HOWTO: How I got my AMD card folding on Linux

[Mellin]

Hi there.

I'm looking for a way to enable GPU folding on my AMD GPUs on Linux Mint 22.

I tried to follow some of the guides and solutions (this thread here, over on the forums.linuxmint.com, and other places after some googling), but everything refers to FAH v7 and/or older Mint versions and I always find some step I cannot follow.

My setup and where I am right now:
OS: Linux Mint 22 (based on Ubuntu 24.04) Cinnamon 6.2.9
CPU: Intel Core i7-4770
Mobo: MSI Z97M GAMING (MS-7919) (2 PCIe slots set up into x8/x8 split)
GPU1: Intel CPU integrated graphics E3-1200 (I'm using this one as a video out for the whole system)
GPU2: AMD RX 5500 XT 8GB (ASRock Challenger) (primary Mobo slot)
GPU3: AMD R9 390 8GB (Club 3D Royalqueen) (secondary Mobo slot with a PCIe 3.0 x16 riser)
Single 1600x1200 screen connected to mobo port.
FAH 8.3.18
v8-3.foldingathome.org/machines interface shows my CPU and both dGPUs, but dGPUs are grayed out (I can select and deselec them, tho that does nothing).
CPU folding works fine.


The errors and warnings that FAH is showing:

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12:17:13:W :OpenCL not supported: clGetPlatformIDs() returned -1001
12:17:13:W :CUDA not supported: Failed to open dynamic library 'libcuda.so': libcuda.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
12:17:13:W :CON1:DNS lookup failed for api.foldingathome.org
12:17:13:E :OUT1:Failed response: CONNECT
12:17:15:E :Exception: Failed to prevent sleep: Permission denied

The problem: FAH is not folding on my AMD dGPUs.


My best guess based on the guides I found is the default OpenCL Driver Mint installed, but I'm relatively new to Linux. All of the links I found linting to better drivers didn't help me as of yet and trying to extract OpenCL driver from the official Linux drivers from AMD site didn't give me anything as all official downloads are just .deb files (installing which didn't help either) and not the tar.xz archives mentioned.

In many places, I saw people saying that OpenCL on Linux Mint is a pain, but I also see many people who claim to have done it (their explanations just don't help me at all...).

Any ideas/suggestions would be great.

[calxalot]

Please try v8.4.9
https://foldingathome.org/beta/

[Mellin]

Please try v8.4.9
https://foldingathome.org/beta/

Thanks for the reply.
Unfortunately, it didn't help.

Same story - CPU folding works fine while GPUs are detected but grayed out.

There are fewer warnings/errors tho:

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19:40:45:W :CON1:DNS lookup failed for api.foldingathome.org
19:40:45:E :OUT1:Failed response: CONNECT

[muziqaz]

You need drivers for your GPU.
Go to https://repo.radeon.com/amdgpu-install/ ... ntu/noble/
Download .deb package stored there. Make sure it is 6.2.4 and not higher
Go to Downloads folder, double-click the downloaded package. This will add Radeon repo (among other things) to your sources.
After that in terminal:

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sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install rocm-opencl-sdk
sudo apt install rocm-opencl-icd (click TAB after this, for completion of the package name, cannot remember exactly full name of it)
sudo apt install clinfo
sudo usermod -a -G render yourlinuxusername
sudo usermod -a -G video yourlinuxusername

Reboot your PC
clinfo command in terminal should report opencl platform as well as opencl device(s)
Launch FAH Web UI in the browser with v8-4.foldingathome.org/
Go to your Settings by clicking the cog, click little padlock icon on the right hand side near the bottom of the page. Resource groups section should show up on the left hand side.
Click Add, name it AMD GPU (or whatever you want, really, name of your actual GPU). Click Create. Click on newly created Resource Group, slide CPU slider to the left, that it shows 0 CPUs, tick Navi 14 GPU.
Click on Default Group, deselect all the GPUs, leave CPU as is, or set it to whatever amount of cores you want.
Click Save
Start folding.
Your Radeon 290 is no longer supported by AMD with their ROCm packages in Linux. If you are not doing anything else on it, might as well take it out, not to burn electricity for no reason
If any of this doesn't make sense, or does not work, let me know

[calxalot]

In case it’s not obvious, deselect all GPUs in the default group.

[muziqaz]

Oh, sh*t, yes. Sorry. Thanks calxalot

I will edit the original post

[calxalot]

Although you can set zero cpus on the GPU group, the GPU core may consume a cpu thread. Best to reduce CPUs on default group by one per gpu that is used, plus one for the system.

[muziqaz]

From screenshot I can see that 4 threads were selected initially, so I assumed it will be the case in the future

[calxalot]

Ah, yes. Good call.

I sure can be long-winded.

[Mellin]

Thanks to both of you for your replies.

I'm now successfully folding on my 5500XT.

Your Radeon 290 is no longer supported by AMD with their ROCm packages in Linux.

Would there be a way to maybe use an older driver for it to enable it as well?
I do use it for other stuff so it is staying in and it would be great to also fold on it.

On some other forum, I saw someone mention that AMD Hawaii PRO is GCN2.x and can be made to use amdgpu drivers instead of the loaded radeon one by using kernel parameters

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radeon.cik_support=0 amdgpu.cik_support=1

, but I had no luck making it work that way.

Non the less thank you for helping me.

[muziqaz]

As far as I know you cannot have two different drivers or packages of the same origin in the same system
You can't download ROCm 6.2.4 alongside ROCm 5.5 Also You are not losing much by not folding on 290, believe me. There is no point trying to get it working to mess up your system completely and start from zero

[Joe_H]

The AMD R9 390 is supported by an older set of drivers from before the ROCm drivers AMD switched to on Linux for more recent cards. Newest version of those drivers is from 2+ years ago. No idea if those drivers can be loaded at the same time as the newer drivers. Potentially you might have more success with running that card under Windows, AMD supported it longer on Windows than on Linux.

[muziqaz]

There is no way to mix Navi (RDNA) GPU with older GCN arch GPU. Old drivers which support 290, do not support RDNA arch. I have both, and I try to keep RDNA GPU with RDNA GPU in the same system, and same with GCN GPUs

[Joe_H]

I wasn't saying to support both with one set of drivers. However there are OSs which allow installation of more than one video driver with each assigned to a specific GPU. If that is not possible in Linux, that is a Linux limitation.

[muziqaz]

probably, but in this case, there is no point in that