hello,

unfortunately boinc fails to detect my ati HD5450 (PowerColor HD5450 Go! Green edition, pcie, directX11), only showing the following message in the log: "no usable GPUs found". The card is OpenCL capable. Memory on Videocard: 1024MiB DDR3.

Since no information is provided in the event log on where the gpu detection failed, I have no idea where to start looking for the error.

Version of boinc: boinc-client-7.0.29-1.r25790svn.fc17.x86_64
(Client Ver. 7.0.29 for x64 from the official fedora repo)

Catalyst version is 12.11 beta (latest) from the AMD downloads page. I removed the annoying watermark but other than that, the driver is unmodified.

I'm guessing that it's a problem with the drivers, but since the current beta seems to be running very well it would be a pain to downgrade.


thanks

here's the first few lines of the log, in case I forgot something:

Thu 10 Jan 2013 12:02:51 PM CET |  | No config file found - using defaults
Thu 10 Jan 2013 12:02:51 PM CET |  | Starting BOINC client version 7.0.29 for x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
Thu 10 Jan 2013 12:02:51 PM CET |  | log flags: file_xfer, sched_ops, task
Thu 10 Jan 2013 12:02:51 PM CET |  | Libraries: libcurl/7.24.0 NSS/3.13.5.0 zlib/1.2.5 libidn/1.24 libssh2/1.4.1
Thu 10 Jan 2013 12:02:51 PM CET |  | Data directory: /var/lib/boinc
Thu 10 Jan 2013 12:02:51 PM CET |  | Processor: 2 GenuineIntel Intel(R) Pentium(R) CPU G860 @ 3.00GHz [Family 6 Model 42 Stepping 7]
Thu 10 Jan 2013 12:02:51 PM CET |  | Processor: 3.00 MB cache
Thu 10 Jan 2013 12:02:51 PM CET |  | Processor features: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc aperfmperf pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm pcid sse4_1 sse4_2 popcnt tsc_deadline_timer xsave lahf_lm arat epb xsaveopt pln pts dtherm tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid
Thu 10 Jan 2013 12:02:51 PM CET |  | OS: Linux: 3.6.11-1.fc17.x86_64
Thu 10 Jan 2013 12:02:51 PM CET |  | Memory: 7.77 GB physical, 9.78 GB virtual
Thu 10 Jan 2013 12:02:51 PM CET |  | Disk: 49.22 GB total, 37.14 GB free
Thu 10 Jan 2013 12:02:51 PM CET |  | Local time is UTC +1 hours
Thu 10 Jan 2013 12:02:51 PM CET |  | No usable GPUs found
Thu 10 Jan 2013 12:02:51 PM CET |  | No general preferences found - using defaults
Thu 10 Jan 2013 12:02:51 PM CET |  | Preferences:
Thu 10 Jan 2013 12:02:51 PM CET |  | max memory usage when active: 3976.35MB
Thu 10 Jan 2013 12:02:51 PM CET |  | max memory usage when idle: 7157.44MB
Thu 10 Jan 2013 12:02:51 PM CET |  | max disk usage: 10.00GB
Thu 10 Jan 2013 12:02:51 PM CET |  | don't use GPU while active
Thu 10 Jan 2013 12:02:51 PM CET |  | suspend work if non-BOINC CPU load exceeds 25 %
Thu 10 Jan 2013 12:02:51 PM CET |  | (to change preferences, visit the web site of an attached project, or select Preferences in the Manager)
Thu 10 Jan 2013 12:02:51 PM CET |  | Not using a proxy
Thu 10 Jan 2013 12:02:51 PM CET |  | This computer is not attached to any projects
Thu 10 Jan 2013 12:02:51 PM CET |  | Visit http://boinc.berkeley.edu for instructions
Thu 10 Jan 2013 12:03:19 PM CET |  | System clock was turned backwards; clearing timeouts
Thu 10 Jan 2013 05:53:08 AM CET |  | Fetching configuration file from http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/get_project_config.php
Thu 10 Jan 2013 05:53:42 AM CET |  | Running CPU benchmarks
Thu 10 Jan 2013 05:53:42 AM CET |  | Suspending computation - CPU benchmarks in progress
Thu 10 Jan 2013 05:54:13 AM CET |  | Benchmark results:
Thu 10 Jan 2013 05:54:13 AM CET |  | Number of CPUs: 2
Thu 10 Jan 2013 05:54:13 AM CET |  | 2212 floating point MIPS (Whetstone) per CPU
Thu 10 Jan 2013 05:54:13 AM CET |  | 5754 integer MIPS (Dhrystone) per CPU

(Client Ver. 7.0.29 for x64 from the official fedora repo)

Permissions, that's the problem.

