problem installing CUDA on Debian
 

I recently got access to a few spare servers (all running Debian 8 Jessie) with multiple Nvidia cards. However, I'm having trouble setting up CUDA even after enabling the [C]contrib[/C] and [C]non-free[/C] packages and installing the required libraries. When I try to install the [c]nvidia-cuda-toolkit[/c] package, the installer tries to run [c]nvidia-installer-cleanup[/c] and asks whether to run [c]nvidia-xconfig --restore-original-backup[/c] to restore the original X configuration file. Answering "Yes" causes the terminal to completely lock up while saying "No" simply terminates the installation.

I've found several threads elsewhere that mention this issue but no working solutions:
[LIST][*][url]http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=123566[/url][*][url]http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=133946[/url][*][url]https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=798732[/url][/LIST]
I tried using different servers but ran into the same problem every time. Anyone know how to resolve this issue?

Can I compile mfaktc on another computer and copy the binary over? Or must I have CUDA installed to run mfaktc?

[QUOTE=ixfd64;523658]
Can I compile mfaktc on another computer and copy the binary over? Or must I have CUDA installed to run mfaktc?[/QUOTE]

I think you still need the cuda shared libraries (same version it is compiled for) but yeah you should be able to compile on one and run on another.

I would try copying the runtime lib from the compiling machine ( "/usr/local/cuda/lib64/libcudart.so" is the path on mine) into the directory with mfaktc executable and see if that works. You might need some of the other files too like libcufft.so, etc. I'm not sure what all mfaktc uses.

In my experience, a working CUDA install is necessary in order to run any CUDA binary. You don't need to build all the tools to compile, but you do need a functioning CUDA.

See [URL]https://mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=23561[/URL] for details of what I had to do to get CUDA working in Devuan (that's a Debian variant without systemd so should be relevant).

Chris

[QUOTE=chris2be8;523686]See [URL]https://mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=23561[/URL] for details of what I had to do to get CUDA working in Devuan (that's a Debian variant without systemd so should be relevant).

Chris[/QUOTE]

Thanks for the information. However, my situation seems to be a bit different. From what I gather, your system already had CUDA installed whereas I'm not able to install it at all. I get an error saying that NVCC could not be found when I try to build mfaktc.

I had to start from scratch by installing CUDA before I started trying to get ECM installed.

Also search [URL]https://dev1galaxy.org/index.php[/URL] (the Devuan forum) for references to CUDA (I was probably the first person to get it working on Devuan).

Chris