2 of 4 GPUs not recognized in Ubuntu 11.04...

[Strophon]

So I followed this guide to installing the mining software onto 11.04. Everything loaded OK, or appeared to. But once it was all done, neither aticonfig nor poclbm recognized two of my four 5850s. In particular, I've got two on x1-x16 risers and two on x16-x16 risers; the two on the x16-x16 risers are the ones NOT being recognized (which is puzzling to me). I'm not running any dummy plugs, but I read that they aren't necessary on Linux; is this true?

Anyone have any idea why this might be happening, or how to fix it?

Also, how the hell does one become an "established member"? I'm really pretty annoyed that I couldn't post in the thread for the guide and ask for help there.

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[skidz7]

So I followed this guide to installing the mining software onto 11.04. Everything loaded OK, or appeared to.

Quick question on that...the instructions you reference have this step:

svn checkout http://svn.json-rpc.org/trunk/python-jsonrpc

Which I was never able to get to work.  Did you find that elsewhere?

[Strophon]

Yes. See here: http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=7514.msg366311#msg366311

[jh1523]

Some motherboards do funny things with slots that (normally without risers) can't be populated at the same time because of physical incompatibilities, such as disable one slot when the other one is in use. Check in your motherboard's manual that this isn't one of those cases.

If that's not it, remove the GPUs that are detected and leave the ones that aren't in; post back what happens then.

[Bert]

I have seen something similar happen with one of my motherboard. It can see 3 out of 4 graphics cards. Then I read the motherboard manual and it says that the motherboard will disable the furthest slot from the CPU (slot 8 ), if 3+ PCIe-16 graphics cards are installed in any of the first 6 slots (slot 7 is PCI). I could shuffle 3 cards into any of the slots and it would work, but adding the 4th and it would disable the last slot. If I had used PCIe risers it should work for me, but I never bothered. Three out of four ain't bad, I just stuck the other card into a different machine.

P.S. You are right that you don't need dummy plugs under Linux (Or under Windows since Catalyst 11.7).

EDIT: There was one other thing about my motherboard and that was that it had little toggle switches to enable/disable PCIe slots, to help in debugging problems, and somehow two of these got flipped to disable. That took me a few hours to notice.

[Strophon]

jh1523:

So I looked at the manual, and it says that: "PCIE3 slot will be disabled when PCIE4 slot is installed." Thing of it is, PCIE3 slot is an x1 slot--one of the ones that works. PCIE4 is an x16 slot, which doesn't work. Huh?

Anyway, the issue has changed. Now all 4 show up in aticonfig, but I can only get temps/clock speeds for 2 of them, and only those 2 show up in poclbm. I've got 2 cards mining now so as to at least do some, but I'd really like to get the others going. All help is appreciated, and thanks to those who have posted so far.

[jh1523]

Which motherboard do you have, which cards are in each slot and which of those show up where?

[Strophon]

I'm running an Nforce 570SLIT-A v5.1 motherboard. There are four 5850s, on riser cables as I said in first post. The two that are working (I can tell because they get hot) are the ones on the x1-x16 risers. These show up in poclbm and aticonfig, and aticonfig shows temps and clocks for both of them. The other two, both on x16-x16 risers, appear under aticonfig --lsa but I can't see clock speeds or temps for them, and they don't show up in poclbm.

[jh1523]

What happens when you remove the cards plugged in the x1 slots?

[Strophon]

With no cards in the x1-x16 slots, I can't get any display, even though it appeared that the computer was functional (though I have no way of knowing that for certain without the display). Just moved the power arrangement around to see if that had any effect. While the power is distributed more properly now, I still have the same situation: only two cards read by poclbm.

[Bert]

These show up in poclbm and aticonfig, and aticonfig shows temps and clocks for both of them. The other two, both on x16-x16 risers, appear under aticonfig --lsa but I can't see clock speeds or temps for them, and they don't show up in poclbm.

Have you tried reinstalling/reinitializing the drivers ?

[Strophon]

Well, unfortunately the rig is set up at school, and I'm about to leave for home, so I want to leave it mining. As such, and because there may also be difficulties with booting, I don't want to risk reboots at this point. So I'll be back in two weeks and I'll work on it then. I'm thinking this is probably a mobo issue, and the booting issues mean the hdd is suspect too.

tl;dr I'm going to just leave it running at half capacity for two weeks until I get back. (I have someone in town who can come and get it back up if it goes down.)