Ricks-Lab GPU Utilities

rickslab-gpu-utils

A set of utilities for monitoring GPU performance and modifying control settings.

In order to get maximum capability of these utilities, you should be running with a kernel that provides support of the GPUs you have installed. If using AMD GPUs, installing the latest amdgpu driver or ROCm package, may provide additional capabilities. If you have Nvidia GPUs installed, you should have nvidia-smi installed in order for the utility reading of the cards to be possible. Writing to GPUs is currently only possible for compatible AMD GPUs on systems with appropriate kernel version with the AMD ppfeaturemask set to enable this capability as described here.

Installation

There are 4 methods of installation available and are summarized here: If you get a key expired message during apt update, try updating the project PUBLIC.KEY with the following command:

wget -q -O - https://debian.rickslab.com/PUBLIC.KEY | sudo gpg --dearmour -o /usr/share/keyrings/rickslab-agent.gpg

• Repository - This approach is recommended for those interested in contributing to the project or helping to troubleshoot an issue in realtime with the developer. This type of installation can exist alongside any of the other installation types.

  

• PyPI - Meant for users wanting to run the very latest version. All PATCH level versions are released here first. This installation method is also meant for users not on a Debian distribution.

  

• Rickslab.com Debian - Lags the PyPI release in order to assure robustness. May not include every PATCH version.

  

• Official Debian - Only MAJOR/MINOR releases. This works for releases of Ubuntu 22.04 or Bullseye 11.3 or later.

  

User Guide

For a detailed introduction, a community sourced User Guide is available. All tools are demonstrated and use cases are presented. Additions to the guide are welcome. Please submit a pull request with your suggested additions!

Commands

A summary of command line tools available in rickslab-gpu-utils follows. Additional details are available in man pages and the User Guide.

gpu-chk

This utility verifies if the user's environment is compatible with rickslab-gpu-utils.

gpu-ls

This utility displays most relevant parameters for installed and compatible GPUs. The default behavior is to list relevant parameters by GPU. OpenCL platform information is added when the --clinfo option is used. A brief listing of key parameters is available with the --short command line option. A simplified table of current GPU state is displayed with the --table option. The --no_fan can be used to ignore fan settings. The --pstate option can be used to output the p-state table for each GPU instead of the list of basic parameters. The --ppm option is used to output the table of available power/performance modes instead of basic parameters. The --features option is used to output the table of amdgpu pp features and their status instead of basic parameters. The --force_all results in an attempt to read all possible sensors, regardless of how the GPU is classified. The --raw will read all possible driver files and display with indicators of if a gpu-util key word and description is associated with each file along with its contents. The --verbose option will display progress and informational messages generated by the utilities. By default, output data is formatted and color coded, so the --no_markup option can be specified to get plain text.

gpu-mon

A utility to give the current state of all compatible GPUs. The default behavior is to continuously update a text based table in the current window until Ctrl-C is pressed. With the --gui option, a table of relevant parameters will be updated in a Gtk window. You can specify the delay between updates with the --sleep N option where N is an integer > zero that specifies the number of seconds to sleep between updates. The --no_fan option can be used to disable the reading and display of fan information. The --log option is used to write all monitor data to a psv log file. When writing to a log file, the utility will indicate this in red at the top of the window with a message that includes the log file name. The --plot will display a plot of critical GPU parameters which updates at the specified --sleep N interval. If you need both the plot and monitor displays, then using the --plot option is preferred over running both tools as a single read of the GPUs is used to update both displays. The --ltz option results in the use of local time instead of UTC. The --verbose option will display progress and informational messages generated by the utilities.

