→ Category: ubuntu

Installing Cuda on Ubuntu 11.10

Written 2011-10-27 by Timo Dickscheid, tagged as 3d, ubuntu

To install Cuda, I followed some hints on bottom of this thread, but also had to fix a few more issues.

  1. Download the current Cuda Toolkit for Ubuntu and the GPU Computing SDK, and save the .run files somewhere.

  2. Install and select gcc/g++ 4.4 

    sudo apt-get install \
    gcc-4.4 g++-4.4 build-essential
sudo update-alternatives \
    --install /usr/bin/gcc gcc /usr/bin/gcc-4.6 40 \
    --slave /usr/bin/g++ g++ /usr/bin/g++-4.6 
sudo update-alternatives \
    --install /usr/bin/gcc gcc /usr/bin/gcc-4.4 60 \
    --slave /usr/bin/g++ g++ /usr/bin/g++-4.4

    Check with

    sudo update-alternatives —config gcc
gcc —version

    that you have now version 4.4.x of the compilers.

  3. Install the nvidia drivers

    sudo apt-get install \
    nvidia-current\
    nvidia-current-dev\
    nvidia-current-updates\
    nvidia-current-updates-dev

  4. As root, run the two .run files from nvidia (see 1.).

  5. For compiling the SDK examples, you also need to install

    sudo apt-get install freeglut3-dev libxi-dev

    and create the following links

    sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libXmu.so.6 /usr/lib/libXmu.so
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/nvidia-173/libGL.so /usr/lib/libGL.so

    Then go to the NVIDIA_GPU_COMPUTING_SDK_... folder. In the file C/common/common.mk change the line

    LINKFLAGS +=

    to

    LINKFLAGS += -L/usr/lib/nvidia-current

    Then run make. This should compile everything, indicating that the CUDA stuff works.

Fixing grub errors after Ubuntu distribution upgrade

Written 2011-04-29 by Timo Dickscheid, tagged as computers, ubuntu

After running an Ubuntu distribution upgrade on a machine where the primary boot disk is not /dev/sda, but let's say /dev/sdb, you may experience the following grub error:

error: symbol not found: 'grub_env_export'

This happens because the grub-update is apparently run on the first disk by default. You'll need to reinstall grub using the correct partition by booting from a live disk, as explained in this post. In the live system, fire up a terminal and (assuming your desired boot partition is on /dev/sdb1) do

sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdb1
sudo mount -o bind /dev /mnt/sdb1/dev
sudo mount -o bind /sys /mnt/sdb1/sys
sudo mount -o bind /proc /mnt/sdb1/proc
sudo chroot /mnt/sdb1

This will make the boot partition your current root directory tree. Then reinstall grub there:

grub-install /dev/sdb
update-grub

Reboot the machine, and hope for the best - it worked for me when upgrading from Maverick to Natty.