CUDA Runtime API error 38: no CUDA-capable device is detected

Question

The Situation

I have a 2 gpu server (Ubuntu 12.04) where I switched a Tesla C1060 with a GTX 670. Than I installed CUDA 5.0 over the 4.2. Afterwards I compiled all examples execpt for simpleMPI without error. But when I run ./devicequery I get following error message:

foo@bar-serv2:~/NVIDIA_CUDA-5.0_Samples/bin/linux/release$ ./deviceQuery
./deviceQuery Starting...

 CUDA Device Query (Runtime API) version (CUDART static linking)

cudaGetDeviceCount returned 38
-> no CUDA-capable device is detected

What I have tried

To solve this I tried all of the thinks recommended by CUDA-capable device, but to no avail:

• /dev/nvidia* is there and the permissions are 666 (crw-rw-rw-) and owner root:root

   foo@bar-serv2:/dev$ ls -l nvidia*
   crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 195,   0 Oct 24 18:51 nvidia0
   crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 195,   1 Oct 24 18:51 nvidia1
   crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 195, 255 Oct 24 18:50 nvidiactl
  

• I tried executing the code with sudo

• CUDA 5.0 installs driver and libraries at the same time

PS here is lspci | grep -i nvidia:

foo@bar-serv2:/dev$ lspci | grep -i nvidia
03:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GK104 [GeForce GTX 670] (rev a1)
03:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation GK104 HDMI Audio Controller (rev a1)
04:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation G94 [Quadro FX 1800] (rev a1)

[update]

foo@bar-serv2:~/NVIDIA_CUDA-5.0_Samples/bin/linux/release$  nvidia-smi -a
NVIDIA: API mismatch: the NVIDIA kernel module has version 295.59,
but this NVIDIA driver component has version 304.54.  Please make
sure that the kernel module and all NVIDIA driver components
have the same version.
Failed to initialize NVML: Unknown Error

How could that be, if I use the CUDA 5.0 installer to install driver and libs at the same time. Could the old 4.2 version, that is still lying around mess things up?

Answer 1

I came across this issue, and running

nvidia-smi

informed me of an API mismatch. The problem was that my Linux distro had installed updates that required a system restart, so restarting resolved the issue.

Answer 2

See this stack overflow question Installing cuda 5 samples in Ubuntu 12.10.

1. Ubuntu 12 is not a supported Linux distro (yet). For reference see CUDA 5.0 Toolkit Release Notes And Errata

   ** Distributions Currently Supported

   Distribution       32 64  Kernel                 GCC         GLIBC        
   -----------------  -- --  ---------------------  ----------  -------------
   Fedora 16          X  X   3.1.0-7.fc16           4.6.2       2.14.90      
   ICC Compiler 12.1     X                                                   
   OpenSUSE 12.1         X   3.1.0-1.2-desktop      4.6.2       2.14.1       
   Red Hat RHEL 6.x      X   2.6.32-131.0.15.el6    4.4.5       2.12         
   Red Hat RHEL 5.5+     X   2.6.18-238.el5         4.1.2       2.5          
   SUSE SLES 11 SP2      X   3.0.13-0.27-pae        4.3.4       2.11.3       
   SUSE SLES 11.1     X  X   2.6.32.12-0.7-pae      4.3.4       2.11.1       
   Ubuntu 11.10       X  X   3.0.0-19-generic-pae   4.6.1       2.13         
   Ubuntu 10.04       X  X   2.6.35-23-generic      4.4.5       2.12.1    
   

2. If you want to do it run on Ubuntu 12 anyway then see answer of rpardo. It looks like this distro instead of installing 64 bit libraries to /usr/lib64 installs them to /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/

I'd suggest searching for all instances of libcuda.so and libnvidia-ml.so on the system. Since the driver doesn't support this distro it might have installed libraries to a path that is not pointed by LD_LIBRARY_PATH. Then move the libraries around and/or change the LD_LIBRARY_PATH to point to this location (it should be the first path on the left). Then retry nvidia-smi or deviceQuery

Good luck

Answer 3

I got error 38 for cudaGetDeviceCount on a windows machine with GTX980 GPU. After I downloaded the latest driver for GTX 980 fro the NVIDIA site, installed it and restarted, everything is fine. Looks like the CUDA installer is not installing the latest driver.