Running TAO Toolkit on Google Cloud Platform

Google Cloud Platform provides the Compute Engine, which is a a computing and hosting service that lets you create and run virtual machines on Google infrastructure. The Compute Engine provides a Linux or a Windows VM. To run TAO Toolkit, you will need to set up a Linux VM.

1. Instructions to set up a VM are outlined in the official compute engine instructions.

2. Select a compute engine from the VM Instances option in the console.

3. Create a new instance using the Create Instance tab

4. Set the machine family of the instance GPU.

5. Set boot image to Ubuntu, with the following options:

   Boot disk type: Balanced persistent dist Size (GB) > 200

6. Select your default network.

7. Spin up the VM by clicking Create.

Once you have set up the instance, note the IP address of the VM created from the console.

1. Set up SSH access

   1. Generate an SSH key from the terminal you intend to use to log in to the created VM. You can do so by running the command below and following the prompts:

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      ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096
              

   2. Copy the contents of the ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub file and add it to the instance.

   3. Use the login ID in the public key to log in to the public IP address of the instance.

1. Prepare the OS dependencies and check the GPUs:

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   sudo apt-get update
   sudo apt-get -y upgrade
   sudo apt-get install -y pciutils
   
   lspci | grep nvidia
           

   
   

2. Install the NVIDIA GPU driver:

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   sudo apt-get -y install nvidia-driver-460
   sudo apt-get -y docker.io
   sudo apt-get install python3-pip unzip
           

   
   

3. Install docker-ce and nvidia-docker2:

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   distribution=$(. /etc/os-release;echo $ID$VERSION_ID)
   curl -s -L https://nvidia.github.io/nvidia-docker/gpgkey | sudo apt-key add -
   curl -s -L https://nvidia.github.io/nvidia-docker/$distribution/nvidia-docker.list | tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nvidia-docker.list
   sudo apt-get update
   sudo apt-get install -y nvidia-docker2
   systemctl restart docker
   usermod -a -G docker $USER
           

   
   

   You can verify the docker installation and the GPU instances, as shown below:

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   docker run --rm --gpus all nvidia/cuda:11.0-base nvidia-smi
   
   +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
   | NVIDIA-SMI 460.39       Driver Version: 460.39       CUDA Version: 11.2     |
   |-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
   | GPU  Name        Persistence-M| Bus-Id        Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
   |-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
           

   
   

4. Log in to the docker registry nvcr.io by running the command below:

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   docker login nvcr.io
           

   
   

   The username here is $oauthtoken and the password is the NGC API KEY. You may set this API key from the NGC website.

1. Upgrade python-pip to the latest version:

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   pip3 install --upgrade pip
           

   
   

2. Install the virtualenv wrapper:

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   pip3 install virtualenvwrapper
           

   
   

3. Configure the virtualenv wrapper:

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   export VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_PYTHON=/usr/bin/python3
   export WORKON_HOME=/home/ubuntu/.virtualenvs
   export PATH=/home/ubuntu/.local/bin:$PATH
   source /home/ubuntu/.local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh
           

   Note

   You may also add these commands to the ~/.bashrc of the VM to retain them for multiple sessions.

   
   

4. Create a virtualenv for the launcher using the following command:

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   mkvirtualenv -p /usr/bin/python3 launcher
           

   Note

   You only need to create a virtualenv once in the instance. When you restart the instance, simply run the commands in step 3 and invoke the same virtual env using the command below:

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   workon launcher
           

   
   

5. Install jupyterlab in the virtualenv using the command below

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   pip3 install jupyterlab
           

   
   

Now that you have created a virtualenv and installed all the dependencies, you are now ready to download and run the TAO Toolkit samples on the notebook. The instructions below assume that you are running the TAO Computer Vision samples.

1. Download and unzip the notebooks from NGC using the commands below:

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   wget --content-disposition https://api.ngc.nvidia.com/v2/resources/nvidia/tao/cv_samples/versions/v1.2.0/zip -O    cv_samples_v1.2.0.zip
   unzip -u cv_samples_v1.2.0.zip  -d ./cv_samples_v1.2.0 && cd ./cv_samples_v1.2.0
           

   
   

2. Launch the jupyter notebook using the command below:

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   jupyter notebook --ip 0.0.0.0 --port 8888 --allow-root --NotebookApp.token=<notebook_token>
           

   This will kick off the jupyter notebook server in the VM. To access this server, navigate to http://<dns_name>:8888/ and enter the <notebook_token> used to start the notebook server, when prompted. The dns_name here is the Public IPv4 DNS of the VM that you noted down earlier.