Build with ISAR an evaluation image based on Debian 11 (bullseye) selecting from nVidia GPU support (515.65.07) up to a graphic developing environment with the full nVidia software stack (11.7.1) running a standard debian kernel
This project is mainteind by Roberto A. Foglietta roberto.foglietta@gmail.com
The generated images run on x86 systems and the complete one includes a nVidia full software stack for developing, debugging and tuning AI applications on the top of the Debian 11 (bullseye) with a Gnome 3 and a dedicated Eclipse GUI:
- EFI boot in a separate VFAT partition
- Debian 11 operative system in EXT4 or BTRFS partition
- application for networking, system maintenance and basic developing tools
- CUDA libraries runtime and development, nVidia tuning and debugging tools
- Gnome 3 desktop graphic environment with nVidia Eclipse devel interface
The size of the complete image is about 9.1 GB and it is supposed to run on bare hardware with a supported nVidia GPU dedicated for computational tasks and an integrated primary graphic card for visualisation.
The most interesting others 2 images that can be created with this project are:
- build-me: the basic-os with the docker-ce for isar build
- nvdocker: the basic-os with the nvidia-docker2 + driver
The build-me is a 1.1 GB image that installed into a 120GB SSD/USB device can run the ISAR environment in order to build every image in the full list. These images do not contain any software from nVidia but just the ISAR tools.
The nvdocker is a 1.3 GB image that installed into a 120GB SSD/USB device can run the AI applications into containers available in the nVidia catalog.
An equivalent result can be obtained installing a Debian 11, adding the nVidia
repositories dedicated to the developers and the other one dedicated to the
docker runtime, then installing the cuda-demo-suite-11-7 and nvidia-docker2
packages.
The most sensitive difference between these two approaches is that the ISAR image contains the open-source driver while the apt installed the closed-source.
In fact, this project is a proof-of-concept that shows how to add the open-source nVidia driver in a Debian 11 system integrating it with the proprietary full software stack without violating the licence and being able to redistribute the image, at least for some usages allowed by the licences (*).
This project aims to provide a way to deliver a system with nVidia full stack software installed which is legally distributable also for commercial uses.
In fact, up today (515.76) the .run archive that contains the driver and the CUDA libraries is licenced in a way for which two essential operations are not permitted:
- §2.1.2 does not allow the compilation essential for deliver a binary driver
- §2.1.3 does not allow to repackage the .run content in many .deb packages
This project works around these limitations using the open-source driver
in order to not violate the §2.1.2 and installing the nVidia software from their public repositories without changing the .deb packages content and removing just few dependencies - which are just text fields into a .deb architecture and have nothing to do with the content delivered aka package metadata, only - allows to avoid installing the closed-source driver and the related packages.
This allows also to choose a complete different kernel version respect the one delivered with the Debian 11 and compile it by an ISAR recipe applying a custom configuration and patches like this one:
that unlock AMD Ryzen CPUs a more +51% of computation power lost due to an old bug.
(*) Legal notes
- no any warranty is granted and further license changes might happen.
- debian legal ml https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2022/10/msg00004.html
Everyone without any authentication can download this virtual machine:
-
isar-buildme-vm.ova.7z.001 (140 MB)
-
isar-buildme-vm.ova.7z.002 (139 MB)
which the integrity could be verified with these two different hashes:
-
md5sum 58526f014134073752b9c75cc53a0e4a isar-buildme-vm.ova.7z.001
-
md5sum 034b332027a4a413710c317c96f0436c isar-buildme-vm.ova.7z.002
-
sha1sum 59ed71725d1e32af8d16b974b62e0254f08a7dfe isar-buildme-vm.ova.7z.001
-
sha1sum 0b23641110ae0012a6c2742b7296a6d1fe61d7b7 isar-buildme-vm.ova.7z.002
and let every Microsoft Windows user to build its own image using a virtual machine like Oracle VirtualBox. Please note that in the VM settings you should activate the EUFI boot (Settings, System, Enable EFI (special OSes only).
The virtual machine is accessible also by SSH using every client:
ssh -p2022 -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no root@localhost (password root)
The first action to do is to change the passwords for users: root and debraf
You might want to install the VirtualBox drivers to activate the shared folder
/home/debraf/vbox-guest-inst-by-apt.sh # for the network installation
/home/debraf/vbox-guest-inst-by-sr0.sh # for the installation by cdrom
The first time to access the local apt cache sudo apt update is needed
A GNU/Linux host with docker or podman installed
sudo apt install docker.io |XOR| docker-ce |XOR| podman
User account with permissions to run docker
sudo usermod -aG docker $USER && newgrp docker
You can load the repository shell profile in this way:
source .profile
to laod the git functions and local scripts aliases
build, clean, wicinst, wicshell, wicqemu
Otherwise you can use this by command line:
58526f014134073752b9c75cc53a0e4a isar-buildme-vm.ova.7z.001 034b332027a4a413710c317c96f0436c isar-buildme-vm.ova.7z.002 59ed71725d1e32af8d16b974b62e0254f08a7dfe isar-buildme-vm.ova.7z.001 0b23641110ae0012a6c2742b7296a6d1fe61d7b7 isar-buildme-vm.ova.7z.002 ./build.sh [ $BBTARGET | $IMAGE ]
The Bitbake target could be any recipe.
