Installing Additional Software#

DGX OS 8 is an optimized version of the Ubuntu 26.04 Linux distribution that provides access to an extensive collection of additional software available from the Ubuntu and NVIDIA repositories. For more information about additional software available from Ubuntu, refer to Install additional applications.

Before you install additional software or upgrade installed software, refer to the Release Notes for the latest release information. To install the additional software, use the apt command.

Installing GPUDirect Storage Support#

NVIDIA Magnum IO GPUDirect Storage (GDS) enables a direct data path for direct memory access (DMA) transfers between GPU memory and storage. This software avoids using a bounce buffer through the CPU.

Note

This section applies only to the following situations:

  • You use GPUDirect Storage on bare metal without Linux PCI P2PDMA.

  • You upgrade or reinstall the DOCA-OFED package and the nvidia-fs module because DGX OS 8 provides updated versions.

Installing GDS Components#

On DGX servers (DGX B300/B200, H100/H200/H800, and A100/A800):

Install the nvidia-gds package.

sudo apt install nvidia-gds

Refer to Verifying a Successful GDS Installation in the NVIDIA GPUDirect Storage Installation and Troubleshooting Guide.

Enabling Relaxed Ordering for NVMe Drives#

The Samsung NVMe drives used in the NVIDIA DGX systems support relaxed ordering for I/O operations. Relaxed ordering enables the PCIe bus to complete transactions out of order. NVIDIA recommends enabling this setting when you use GPUDirect Storage to improve performance.

  • Run the nvidia-relaxed-ordering-nvme.sh utility.

    sudo /bin/nvidia-relaxed-ordering-nvme.sh enable

Note

This applies to DGX A100/A800 systems only.

Configuring NVMe Interrupt Coalescing#

The nvidia-nvme-options package, which is installed on all DGX systems, automatically configures NVMe interrupt coalescing on all Samsung, Kioxia, and Micron drives at each boot. To disable this setting or manually configure the setting, issue the following commands:

To disable the setting:

sudo systemctl stop nvidia-nvme-interrupt-coalescing.service
sudo systemctl disable nvidia-nvme-interrupt-coalescing.service

To enable the setting manually:

sudo /usr/bin/nvidia-nvme-interrupt-coalescing.sh enable

To disable the setting manually:

sudo /usr/bin/nvidia-nvme-interrupt-coalescing.sh disable