What AMD graphics card (< US$250) works on Beowulf?

rmrichesjr · 2020-12-20 03:38:26

What AMD graphics card (up to US$250 price) will work with Beowulf?

I'm preparing to build a new system with an Asus Pro WS X570-ACE motherboard and either a 9 5900X or a 7 5800X CPU, with Devuan Beowulf as its first OS. I plan to use open-source drivers, so I'm avoiding the 'PRO' cards. After considerable searching, I have yet to find a cross-reference that says what AMD GPUs work with what version of kernel, xorg, etc. Any pointers or suggestions?

Thanks,

Robert

Head_on_a_Stick · 2020-12-20 10:10:57

I don't think beowulf's stock kernel will work very well with those processors. The backported kernel should be fine but all of the new AMD cards need a newer Mesa version that isn't available from beowulf-backports: https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?id=3913

EDIT: see the firmware-amd-graphics package information page for a list of supported cards:

https://pkginfo.devuan.org/cgi-bin/poli … d-graphics

v20200918 is in the beowulf-backports repository.

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2020-12-20 10:15:00)

rolfie · 2020-12-20 10:35:28

I am running a 5500XT with Beowulf on 2 X570 mainboards with Ryzen 3700X, latest backports kernel and firmware, Mate Desktop. For Gnome/Cinnamon you need the MX Mesa package upgrade. Read the linked post and all its branches.

rolfie

rmrichesjr · 2021-03-07 01:11:17

Thank you both for those very helpful answers. In case it might help someone else who might happen upon this thread:

After a long wait for the CPU (and some problems with a now-EOL SAS/SATA card) the machine is running. (I had wanted a 5900X CPU, but it's still not in stock anywhere at a price even close to list.) With a temporary (2200G) CPU, I upgraded the motherboard's BIOS to a version that supports the 5800X CPU. That temporary CPU also allowed testing of some other issues. I installed Beowulf with the temporary CPU.

For the kernel, I downloaded the 5.11.2 source from kernel.org to my old machine, ran "make oldconfig" based on the config file from the stock Beowulf kernel (accepting the defult for all questions), cleared the value of CONFIG__SYSTEM_TRUSTED_KEYS, ran "make -j 6 bindeb-pkg", waited an hour for the build to finish, installed three DEBs (not the one with "dbg" in its name), installed the 5800X CPU, and booted it up. So far, so good on the kernel.

Getting the GPU up to speed is still pending--one step at a time.

Head_on_a_Stick · 2021-03-07 08:59:25

rmrichesjr wrote:

For the kernel, I downloaded the 5.11.2 source from kernel.org

How are you planning to keep that updated? That version is already old.

The beowulf-backports repository will be tracking the 5.10 LTS branch, which might be sufficient for your processor. That version is slightly delayed but your current strategy will leave your system with known kernel vulnerabilities unless you track upstream development assiduously and manually compile newer versions as they are released.

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2021-03-07 09:00:47)

rmrichesjr · 2021-03-09 01:44:15

That's a very good point. Thank you for suggesting the 5.10 LTS branch from the beowulf-backports repository. So far, today's current 5.10 kernel from beowulf-backports appears to be working well. I partitioned the big HDDs and created the RAIDs. The big RAID is doing its initial sync as I type (and for the next ~4+ hours).

I did a web search or two about how to add a backports repository. One thing was not clear from the relevant web pages those searches found. Does apt-get pick up updated kernel packages from backports automagically? When I tried "apt-get -d -t beowulf-backports update", it wanted to update an enormous boatload of things, which I immediately rejected. (Packages from the stable, non-backports repositories had already been fully updated.)

Head_on_a_Stick · 2021-03-09 16:33:10

rmrichesjr wrote:

Does apt-get pick up updated kernel packages from backports automagically?

Yes, it does. Just run the usual apt update && apt upgrade. Don't target backports for updates & upgrades, that can break your box.

rmrichesjr · 2021-03-09 17:07:29

Excellent! Thank you very much!

rolfie · 2021-03-09 17:52:55

It may not be that simple. All depends on if the meta package linux-image-amd64 is installed, and if this is linked to the main repository or to backports.