However, to create an image you should choose one of these:
./build.sh -h
It will show a list like this, in which the first field is the target:
- basic-os: a debian 11 with some system/networking tools
- build-me: the basic-os with the docker-ce for isar build
- basicdev: the basic-os with the basic development tools
- nvdocker: the basic-os with the nvidia-docker2 + driver
- complete: the basicdev + nvdocker + Gnome3 + CUDA devel
The complete update images list lives in recipes-core/images/README.txt
After having created an image you can chroot into it running this command
./wicshell.sh
Then you can clean the ISAR project with command
./clean.sh isar
or to clean quite everything in build but not downloads, this command
./clean.sh all
the build/downloads folder is precious because it takes time to download again
You can find the image with this command
imgfile=$(find build/ -name eval-image-\*.wic 2>/dev/null)
and install it with one of these two
sudo dd if=${imgfile} of=/dev/${USBDISK} bs=1M status=progress
or, if bmap-tools are installed,
sudo bmaptool copy ${imgfile} /dev/${USBDISK}
on some system bmaptool fails to work, then simply deinstall it
The best way is to use this script
sudo ./wicinst.sh /dev/${USBDISK}
With the script you can also transform your image in a VMDK file:
./wicinst.sh vmdk:image.vmdk [$disk_size_in_gigabytes]
this requires qemu-img installing the qemu-utils deb package and the last paramenter indicates the size in GB of the virtual disk
For example to create the build me vmdk 100 GiB image:
source .profile
clean all
build.sh build-me
wicinst vmdk:image-buildme-vm.vmdk 100
then in docs/vm there is the template to create the OVA package
makeova [$filename].ova [$disk_size_in_gigabyte]
do the magic to create the OVA archive in the top folder or this
wicinst ovaf:image-buildme-vm.ova 100
which do the same using makeova.sh but with wicinst syntax
sudo -s
apt update && apt install -y squid squid-purge squidview ufw
sed -i "s,^\(acl localnet src .*\),#\\1," /etc/squid/squid.conf
cat >/etc/profile.d/squid_proxy_vars.sh <<EOF
export no_proxy=localhost,$(hostname -s),127.0.0.0/8,::1
export ftp_proxy=http://127.0.0.1:3128/
export https_proxy=http://127.0.0.1:3128/
export http_proxy=http://127.0.0.1:3128/
EOF
source /etc/profile.d/squid_proxy_vars.sh
mkdir -p /etc/systemd/system/docker.service.d
ipaddr=$(ip -4 -o a s dev docker0 | awk '{sub("/..","",$4); print $4}')
cat >/etc/systemd/system/docker.service.d/http-proxy.conf <<EOF
[Service]
Environment="HTTP_PROXY=${http_proxy/127.0.0.1/$ipaddr}"
Environment="HTTPS_PROXY=${https_proxy/127.0.0.1/$ipaddr}"
Environment="NO_PROXY=$no_proxy"
Environment="http_proxy=${http_proxy/127.0.0.1/$ipaddr}"
Environment="https_proxy=${https_proxy/127.0.0.1/$ipaddr}"
Environment="no_proxy=$not_proxy"
EOF
cat >/etc/squid/conf.d/docker.conf <<EOF
acl dockernet src ${ipaddr/.*/}.0.0.0/8
http_access allow dockernet
EOF
ufw allow squid
systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl restart docker
systemctl reload squid
Almost all the files are under one of many FOSS licenses and the others are in the public domain. Instead, the composition of these files is protected by the GPLv3 license under the effects of the Copyright Act, title 17. USC §101:
Under the Copyright Act, a compilation [EdN: "composition" is used here as synonym because compilation might confuse the technical reader about code compiling] is defined as a "collection and assembling of preexisting materials or of data [EdN: data includes source code, as well] that are selected in such a way that the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship."
This means, for example, that everyone can use a single MIT licensed file or a part of it under the MIT license terms. Instead, using two of them or two parts of them implies that you are using a subset of this collection which is a derived work of this collection which is licensed under the GPLv3, also.
The GPLv3 license applies to the composition unless you are the original author of a specific unmodified file. This means that every one that can legally claim rights about the original files maintains its rights, obviously. Therefore the original authors do not need to undergo the GPLv3 license applied to the composition and they maintains their original right in full. Unless, they use the entire composition or a part of it for which they had not the rights, before.
Some files, documents, software or firmware components can make an exception to the above general approach due to their specific copyright and license restrictions. In doubt, follow the thumb rule of fair-use.
Moreover, this project is a layer of a customised ISAR engine as defined in
the kas.yml. Some files of that project will transfered into the image thus
their license also matters. Please also check the README.md of this
For further information or requests about licensing and how to obtain a fork suitable for your own business, please write to the project maintainer and copyleft owner:
- Roberto A. Foglietta roberto.foglietta@gmail.com
Have fun! <3