Installing TransferBench from the TGZ archive

Installing TransferBench from the TGZ archive#

The TransferBench TGZ archive (amdrocm<MAJOR>-transferbench-*.tar.gz) is a relocatable install tree that works on any Linux distribution where a compatible ROCm runtime is already present. Use it when you cannot or do not want to install the DEB or RPM package — for example on a distribution without a native ROCm package, or inside a non-root container.

The TGZ ships only the TransferBench binary and its supporting files. It does not bundle ROCm; the host system must already provide the ROCm runtime libraries (hsa-rocr and the HIP runtime).

Pre-install: ROCm#

Install ROCm on the target system before extracting the TGZ. Follow the official AMD documentation:

After installing, ROCM_PATH (typically /opt/rocm) must be set correctly and the ROCm libraries must be loadable by the dynamic linker.

Install runtime dependencies#

The DEB and RPM packages declare these runtime dependencies; TGZ users must install them manually on the target host.

Family

Required packages

Debian / Ubuntu

numactl, libnuma1, plus the ROCm runtime (hsa-rocr)

RHEL / Rocky / AlmaLinux

numactl, plus the ROCm runtime (hsa-rocr)

Install commands:

# Ubuntu / Debian
sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y numactl libnuma1

# RHEL / Rocky / AlmaLinux
sudo dnf install -y numactl

The ROCm packages (hsa-rocr and friends) come from the ROCm repo configured in the pre-install step above.

Extract the TGZ#

Extract the archive into /opt/rocm/extras-<MAJOR>, where <MAJOR> is the ROCm major version the package was built against (encoded in the package name, for example amdrocm7-transferbench-*.tar.gz → major 7).

# Example for ROCm major 7 — match your package
sudo mkdir -p /opt/rocm/extras-7
sudo tar -xzf amdrocm7-transferbench-*.tar.gz -C /opt/rocm/extras-7 --strip-components=1

The --strip-components=1 option discards the top-level directory inside the tarball so files land directly under /opt/rocm/extras-7/{bin,lib,...}.

Configure PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH#

Point the shell at the extracted prefix and your ROCm install. Copy and paste the block as one unit (replace paths with your real ROCM_PATH and major version):

export ROCM_PATH=/opt/rocm                          # or your real ROCm root
export PATH=/opt/rocm/extras-7/bin:$ROCM_PATH/bin:$PATH
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/rocm/extras-7/lib:$ROCM_PATH/lib:$ROCM_PATH/lib/llvm/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH

The TransferBench binary embeds an RPATH covering $ORIGIN, $ORIGIN/../lib, /opt/rocm/extras-<MAJOR>/lib, /opt/rocm/lib, /opt/rocm/lib/llvm/lib, /opt/rocm/core-<MAJOR>/lib, and /opt/rocm/core-<MAJOR>/lib/llvm/lib. The LD_LIBRARY_PATH export above is mainly defensive — useful if your ROCm tree lives somewhere non-standard or if you want to override which copy of a library is loaded for troubleshooting.

Verify the install#

TransferBench

Run with no arguments, TransferBench prints its version, usage, the list of available preset benchmarks, and the detected GPU/CPU topology, then exits. Seeing that output confirms the binary loaded its ROCm libraries correctly.

If the binary fails to load a shared library, inspect:

ldd /opt/rocm/extras-7/bin/TransferBench
readelf -d /opt/rocm/extras-7/bin/TransferBench | grep -E 'RPATH|RUNPATH'

Make a persistent shell setup#

To avoid re-exporting every shell, drop the variables into a profile script:

sudo tee /etc/profile.d/transferbench.sh >/dev/null <<'EOF'
export ROCM_PATH=/opt/rocm
export PATH=/opt/rocm/extras-7/bin:$ROCM_PATH/bin:$PATH
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/rocm/extras-7/lib:$ROCM_PATH/lib:$ROCM_PATH/lib/llvm/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
EOF
sudo chmod 0644 /etc/profile.d/transferbench.sh

Log out and back in (or source /etc/profile.d/transferbench.sh) for the changes to apply.

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