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NGC Access Setup#

Configure NGC access so you can pull Speech NIM images and download models.

NGC API Key#

Generate an API Key#

  1. Open Generate Personal Key.

  2. Create a key and ensure at least NGC Catalog is included in Services Included. Add more services if you use the key for other NGC features.

Note

Personal keys support expiration, revocation, and rotation. See the NGC User Guide for key types.

Export the API Key#

Use the API key value as the NGC_API_KEY environment variable so deploy commands (Docker or Helm) can pull images and download models.

In your terminal:

export NGC_API_KEY=<your-key-value>

To persist across sessions:

# Bash
echo "export NGC_API_KEY=<your-key-value>" >> ~/.bashrc

# Zsh
echo "export NGC_API_KEY=<your-key-value>" >> ~/.zshrc

Note

For tighter security, store the key in a file and use cat $NGC_API_KEY_FILE when needed, or use a password manager.

Docker Login to NGC#

Authenticate with the NVIDIA Container Registry so Docker can pull nvcr.io images:

echo "$NGC_API_KEY" | docker login nvcr.io --username '$oauthtoken' --password-stdin

  • Username is the literal $oauthtoken (API key authentication).

  • Password is the value of NGC_API_KEY.

After this, docker pull nvcr.io/nim/nvidia/<image>:<tag> and NIM container runs that pull from NGC will succeed.