Installing 3DS CST Microwave Studio Suite Distributed Computing Node on Ubunntu
Tested on: Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS nvidia version 470
check if you see your GPUs:
lspci | grep -i nvidia
first try to remove old versions
sudo apt-get purge *nvidia*
sudo apt autoremove
you can reboot here once, because if there is an old version in the memory and if you run nvidia-smi you will get:
Failed to initialize NVML: Driver/library version mismatch
if you have it run
nvidia-detector
to see which shows the latest version. This will be installed then. i.e.:
sudo apt install nvidia-driver-XXX
if all goes well, you can run:
nvidia-smi
you should see all the GPUs there. Now comes the coda toolkit
sudo apt install nvidia-cuda-toolkit
You can just download the ZIP version for the Linux64 from 3DS website according to your license. Go step by step, and answer questions. It will ask you which component to install. You need the DC Controller and Solver Server, but installing the GUI is of no harm. Many of the reported missing libraries are get actually installed by the GUI. The components can be installed by comma separated values, like 1,2,4. It is recommended to use an alternative user who has the permissions to run and stop the computing node. After successful installation you have:
*** Installation successful ***
The installation completed successfully without any warnings or errors.
then run the check script:
/opt/cst/CST_Studio_Suite_2021/cst_system_check
if you see a missing library it could be intalled. In my case it was the dummy frame buffer:
sudo apt-get install -y xvfb
You can easily update the installation using service packs:
sudo /opt/cst/CST_Studio_Suite_2021/update_with_supfile CST_S2_v2021_LIN_SP5_2020-09-08_2021-06-28.sup
After you are finished, you should unmount /mnt, but actually a reboot is much better. The CST DC node starts automatically. You can use the to stop/start/restart the DC-services, e.g.:
/etc/init.d/lsb-cst-maincontroller start
Check number of available GPU cards:
nvidia-smi -L
you can check if CST sees your GPUs:
/opt/cst/CST_STUDIO_SUITE_XXXX/LinuxAMD64/CSTHardwareInfo_AMD64
you can perform a system check:
/opt/cst/CST_STUDIO_SUITE_XXXX/cst_system_check
Disable error correction code for optimal performance:
sudo nvidia-smi -i <CARD Number> -e 0
you can see the current calculation jobs:
/opt/cst/CST_STUDIO_SUITE_2018/LinuxAMD64/CSTDCMainControl_AMD64
you can use htop to see the CPU usage. and also for GPU usage:
watch -n 0.5 nvidia-smi
nvidia-smi -q -g 0 -d UTILIZATION -l
CST GUI and related services such as update seem to have problems running whenever IPv6 is deactivated. Reason is unknown at the moment.
For uninstalling CST, you have to run the specified uninstaller in:
/opt/cst/CST_STUDIO_SUITE_2018/Uninstall\ CST_STUDIO_SUITE_2018/Uninstall\ CST_STUDIO_SUITE_2018
The uninstaller may not work if you have done ssh -X. So you may repeat without X. If this does not work, then just remove the folder manually. But then you also need to remove this file:
/var/.com.zerog.registry.xml
Thx, I will try it.