Trying to use LinuxCoin but cannot...

[BkkCoins]

I've used Unetbootin to make a bootable flash stick of LinuxCoin. I was hoping I could fire it up and do some quick tests of my new cards and mainboard. But it's taking hours for me to get nowhere! Help!

First off, I have a Gigabyte mainboard with 1 5830 installed. This silly board won't boot off normal USB flash sticks. After much digging I found I had to format the stick with some HP tool. Which sucks, but I'm past that now. I can boot LinuxCoin.

I can read and accept the license. That seems to work. Bit nothing else does.

I've tried doing some things seen in tutorials here but AMDOverdrive just complains:

"Unable to init AMD ADL library" "blah blah need Catalyst drivers"

similarly the CatalystControlCenter gives an error about drivers not installed.

I tried aticonfig and can use it to see the 5830 is there. But it doesn't seem to allow me to do much else. Though I'm still confused by the commands as some posted here simply don't work, eg. checking temperatures, speeds etc. I'm getting a message about "X needs to be running"... what? I thought it was since the desktop is up. Confused now.

Isn't it supposed to be easier than this? Aren't drivers supposed to be detected and installed by LinuxCoin?
I haven't seen any "getting started" info that says how to find and install the drivers.

What do I need to do? I'd like to just test the card functions and maybe do a test mining session.

(Tried poclbm but it lists CPU and no GPUs, seems to also want drivers to work)

BTW I've been using Linux for years so I'm quite capable with it. I just haven't done any mining using LinuxCoin+GPUs before. I can mine on my Linux notebook though

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[Dargo]

You might try posting this in the linuxcoin thread (in Project Development). Which version are you using? pre-final, or 0.2b? The drivers should already be installed, but of course you could try re-installig them. Sorry I can't be more helpful, but you are probably more experienced with linux than I am, and I had no problems running linuxcoin, so I haven't had any experience troubleshooting. This may only multiply your headache, but there is another linux distro for mining called BAMT (see the thread for this in Project Development). Maybe you will have better luck with the other distro.

[drgr33n]

I've used Unetbootin to make a bootable flash stick of LinuxCoin. I was hoping I could fire it up and do some quick tests of my new cards and mainboard. But it's taking hours for me to get nowhere! Help!

First off, I have a Gigabyte mainboard with 1 5830 installed. This silly board won't boot off normal USB flash sticks. After much digging I found I had to format the stick with some HP tool. Which sucks, but I'm past that now. I can boot LinuxCoin.

I can read and accept the license. That seems to work. Bit nothing else does.

I've tried doing some things seen in tutorials here but AMDOverdrive just complains:

"Unable to init AMD ADL library" "blah blah need Catalyst drivers"

similarly the CatalystControlCenter gives an error about drivers not installed.

I tried aticonfig and can use it to see the 5830 is there. But it doesn't seem to allow me to do much else. Though I'm still confused by the commands as some posted here simply don't work, eg. checking temperatures, speeds etc. I'm getting a message about "X needs to be running"... what? I thought it was since the desktop is up. Confused now.

Isn't it supposed to be easier than this? Aren't drivers supposed to be detected and installed by LinuxCoin?
I haven't seen any "getting started" info that says how to find and install the drivers.

What do I need to do? I'd like to just test the card functions and maybe do a test mining session.

(Tried poclbm but it lists CPU and no GPUs, seems to also want drivers to work)

BTW I've been using Linux for years so I'm quite capable with it. I just haven't done any mining using LinuxCoin+GPUs before. I can mine on my Linux notebook though

I'm afraid linuxcoin's startup scripts are getting in the way. I'm releasing linuxcoin-final this afternoon that will fix your errors but if you wanted to get rolling with what you've already got. Load up linuxcoin and open a root shell and type.

Code:

rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf
aticonfig --initial --adapter=all
/etc/init.d/gdm stop

You will be met with a black screen with command prompt. in there type

Code:

sudo /etc/init.d/gdm start

Everything should work as anticipated now.

[shotgun]

You need to export the correct environment variables in your shell session.

Code:

export AMDAPPSDKSAMPLESROOT=/opt/AMD-APP-SDK-v2.4-lnx64
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/AMD-APP-SDK-v2.4-lnx64/lib/x86_64:
export PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/opt/phoenix-1.50_patched
export AMDAPPSDKROOT=/opt/AMD-APP-SDK-v2.4-lnx64
export HOME=/home/user
export LOGNAME=user
export DISPLAY=:0
export _=/usr/bin/env

[BkkCoins]

Thank you for the replies.
I already did a manual install using Ubuntu and managed to get it working here.
I still have a couple problems though but mostly it works.

poclbm is working fine and giving me 280MH @ 1020 / 69C (on 1x5830).

But with Phoenix (1.48) I never get anything but "Failed to Connect" messages.
So I'm trying to figure that out and maybe will wipe and re-install the Phoenix stuff.

I've read I should get a bit higher from Phoenix.

I also haven't figured out how to run aticonfig over ssh (remote admin). It always says it need X server running but I believe that is, and it works fine from the terminal on the system. I guess it needs some connection between the X server and the ssh session but don't yet know much about how that works.

[jayfitt]

Have you OC'd at all?

I just setup a 5830 and got about 280MH at first. I'm averaging 302MH now after a slight OC and underclocking memory. I'm using atitweak

[BkkCoins]

I'm not so lucky! Default clock gives me 236 now with Phoenix.

I was using 11.7 driver but it was using 100% cpu even with 1 GPU and was terrible with 2 GPUs.
I reverted to 11.5 and it doesn't use the CPU much at all.

I did some OC before with 11.7 and at 1000 it got about 285MH (poclbm, don't know phoenix).
My second card wouldn't get as high and with 11.7 running 2 GPUs caused them to slow down and "share" the work, so each only ran half speed. Terrible.

Once I reverted to 11.5 they both run full speed with Phoenix. But I cannot use aticonfig to change clocks. I wonder if 11.6 is better for that? Or maybe I need AMDOverdrive (so far haven't used that). I can't get the memory speed down to 300 with 11.5 either. Hmm. So I guess I should try 11.6 as I hear that doesn't have the 100% CPU problem.

I did get Phoenix running. It seemed like some script error in the ones given in the Natty tutorial I followed. Eventually I found it worked manually at the cmd line and so I updated the script to be same as manual. That's ok now.

Anyway, I'm still messing around with it. I'll install 11.6 and try atitweak as well.

(With 11.7 I used aticonfig to set 1030 MHz but it wasn't stable and soon locked up. One GPU seems to be ok at 1020 and the other locks soon even at 980).

UPDATE:
So with 11.6 and using atitweak I've set 950 engine, 300 mem. 75C + 70C. CPU 10%.
Getting 295 on each GPU now with Phoenix. Happy with that and will cook for a while before trying to see how much more I can get.

atitweak says my core voltage is 1.163. I thought default was a bit lower than that. I'd seen 1.083 figure around the forums.

BTW these are the Sapphire 5830 cards that were on sale from Newegg @ $129 couple weeks back.