gpu-plot

A utility to continuously plot the trend of critical GPU parameters for all compatible GPUs. The --sleep N can be used to specify the update interval. The gpu-plot utility has 2 modes of operation. The default mode is to read the GPU driver details directly, which is useful as a standalone utility. The --stdin option causes gpu-plot to read GPU data from stdin. This is how gpu-mon produces the plot and can also be used to pipe your own data into the process. The --simlog option can be used with the --stdin when a monitor log file is piped as stdin. This is useful for troubleshooting and can be used to display saved log results. The --ltz option results in the use of local time instead of UTC. If you plan to run both gpu-plot and gpu-mon, then the --plot option of the gpu-mon utility should be used instead of both utilities in order reduce data reads by a factor of 2. The --verbose option will display progress and informational messages generated by the utilities.

gpu-pac

Program and Control compatible GPUs with this utility. By default, the commands to be written to a GPU are written to a bash file for the user to inspect and run. If you have confidence, the --execute_pac option can be used to execute and then delete the saved bash file. Since the GPU device files are writable only by root, sudo is used to execute commands in the bash file, as a result, you will be prompted for credentials in the terminal where you executed gpu-pac. The --no_fan option can be used to eliminate fan details from the utility. The --force_write option can be used to force all configuration parameters to be written to the GPU. The default behavior is to only write changes. The --verbose option will display progress and informational messages generated by the utilities.

New in Current Release - v3.9.0

• Optimized regex compile strategy for improved performance.
• Fixed issue with handling of alpha strings in kernel version.
• Fixed matplotlib deprecation issue.
• Enhanced gpu-ls --about output.
• Catch and report PermissionError for driver files.
• Prep for debian repository release.

Development Plans

• Add status read capabilities for Intel GPUs. Need someone to provide gpu-ls --raw --no_markup and clinfo output for Intel GPU.
• Add pac capabilities for Nvidia GPUs.

Known Issues

• Seems like over/under clocking capabilities are disabled for Workstation cards.
• Reset of Curve Points for Vega20 (Radeon VII) does not work.
• Some windows do not support scrolling or resize, making it unusable for lower resolution installations.
• I/O error when selecting CUSTOM ppm. Maybe it requires arguments to specify the custom configuration.
• Doesn't work well with Fiji ProDuo cards.
• P-state mask gets intermittently reset for GPU used as display output.
• Utility gpu-pac doesn't show what the current P-state mask is. Not sure if that can be read back.
• Utility gpu-pac fan speed setting results in actual fan speeds a bit different from setting and pac interface shows actual values instead of set values.

References

• Original inspiration for this project: Reddit
• Phoronix articles including these: PowerCap, HWMon
• Repositories: amdgpu-clocks, WattmanGTK, ROC-smi
• Relevant Kernel Details: Kernel Details
• PCI ID Decode Table: PCI IDs
• Radeon VII discussion on Reddit: Radeon VII OC
• Example use cases: wiki.archlinux.org

History

New in Previous Version - v3.8.4

• Fixed GpuType and GpuVendor dictionary initialization as described in update to issue 139.
• Fixed skip list for APU which incorrectly included memory parameters.
• Fixed matplotlib 3.5.* compatibility issues.

New in Previous Release - v3.8.3

• Implementation of gpu-pac capability for VDDGFX Offset mode type of AMD GPUs. Does not seem to work for negative values.
• Improvements to code including improved use of Enum objects as dictionary keys.
• Improved check for Gtk import errors.
• Fixed bug 147, ignore invalid data read from GPU.

New in Previous Release - v3.8.2

• Utility gpu-mon will default to text format when Gtk is not available.

New in Previous Release - v3.8.0

• Prep for next official Debian release.

New in Previous Release - v3.7.8

• Improved read/write status summary.
• Made monitor window not resizable.
• Ignore 'Non-VGA' PCIe entries.
• Fixed AMD/ATI regex.
• Changed INTEL color to blue and other to magenta.

New in Previous Release - v3.7.7

• Add check of rickslab public key in apt-key. Users should follow new protocol of adding it to a shared keyring as described in UsersGuide. Apt-key is being deprecated and is just a better practice to use a shared keyring.

New in Previous Release - v3.7.6

• Update installation guide due to deprecation of apt-key.
• Fixed inconsistency in table/plot item formats.

