2
$\begingroup$

I followed the answer on this question for blender 2.7x, but I still don't see the option to enable GPU rendering for cycles, as shown in this screenshot:

Blender 2.8 System Preferences

I'm using an RX 560 on Debian 11

  • contrib non-free enabled in my sources.list
  • CYCLES_OPENCL_SPLIT_KERNEL_TEST=1 inside /etc/environment
  • ocl-icd-opencl-dev installed

How do I enable GPU Cycles rendering?

Improve this question
$\endgroup$
2
  • $\begingroup$ Did u use blender form main website not that form debian repository ? $\endgroup$
    – MAX.RAY
    Commented Sep 8, 2019 at 23:57
  • $\begingroup$ I'm using the one from the debian repos. I just tried the blender build from the main website and it's the same thing $\endgroup$
    – MrWm
    Commented Sep 9, 2019 at 1:42

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
2
$\begingroup$

To enable opencl on linux working with blender, the only way is to install the official amd-pro driver, or, as I did, only the opencl part. Unfortunately, the only Linux distro officially supported are: RHEL 8.0 / CentOS 8.0 and 7 Ubuntu 18.04.3 (and derivative) (so, all the kubuntu, xubuntu, lubuntu etc and mint) SLED/SLES 15 SP1 (and opensuse leap)

So, with Debian You are in a bad spot, unless You play around quite a bit

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
3
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ or manjaro - arch , just installing the amd-gpu opencl package from aur repositories. So far, for me, the easiest solution to have new software version and everything running without much hassle $\endgroup$
    – claudio castelli
    Commented Sep 25, 2019 at 12:25
  • $\begingroup$ I tried playing around with the amd-pro driver, but amdgpu-dkms fails to compile on the 5.2 kernel with Debian. :( $\endgroup$
    – MrWm
    Commented Oct 1, 2019 at 19:32
  • $\begingroup$ I figured out how to install amdgpu-pro on Debian! I'll post an followup answer shortly. $\endgroup$
    – MrWm
    Commented Oct 5, 2019 at 22:48
0
$\begingroup$

The amdgpu-dkms fails to compile with the (5.2) kernel in Debian testing, but works with the (4.19) kernel in stable. In order to install the AMD pro driver, a kernel downgrade would be necessary.

Downgrade the current kernel to the kernel available in stable

Running sudo apt edit-sources

Add the stable repository:

deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ stable main contrib non-free

Only apt pin the kernel to stable

To prevent other packages downgrading to stable, we will only pin the kernel to the stable branch.

Create a new file /etc/apt/preferences.d/kernel with:

Package: linux-image-amd64
Pin: release a=stable
Pin-Priority: 950

Package: linux-headers-amd64
Pin: release a=stable
Pin-Priority: 950

and /etc/apt/preferences.d/apt-branches with:

Package: *
Pin: release a=sid
Pin-Priority: 700

Package: *
Pin: release a=testing
Pin-Priority: 650

Package: *
Pin: release a=stable
Pin-Priority: 600

For Debian to recognize the repositories, we will need to refresh the package list: 

sudo apt update

Once this is done, the kernel and headers in stable can be installed:

sudo apt install linux-image-amd64/stable linux-headers-amd64/stable

Installing the AMD-Pro driver

Download the proprietary AMD-Pro driver here.

Unpack the downloaded driver

cd ~/Downloads
tar -Jxvf amdgpu-pro-YY.XX-NNNNNN.tar.xz
cd ~/Downloads/amdgpu-pro-YY.XX-NNNNNN

Install the AMD-Pro driver by running to provided script:

./amdgpu-pro-install -y --opencl=pal,legacy

Note: The command above installs the base kernel and all the Pro Components. See the documentation here for installing only parts of the AMD-Pro driver.

After installing the AMD-Pro driver, restart blender and the option for OpenCL rendering with the GPU should be available in the user preferences.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .