Re: ISAR evaluation nVidia image generator based on Debian bullseye

["Roberto A. Foglietta" <roberto.foglietta@gmail.com>]

Il giorno mer 5 ott 2022 alle ore 13:35 Roberto A. Foglietta
<roberto.foglietta@gmail.com> ha scritto:
>
> Dear all,
>
> I am proud to announce the v0.9.1 of an ISAR evaluation nVidia image
> generator based on Debian bullseye. I hardly believe that this project
> will surprise you because of the technology adopted nor its use but
> probably you will find this file interesting, in particular the
> rationale chapter.
>
> https://github.com/robang74/isar-nvidia-debian/blob/main/README.md

Hi all,

during this weekend, I did a bit of development of my ISAR project.
Now it is able to produce vmdk files and ova archives:

 - vmdk: virtual machine disk useful to emulate the evaluation system
with a virtual machine

 - ova: useful for Windows users because it is vmdk combined with a
pre-configured virtual machine

This is a small step for a geek but it could be a first step in
bringing ISAR into different other fields (aka markets).

So, why virtualise a system containing nVidia software that needs to
have a direct kernel/hardware access? This project can build different
kind of system images and one of these allows the others to be built:

 1. buildme: runs on VM and can build every bitbake target and every
image in the list

 2. nvdocker: it is a runtime image containing some nVidia software
enough to run AI/GPU applications

 3. complete: Gnome3 with Eclipse allows the user to develop, test,
debu and profile AI/GPU applications

The OVA allows Windows users to download 1. which is just a Debian
system and build their own image containing nVidia software/driver

 - https://github.com/robang74/isar-nvidia-debian/blob/main/README.md#virtual-disk-build-me-download

This is important because a hobbyist driven project (a PoC) like this
could not grant anyone to share the image built with nVidia software.
However, this project could provide everyone - with some basic
knowledge about Linux - a way to build its own image.

 - Install VirtualBox
 - Download and open the OVA archive with VirtualBox
 - Boot the Virtual Machine imported by the OVA archive
 - login as debraf (no password)
 - git clone https://github.com/robang74/isar-nvidia-debian.git
 - cd isar-nvidia-debian
 - ./build.sh nvdocker
 OR
 - ./build.sh complete
 - retrieve the image built with the use of pre-configured SSH service

 Not as easy as downloading the image but reasonable and after all,
this never aimed to be a commercial service or a product ready for the
market. I did not test the OVA archive on a VM running on Windows.

NOTE FOR THE GEEKS

 I am pretty sure that almost everyone in this ml could have done this
better than me. In fact, I also explained what vmdk / ova files are,
hoping that not only geeks will read
 :-)

 Cheers, R-