Docker Hosts: Difference between revisions

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==Introduction==
==Introduction==


This page will be concerned with the actual hosts more general information about Docker can be found '''[[Linux Docker And GPU Passthrough | here]]'''. We need to have some '''[[Virtual Machines]]''' to host the containers so that processing is reasonably separated and constrained with no one container gaining all of the CPU or GPU cycles of the entire Proxmox host. Another, possibly more important, consideration is that if the OS of Pear is upgraded we don't want to break a load of containers. The last point for VMs for containers is that Nvidia are fairly well known for breaking there drivers sometimes while they are being upgraded. So better to leave the GPU driver update until other people have tested it and do any Proxmox updates as a separate job.
It became apparent that We need to be able to run Docker containers as well as LXCs so some new '''[[Virtual Machines]]''' are being created with the sole purpose of running containers. With the new Linux drivers for Nvidia 5060ti GPUs it is now practical to use GPU passthrough to a Linux VM rather than a Windows 11 host. In turn with the GPU on Linux, it can and should be shared amongst any applications that use GPU to speed up their operation, obvious candidates are Jellfin an LLMs, To that end Linux has been installed on the host Quince and Docker containers can run on it.


==[[Data Archive]] Host==
==The Logical Choice==


We have another host named '''[[Data Archive | Blackberry]]''' that will be used as a data archival storage That will have docker applications to download, store and serve downloaded archives that have, hopefully, not been too badly damaged by the great AI flattening and AI washing that is starting to gain a lot of momentum. It is assumed that most of the archiving will be more CPU, storage and bandwidth intensive so we are keeping this away from the AI and Jellyfin host so either one does not have too much impact on the other. More Details of the '''[[Data Archival]]''' can be found '''[[Data Archival | here]]'''
Walnut had hosted Jellyfin for a while because Nvidia GPU drivers were not working well on Linux  but did install easily on Windows 11 Pro and to have hardware transcoding Jellyfin could use the GPU so it made sense to have the GPU passthrough to Walnut but it was only ever intended as a temporary measure to make Jellyfin work until Nvidia got decent Linux drivers. Running Docker on a Window 11 pro VM was causing problems in that it is a '''[[Virtual Machines | Virtual Machine]]'''with another Virtualisation on top so it was only practical to run Jellyfin. However, now with working Linux drivers, the VM Quince is now using the GPU. Also Quince is running Docker. So with docker and GPU Jellyfin is setup as a docker container application and as the GPU is on the host it can share its processing for hardware transcoding. At the same time Quince also has Ollama running in a different container so it can also use the GPU. It seems reasonable that other docker images will be wanted at some point and some of them may benefit from the GPU's processing power while others will not really use the GPU at all, so to keep the load down and under control we will have at least one separate host. A possible second host will have a news archiving suite of containers that will not need the GPU at all but may well be moving large amounts of data around and we do not want it to interfere with transcoding or LLM processing on Quince.


==GPU Host Quince==


We are using Quince 192.168.100.75/24 as the host for GPU Passthrough and as a consequence it will have Jellyfin and Ollama docker containers.
== Docker Hosts ==


===Quince Specification===
'''[[Linux Docker And GPU Passthrough | Quince]]''' will be the Host for GPU passthrough, Jellyfin and Ollama. '''[[Data Archive |Blackberry]]''' will be the host for the news archive applications '''[[The Kiwix Archive]]''' and '''[[The Web Archive (ArchiveBox)]]'''. While Tayberry will have the '''[[OpenAlex]]''' research tool
 
To store the OS we have a 150gb drive allocated from the SSD Rpool and to keep all of the media files we have a 3TB hard drive allocated from Pearpool. As a temporary measure the media HD from Walnut has also been added to enable the media files to be copied to the new HD, it was impractical to keep the walnut HD on quince as it is NTFS and quince is Linux so while it would work it is not the preferred.
* Hostname is Quince
* IP Address is 192.168.100.75/24
* RAM is 32gb
* Processor is type Host and has 1 socket with 10 cores
* Bios is OVMF (UEFI)
* Machine type is q35
* OS Storage is 150gb allocated from Rpool
* Media storage is 3tb allocated from Pearpool
* NIC is on production VLAN
* Display is set to default
* PCI device is 0000:07:00 (the Nvidia 5060ti 16gb GPU)
 
===GPU setup on Quince===
 
We will include the full guide to GPU passthrough to a Linux host but it should be noted alot of the steps were already done while preparing to do the same on Walnut. Speaking of walnut we need to disable all of the GPU passthrough settings on walnut before we proceed so it should have the PCI device removed and a a display set to Virto-GPU. If walnut PCI is not reset the GPU passthrough will fail, obviously, but if the display is not changed it will have no screen to output to.
 
