Linux experts please

[timwilky]

OK, I am on holiday, this has arrived from our European build specialist



Hi Tim

Im hoping you can maybe help us out.

We have built a number of new Dell machines with RHEL 5.4 that have the newer NVidia graphics cards in (Quadro 4800)

The problem with this though is you can load one version of the graphics driver and get Abaqus working but Ansys crashes, or you can load a different version and Ansys works but Abaqus crashes (the whole machine)

Is it possible for you to take up with the Vendors and come up with a graphics card and driver that both support at the same version. We do have some test hardware available in the test build room (A T7400 from stores and possibly some other kit)

If not we may have to look at offering them a selection of kernels to boot from with different kernel module drivers to run different apps.



Ok so build A crashes app A
so build B is ok with a app A but crashes the whole system with app B.


I thought linux was supposed to be app friendly. this sounds very windows like.

Anyone running Abaqus and Ansys with a quattro 4800 graphic card?

[Daimo]

LiUnix forums??

[SoulKiss]

OK, I am on holiday, this has arrived from our European build specialist



Ok so build A crashes app A
so build B is ok with a app A but crashes the whole system with app B.


I thought linux was supposed to be app friendly. this sounds very windows like.

Anyone running Abaqus and Ansys with a quattro 4800 graphic card?

Its just a driver issue - the GFX Card manufacturers like to keep their cards to their chest, so dont release full specs on the cards...

Cant help beyond that - other than to say I think that the nVidia support is still better than the ATI support (its why I tend to buy nVidia)

Also I don't go anywhere near DeadRat Linux, so don't know how up to date the nVidia drivers would be, tho I know the ones on Ubuntu were fine the last time I tried them.

Sorry to not be of much use - my suggestion, try an install on an Ubuntu 10.10 machine and see if it all works then - I suggest 10.10 as it is the most up to date, so is more likely to have better nVidia drivers than 10.4LTS (which I would have recommended if this was a "switch to Ubuntu totally" reply, with it being an LTS release).

That way you may be able to point the finger at the Driver more readily, and get RedHat to do something about it (I assume the reason they use RedHat is for the Paid Support...)

[kaivalagi]

I too am not a redhat user, I'm into Arch, which I install drivers from source onto...this may be the only option for you on Redhat to be fair...but to do that you'd need some pointers from a redhat guru IMHO, search Fedora forum sites for help I'd say.

The linux drivers are available from the NVidia site, and I would expect them to be newer than what is RPM packaged for RH...especially for RHEL 5.4

Another idea...in Ubuntu there are what's know as backports, basically newer packages made available to older OS versions...if there is something similar you can utilise with RH you may find newer drivers.

Ultimately though I think there is RHEL 6 now which will have far newer kernel versions that 5.4 and will therefore support far newer NVidia drivers. Maybe that's the best option.

So options from my point of view are:
1) RHEL 6 available? Try using it rather than 5.4 maybe?
2) Backports equivalent in RH to provide more newer drivers to you
3) Build drivers from source, will require NVidia driver download and all dependancies to be setup for a build of the binaries/package for installation - RH Guru required

Hope that helps

[SoulKiss]

I too am not a redhat user, I'm into Arch, which I install drivers from source onto...

Drivers from source?

I suppose you think Curvys are the way forwards too :p

Hehe

[kaivalagi]

no not that bad :lol:

Just geeky bad, I can also install binaries like you deb and rpm package (ab)users...

Bad choice of words "source" anyway as Nvidia drivers are closed source so it's only the distro packaging that needs doing really :)

<geekspeak>
Drivers get installed through a PKGBUILD from the Arch User Repository (AUR), this details the source files, build operations etc and creates a package on the fly for me, it allows me to have the latest and greatest when I want from Nvidia direct...

here's the PKGBUILD for nvidia-all:

pkgname=nvidia-all
pkgver=260.19.21
pkgrel=1
pkgdesc="NVIDIA drivers. Builds modules for all kernels detected on system."
arch=('i686' 'x86_64')
_kernver=`uname -r`
ARCH="x86"
[ "$CARCH" = "x86_64" ] && ARCH="x86_64"
provides=('nvidia')
url="http://www.nvidia.com/"
depends=('kernel26' 'kernel26-headers' 'nvidia-utils')
conflicts=('nvidia-71xx' 'nvidia-96xx' 'nvidia-173xx' 'nvidia-legacy' 'nvidia-beta' 'nvidia')
license=('custom')
install="nvidia.install"
source=("ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-$ARCH/${pkgver}/NVIDIA-Linux-$ARCH-${pkgver}.run")