If you choose linux-image-amd64 during installation and not one of the presented dedicated kernel images, apt update && apt upgrade will check for updates and install them when available. For Beowulf this is the 4.19 kernels.

When you only install one dedicated kernel from backports, that will stay forever and not be affected by apt update && apt upgrade. Unless you install the meta-package from backports. Then the stock kernel is left alone and backports is updated.

You can't have both.

rolfie

Last edited by rolfie (2021-03-09 18:16:39)

Head_on_a_Stick · 2021-03-09 18:13:22

^ Good point rolfie, thanks for the clarification. I just presumed the OP had installed the metapackage, which was silly of me.

rmrichesjr · 2021-03-09 19:13:29

Thanks for the great info about the meta package. During installation, I just followed the default path. Now that I know about the meta package structure, I'll make sure to install the meta package from backports.

rmrichesjr · 2021-03-10 04:06:47

It appears when I installed the backports 5.10 kernel that I used the meta package. This is what 'dpkg -l' says for it:

ii linux-image-amd64 5.10.13-1~bpo10+1 amd64 Linux for 64-bit PCs (meta-package)

Again, thank you both for the very helpful guidance.

rmrichesjr · 2021-05-23 02:33:13

Thank you for all the help. After working through some odd issues (and a bug report about BIOS corrupting disk data), the machine just went into "production" use with a 5800 CPU, an ASUS Pro WS X570-ACE motherboard, a MSI Radeon RX 5500 XT GAMING X graphics card, Devuan Beowulf, the kernel from backports, AMD graphics and Realtek firmware from backports, some other packages from backports that apparently got pulled in as dependencies, and the Mesa and related libraries from MX AHS. The MX AHS packages were mentioned in these linkded pages: https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?id=3913 and http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=146083 So far, everything appears to be working well.

rmrichesjr · 2021-12-27 22:57:42

By way of follow-up, the Beowulf installation worked very well. Even with adding the MX AHS packages and then migrating at least some of them to backports (when backports had the newer versions available), I did not see any serious problems from mixing distribution packages. There was only one time in about 7 months that the machine crashed, apparently a GPU crash, and that was in August, 2021.

A few days ago, I installed Chimaera without any packages coming from MX or even backports. So far, everything appears to be working very well (modulo migrating all my home-grown Python code to Python 3). Graphics performance is excellent. At shadertoy.com, the 'tempting the mariner' page (with a warning, apparently about overheating systems) runs full 60fps in the small window and appears to do 20-30fps at full screen (1920x1200).

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#1 2020-12-20 03:38:26

What AMD graphics card (< US$250) works on Beowulf?

#2 2020-12-20 10:10:57

Re: What AMD graphics card (< US$250) works on Beowulf?

#3 2020-12-20 10:35:28

Re: What AMD graphics card (< US$250) works on Beowulf?

#4 2021-03-07 01:11:17

Re: What AMD graphics card (< US$250) works on Beowulf?

#5 2021-03-07 08:59:25

Re: What AMD graphics card (< US$250) works on Beowulf?

#6 2021-03-09 01:44:15

Re: What AMD graphics card (< US$250) works on Beowulf?

#7 2021-03-09 16:33:10

Re: What AMD graphics card (< US$250) works on Beowulf?

#8 2021-03-09 17:07:29

Re: What AMD graphics card (< US$250) works on Beowulf?

#9 2021-03-09 17:52:55

Re: What AMD graphics card (< US$250) works on Beowulf?

#10 2021-03-09 18:13:22

Re: What AMD graphics card (< US$250) works on Beowulf?

#11 2021-03-09 19:13:29

Re: What AMD graphics card (< US$250) works on Beowulf?

#12 2021-03-10 04:06:47

Re: What AMD graphics card (< US$250) works on Beowulf?

#13 2021-05-23 02:33:13

Re: What AMD graphics card (< US$250) works on Beowulf?

#14 2021-12-27 22:57:42

Re: What AMD graphics card (< US$250) works on Beowulf?

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