Unofficial Setup thread (Local, AWS)

Just pushed a new version that’ll work fine.

I already have a Paperspace account with a machine built using their fast.ai template (v0.7). I submitted a Paperspace help request a few days ago to ask them if they would have a v1.0 template anytime soon, but they haven’t responded. Anyone have any extra information? Shall I assume that I’ll just need to create a new machine and install fast.ai v1.0 myself? Thanks.

3 Likes

Hey venkat, don’t be afraid :wink: , I am using exactly your XPS15 laptop and have installed dual boot with no problem. But yes, you will have to disable secure boot functionality. I followed mainly this guide (but did not implement everything like making windows harddrive run as a vm in linux): https://github.com/rcasero/doc/wiki/Ubuntu-linux-on-Dell-XPS-15-(9560).

The other alternative, if you are not afraid of docker is to use that. So if you are planning on continuing to use windows (which I don’t really, even if it’s still there, switching around is a hassle…), that might be the better alternative, but has it’s own “learning overhead”. But docker on windows works quite fine these days…
There are posts in the forums and dockerfiles and docker containers images with fastai you can use out of the box…

Hello community, does fast.ai v1.x.x has support for running on kaggle competitions so that we can make submissions to particular competition ?

Thanks for the encouragement. :slight_smile: How is the battery management with regard to juggling the on-board and dedicated GPUs?

Bad. I get hours less out of the battery with ubuntu than with windows. I first tried to do something about it, but if you research this a bit, this seems to be generally the case with ubuntu/linux, also on macs, because for windows the parties involved spend a lot of time finetuning all the drivers which seems to lack on linux. So, running any linux on a windows-intended machine or on a mac seems to increase battery drainage. This is independent of gpu/non gpu. It is definitely advisable to use the onboard graphics for x-windows and the gpu only for DL, there is a thread regarding this and my explicit way of doing it here. That gives you back some battery time (because nvidias power management seems to be better on windows than on linux too…). You can now also go directly for headless nvidia drivers (disclaimer: haven’t tested this myself)

2 Likes

Thank you. I’ll have a look at the options.

I’m using fastai 0.7 and 1.0 with ubuntu 18. Everything is working okay.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but ubuntu 18 has a “friendly UI” or atleast compared to 16.

4 Likes

@bholmer It’s just as easy as a pip install.
Please check the steps for AWS in the wiki. You’ll just need to follow those.

If you’re going through the ML mooc, you could build a 2nd environment to install fastai_v1

1 Like

Is there a stable docker image for the course? I’ve tried to install everything from scratch on PC, but failed miserable and wasted two weekends in the process, but I know how to use docker :stuck_out_tongue:

During class, do we know if it’s better to stick to the development version of fast.ai (in git repo) or use the released version?

I had problems running the examples until I switched to the development version, and I am fine with that, but I think it would be good to know what the recommended approach is.

We’ll be using conda for the class, not development version. But until Monday you might find dev version best if you’re trying to follow along.

Setup Fastai v1 on Paperspace

Hello everyone!

I’ve create a small step-by-step guido to setup and configure the new fast.ai v1 version on the already available fast.ai paperspace template.

Please check the guide on https://gist.github.com/tcvieira/d29d38068a6cd2c455baaaf0d183534b

I’d appreciate all feedbacks!
:wink:

1 Like
3 Likes

On day to day basis, is it enough to run :

conda update -c fastai fastai 
conda update -c fastai torchvision-nightly

to update ones local install? If so perhaps this should be added to the install instructions.

2 Likes

Great! Thanks. I’ll try it out tonight.
BTW, will v0.7 still be usable after installing v1.0?
(I noticed that @init_27 says he has both 0.7 and 1.0 working).

2 Likes

Hello @init_27, when you refer a 2nd environment it means a 2nd virtual machine?

you need to set up different conda environments for the 2 versions, then it is no problem.
you cannot have 2 versions of fastai in the same env at the same time. you have to switch between environments using conda activate fastai and conda activate fastaiv1 (just examples)

2 Likes

Hello, I just updated the wiki guide for implementing Fastai v1 in Google Colab
Please checkout, everything is working fine!

1 Like

LIke @marcmuc said, you can have both on the same machine but in differente enviroments. That’s why in my step by step I’ve created another env for v1.
The only problem I’ve found was that when switching env, sometimes, my Jupyter config gets messy. So, I’ve got to reconfigure it.