Folding Forum

been running FAH on my AMD Phenom II X2 for a year or so, just activated a GPU slot too, and it fails to get work:

03:14:21:WU02:FS01:Connecting to assign-GPU.stanford.edu:80
03:14:30:WU02:FS01:News: Welcome to Folding@Home
03:14:30:WARNING:WU02:FS01:Failed to get assignment from 'assign-GPU.stanford.edu:80': Empty work server assignment
03:14:30:WU02:FS01:Connecting to assign-GPU.stanford.edu:8080
03:14:38:WU02:FS01:News: Welcome to Folding@Home
03:14:38:WARNING:WU02:FS01:Failed to get assignment from 'assign-GPU.stanford.edu:8080': Empty work server assignment
03:14:38:ERROR:WU02:FS01:Exception: Could not get an assignment

is this a known issue, or have I got some weird problem on my end?
the GPU is a Geforce 9800GT.

thanks!

I failed to note, it's the Linux V7 client.

core11 is end of life soon. i believe that is what your card requires.

Your GPU card is not recent enough to be supported in Linux for folding. A card based on either the Fermi or Kepler architecture is needed. See the GPU folding requirements listed in the Linux Install Guide.

Please note that if you want to still contribute with your GPU under Linux, you can do that by using v6.41 under WINE (viewtopic.php?f=54&t=23958).

Joe_H:

9800GT is on the whitelist:

https://fah-web.stanford.edu/file-relea ... c/GPUs.txt

Given that, how would one determine that it's NOT supported?

The entry will have ::: instead of numbers. The numbers specify the type of video card. ::: means blacklisted (i.e. not supported).

Specifically the card is supported for folding in Windows with the current client and cores being used. The GPUs.txt file is not OS specific. The installation guides do list the specific requirements and limitations that apply. In the case of Linux, GPU folding was not supported until Core_17 was written earlier this year. That core requires Fermi or Kepler as a minimum. The unsupported folding through Wine mentioned was done using a third party hack and the Windows folding core.

One other important distinction, GPUs.txt is not a whitelist only. It just lists GPU's and has the function of being both a whitelist and a blacklist.

Guys, I"m not trying to argue with you, I'm just trying to understand some details, so please bear with me:

So, P5-133XL is telling me that if it has ":::" it's NOT supported, which means if it has :<number>:<number>: it is (or could be???) supported??? (and the entry for 9800GT has numbers...)

and Joe_H is telling me that regardless of whatever it says in GPUs.txt, the client for linux won't allow it...

It seems odd to me, though, that if the client doesn't support that GPU that it attempts to get work,... wouldn't it error out and just fails instead of trying to get work?

The only thing I see in the log that looks like an error is:

18:12:13:ERROR:Exception: Option 'gpu-index' has no default and is not set.

I'm not at all sure what that means, or how to solve it (if it's possible to solve).

thanks for your ongoing patience!

Fred

The client has nothing to do with "supporting" specific hardware. If you ask the client, it will try to download work for any whitelisted GPU for any operating system. The client supports GPU folding in Win, Lin, and OSX.

The "not supported" part comes from either the GPU hardware (doesn't work in FAH, so blacklisted :::), of from the OS/drivers, where the drivers and/or operating system fails to meet the requirements for GPU folding (OpenCL support). Older NV hardware like yours does not support OpenCL, so it is unsupported in the V7 Linux fah client. OSX is in a similar lack of OpenCL boat.

See also: https://fah-web.stanford.edu/projects/F ... tOfGPUsTxt

I'll agree with your complaint: If the video card isn't supported an error should be produced, at the start, rather than go all they way to the point of trying to get a WU and just not getting an appropriate WU because nothing fits your GPU. Windows, has a bit more error checking than Linux but still what you experianced isn't a good failure mode.

Sorry

I agreed as well, was just answering the question.

New bug/feature enhancement ticket created to either fix the installer or enhance the Greylist to select by Operating System: https://fah-web.stanford.edu/projects/F ... icket/1084

Please post the first page of the log. It should show something like mine: Note that my gpu 0 is specifically listed as UNSUPPORTED.
There are lots and lots of older/less-powerful GPUs which are simply not listed in GPUs.txt.

Not all unsupported GPUs will show that designation. Other GPUs which were supported in the past but have been deprecated will simply never get an assignment because all WUs in the applicable projects have been completed.