Installation Prerequisites (Linux)#

Applies to Linux

2023-06-26

7 min read time

You must perform the following steps before installing ROCm and check if the system meets all the requirements to proceed with the installation.

Confirm the System Has a Supported Linux Distribution Version#

The ROCm installation is supported only on specific Linux distributions and kernel versions.

Check the Linux Distribution and Kernel Version on Your System#

This section discusses obtaining information about the Linux distribution and kernel version.

Linux Distribution Information#

Verify the Linux distribution using the following steps:

  1. To obtain the Linux distribution information, type the following command on your system from the Command Line Interface (CLI):

    uname -m && cat /etc/*release

  2. Confirm that the obtained Linux distribution information matches with those listed in Supported Linux Distributions.

    Example: Running the command above on an Ubuntu system results in the following output:

    x86_64
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=20.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=focal
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 20.04.5 LTS"

Kernel Information#

Verify the kernel version using the following steps:

  1. To check the kernel version of your Linux system, type the following command:

    uname -srmv

    Example: The output of the command above lists the kernel version in the following format:

    Linux 5.15.0-46-generic #44~20.04.5-Ubuntu SMP Fri Jun 24 13:27:29 UTC 2022 x86_64

  2. Confirm that the obtained kernel version information matches with system requirements as listed in Supported Linux Distributions.

Additional package repositories#

On some distributions the ROCm packages depend on packages outside the default package repositories. These extra repositories need to be enabled before installation. Follow the instructions below based on your distributions.

All packages are available in the default Ubuntu repositories, therefore no additional repositories need to be added.

1. Add the EPEL repository

wget https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-8.noarch.rpm
sudo rpm -ivh epel-release-latest-8.noarch.rpm

wget https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-9.noarch.rpm
sudo rpm -ivh epel-release-latest-9.noarch.rpm

2. Enable the CodeReady Linux Builder repository

Run the following command and follow the instructions.

sudo crb enable

Add the perl languages repository.

zypper addrepo https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:languages:perl/SLE_15_SP4/devel:languages:perl.repo

zypper addrepo https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/languages:/perl/15.5/devel:languages:perl.repo

Kernel headers and development packages#

The driver package uses DKMS to build the amdgpu-dkms module (driver) for the installed kernels. This requires the Linux kernel headers and modules to be installed for each. Usually these are automatically installed with the kernel, but if you have multiple kernel versions or you have downloaded the kernel images and not the kernel meta-packages then they must be manually installed.

To install for the currently active kernel run the command corresponding to your distribution.

sudo apt install "linux-headers-$(uname -r)" "linux-modules-extra-$(uname -r)"

sudo yum install kernel-headers kernel-devel

sudo zypper install kernel-default-devel

Setting Permissions for Groups#

This section provides steps to add any current user to a video group to access GPU resources. Use of the video group is recommended for all ROCm-supported operating systems.

  1. To check the groups in your system, issue the following command:

    groups

  2. Add yourself to the render and video group using the command:

    sudo usermod -a -G render,video $LOGNAME

To add all future users to the video and render groups by default, run the following commands:

echo 'ADD_EXTRA_GROUPS=1' | sudo tee -a /etc/adduser.conf
echo 'EXTRA_GROUPS=video' | sudo tee -a /etc/adduser.conf
echo 'EXTRA_GROUPS=render' | sudo tee -a /etc/adduser.conf