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Home server question: How hard is it to set up an Nvidia GPU on a Linux machine with no display server? (alien.top)
submitted 11 months ago by sskg@alien.top to c/main@selfhosted.forum
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Okay, so I have an old gaming rig (4th gen i7, GTX 1070ti) that I want to turn into a home server. I'd like to use the GPU only for specific tasks, like encoding when watching stuff via Jellyfin. What would be easier?

  • Install Fedora or Rocky Linux with the normal GUI, install and configure the Nvidia drivers with akmod-nvidia, then just remove X/Wayland from the startup process?
  • Install either distro sans GUI, and install the nvidia drivers? Also, does akmod-nvidia work for systems with no display server?

So yeah. Any Linux people out there with nvidia cards and purely CLI servers out there? I've got a fair bit of experience with Linux, but I've just never done this before. And Google keeps giving me results about troubleshooting black screens after installing the drivers.

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[–] GnomeComedy@beehaw.org 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

For sanity, use RHEL or a RHEL clone and not Fedora (less kernel updates, less opportunity for nvidia driver breakage), then use the official Nvidia rpm repo and the setup should be pretty straightforward.

[–] Still-Snow-3743@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

Last I tried this, the Nvidia cli I stalker was easy peasy for my 1050ti.

However, I haven't took a look at jellyfin, but the Intel quicksync encoder on the Intel chip on my home server did the same encoding tasks and was far less temperamental with plex than Nvidia was. Do you really need the GPU? If it's just for video encoding I feel like you could skip it. If it's for more esoteric stuff like running LLM then of course it's a requirement.

[–] mavour@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

PolloLoco vgpu guide will help you

[–] sskg@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

Thanks!

[–] leggyybtw@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

Nothing against fedora but I did not have a good experiente with it, specially akmod-nvidia drivers

[–] Lamber414@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

Pretty easy on Debian, Ubuntu, rhel and it's derivatives.

[–] randombullet@feddit.de 0 points 11 months ago

I think you may be interested in ProxMox. You can pass through the GPU to a VM or CT.

That way if you get tired of troubleshooting, you can just create a new VM.

[–] jmadden912@alien.top 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Why not use proxmox? Then passthrough the gpu to distro of your choice? I have 2x headless ubuntu set ups with gpu's passed through no problem. One for plex/jellyfin, one for cameras

[–] sskg@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

This rig isn't really built for virtualization. In fact, I don't think I can even enable KVM in the BIOS. A regular OS and maybe some containers will have to do.

My only real question is how to get the Nvidia drivers installed sans display server.

[–] jmadden912@alien.top 0 points 11 months ago

Pretty sure they're installed by default. At least in ubuntu.

https://ubuntu.com/server/docs/nvidia-drivers-installation