====Host Preparation (The Proxmox Level)====
 
First the host must be told to "ignore" the GPU so it can be handed over to the VM. Enable IOMMU in GRUB: on the Proxmox host
nano /etc/default/grub
The basic line to edit is
# For Intel CPUs:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet intel_iommu=on iommu=pt"
# For AMD CPUs:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet amd_iommu=on iommu=pt"
However, as it didn't work with the first try the line was changed but it is not known if it was this change that made it work or some other trouble shooting step. So try the above line but if it does not work try
  GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet amd_iommu=on iommu=pt pcie_acs_override=downstream,multifunction pcie_aspm=off"
After save and close
update-grub
reboot
The next step is Load VFIO Modules: Add these to /etc/modules to allow the "hand-off" to the VM
nano /etc/modules
and add the following settings. Please note Proxmox 8.x WebGUI will possibly work without these settings but it is better to add them to avoid race conditions between two GPUs and more importantly in case future versions of Proxmox GUI changes how it handles PCI devices.
vfio
vfio_iommu_type1
vfio_pci
vfio_virqfd
Save and close. the last thing to do on the Proxmox host is to blacklist Drivers on Host to Prevent Proxmox from using the card (so that we can pass it through to a Guest) by creating /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
nano /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
and add the following lines
blacklist nouveau
blacklist nvidia
blacklist nvidiafb
Save and close.
Tell Proxmox to rebuild the initramfs so it knows to load these modules next time the host boots
update-initramfs -u -k all
Please note this may take some time to run
 
====VM Configuration (The Quince Level)====
 
In the Proxmox GUI, the VM settings are the most delicate part.
* Machine Type: Set to q35 (essential for PCIe bus support).
* BIOS: Set to OVMF (UEFI) (required for modern GPUs).
* PCI Device: Add a "Raw Device" and select the 5060 Ti
** PCI Device (hostpci0) 0000:07:00 (This should be listed as (Nvidia Corporation GB206 [GeForce RTX 5060 TI]
** All Functions ticked. This ensures the Audio and Video components of the 5060 Ti are passed as one unit
** PCI-Express ticked
** Primary GPU: unticked as this is a headless server we don't need the GPU to output any screen. If this was to be the main output like on a Win11 VM then this would be checked.
** ROM-Bar (Read-Only Memory Base Address Register) unchecked. This tells the VM to look for the "Video BIOS" (vBIOS) of the GPU. If Checked: The VM tries to read the BIOS directly from the physical chip to "initialize" the card before the driver takes over. If Unchecked: The VM skips reading the hardware ROM. It relies entirely on the NVIDIA Driver (which will be installed in Quince) to initialize the Blackwell silicon. Since we are using a Headless Linux Server and Modern UEFI (OVMF), the traditional "initialization" steps that require the ROM are less critical than they are for a Windows gaming VM. The NVIDIA drivers for Linux are very good at "talking" to the card without needing the VM's BIOS to see the ROM first. 50-series cards and newer UEFI motherboards often hand off the device state in a way that doesn't require the ROM-Bar "shim." In some cases, unchecking ROM-Bar actually prevents "Error 43" or initialization loops that happen when a VM tries to read a BIOS that the host has already "partially" claimed. If nvidia-smi stops responding or the card disappears after a VM reboots, try ticking the ROMBAR box to force a fresh BIOS read.
 
====Proving the VM is using the GPU ====
 
To prove the GPU is being recognised run the following command.
  lspci -v -s $(lspci | grep -i NVIDIA | awk '{print $1}' | head -n 1)
It should give an output something like
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation Device 2d04 (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
  Subsystem: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd Device 418f
  Physical Slot: 0
  Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 16
  Memory at 80000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64M]
  Memory at 380000000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=16G]
  Memory at 380400000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=32M]
  I/O ports at 8000 [size=128]
  Capabilities: <access denied>
  Kernel driver in use: nvidia
  Kernel modules: nvidiafb, nouveau, nvidia_drm, nvidia
* Expected Device ID: 2d04 (RTX 5060 Ti)
* VRAM Confirmation: Look for the 16G memory block as this is the TI version with 16GB  VRAM
* Driver Status: Must show Kernel driver in use: nvidia
 
