So, this could be a very good week or very bad. My old desktop started to behave very annoyingly, freezing every ten minutes is not the ideal scenario. Happily, I had a spare CPU I was using for Windows applications only, so I decided to take it. Because I have some spare AMD Radeon R9 290 GPUs, I decided to install one of them.
Again, I have been getting into photography so again, processing RAW files with the CPU is not a good idea. Not even if your desktop has twelve cores. So I had to figure out a way to make it work.
As I had described in the article where I made my discrete NVIDIA work with Darktable, this software needs IMAGE support. So, the situation is the following:
- only the proprietary AMDGPU PRO module offers IMAGE support, so no Radeon module.
- the AMDGPU PRO requires X.Org 1.1xx, and Mageia 7 comes with X.Org 1.20.x
Here is what I did to make it work.
Configure X.org to use AMD GPU
The first step I did was to configure my X.Org to use the open-source AMD PRO module. Because my AMD R9 290 is not a very new card, Mageía would offer the old flgrx module. Instead, I selected another card that showed the amdgpu module. My /etc/X11/xorg.conf file looks as follows:
It is important to use the amdgpu module.
# File generated by XFdrake (rev 262502)
# **********************************************************************
# Refer to the xorg.conf man page for details about the format of
# this file.
# **********************************************************************
Section "ServerFlags"
AllowMouseOpenFail # allows the server to start up even if the mouse does not work
Option "DontZap" "False" # disable <Ctrl><Alt><BS> (server abort)
#DontZoom # disable <Ctrl><Alt><KP_+>/<KP_-> (resolution switching)
EndSection
Section "Module"
Load "v4l" # Video for Linux
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "monitor1"
VendorName "Plug'n Play"
ModelName "LG ULTRAWIDE"
HorizSync 30-90
VertRefresh 56-75
# Monitor supported modeline (75.0 Hz vsync, 83.9 kHz hsync, ratio 2.37, 81 dpi)
ModeLine "2560x1080" 228.25 2560 2608 2640 2720 1080 1083 1093 1119 -hsync +vsync
# Monitor preferred modeline (60.0 Hz vsync, 66.6 kHz hsync, ratio 2.37, 81 dpi)
ModeLine "2560x1080" 181.25 2560 2608 2640 2720 1080 1083 1093 1111 -hsync +vsync
# Apple iMac modes
ModeLine "1024x768" 78.525 1024 1049 1145 1312 768 769 772 800 +hsync +vsync
ModeLine "800x600" 62.357 800 821 901 1040 600 601 604 632 +hsync +vsync
ModeLine "640x480" 49.886 640 661 725 832 480 481 484 514 +hsync +vsync
# Apple monitors tend to do 832x624
ModeLine "832x624" 57 832 876 940 1152 624 625 628 667 -hsync -vsync
# Apple PowerBook G3
ModeLine "800x600" 100 800 816 824 840 600 616 624 640 -hsync -vsync
# Apple TI Powerbook
ModeLine "1152x768" 78.741 1152 1173 1269 1440 768 769 772 800 +vsync +vsync
# Pismo Firewire G3
ModeLine "1024x768" 65 1024 1032 1176 1344 768 771 777 806 -hsync -vsync
# iBook2
ModeLine "1024x768" 65 1024 1048 1184 1344 768 771 777 806 -hsync -vsync
# 17" Apple Studio Display
ModeLine "1024x768" 112.62 1024 1076 1248 1420 768 768 780 808 +hsync +vsync
# HiRes Apple Studio Display
ModeLine "1280x1024" 135 1280 1288 1392 1664 1024 1027 1030 1064
# Another variation
ModeLine "1280x1024" 134.989 1280 1317 1429 1688 1024 1025 1028 1066 +hsync +vsync
# TV fullscreen mode or DVD fullscreen output.
# 768x576 @ 79 Hz, 50 kHz hsync
ModeLine "768x576" 50.00 768 832 846 1000 576 590 595 630
# 768x576 @ 100 Hz, 61.6 kHz hsync
ModeLine "768x576" 63.07 768 800 960 1024 576 578 590 616
EndSection
Section "Device"
Identifier "device1"
BoardName "ATI Volcanic Islands and later (amdgpu/fglrx)"
Driver "amdgpu"
Option "DPMS"
Option "TearFree" "true"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "screen1"
Device "device1"
Monitor "monitor1"
DefaultColorDepth 24
EndSection
Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "layout1"
Screen "screen1"
EndSectionAlso, I added the file /etc/modprobe.d/amd.conf with the following content:
blacklist radeon
options amdgpu cik_support=1
options amdgpu si_support=1
options radeon cik_support=0
options radeon si_support=0
After that, I did a depmod -a and rebuilt the image with Dracut. I made sure the nokmsboot option was taken off the grub options. I restarted and that was it!, the GPU was working but Darktable was still not able to use the GPU for processing.
Install the AMDGPU PRO Modules
I went to the AMD website and downloaded the drivers of the RX 480 for CentOS 8. The website gave me a tarball and within there were a lot of RPMs. I extracted those RPMs.
After a long fail and try, I found that by installing only these RPMs it was enough:
- opencl-orca-amdgpu-pro-icd-20.30-1109583.el8
- libgl-amdgpu-pro-ext-20.30-1109583.el8
- libgl-amdgpu-pro-20.30-1109583.el8
- libdrm-amdgpu-2.4.100-1109583.el8
- libegl-amdgpu-pro-20.30-1109583.el8
- libgles-amdgpu-pro-20.30-1109583.el8
- libdrm-amdgpu-common-1.0.0-1109583.el8
- clinfo-amdgpu-pro-20.30-1109583.el8
- ocl-icd-amdgpu-pro-20.30-1109583.el8
- opencl-amdgpu-pro-20.30-1109583.el8
Finding what RPM's to install and which ones not to took me a few hours.
After that, X didn't start. I found that one of these RPMs (not sure which one) installed the /etc/ld.conf.so.d/10-amdgpu-pro-x86_64.conf with the following content:
/opt/amdgpu-pro/lib64
So I removed that file and run ldconfig. X started to run again, but Darktable still didn't work properly.
Tell X.Org to use the AMDGPU PRO
This was an easy one, I just used the LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/amdgpu-pro/lib64, for example:
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/amdgpu-pro/lib64 darktable-cltest -d opencl
And I saw a successful test. I just edited the menu entry in my KDE environment and that was it.
Good luck!
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