Mac Laptop screen going black when opening window while connected to egpu Nvidia

After installing my Akitio egpu on my mac as discussed in the previous post, I faced an annoying issue: when opening a window like in a browser; the screen on my laptop would go black whereas the screen in my external monitor connected to the egpu would stay on. This is a weird issue that seemed to pertain to a configuration of some type or a glitch on the driver. After spending more time than I wanted to put on this issue, I found this post that helped me solve the problem:

https://egpu.io/forums/mac-setup/wip-nvidia-egpu-support-for-high-sierra/paged/43/

Basically one of the people were having a similar problem and noticed that the energy saving setting was not set properly.
He basically did this:

 System Preferences > Energy Saver > to uncheck "Automatic Graphics Switching"

That seemed to make the problem go away and now I am up in business again. The only other issue I notice is that sometimes my monitors are a little laggy for some reason. I am not sure how much it is related to the egpu or a totally different issue with my computer but in the meantime I expect I will be able to get some work done with my computer in this state. Thanks all the people out there posting their solutions. It really helped.

Update: the screen going black when opening Chrome was an issue of Chrome and also there are other applications that might also have a similar problems. The issue is related to having the graphics switching enable which allows to switch between integrated or discrete GPU in order to save energy. Most applications do not need the GPU for regular tasks. However, for some reason Chrome does need to run the discrete GPU and since I am running an external GPU, there is a conflict with my eGPU and the discrete GPU. I tried to see if there is a way to disable the the discrete GPU and although there is some commands that could help doing such, it seemed a lot of work for trying to run just Chrome. I noticed that if I stop running Chrome, then everything else works well. So in the meantime I have decided to use other browsers to avoid the "black screen of death" :)
I am still yet looking for a solution for this issue so if you know of a good solution for high Sierra please let me know.
Update: One of the posts I saw suggested to close the laptop when using the GPU on an external monitor in order to make sure the discrete GPU is being used. So I turned on the graphics switching and connected two external monitors. I close the laptop and just used the external monitor. I can report that so far my setup is pretty good. It is sometimes laggy with Chrome and other apps that use GPU, however, they still work and don't crash the screen like with the laptop screen. I can at least get some work done now.
Thanks

Installing Akitio Thunder 3 Nvidia egpu on MacBook Pro 2016 with AMD built-in gpu

Installing an egpu on a mac should straight forward except when you run into some issues like I did that made me spent more time than I wanted on this.

By following the steps in this tool it should have you up and running the Akitio box with this configuration:

https://github.com/learex/macOS-eGPU/tree/master#macos-egpush

Other scripts that might be helpful are:

https://github.com/marnovo/macOS-eGPU-CUDA-guide#step-by-step-tutorials

It would be a good idea to start a fresh installation and remove all previous drivers and solutions as well as even clearing nvram just in case (optional):

https://www.macworld.com/article/2881177/macs/how-to-reset-your-macs-nvram-pram-and-smc.html

After running the first script mentioned here, I was able to get the card recognized and running on my Mac. However, I encountered an issue when opening a window like for a browser; the screen on my laptop would go black whereas the screen in my external monitor connected to the egpu would stay on. This seem a weird issue that seemed to pertain to a configuration of some type or a glitch on the driver. The way I solved this is explain in the next post. I hope you didn't have any issues and that your were happily able to get your Akitio box working.

Movistar APN Peru setting

Nombre
Movistar

APN
movistar.pe


Proxy
no definido

Puerto
no definido

Nombre e usuario
movistar@datos

Contrasena
movistar

Servidor
No definido

MMSC
No definido

Proxy de MMS
No definido

Puerto MMS
No definido

MCC
716

MNC
06

Tipo de autenticacion
PAP

tipo de APN
default

Protocolo APN
IPv4/IPv6

Protocolo de APN en itinerancia
IPv4/IPv6

Portador
Sin especificar

Tipo de OMV
None

How to install Akitio 3 and M6000 GPU to Mac Book air with High Sierra 10.13.3

Please see my previous post on installing this on a previous version of High Sierra for more details. The main gist of it is to 

1. Enable System Integrity Protection (SIP) 

https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Security/Conceptual/System_Integrity_Protection_Guide/ConfiguringSystemIntegrityProtection/ConfiguringSystemIntegrityProtection.html

2. Download and install

cuda_9.1.128_mac.dmg

WebDriver-378.10.10.10.25.156.pkg

Cudadriver_387.128_macos.dmg

3. Disabled SIP by restarting while pressing command+ R

I used the terminal and type csrutil disable

4. Install the nvidia-egpu-v6.zip tool that correspond to my driver and my high Sierra version 10.13.3. After installation the tool will ask you to restart your computer.