New in Previous Release - v3.7.5

• Fixed placement of read P-state data in gpu-ls for complete P-state details in the output.
• Improved implementation of Vddc Range for CurvePts type AMD GPU.
• Optimized by GPU type skip lists.
• Disable clock and voltage range reading/displaying when pp_od_clk_voltage reading is not possible.

New in Previous Release - v3.7.4

• Documentation updates.
• Code clean up, simplification, and optimization.
• Moved high level requirement definitions to init file, modify setup.py and env checks to use these.
• Fixed hash-bang statements across project to use python as specified in env.

New in Previous Release - v3.7.3

• Improved Icon file management.
• Improved compute status logic. Add Unknown status for when clinfo is not available.
• Do not display invalid energy reading in plot.
• Resolved linter issues.
• Code simplification.
• Better organized credits.

New in Previous Release - v3.7.2

• Implemented long version of gpu-ls, which will display all information from ppm, pstate, features, and clinfo.
• Improved gpu-ls argument parsing.
• Various code optimizations.

New in Previous Release - v3.7.1

• Fixed an issue created just as I released. Omitted testing on my APU system.

New in Previous Release - v3.7.0

• Fixed error in calculating power when invalid sensor data is returned.
• Check for OSError when reading from all sensor files. Disable sensor reading on error.
• Check for system type. Only systemD is fully supported. Issues in reading sockets in systemV are handled.
• Added read of Power DPM State for AMD GPUs.
• On read error, make read for the parameter False instead of indicating card is not readable.
• Add gpu-ls option --force_all to attempt to read all relevant sensors, regardless of card classification.
• Improve error message handling. Minor (expected) errors are suppressed unless --verbose is specified. GPU output will indicate all sensors that were disabled due to read errors.
• Implemented gpu-ls option --raw to give a summary view of the content of all available driver files.
• Enable gpu-plot and gpu-mon capability to include GPUs with incomplete driver coverage.
• Allow plain text instead of formatted/color coded output with the --no_markup option.
• Use pp_dpm_*clk files as a source of P-state information.
• Separate lists to manage skipped and disabled parameters for easier user interpretation.

New in Previous Release - v3.6.2

• Minor User Guide updates.
• Add /usr/share/doc/pci.ids to possible locations of pci decode file.
• Modify to handle pci addresses that include domain.

New in Previous Release - v3.6.1

• Update logger to output hex version of amdfeaturemask value.
• Improve reading/displaying of AMD GPUs when amdfeaturemask is not set to write.

New in Previous Release - v3.6.0

• Rewrite of the installation guide and simplification of the readme.
• Roll-up all v3.5.x patches into a new minor revision release.

New in Previous Release - v3.5.10

• Set Neon as a validated distribution.
• Check all possible package readers for undefined distribution.

New in Previous Release - v3.5.9

• Optimize gpu-mon table size.
• Toggle button color to match enable/disable status of plot line.
• When install type is repository, force use of repository gpu-plot from gpu-mon.

New in Previous Release - v3.5.8

• Fixed bug in determining AMD GPU card type. Now it properly identifies APU and Legacy types.

New in Previous Release - v3.5.7

• More robust determination of install type and display this with --about and in logger.
• Implementation of scroll within PAC window.
• Fixed plot crash for invalid ticker increment.
• Code robustness improvements with more typing for class variables.

New in Previous Release - v3.5.6

• Fixed issue in reading AMD FeatureMask for Kernel 5.11

New in Previous Release - v3.5.5

• Include debian release package.
• Check gtk initialization for errors and handle nicely.
• Use logger to output plot exceptions.
• Check number of compatible and readable GPUs at utility start.
• Minor User Guide and man page improvements.
• Use minimal python packages in requirements.

