Stockfish Abrok August 24 Engine Failure

[zullil]

Hello All,

I finally got Stockfish NNUE to work!

But first, I hereby thank those very kind people who took the time to try to help me. THANK YOU!

Those who mentioned that as of August 20, the Stockfish NNUE updates now have the USE NNUE box already checked were correct. That was the problem, although it took me awhile to see that this change affected me. After all, I always manually checked that box when establishing parameters. So why should the fact that it's now already checked change things? Well...it does. And the reason it adversely affected me is because of the chronological order of steps that I utilized to get Stockfish NNUE to run.

Before August 20, when the updated engine's default status had that NNUE box unchecked, my order of events were:
1) First convert the updated engine to a .uci engine
2) Switch to that new .uci engine, and then run it
3) Once running, establish parameters with the related NNUE bin file and then check the USE NNUE box. This converts the engine from conventional Stockfish to Stockfish NNUE, while also establishing the desired number of threads, etc.

But presently, with USE NNUE already checked as of August 20, step 2 should be modified to: Switch to that new .uci engine. Before running it, establish parameters linking the net/bin file to the engine.

This new/modified order of events would have worked previously too. But, I always ran the engine first before establishing parameters. Why? Well, if the new engine doesn't run properly, then why waste time establishing parameters?

That said, I got emails and calls from numerous others who also had the same problem. Again, see the Post at the abrok Comments site for yet another example of the same problem. For whatever reason, many of us did as I formerly did.

Now everything works fine by establishing Parameters before running the engine. I'm embarrassed at my failure here. But by going public with it, others with the same problem can now be helped.

Thanks again everyone who tried to help me.

All the best,
-Steve-

Glad you got this sorted out!

[cma6]

@ Guenther:

"So the question remains, is the NNUE file in the same folder as the binary, where it should be now? Only if it is, the newer binaries will run at all!"

If the GUI has a parameter for the location of the NNUE net, then it would not be necessary for the NNUE net and the binary to be in the same folder; isn't that correct?

[tmokonen]

@ Guenther:

"So the question remains, is the NNUE file in the same folder as the binary, where it should be now? Only if it is, the newer binaries will run at all!"

If the GUI has a parameter for the location of the NNUE net, then it would not be necessary for the NNUE net and the binary to be in the same folder; isn't that correct?

The net doesn't have to be in the same folder as the executable, as long as you give a full path. I just tested it with the latest version from Abrok, and all previous versions also worked fine with the nets in a different folder.

[Guenther]

@ Guenther:

"So the question remains, is the NNUE file in the same folder as the binary, where it should be now? Only if it is, the newer binaries will run at all!"

If the GUI has a parameter for the location of the NNUE net, then it would not be necessary for the NNUE net and the binary to be in the same folder; isn't that correct?

Yes, I described the default behaviour ofc.
You can change the eval file location parameter, but the default is for people who can't/won't do this.

[cma6]

Guenther and tmo:
Thanks for clarification.