When you install BOINC from repositories it makes and runs under an unprivileged user account named boinc. This user boinc doesn't have permission to access parts of the video subsystem, which means it can't read what kind of drivers you have installed, which means it can't detect whether or not you have a GPU installed.

There's some way around that with sym links, but I don't know how. Even the easiest option is to uninstall this BOINC and install Berkeley BOINC instead. That one will be able to detect the drivers, as it runs under your user account.

For the Berkeley BOINC installer, see http://boinc.berkeley.edu/download_all.php. I link to the all-versions page in case you want to try the development version. Change Logs for these versions can be found in the BOINC 7 change log thread.

---

Even the easiest option is to uninstall this BOINC and install Berkeley BOINC instead. That one will be able to detect the drivers, as it runs under your user account.

That rarely works. The BOINC installed by the Berkeley installer is built for Ubuntu. He's running Fedora. Fedora won't have the same shared libraries (dlls) as Ubuntu therefore the Berkeley BOINC won't run on Fedora 99% of the time. There are 3 ways around this problem:

1) Do NOT uninstall the BOINC installed from repos, simply disable the BOINC daemon so it does not start at boot time. Then copy the binaries (boinc, boinccmd and boincmgr) from /usr/bin/ to ~/boinc/ and run them from that directory. ~ is shorthand for your home directory. If you start the client then it runs on your account and in a directory you own and there are no permissions problem. Basically what you're doing is installing binaries from the repos in a Berkeley fashion. The repo installer also installs all the shared libs required for the repo binaries so no problem there either. You can make the client and/or the manager autostart at bootime or you can start them manually. However if you uninstall the repo installation then you also uninstall the shared libs BOINC needs so don't uninstall

2) Give the boinc user (the user created by the package installer) permission to access the video subsystems. I don't remember how to do that for Fedora, I had it all documented, tested and confirmed once and was ready to add it to the wiki then other crap happened and I forgot and eventually lost the files and links and so on. IIRC, Dagorath posted the method here once, could do a forum search I suppose. People at GPUgrid would know how too.

3) Download the BOINC source code, compile it and install it Berkeley fashion on your account as described in 1) above. You'll likely have to dig up and install some shared libs but lots of people do it.

If you want to run BOINC on Linux then the easiest and best way is to install Ubuntu LTS. The Berkeley BOINC builds are guaranteed to run on Ubuntu LTS and if you want a daemon BOINC install from repos it seems like the Ubuntu BOINC package installers do the best job of keeping up with BOINC updates.

Add user boinc to the video group, if you have one.

English at the end of the post.


Bonjour,
Le problème vient des droits d'accès à la GPU :
Créer le script :

vi /usr/bin/boincxhost

le remplir avec :

#!/bin/sh
xhost local:boinc &> /dev/null
exit 0

donner les droits en exécution :

chmod 555 /usr/bin/boincxhost

Modifier le script de lancement du service :

vi /usr/lib/systemd/system/boinc-client.service

Avant la ligne :

ExecStart=/usr/bin/boinc --dir /var/lib/boinc 

ajouter :

ExecStartPre=/usr/bin/boincxhost

Recharger systemctl :

systemctl --system daemon-reload

relancer le service boinc_client :

systemctl status boinc-client.service 

Cela résout définitivement le problème de détection et d'utilisation de la GPU.

========================

Hi,
Thr problem come from right acces to de video card.
To solve cleanly et definitively do :
Create a script :

vi /usr/bin/boincxhost

fill it with :

#!/bin/sh
xhost local:boinc &> /dev/null
exit 0

Give it the execution rights :

chmod 555 /usr/bin/boincxhost

Change the starting service script:

vi /usr/lib/systemd/system/boinc-client.service

Before this line :

ExecStart=/usr/bin/boinc --dir /var/lib/boinc 

Add :

ExecStartPre=/usr/bin/boincxhost

Reload systemctl :

systemctl --system daemon-reload

Relstart boinc_client service :

systemctl status boinc-client.service 

Bye