I have decided to move my blog to my github page, this post will no longer be updated here.  You can find the newest revision here.

In this tutorial I will be going through the process of building the latest TensorFlow from sources for Ubuntu 16.04.  I much prefer to install Tensorflow using Anaconda Python and you can find a tutorial for that here.  If you prefer to build from sources using Ubuntu 14.04 please see my other tutorial.

In order to use TensorFlow with GPU support you must have a Nvidia graphic card with a minimum compute capability of 3.0.

Getting started I am going to assume you know some of the basics of using a terminal in Linux.


Install Required Packages

Open a terminal by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T
Paste each line one at a time (without the $) using Shift + Ctrl + V

$ sudo apt-get install openjdk-8-jdk git python-dev python3-dev python-numpy python3-numpy python-six python3-six build-essential python-pip python3-pip python-virtualenv swig python-wheel python3-wheel libcurl3-dev libcupti-dev

Update & Install Nvidia Drivers

You must also have the 367 (or later) NVidia drivers installed, this can easily be done from Ubuntu’s built in additional drivers after you update your driver packages.

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
$ sudo apt update

Once installed using additional drivers restart your computer.  If you experience any troubles booting linux or logging in: try disabling fast & safe boot in your bios and modifying your grub boot options to enable nomodeset.


Install Nvidia Toolkit 8.0 & CudNN

Skip if not installing with GPU support

To install the Nvidia Toolkit  download base installation .run file from Nvidia website.  MAKE SURE YOU SAY NO TO INSTALLING NVIDIA DRIVERS! Also make sure you select yes to creating a symbolic link to your cuda directory.

$ cd ~/Downloads
$ wget https://developer.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/8.0/Prod2/local_installers/cuda_8.0.61_375.26_linux-run
$ sudo sh cuda_8.0.61_375.26_linux.run --override --silent --toolkit

This will install cuda into: /usr/local/cuda

To install CudNN download cudNN v6.0 for Cuda 8.0 from Nvidia website and extract into /usr/local/cuda via:

$ tar -xzvf cudnn-8.0-linux-x64-v6.0.tgz
$ sudo cp cuda/include/cudnn.h /usr/local/cuda/include
$ sudo cp cuda/lib64/libcudnn* /usr/local/cuda/lib64
$ sudo chmod a+r /usr/local/cuda/include/cudnn.h /usr/local/cuda/lib64/libcudnn*

Then update your bash file:

$ gedit ~/.bashrc

This will open your bash file in a text editor which you will scroll to the bottom and add these lines:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/usr/local/cuda/lib64:/usr/local/cuda/extras/CUPTI/lib64"
export CUDA_HOME=/usr/local/cuda

Once you save and close the text file you can return to your original terminal and type this command to reload your .bashrc file:

$ source ~/.bashrc

Install Bazel

Instructions also on Bazel website

$ echo "deb [arch=amd64] http://storage.googleapis.com/bazel-apt stable jdk1.8" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/bazel.list
$ curl https://bazel.build/bazel-release.pub.gpg | sudo apt-key add -
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install bazel
$ sudo apt-get upgrade bazel

Clone Tensorflow 

$ cd ~
$ git clone https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow

Unless you want absolute bleeding edge I highly recommend checking-out to the latest branch rather than master.

$ cd ~/tensorflow
$ git checkout r1.2

Configure TensorFlow Installation

$ cd ~/tensorflow
$ ./configure

Use defaults by pressing enter for all except:

Please specify the location of python. [Default is /usr/bin/python]:

For Python 2 use default or If you wish to build for Python 3 enter:

$ /usr/bin/python3.5

Please input the desired Python library path to use. Default is [/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages]:

For Python 2 use default or If you wish to build for Python 3 enter:

$ /usr/local/lib/python3.5/dist-packages

Unless you have a Radeon graphic card you can say no to OpenCL support. (has anyone tested this? ping me if so!)

Do you wish to build TensorFlow with CUDA support?

$ Y

You can find the compute capability of your device at: https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-gpus

If all was done correctly you should see:

INFO: All external dependencies fetched successfully.
Configuration finished


Build TensorFlow

Warning Resource Intensive I recommend having at least 8GB of computer memory.

If you want to build TensorFlow with GPU support enter:

$ bazel build --config=opt --config=cuda //tensorflow/tools/pip_package:build_pip_package

For CPU only enter:

$ bazel build --config=opt //tensorflow/tools/pip_package:build_pip_package


Build & Install Pip Package

This will build the pip package required for installing TensorFlow in your /tmp/ folder

$ bazel-bin/tensorflow/tools/pip_package/build_pip_package /tmp/tensorflow_pkg

To Install Using Python 3 (remove sudo if using a virtualenv)

$ sudo pip3 install /tmp/tensorflow_pkg/tensorflow

# with no spaces after tensorflow hit tab before hitting enter to fill in blanks

For Python 2 (remove sudo if using a virtualenv)

$ sudo pip install /tmp/tensorflow_pkg/tensorflow

# with no spaces after tensorflow hit tab before hitting enter to fill in blanks


Test Your Installation

Close all your terminals and open a new terminal to test.  Also make sure your Terminal is not in the ‘tensorflow’ directory.

$ python3 # or python for python 2
$ import tensorflow as tf
$ sess = tf.InteractiveSession()
$ sess.close()

TensorFlow also has instructions on how to do a basic test and a list of common installation problems.

There you have it, you should now have TensorFlow installed on your computer. This tutorial was tested on a fresh install of Ubuntu 16.04 with a GeForce GTX 780, GTX 970m & Quadro K2000M.

If you want to give your GPU a workout maybe try building a massive image classifier following this tutorial.