MIG GPU passthrough for system containers via DRA/CDI
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- Dominant language
- Shell
- Stars
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- Avg merge
- 7h 48m
- Merged PRs (30d)
- 3
Description
Need
System containers need access to NVIDIA MIG GPUs allocated through Kubernetes DRA/CDI (e.g. from the GPU-Operator). Today sysbox has no end-to-end support for passing MIG-capable GPUs into user-namespaced system containers.
Proposal
Add MIG/DRA/CDI GPU passthrough across the three sysbox component repos:
- sysbox-ipc — new SetupDevices gRPC RPC and Device messages so sysbox-mgr can tell sysbox-runc which host device nodes to set up.
- sysbox-mgr — a device manager (deviceMgr) that reconciles GPU discovery, plus mknod of missing NVIDIA MIG capability nodes on the host so they can be bind-mounted into the container.
- sysbox-runc — a SetupDevices flow that processes the configured devices, scrubs the injected nvidia-cdi-hook (it cannot run in a user-mapped namespace), and recreates the CDI soname LibLink symlinks inside the container rootfs.
Benefits
Enables GPU/MIG passthrough into sysbox system containers driven by Kubernetes DRA/CDI, unblocking GPU-Operator-based MIG workspaces while preserving sysbox's security model.
Linked issues/PRs
- nestybox/sysbox-ipc: ipc issue/pr URL
- nestybox/sysbox-mgr: mgr issue/pr URL
- nestybox/sysbox-runc: runc issue/pr URL
Env
Host / Node
- OS: Ubuntu with kernel supporting sysbox (base v0.7.1-era sysbox; deployed sysbox-mgr/runc working builds)
- GPU node(H100)
Kubernetes (cluster)
- RuntimeClass sysbox-runc
- DRA ( Dynamic MIG profiling based on workload request on the fly)
- with NVIDIA GPU-Operator and MIG enabled; NVIDIA driver containerized
Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Start by reading the linked sysbox-ipc issue 37, sysbox-mgr issue 83, and sysbox-runc issue 120 to understand the coordinated scope across the three repositories. Trace the proposed SetupDevices RPC, device discovery and host-node creation, and runc CDI handling. Done means MIG devices can be allocated through Kubernetes DRA/CDI and passed into a sysbox system container with the required links recreated.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- kubernetes
- Domain
- devops, infrastructure
- Issue type
- Feature
- Difficulty
- 5/5
- Estimated time
- Over a week
- Activity status
- Active
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 30/100