New in Previous Release - v3.5.0

• Utilities now include reading of NV GPUs with full gpu-ls, gpu-mon, and gpu-plot support!
• Update name from amdgpu-utils to rickslab-gpu-utils.
• Improved PyPI packaging.
• Updated User Guide to cover latest features and capabilities.
• Improved robustness of NV read by validating sensor support for each query item the first time read. This will assure functionality on older model GPUs.
• Fixed issue in setting display model name for NV GPUs.
• Improved how lack of voltage readings for NV is handled in the utilities.
• Fixed an issue in assessing compute capability when GPUs of multiple vendors are installed.

New in Previous Release - v3.3.14

• Display card path details in logger whenever card path exists.
• Implemented read capabilities for Nvidia. Now supported by all utilities except pac.
• Added APU type and tuned parameters read/displayed for AMD APU integrated GPU.
• Read generic pcie sensors for all types of GPUs.
• Improved lspci search by using a no-shell call and using compiled regex.
• Implement PyPI package for easy installation.
• More robust handling of missing Icon and PCIID files.

New in Previous Release - v3.2.0

• Fixed CRITICAL issue where Zero fan speed could be written when invalid fan speed was read from the GPU.
• Fixed issue in reading pciid file in Gentoo (@CH3CN).
• Modified setup to indicate minimum instead of absolute package versions (@smoe).
• Modified requirements to include min/max package versions for major packages.
• Fixed crash for missing pci-ids file and add location for Arch Linux (@berturion).
• Fixed a crash in amdgpu-pac when no fan details could be read (laptop GPU).
• Fixed deprecation warnings for several property setting functions. Consolidated all property setting to a single function in a new module, and ignore warnings for those that are deprecated. All deprecated actions are marked with FIXME in GPUgui.py.
• Replaced deprecated set properties statement for colors with css formatting.
• Implemented a more robust string format of datetime to address datetime conversion for pandas in some installations.
• Implemented dubug logging across the project. Activated with --debug option and output saved to a .log file.
• Updated color scheme of Gtk applications to work in Ubuntu 20.04. Unified color scheme across all utilities.
• Additional memory parameters added to utilities.
• Read ID information for all GPUs and attempt to decode GPU name. For cards with no card path entry, determine system device path and use for reading ID. Report system device path in amdgpu-ls. Add amdgpu-ls --short report to give brief description of all installed GPUs.

New in Previous Release - v3.0.0

• Style and code robustness improvements
• Deprecated amdgpu-pciid and removed all related code.
• Complete rewrite based on benchMT learning. Simplified code with ObjDict for GpuItem parameters and use of class variables for generic behavior parameters.
• Use lspci as the starting point for developing GPU list and classify by vendor, readability, writability, and compute capability. Build in potential to be generic GPU util, instead of AMD focused.
• Test for readability and writability of all GPUs and apply utilities as appropriate.
• Add assessment of compute capability.
• Eliminated the use of lshw to determine driver compatibility and display of driver details is now informational with no impact on the utilities.
• Add p-state masking capability for Type 2 GPUs.
• Optimized pac writing to GPUs.

New in Previous Release - v2.7.0

• Initial release of man pages
• Modifications to work with distribution installation
• Use system pci.ids file and make amdgpu-pciid obsolete
• Update setup.py file for successful installation.

New in Previous Release - v2.6.0

• PEP8 style modifications
• Fixed a bug in monitor display.
• Implement requirements file for with and without a venv.
• Found and fixed a few minor bugs.
• Fixed issue with amdgpu-plot becoming corrupt over time.
• Implemented clean shutdown of monitor and better buffering to plot. This could have caused in problems in systems with many GPUs.

New in Previous Release - v2.5.2

• Some preparation work for Debian package (@smoe).
• Added --ltz option to use local times instead of UTC for logging and plot data.
• Added 0xfffd7fff to valid amdgpu.ppfeaturemask values (@pastaq).
• Updates to User Guide to include instructions to apply PAC conditions on startup (@csecht).

