How to Install NVIDIA Drivers on Ubuntu for CUDA / cuDNN

OK, so I have purchased my desktop system with dedicated GPU! The last time I purchased a system with dGPU was back in 1990s, so it's been about 20 years. I bought one because I wanted to study tensorflow / keras, and I simply couldn't do it with just CPUs, so I had to get NVIDIA GPU.

Anyways, I noticed that Ubuntu doesn't install its driver automatically, so here is how to do so manually. First, download CUDA from NVIDIA here. As of now, the latest version is CUDA 8.0. If you are going to use tensorflow, make sure it supports the version of CUDA you are going to download from the official documentation page.

Follow the instruction on NVIDIA download page to install. I am going to download local runfile for Ubuntu 16.04. For this option, I need to run
$ sudo sh cuda_8.0.61_375.26_linux.run

***
Note that the runfile will probably not work unless you make sure 2 things:

1. Install gcc on your system
$ sudo apt-get install build-essential

2. Run it in console mode. Follow the answer by Rey on this post for details.
***

Download cuDNN from here. I am going to download cuDNN v5.1 Library for Linux for CUDA 8.0. Decompress the file into /usr/local/cuda/cudnn folder:
$ tar xfz cudnn-8.0-linux-x64-v5.1.tgz -d cudnn
$ sudo mv cudnn /usr/local/cuda/cudnn

Next, add library paths by creating /etc/ld.so.conf.d/cuda.conf file with the following lines:
/usr/local/cuda/lib64/
/usr/local/cuda/cudnn/lib64/

Refresh ld cache by
$ sudo ldconfig

Finally, install tensorflow-gpu. I am going to use pip:
$ sudo apt-get install python-pip
$ pip install tensorflow-gpu

Now, when you run the following command, you should see all CUDA library opened successfully:
$ python -c 'import tensorflow'

Happy hacking!

Setup XRDP Server with Ubuntu Mate

I want to setup a server that runs Ubuntu Mate (not Ubuntu Server). Although I will usually only connect via ssh, sometimes I may want to remote into Mate desktop. Here is how to configure the server.

First, fresh install Ubuntu Mate. You can download it from here. I used unetbootin to create a bootable USB drive using the downloaded iso file (16.04 LTS).

Once Ubuntu Mate is installed on your server, you will need to update packages first:
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade

Next, install xrdp:
$ sudo apt-get install xrdp

That's it! You can now connect to your server from Windows/Mac/Linux clients.

From Mac clients, install Microsoft Remote Desktop from here. Add a desktop with IP and username and password to connect to. To find your server's IP address, type the following from the server:
$ hostname -I

If you are not going to use the server locally, you may want to run the server int he console mode to save some system resources. Take a look at this post for how to do so.

How to Resize Virtual Disk

In this post, I will discus how to resize virtual disk using VirtualBox.

Say you have a virtual disk file ~/disk.vdi that you would like to resize. For Linux, run
$ vboxmanage modifyhd ~/disk.vdi --resize 100000

For Mac OS X, run
$ VBoxManage modifyhd ~/disk.vdi --resize 100000

where I am assuming that you have VirtualBox installed on your system. Note that the size number 100000 after --resize command is in KB, so the number 100000 indicates 100GB.

Note that if you have snapshots of your virtual disk, you also need to resize your snapshot disks as well. Otherwise, the VirtualBox won't notice the disk has been resized.

After you are done resizing the virtual disk, you may need to edit your disk partition so that the guest OS can fully manage the resized disk.

How to Install YouCompleteMe Vim Plugin for Linux

***If you are like me, using vim as the main editor for coding, then I highly recommend that you read this post.

 Here, I will go through a step by step guide for installing YouCompleteMe plugin for vim with C-family support, i.e., C/C++/Objective-C/Objective-C++. Detailed instruction is given in its Github repo, but it took me quite a while to figure out how to do this right, so I just think it will be helpful to other people as well.

First, you will need to install Vundle. Run the following:
$ git clone https://github.com/VundleVim/Vundle.vim.git ~/.vim/bundle/Vundle.vim

Next, copy and paste the following at the top of ~/.vimrc file:
set nocompatible              " be iMproved, required
filetype off                  " required

" set the runtime path to include Vundle and initialize
set rtp+=~/.vim/bundle/Vundle.vim
call vundle#begin()
" alternatively, pass a path where Vundle should install plugins
"call vundle#begin('~/some/path/here')

" let Vundle manage Vundle, required
Plugin 'VundleVim/Vundle.vim'
Plugin 'Valloric/YouCompleteMe'

" All of your Plugins must be added before the following line
call vundle#end()            " required
filetype plugin indent on    " required
" To ignore plugin indent changes, instead use:
"filetype plugin on
"
" Brief help
" :PluginList       - lists configured plugins
" :PluginInstall    - installs plugins; append `!` to update or just :PluginUpdate
" :PluginSearch foo - searches for foo; append `!` to refresh local cache
" :PluginClean      - confirms removal of unused plugins; append `!` to auto-approve removal
"
" see :h vundle for more details or wiki for FAQ
" Put your non-Plugin stuff after this line


Next, install Vundle and YouCompleteMe in vim. To do this, open up vim and install plugins:
$ vim
:PluginInstall

This command within vim will install Vundle and YouCompleteMe plugins directly from the Github repositories, so make sure that you have Internet connection. Wait until it says "Done" at the bottom of vim.

You are not done yet. You will need to install necessary packages to configure YouCompleteMe.
$ sudo apt-get install build-essential cmake python-dev python3-dev

Next, you will need to change directory to where the YouCompleteMe is installed and setup clang-completion for C-family:
$ cd ~/.vim/bundle/YouCompleteMe
$ ./install.py --clang-completer

This will take a while, so be patient. When this is done, you are done with the installation, but you are not done with C-family auto-completion features just yet. For more info, you will need to read the official documentation regarding the part.

Basically, you will need to let clang know how to compile your project, so that it can suggest auto-completion methods or fields. If your simply want to skip all and see it in action, then create ~/.vim/bundle/YouCompleteMe/.ycm_extra_conf.py with the following:
def FlagsForFile( filename, **kwargs ):
  return {
    'flags': [ '-x', 'c++', '-Wall', '-Wextra', '-Werror' ],
  }

Also, append the following line to ~/.vimrc
let g:ycm_global_ycm_extra_conf = '~/.vim/bundle/YouCompleteMe/.ycm_extra_conf.py'

Now, start editing a C++ file in the same directory with vim
$ vim hello.cpp

As you edit, you will see YouCompleteMe in action with auto-completion for C++ functions!

For Python development, I have a dedicated post here too. By the way, you may wish to read here when using Python modules. It explains how to set the python executable path.

Also, if you are a Mac user, you may want to checkout this post by Oliver.