To test the GPU is running at the full bandwidth of the PCI slot the following command can be run
sudo lspci -vv -s $(lspci | grep -i NVIDIA | awk '{print $1}' | head -n 1) | grep -E "LnkCap:|LnkSta:"
It should give the following output
  LnkCap: Port #0, Speed 32GT/s, Width x16, ASPM L1, Exit Latency L1 <4us
LnkSta: Speed 2.5GT/s (downgraded), Width x8 (downgraded)
* LnkCap: Width x16: This is the "Capability" of the Motherboard Slot and the Virtual Port. It means the "highway" (the physical slot on your motherboard and the virtual bridge in Proxmox) is built wide enough to handle 16 lanes of traffic.
** Port #0 is the PCI virtual slot number.
** Speed 32GT/s. GT/s stands for GigaTransfers per second. Unlike "Gigabytes," which measure the actual data, GT/s measures the raw speed of the electrical signals jumping across the wires.
*** 32GT/s is the hallmark of PCIe Gen 5 (the latest standard in 2026)
*** Gen 3: 8GT/s
*** Gen 4: 16GT/s
*** Gen 5: 32GT/s ( the Blackwell card's specification
* LnkSta: Width x8 (downgraded): This is the "Status" of the GPU Silicon. The RTX 5060 Ti is a physical x8 card.
** The reported speed in this case is wrong because It reports 2.5GT/s. Because we are using PCI Passthrough, the VM isn't actually "talking" to the physical wires; it's talking to a Virtual PCIe Bridge created by Proxmox.
this means to test what speed the GPU is actually using we must look at the Proxmox host, Pear. So open a terminal on pear and enter
lspci -vv -s 7 | grep LnkSta
The 7 is the pci slot number on Pear, it will be the number that the VM quince passed through on the hardware in the webgui.
LnkSta: Speed 16GT/s, Width x16
LnkSta2: Current De-emphasis Level: -3.5dB, EqualizationComplete+ EqualizationPhase1+
This shows Speed 16GT/s which is what it should be.
 
== Docker Applications installed on Quince ==
 
===Installation Strategy===
 
Once the Blackwell GPU passthrough was verified on the Pear host, we transitioned to the Quince VM to set up the containerized environment. This allows us to run high-performance AI (Ollama) and media (Jellyfin) apps while keeping the base OS clean.
 
===Docker Engine Installation===
 
We use the official Docker repository to ensure access to v29+, which includes critical patches for Gen 5 PCIe and Blackwell architecture support.
sudo apt update
sudo apt install ca-certificates curl gnupg
Then setup the repository
sudo install -m 0755 -d /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg
sudo chmod a+r /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg
echo "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu $(. /etc/os-release && echo "$VERSION_CODENAME") stable" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null
Next Install Engine & Compose
sudo apt update
sudo apt install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-buildx-plugin docker-compose-plugin
===NVIDIA Container Toolkit (The "Magic Bridge")===
This toolkit enables the libnvidia-container library, which maps the physical GPU device files (/dev/nvidia0, etc.) into the virtualized Docker namespace.
curl -fsSL https://nvidia.github.io/libnvidia-container/gpgkey | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/nvidia-container-toolkit-keyring.gpg
curl -s -L https://nvidia.github.io/libnvidia-container/stable/deb/nvidia-container-toolkit.list | sed 's#deb https://#deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/nvidia-container-toolkit-keyring.gpg] https://#g' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nvidia-container-toolkit.list
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y nvidia-container-toolkit
and last we configure the Nvidia Container tool Kit and restart Docker
sudo nvidia-ctk runtime configure --runtime=docker
sudo systemctl restart docker
===Verification & First App: Ollama ===
We used the "Pull-on-Demand" feature to deploy Ollama. Docker automatically fetched the image from Docker Hub since it wasn't in the local "storage locker."
docker run -d \
  --gpus all \
  -v ollama:/root/.ollama \
  -p 11434:11434 \
  --name ollama \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  ollama/ollama
Note on Parameters
* --gpus all: Crucial. Without this, the container sees a CPU only.
* -v ollama:/root/.ollama: Preserves model weights (like Qwen or Llama) even if the container is deleted/upgraded.
* Storage Logic: Docker Hub images are immutable; any changes you want to keep (like downloaded AI models) must be stored in a volume -v.
* --restart unless-stopped: Ensures your AI is always online after a reboot.
* Docker identifies the "app" by the Image Name at the very end of your command In this case, the name was ollama/ollama. Docker treats this like a URL. It looks at its local "storage locker" first. If it doesn't see ollama/ollama there, it automatically reaches out to Docker Hub (the global library of apps) to find it. This is the "Pull-on-Demand" feature.
* Status Check: After running this, use docker exec -it ollama nvidia-smi to prove the container sees the Blackwell card.
 
