Garden Linux NVIDIA Installer

This component installs NVIDIA kernel modules on Garden Linux nodes at runtime via the NVIDIA GPU Operator. Pre-compiled kernel modules are baked into the image at build time.

Available Nvidia_installer documentation

Building NVIDIA Kernel ModulesLearn how to build NVIDIA kernel modules using the Garden Linux NVIDIA Installer.

Deploying NVIDIA GPU Operator with HelmLearn how to Deploy the NVIDIA GPU Operator using Helm

Working with NVIDIA DriversCompiling and Deploying NVIDIA GPU Drivers on Different Linux Distributions

Driver lifecycle

This project tracks the three most recent NVIDIA driver major versions. Minor driver releases and Garden Linux version updates are applied automatically via CI; major driver version bumps are handled manually.

• Garden Linux versions are tracked from https://github.com/gardenlinux/gardenlinux/releases
• NVIDIA driver versions are tracked from https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/

Runtime Driver compilation

This project also supports compilation of kernel during runtime. With this feature, the operator automatically detects the host’s kernel version and builds the required driver modules using the host’s kernel headers. To enable runtime driver compilation, apply the Helm values provided in helm/gpu-operator-values-runtime.yaml.

Note

When using the runtime image, please be aware that driver availability may take approximately 4 minutes.

gVisor (runsc) support

For clusters running workloads inside gVisor sandboxes, driver images are published at a separate gvisor/driver registry path. These images use nvproxy-qualified driver versions pinned by the gVisor project.

helm upgrade --install -n gpu-operator gpu-operator nvidia/gpu-operator \
  --values https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gardenlinux/gardenlinux-nvidia-installer/refs/tags/1.15.0/helm/gpu-operator-gvisor-values.yaml

gVisor driver images are published at:

ghcr.io/gardenlinux/gardenlinux-nvidia-installer/<release>/gvisor/driver:<driver_major>-<kernel_version>-gardenlinux0

The driver.version in gpu-operator-gvisor-values.yaml tracks the gVisor-pinned major, which may differ from the mainstream driver major when the latest mainstream release is not yet qualified by gVisor’s nvproxy.

Background

Garden Linux ships without build tools and without accessible kernel sources on the running node. This project solves that by compiling kernel modules at image-build time inside the Garden Linux kmodbuild developer container (which contains the correct kernel headers and compiler toolchain). The compiled modules are packaged into tarballs, published to GitHub Releases, and downloaded by the installer container at runtime immediately before installation.

Development

For instructions on building the driver tarballs and container images locally and working with the build system, see Building NVIDIA Kernel Modules guide.

Disclaimer

Drivers built with this project are only supported on Garden Linux. Only data center (non-consumer) graphics cards are supported.