since those days. Both times I have found they don’t test with NVidia. This machine was running Manjaro BOINC and NVidia 470 prior to switching to OpenSuSE. I will do a little more poking then just switch it to Rocky Linux.

Thanks for your feedback.

[tckosvic]

@seasoned_geek,
I am running asteroids@home which has no provisions to specifically utilize gpu that I see. I did run rosetta@home and also sidock@home at other times. According to boinc web info, these did have support for gpu but I never saw that provision and never did anything special to utilize gpu.

tom kosvic

[seasoned_geek]

Well, it appears OpenSuSE is continuing the time honored tradition of not packaging BOINC correctly.

Here is how you fix this.

Must delete everything BOINC installed from the repo

Now you need Flatpak

sudo zypper install flatpak

flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://dl.flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

flatpak search boinc

flatpak install flathub boinc

Please notice the Nvidia GL package.

Reboot

Start Boinc Manager and check event log.

on 15 Apr 2024 04:05:17 PM CDT |  | cc_config.xml not found - using defaults
Mon 15 Apr 2024 04:05:17 PM CDT |  | Starting BOINC client version 7.22.1 for x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
Mon 15 Apr 2024 04:05:17 PM CDT |  | log flags: file_xfer, sched_ops, task
Mon 15 Apr 2024 04:05:17 PM CDT |  | Libraries: libcurl/8.2.1-DEV OpenSSL/3.0.13 zlib/1.3.1 nghttp2/1.58.0
Mon 15 Apr 2024 04:05:17 PM CDT |  | Data directory: /home/roland
Mon 15 Apr 2024 04:05:20 PM CDT |  | CUDA: NVIDIA GPU 0: NVIDIA GeForce GT 630 (driver version 470.99, CUDA version 11.4, compute capability 3.5, 979MB, 979MB available, 692 GFLOPS peak)
Mon 15 Apr 2024 04:05:20 PM CDT |  | OpenCL: NVIDIA GPU 0: NVIDIA GeForce GT 630 (driver version 470.239.06, device version OpenCL 3.0 CUDA, 979MB, 979MB available, 692 GFLOPS peak)
Mon 15 Apr 2024 04:05:20 PM CDT |  | Creating new client state file
Mon 15 Apr 2024 04:05:20 PM CDT |  | libc:  version 2.35
Mon 15 Apr 2024 04:05:20 PM CDT |  | Host name: localhost.localdomain
Mon 15 Apr 2024 04:05:20 PM CDT |  | Processor: 4 GenuineIntel Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3470 CPU @ 3.20GHz [Family 6 Model 58 Stepping 9]

[Svyatko]

ILL BOINC needs 32-bit environment.
Install it using “patterns-base-32bit”.

https://boinc.berkeley.edu/download_all.php

[seasoned_geek]

Thank you for your response. If BOINC needs patterns-base-32bit then the Requires line of the .spec file needs to list that.

Those lines look like this

Requires: bash, perl

When the RPM is packaged it will then have a valid list of required dependencies to be installed with it.