===Final Integration Step ===
 
With Docker verified, we move from manual docker run commands to Docker Compose (.yaml). This allows for "Infrastructure as Code," where we can define our 16GB VRAM reservations and Pearpool log paths in a single, repeatable file.
===The "Blackwell Stack" Compose File for Quince===
 
The Compose file should be created in the home directory
  nano ~/compose.yaml
The configuration for Quince to use the 16GB VRAM of the 5060 Ti efficiently is as follows.
services:
  jellyfin:
    image: jellyfin/jellyfin:latest
    container_name: jellyfin
    network_mode: host # Best for DLNA/local discovery
    user: 1000:1000  # Assuming nigel is UID 1000
    volumes:
      - /mnt/jellyfin/docker/jellyfin/config:/config
      - /mnt/jellyfin/docker/jellyfin/cache:/cache
      - /mnt/jellyfin:/media
    deploy:
      resources:
        reservations:
          devices:
            - driver: nvidia
              count: 1
              capabilities: [gpu, video]
    restart: unless-stopped
 
  ollama:
    image: ollama/ollama:latest
    container_name: ollama
    volumes:
      - /mnt/jellyfin/docker/ollama:/root/.ollama
    ports:
      - "11434:11434"
    deploy:
      resources:
        reservations:
          devices:
            - driver: nvidia
              count: 1
              capabilities: [gpu]
    restart: unless-stopped
 
  open-webui:
    image: ghcr.io/open-webui/open-webui:main
    container_name: open-webui
    volumes:
      - /mnt/jellyfin/docker/open-webui:/app/data
    environment:
      - 'OLLAMA_BASE_URL=http://ollama:11434'
      - 'WEBUI_SECRET_KEY=change_me_to_a_long_random_string' # Crucial for security
      - 'ENABLE_SIGNUP=true' # Set to false after you create your account
    ports:
      - "3000:8080"
    extra_hosts:
      - "host.docker.internal:host-gateway"
    restart: unless-stopped
 
If the test container is still running stop it with the command
docker stop ollama && docker rm ollama
Launch the stack with
docker compose up -d
Verify the three apps are running with
docker ps
change the secretkey to a random string for security
'WEBUI_SECRET_KEY=change_me_to_a_long_random_string' # Crucial for security
Once the OpenWebui has been logged in with a username and password change the signup to false
- 'ENABLE_SIGNUP=true' # Set to false after you create your account

Latest revision as of 11:15, 9 February 2026

Introduction

It became apparent that We need to be able to run Docker containers as well as LXCs so some new Virtual Machines are being created with the sole purpose of running containers. With the new Linux drivers for Nvidia 5060ti GPUs it is now practical to use GPU passthrough to a Linux VM rather than a Windows 11 host. In turn with the GPU on Linux, it can and should be shared amongst any applications that use GPU to speed up their operation, obvious candidates are Jellfin an LLMs, To that end Linux has been installed on the host Quince and Docker containers can run on it.

The Logical Choice

Walnut had hosted Jellyfin for a while because Nvidia GPU drivers were not working well on Linux but did install easily on Windows 11 Pro and to have hardware transcoding Jellyfin could use the GPU so it made sense to have the GPU passthrough to Walnut but it was only ever intended as a temporary measure to make Jellyfin work until Nvidia got decent Linux drivers. Running Docker on a Window 11 pro VM was causing problems in that it is a Virtual Machinewith another Virtualisation on top so it was only practical to run Jellyfin. However, now with working Linux drivers, the VM Quince is now using the GPU. Also Quince is running Docker. So with docker and GPU Jellyfin is setup as a docker container application and as the GPU is on the host it can share its processing for hardware transcoding. At the same time Quince also has Ollama running in a different container so it can also use the GPU. It seems reasonable that other docker images will be wanted at some point and some of them may benefit from the GPU's processing power while others will not really use the GPU at all, so to keep the load down and under control we will have at least one separate host. A possible second host will have a news archiving suite of containers that will not need the GPU at all but may well be moving large amounts of data around and we do not want it to interfere with transcoding or LLM processing on Quince.


Docker Hosts

Quince will be the Host for GPU passthrough, Jellyfin and Ollama. Blackberry will be the host for the news archive applications The Kiwix Archive and The Web Archive (ArchiveBox). While Tayberry will have the OpenAlex research tool