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Adam Przedniczek
Asked: 2016-11-10 06:46:23 +0800 CST

Downgrading gcc and libc6 to fulfill CUDA 8 requirements on Ubuntu 16.10

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A few days ago I have switched from Fedora to Ubuntu to have better CUDA support, but I've faced some problems with downgrading gcc and glibc/libc6 packages to fulfill CUDA 8 requirements.

But let's start at the very beginning. A couple days ago I've installed Ubuntu 16.10 Yakkety with intention to install CUDA 8 drivers & toolkit. I've compared my current versions with CUDA 8 requirements docs.nvidia.com/cuda/cuda-installation-guide-linux/ :

CUDA 8 requirements are:

  • Ubuntu 16.04 with kernel 4.4.0
  • GCC 5.3.1
  • GLIBC/LIBC6 2.23

My current setup is:

$ uname -vr
4.8.0-26-generic #28-Ubuntu SMP Tue Oct 18 14:39:52 UTC 2016

$ dpkg -s gcc | grep Version
Version: 4:6.1.1-1ubuntu2

$ dpkg -s libc6 | grep Version
Version: 2.24-3ubuntu1

I thought that downgrading would be something as simple as typing one of the following:

sudo apt-get install gcc=5.3.1 
sudo apt-get install gcc=5.3

Unfortunatelly, those versions were not found for Yaketty. I checked at packages.ubuntu.com (and by apt-cache policy) that the appropriate versions are only for Xenial and for Yakkety there's only gcc-5 (5.4.1-2ubuntu2) and 2.24-3ubuntu1 for libc6.

To sum up:

  • I would like to downgrade gcc to 5.3.1 and glibc/libc6 to 2.23 and somehow manage these alternatives. I would prefer something like update-alternatives rather than using symbolic links directly (to take care of not only exectuables, but also all libraries).

  • Could I downgrade preserving 100% stability by adding for a moment Xenial repository to list in: Software & Updates > Other Software ?

  • Assuming that I would manage to downgrade gcc & libc6, could I install CUDA 8 on my current much higher kernel 4.8.0 (insetead of 4.4.0) without any loss in stability? (So far I've been using CUDA only on kernel versions exactly mentioned in installation guide.)

Thank you in advance for your help.

P.S. I'm newbie to Ubuntu (only Fedora & RHEL so far), so this problem could be something very trivial.

16.04

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    If I had your specific set of requirements which required aspects of 16.04 as well as aspects of 16.10, I would take the easy way out and either dual boot both 16.04 and 16.10 or run 16.10 in a VM under Virtualbox running on a 16.04 host. I think this alternate approach would result in far more stable operations than attempting to mix packages designed for one with the other. (Granted this sometimes works, but it's not something I'd count on.)

    To dual boot, simply tell the 16.04 installer to install alongside your existing 16.10 installation during the install process.

    VirtualBox can be installed via the software center. Documentation is available, and if you get stuck There are many of us here eager to help with any specific difficulties

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