[vtkusers] [dashboard maintainers]To make TestGPUInfo works properly

[Francois Bertel]

To dashboard maintainers,

in order to make TestGPUInfo work properly and return something like:

"
There is 1 GPU(s).
  GPU 0:
   dedicated VRAM=512 MB
   dedicated RAM=0 MB
   shared RAM=0 MB
"

instead of

"There is 0 GPU(s)."



1. With a Windows machine, you need to install the DirectX SDK.

It have been tested on VTKEdge with the DirectX SDK from August 2008:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=ea4894b5-e98d-44f6-842d-e32147237638&DisplayLang=en

And you can find the latest Direct X SDK from February 2010 here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=2c7da5fb-ffbb-4af6-8c66-651cbd28ca15


2. With a Linux machine with an nVidia card, with an nVidia
proprietary driver, you need to install the NVCtrl library (It gives
access to the NV-CONTROL X extension) and set  VTK_USE_NVCONTROL to ON
in your dashboard script:

 * If it is already installed on your system, you can find the library
libXNVCtrl.a in /usr/lib/ and the header files NVCtrlLib.h and
NVCtrl.h in /usr/include/NVCtrl/. On Ubuntu, those files are provided
by the package "nvidia-settings".
 * You can also get them from the source package of nvidia-settings
from ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/nvidia-settings/. With the
source package, all the relevant files are in src/libXNVCtrl/. Make
sure to download a version of nvidia-settings equal or greater to
177.82 to avoid any license issue. (on August 25 2008, nVidia
acknowledged that there is a mistake in the license of the NVCtrl
library prior to 177.82, it should be MIT-X11 / BSD instead of GPL,
only the nvidia-settings application is covered by the GPL, not the
NVCtrl library:
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=1756087&postcount=8 )

3. There is nothing special to change on Macs.

What I just wrote is pretty much what it is the VTKEdge FAQ as the
GPUInfo feature was moved from VTKEdge to VTK:
http://vtkedge.org/Wiki/VTKEdge:FAQ#Compile_time




-- 
François Bertel, PhD  | Kitware Inc. Suite 204
1 (518) 371 3971 x113 | 28 Corporate Drive
                      | Clifton Park NY 12065, USA