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I have Ubuntu 14.04.5 LTS, and RX480 cards.

I cannot get an OPENCL driver installed. Whenever I do the install it says:

Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 amdgpu-pro : Depends: libvdpau-amdgpu-pro but it is not going to be installed
 amdgpu-pro-lib32 : Depends: libvdpau-amdgpu-pro:i386 but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

I tried installing libvdpau-amdgpu-pro but it requires a different version of some packages that seem to be from after Ubuntu 14.04.5, and I don't know how to get those installed. I think this is related to the kernel being from the 16.04 release.

sudo apt-get install libvdpau-amdgpu-pro
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 libvdpau-amdgpu-pro : Depends: libstdc++6 (>= 5.2) but 4.8.4-2ubuntu1~14.04.3 is to be installed
                       Depends: libtinfo5 (>= 6) but 5.9+20140118-1ubuntu1 is to be installed
                       Depends: libvdpau1 (>= 1.1) but 0.7-1ubuntu0.1 is to be installed or
                                libvdpau1-amdgpu-pro but it is not installable
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

I assume there is some way to get those installed but I don't know how.

I have read the excellent answer on Ubuntu 14.04.5/16.04/16.10 and AMD graphics but it does not apply to my question, and I wonder if anyone has threaded this needle.

I need to be on 14.04 for a compatibility issue unrelated to the RX480, so I can't go to the 16.04 release (one of the suggestions in that answer) (and anyway unfortunately the fglrx driver doesn't seem to work with the RX480 and so downgrading to 14.04.4 is not a workable solution.)

(FYI, I tried installing the adapter on a 16.04 box and it works fine)

Any help greatly appreciated.

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Bruce0
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1 Answers1

2

Answering my own question. I didn't get Oibaf to work, but here is what I have learned and done to solve my problem.

1) I found that 16.04 (and probably 14.04.5) have a compatibility issue with RX480 and amdgpu-pro version 16.50 and 16.60 but only on SOME programs that try to use openCL. I experienced the problem as hangs, but it is reported to be a problem with the upgraded openCL compiler (openCL ICD?) in 16.50. I don't know the source of that issue but I did find out that using the 16.40 version of amdgpu-pro solved it.

It is possible to install 16.50 and then downgrade the ICD component to 16.40, allowing you to get the stability and features of the newer driver but use the old ICD. Instructions for this are here - thanks to the folks over at genesis mining

2) The clocking and temperature control on the AMD cards works much better on the kernel 4.9 (which I upgraded to). Still cannot reset a gpu hung in an openCL call (openCL kernel) without powering off the machine, but most other stuff works at least some of the time without hanging (fan changes always work, clock changes sometimes work, memory clock changes usually work, monitoring tempurature and fan always works.)

3) I upgraded the kernel to 4.9 version (procedures for this on ubuntu are easy and documented in various sites). I did this to get the GPU reset working. However in my case it did not fix the GPU reset, but did make clocking changes function better without as many hangs.

In summary: Running ubuntu 16.04 running the amdgpu-pro 16.50 drivers with the amdgpu-pro 16.40 openCL compiler I am up and running very stable now.

Finding a copy of the 16.40 drivers is difficult, because AMD has stopped allowing access to old drivers on their website (this appears to be an oversight and not intentional, because compatibility issues often arrive with device drivers). And the AMD license does not allow the drivers to be shared, so they are not posted liberally around on the net. However you can get them from AMD if you search for amdgpu-pro 16.40 release notes, and click the link in the release notes. And they are also available from a french site called toutlesdrivers (really!).

Bruce0
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