Intel GPU driver [SOLVED] for BOINC use

[Relative]

Just noticed that inxi doesn't tell me about the GPU in my laptop - or maybe I just don't understand the nomenclature correctly. This is what comes up for the portion of concern to me:

System: Host: OnionThinkT430 Kernel: 4.15.0-43-generic x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 7.3.0 Desktop: MATE 1.20.1
Distro: Linux Mint 19.1 Tessa base: Ubuntu 18.04 bionic
Machine: Type: Laptop System: LENOVO product: 2351BR1 v: ThinkPad T430 serial: <filter>
Mobo: LENOVO model: 2351BR1 serial: <filter> UEFI [Legacy]: LENOVO v: G1ETB7WW (2.77 ) date: 06/05/2018
Battery: ID-1: BAT0 charge: 43.2 Wh condition: 43.7/47.5 Wh (92%) model: SANYO 45N1001 status: Unknown
CPU: Topology: Dual Core model: Intel Core i5-3320M bits: 64 type: MT MCP arch: Ivy Bridge rev: 9 L2 cache: 3072 KiB
flags: lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx bogomips: 20753
Speed: 3093 MHz min/max: 1200/3300 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 3093 2: 3093 3: 3093 4: 3093
Graphics: Device-1: Intel 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics vendor: Lenovo driver: i915 v: kernel bus ID: 00:02.0
Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.19.6 driver: modesetting unloaded: fbdev,vesa resolution: 1366x768~60Hz
OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel Ivybridge Mobile v: 4.2 Mesa 18.0.5 direct render: Yes

My understanding is that the GPU is defined in Windows 10 as:

INTEL Intel(R) HD Graphics 4000 (1400MB) OpenCL: 1.2

I can't seem to get that same info from the inxi application. What brought this to my attention is the BOINC application wherein it tests and finds the GPU when running Windows 7 or 10 but doesn't find it when running Mint Mate.

Can someone straighten me out?

Mike Cebula

[gm10]

It's right here:

Graphics: Device-1: Intel 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics

The rest is naming difference.

[Relative]

That's what I thought too. And the current driver is supposedly i915 which is what is installed. However, the BOINC application doesn't recognize it and therefore doesn't use it. But it does under Windows. Something is different and that's what I'm after.

Mike

[thx-1138]

...i've never used Boinc, but in regards to utilizing OpenCL, such appears to be a separate package to be installed.
Try installing boinc-client-opencl and also mesa-opencl-icd maybe...

Try digging / asking around (by supplying the exact error messages that Boinc returns) over at their forums as well...

[Relative]

OK. Installed those two and also boinc-app-eah-brp just for the heck of it. Then ran the BOINC benchmarks and it still doesn't recognize the GPU. Browsing around looking for anything else that might apply.

Mike

[Hoser Rob]

OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel Ivybridge Mobile v: 4.2 Mesa 18.0.5 direct render: Yes

This is the part that tells you what actual series Intel video it is, and is usually the most useful bit re gpus in Linux. I do agree, with Intel cards it's actually surprisingly hard to find out exactly what damn card you have, but that's how I've done it for years. And if it says Ivybridge there that's what you'd generally use as a search term for support.

It also says you're using the modesetting driver, which is the right one for most Intel cards in Mint 19.x. In fact unless you're using a really old Intel card or a poorly supported INgtrel card like the Poulsbo or Cedarview cards, that's it. Linux dirvers don't work the same as WIndows ones, and Intel doesn't do Linux closed source binary video drivers.

You can also get more info from this in the terminal, there are other commands but this one I remember :

Code: Select all

sudo lshw -C video

Next question, does the video work OK?

[Relative]

Yes, the video doesn't seem to have any problems. Ran glmark2 and came up with a score of 749. No observable problems as it went through its gyrations.

Here are the results of the lshw command:
sudo lshw -C video
*-display
description: VGA compatible controller
product: 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 2
bus info: pci@0000:00:02.0
version: 09
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: msi pm vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
configuration: driver=i915 latency=0
resources: irq:29 memory:f0000000-f03fffff memory:e0000000-efffffff ioport:6000(size=64) memory:c0000-dffff

Mike

[Relative]

Found that BOINC 7.14 has some sort of "fix" for GPU detection and has been made available for Windows and Mac. Evidently, Linux distributions have to compile BOINC for their own release. Currently only 7.9 is available from Ubuntu repositories. Don't know if this would be of any help, but how to go about pushing for this? The 7.9.3 version I have is pretty far downlevel.

Mike

[Hoser Rob]

Why even bother pushing for boinc? It's a WIndows app AFAIK and thewy don't seem to have much interest in supporting Linux. Find something else.

WHat do you want to do anyway? For gaaming it's mostly the OpenGL levels you need to worry about AFAIK but I'm not that much of a gamer. For just playing back video many users would be surprised at how trivial it is as long as your card has a decent Linux video driver for the card.

E.g. I have a laptop with older Intel video that that, and I've played 1080p HEVC 10bit video with 4-5 M/sec bit rate many times with excellent resutls. That's using SMplayer with mplayer as a backend rather than mpv because I understand the mplayer settings better. And that's with ALL hardware decoding turned off, whcih the mpv devs recommend.

[Relative]

Nothing to do with gaming. BOINC downloads scientific computing jobs to your computer and runs them invisibly in the background. These projects investigate diseases, study global warming, discover pulsars, and do many other types of scientific research. Most are run by universities around the world and there are tens of thousands participating. BOINC itself is just the application you can install that will manage the distributed processing for these projects.

As far as supporting Linux, I can understand the Berkeley people who support BOINC don't have staff to support the many different variations of Linux and leave it to the community to build their own packages - not an unfamiliar stance. One Windows version and one MAC version support those platforms quite nicely. The source is readily available to package managers - they just have to find the time to make it available in their repositories.

Source is available at: https://boinc.berkeley.edu/

Mike

[Relative]

OK. Consider this SOLVED for getting the GPU identified and having the latest version of BOINC installed.

The latest level of BOINC is 7.14.2 and is available from a PPA:

add-apt-repository ppa:costamagnagianfranco/boinc
apt-get update
apt-get install boinc-client

Also, the GPU on my machine is now identified (INTEL Intel(R) HD Graphics IvyBridge M GT2 (2048MB) OpenCL: 1.2) in the BOINC benchmarks and is being used.

Mike