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Mattia Eleuteri 669fb2416a feat(kubernetes): default gpu-operator to an OS-provided driver on Talos
Closes the gpu-operator half of #3563. Tenant clusters have run Talos
workers since 1.6.0, where the NVIDIA driver comes from a system extension
baked into the worker image rather than from the operator's driver
container. The addon default still described the Ubuntu shape, so a GPU
node group came up with the operator fighting the OS for the driver and no
path at all for CUDA libraries to reach a tenant pod.

Three things change, each fixing one silent failure:

driver.enabled and toolkit.enabled go false. The driver container would
load its own module and clash with the extension's; the toolkit container
would rewrite /etc/containerd/config.toml, which Talos owns and which
already registers the nvidia runtime with enable_cdi = true and
cdi_spec_dirs = ['/run/cdi'].

validator.driver.env points DRIVER_ROOT and NVIDIA_DRIVER_ROOT at / and
disables /dev/char symlink creation. The driver validator otherwise looks
for a driver container install, finds none, never writes its sentinel, and
leaves the device plugin blocked behind toolkit-validation — the loop on
"Attempting to validate a driver container installation".

devicePlugin.env selects cdi-annotations and points NVIDIA_CTK_PATH at the
host's nvidia-ctk. Tenant pods carry no runtimeClassName and did not need
one on Ubuntu, where the toolkit made nvidia the default containerd
runtime; Talos does not, so CDI is the only route for the CUDA libraries.
DEVICE_ID_STRATEGY, NVIDIA_DRIVER_ROOT and CDI_ANNOTATION_PREFIX are set
and tested alongside it: CDI device names key on the UUID strategy, the
plugin resolves the driver from NVIDIA_DRIVER_ROOT, and the annotation
prefix has to be the one containerd reads, so a regression in any of them
breaks device resolution on its own.

The previous default fed NVreg_NvLinkDisable=1 to the driver container
through the nvidia-kernel-module-params ConfigMap. With that container off
the ConfigMap is mounted by nothing, so the default is removed. On Talos a
module parameter belongs to the worker machine config, which the
kernelModules field of the KubernetesNodes app
(packages/apps/kubernetes-nodes, #3571) writes. The wrapper chart keeps
the ConfigMap for an operator who re-enables the driver container.

Every value here is the configuration validated on a production Talos GPU
node group, minus the parts that only mattered while the driver container
was in play.

Not covered: HAMi. When addons.hami.enabled the operator's device plugin
stays off and HAMi serves the GPUs, and HAMi's own plugin needs equivalent
CDI wiring on Talos that this default does not attempt.

Refs: #3563

Assisted-by: LLM
Signed-off-by: Mattia Eleuteri <mattia@hidora.io>
2026-09-29 17:09:13 +02:00
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