New in Previous Release - v2.5.1

• Fixed a compatibility issue with matplotlib 3.x. Converted time string to a datetime object.
• Display version information for pandas, matplotlib, and numpy with the --about option for amdgpu-plot

New in Previous Release - v2.5.0

• Implemented the --plot option for amdgpu-monitor. This will display plots of critical GPU parameters that update at an interval defined by the --sleep N option.
• Errors in reading non-critical parameters will now show a warning the first time and are disabled for future reads.
• Fixed a bug in implementation of compatibility checks and improved usage of try/except.

New in Previous Release - v2.4.0

• Implemented amdgpu-pac feature for type 2 Freq/Voltage controlled GPUs, which includes the Radeon VII.
• Implemented the amdgpu-pac --force_write option, which writes all configuration parameters to the GPU, even if unchanged. The default behavior is changed to now only write changed configuration parameters.
• Indicate number of changes to be written by PAC, and if no changes, don't execute bash file. Display execute complete message in terminal, and update messages in PAC message box.
• Implemented a new GPU type 0, which represent some older cards whose p-states can not be changed.
• Tuned amdgpu-pac window format.

New in Previous Release - v2.3.1

• Fixed and improved Python/Kernel compatibility checks.
• Added Python2 compatible utility to check amdgpu-utils compatibility.
• Fixed confusing mode/level fileptr names.
• Removed CUSTOM PPM mode until I figure out syntax.
• Implemented classification of card type based on how it implements frequency/voltage control. This is reported by amdgpu-ls and alters the behavior of both amdgpu-pac and amdgpu-monitor.
• Changed dpkg error to a warning to handle custom driver installs.
• Initial User Guide - Need contributors!

New in Previous Release - v2.3.0

• Implemented a message box in amdgpu-pac to indicate details of PAC execution and indicate if sudo is pending credential entry.
• Implement more robust classification of card compatibility and only use compatible GPUs in the utilities.
• Official release of amdgpu-pciid which updates a local list of GPU names from the official pci.ids website.
• Optimized refresh of data by moving static items to a different function and only read those that are dynamic.
• Power Cap and Fan parameters can be reset by setting to -1 in the amdgpu-pac interface.
• Initial basic functionality for Radeon VII GPU!

New in Previous Release - v2.2.0

• Major bug fix in the way HWMON directory was determined. This fixes an issue in not seeing sensor files correctly when a some other card is resident in a PCIe slot.
• Implemented logging option --log for amdgpu-monitor. A red indicator will indicate active logging and the target filename.
• Implemented energy meter in amdgpu-monitor.
• Implemented the ability to check the GPU extracted ID in a pci.ids file for correct model name. Implemented a function to extract only AMD information for the pci.ids file and store in the file amd_pci_id.txt which is included in this distribution.
• Optimized long, short, and decoded GPU model names.
• Alpha release of a utility to update device decode data from the pci.ids website.

New in Previous Release - v2.1.0

• Significant bug fixes and error proofing. Added messages to stderr for missing driver related files.
• Added fan monitor and control features.
• Implemented --no_fan option across all tools. This eliminates the reading and display of fan parameters and useful for those who have installed GPU waterblocks.
• Implemented P-state masking, which limits available P-states to those specified. Useful for power management.
• Fixed implementation of global variables that broke with implementation of modules in library.
• Added more validation checks before writing parameters to cards.

New in Previous Release - v2.0.0

• Many bug fixes!
• First release of amdgpu-pac.
• Add check of amdgpu driver in the check of environment for all utilities. Add display of amdgpu driver version.
• Split list functions of the original amdgpu-monitor into amdgpu-ls.
• Added --clinfo option to amdgpu-ls which will list openCL platform details for each GPU.
• Added --ppm option to amdgpu-ls which will display the table of available power/performance modes available for each GPU.
• Error messages are now output to stderr instead stdout.
• Added power cap and power/performance mode to the monitor utilities. I have also included them in the amdgpu-ls display in addtion to the power cap limits.

New in Previous Release - v1.1.0

• Added --pstates feature to display table of p-states instead of GPU details.
• Added more error checking and exit if no compatible AMD GPUs are found.

New in Previous Release - v1.0.0

• Completed implementation of the GPU Monitor tool.