5. Do a hot plug of the egpu onto the laptop. The computer should recognize it by the driver.

6. Finally, restart once more for the  gpu to be recognized by the CUDA driver

How to install pytorch on mac osx high sierra 10.13.02 with egpu Akitio 3

Check my previous post on how to get Akitio 3 working on Mac OSX high sierra

http://olivernina.blogspot.com/2018/01/how-to-install-akitio-3-m6000-to-mac.html

This post is mainly on compiling and installing pytorch from source for Mac.
Installing pytorch in MacOS X with an external gpu could be cumbersome. I compiled pytorch from source before and there are a few main details to pay attention in order to succeed. I found this video that was helpful on getting this working.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8n6HrLfeJQ


The main instructions are as follows
Assuming you have your GPU working properly.

Install xcode. I got the version that comes with 10.13.02

Install homebrew as instructed in https://brew.sh/

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

Update homebrew:

brew update

install anaconda. You can do it through brew or downloading the installer from their website.

Install cuda. Verify which version works with your driver. My driver is 378.10.10.10.25.102
You will also need to install the CUDA toolkit that will have the compiler and other tools for compiling CUDA code. My verison for the toolkit is 9.1.

Install cudnn. Also verify which version works with the CUDA version you have


clone pytorch from source

git clone --recursive https://github.com/pytorch/pytorch

According to pytorch you have to update some tools

conda install numpy pyyaml setuptools cmake cffi

Define path for cmake which is where your anaconda is,  in my case was:

export CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=/Users/oliver/anaconda/

Make sure clang --version works with the CUDA you have. My setup works only with clang version 8.1.0 (clang-802.0.42)
Thus I need to go to https://developer.apple.com/download/more/
and download Command Line Tools for Xcode 8.3.2
Install the command line tools and then run

sudo xcode-select --switch /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools

Then compile and  install pytorch.

MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.13 CC=clang CXX=clang++ python setup.py install

That is it. Good luck!

How to install Akitio 3 and M6000 GPU to Mac Book air with High Sierra 10.13.02 through TB2

I was recently given an M6000 Nvidia GPU with an Akitio 3 box to work with my mac book air which is a mid 2013. My laptop was updated to the latest high Sierra Mac OSX 10.13.02.

The problem with my laptop and Akitio 3 is that my laptop has only a TB2 output. However, this can overcome by getting a USB-C (TB3) to TB2 adapter for mac. Thus I connected my Akitio egpu through my TB2 connection and the system was able to recognize the Akitio.

The next part was to install the drivers and software for the Akitio and GPU to work. This part is a little tricky since Nvidia still doesn't fully support all GPUs and people rely on third party software for this to work. Fortunately there is a good community that keeps the tools and forums up to date and make possible to figure out solutions for different systems.

After spending a large amount of time on different post and forums. I came across this page which made the difference.

https://egpu.io/forums/mac-setup/wip-nvidia-egpu-support-for-high-sierra/

It appears that some of the drivers need the egpu support tool described in this page. So I followed the steps in this page.

I first started with a fresh installation by removing all other drivers and cuda tools installed. I also didn’t have the egpu connected to the laptop until after all the software was installed.

I downloaded manually the drivers and cuda tools from nvidia. In my case I used

WebDriver-378.10.10.10.25.102.pkg

Cudadriver_387.99_macos.dmg

I did this by having System Integrity Protection (SIP) enable at first

https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Security/Conceptual/System_Integrity_Protection_Guide/ConfiguringSystemIntegrityProtection/ConfiguringSystemIntegrityProtection.html

Then installed the drivers and cuda

I then disabled SIP by restarting while pressing command+ R

I used the terminal and type csrutil disable

I then installed the nvidia-egpu-v4.zip tool that correspond to my driver and my high Sierra version [17C88]

I then did a hot plug on the egpu and it was recognized by the driver but it still didn’t show on the system information profile. I did a restart and finally the Nvidia driver and gpu were finally working.

Good luck with this.

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