md5sums=('2ec917f51e752802646920e9bcd747e7') # i686 package
[ "$CARCH" = "x86_64" ] && md5sums=('7a3cb014baa50184a6f9e7695c8fea1b') # x86_64 package

build() {
# Extract the nvidia drivers
cd "$startdir/src/"
sh "NVIDIA-Linux-${ARCH}-${pkgver}.run" --extract-only
cd "NVIDIA-Linux-${ARCH}-${pkgver}"

cd kernel
ln -s 'Makefile.kbuild' Makefile

msg 'Building the kernel module...'
# Loop through all detected kernels
for _kernver in `file /boot/* | grep 'Linux kernel.*boot executable' | grep 'vmlinuz' | sed 's|.*version \([^ ]\+\).*|\1|'`;
do
msg2 "Building module for $_kernver..."

make SYSSRC=/lib/modules/${_kernver}/build module

# Install kernel module
mkdir -p "$startdir/pkg/lib/modules/${_kernver}/kernel/drivers/video/"
install -m644 nvidia.ko "$startdir/pkg/lib/modules/${_kernver}/kernel/drivers/video/"
done
}


I've used Linux since Uni (1997) and I have tried various distros including but not limited to RH, SuSE, Slackware, Debian, Fedora, Mandrake (now Mandriva), Ubuntu, Gentoo but have settled for the longest time with Arch...it's the mutts nuts (http://archlinux.org - beginners guide: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners'_Guide)
</geekspeak>

[beabert]

Linux as user friendly as ever lol

[kaivalagi]

Linux as user friendly as ever lol
Linux it whatever you want it to be and user friendly most of the time :p

If you are referring to the graphics card problem, I could sort it (and so should an IT support department!) if given enough time and if the machine was put in front of me but trying to solve an issue like this through a bike forum is kinder difficult...it's probably the fact that the OS version is fairly old and/or that the drivers available are too old to support all the features required properly...if it were any windows platform then the latest drivers would be installed but then that's the manufacturers for you only caring for windows users in general...windows drives the industry, if it were Linux in the driving seat windows would have the user friendly issues...I'll still go with the "rock solid when setup correctly" OS

The above PKGBUILD does give a tech savvy person the building blocks of a build process that works...but the dependencies for tools and linux kernel sources will no doubt bite anyone who isn't in the know

See what you started, and I kinda proved your point :lol:

[fastdruid]

<sysadmin hat>

I'm rather more SLES and not used RHEL in a long while but still.

Does RHEL 5.5 work?

Are you using 32bit or 64bit versions? (there is an issue with memory mapping on the 32bit versions with >4Gb RAM).

What actual drivers (and versions) are in use, nvidia or nouveau?

Druid

[seedy100]

Wot?

[beabert]

Linux it whatever you want it to be and user friendly most of the time :p

If you are referring to the graphics card problem, I could sort it (and so should an IT support department!) if given enough time and if the machine was put in front of me but trying to solve an issue like this through a bike forum is kinder difficult...it's probably the fact that the OS version is fairly old and/or that the drivers available are too old to support all the features required properly...if it were any windows platform then the latest drivers would be installed but then that's the manufacturers for you only caring for windows users in general...windows drives the industry, if it were Linux in the driving seat windows would have the user friendly issues...I'll still go with the "rock solid when setup correctly" OS

The above PKGBUILD does give a tech savvy person the building blocks of a build process that works...but the dependencies for tools and linux kernel sources will no doubt bite anyone who isn't in the know

See what you started, and I kinda proved your point :lol:

LOL

[SoulKiss]

<sysadmin hat>

I'm rather more SLES and not used RHEL in a long while but still.

Does RHEL 5.5 work?

Are you using 32bit or 64bit versions? (there is an issue with memory mapping on the 32bit versions with >4Gb RAM).

What actual drivers (and versions) are in use, nvidia or nouveau?

Druid

You poor man, I was lumbered with SLES for 2 years in one job, still have flashbacks...

Oh and you forgot to close your tag :p

[fastdruid]

Even more fun on power...

Tag purposely left open btw. :-)

Druid

[timwilky]

thanks guy you have give me a bit of food for thought.

What gets me is the guy asking for my help is the company RHEL Guru, yes we use it for the paid support and whilst predominantly within our data centres for web hosted apps etc. We also use it within specialist groups of engineers who need to do Computational Fluid dynamics, Finite Element Modelling etc. What the support guys are trying to do is standardise a build as they would with the 50,000 windows PCs they support. they had quite happilly been working with RHEL5.4 for some while. Until the latest set of Dell Hardware (Yes we have to use Dell worldwide) arrived and now they are having serious compatibility issues.

My involvement is minor, I am a project manager who supposedly is Linux savvy. So I get to run with all the linux issues in the company, even the ones I cannot fix.