Try DGX Spark playbooks using Nix on DGX OS, or install NixOS on your DGX Spark for the full Nix experience. The repository provides USB images and a NixOS module with settings for DGX Spark systems.

This works on the NVIDIA DGX Spark itself and also on the Asus Ascent GX10.

See my 5 minute lightning talk from Planet Nix for an intro: https://youtu.be/AvK_gi_snJE?si=MPKv3iiuS9B5elIE

You can use the dev shells and playbooks in this repo on NVIDIA DGX OS (Ubuntu) without installing NixOS.

Install Nixusing the official installer:sh <(curl -L https://nixos.org/nix/install) --daemonAlternatively, you can use the Determinate Nix Installer: curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf -L https://install.determinate.systems/nix | sh -s -- install
Enable flakes and nix-commandby adding to/etc/nix/nix.conf:experimental-features = nix-command flakes
Enable the graham33 Cachix cache— see Caching below.

On non-NixOS systems, Nix-built CUDA applications need
nix-gl-host to find the host GPU
drivers. The playbook devshells handle this automatically — container-based
playbooks don't need it, and Nix-native playbooks wrap their commands with
nixglhost so no manual intervention is required.

For other devshells (e.g. cuda), nixglhost is available and can be used
to prefix commands manually:

nix develop .#cuda nixglhost deviceQuery
Warning

Only DGX OS can boot from the factory firmware. You need to update firmware before installing NixOS.

Build the USB image:

nix build .#usb-image sudo dd if=$(echo result/iso/*.iso) of=/dev/your_usb_disk_device bs=1M status=progress sync
The image includes two kernel options, selectable from the GRUB boot menu:

NixOS(default) - NVIDIA's specialised kernel for DGX Spark with full GPU support and working Ethernet
NixOS (standard-kernel)- Standard NixOS 6.17 kernel (Ethernet has problems)

Disable Secure Boot in the DGX Spark BIOS and boot from the USB drive.

You can then follow the installation instructions in the NixOS manual: https://nixos.org/manual/nixos/stable/#sec-installation-manual

This module provides configurable DGX Spark hardware support with options for kernel selection.

hardware.dgx-spark = { enable = true; # Enable DGX Spark hardware support useNvidiaKernel = true; # Use NVIDIA kernel (default: true) };
hardware.dgx-spark.enable = true; # Uses NVIDIA kernel by defaultThe NVIDIA kernel is a custom build optimised for NVIDIA DGX Spark systems. The kernel configuration is generated from NVIDIA's Debian annotations and compared with NixOS defaults to produce a minimal, maintainable configuration.

The module also enables the DGX Dashboard web interface at http://localhost:11000, providing GPU telemetry and system monitoring.

hardware.dgx-spark = { enable = true; useNvidiaKernel = false; # Use standard NixOS 6.17 kernel };
The kernel configuration is generated from NVIDIA's Debian annotations and stored in kernel-configs/nvidia-dgx-spark-<version>.nix. This terse configuration only contains options that differ from NixOS defaults, reducing verbosity by ~82%.

To regenerate the kernel configuration:

nix run .#generate-kernel-configThis:

Fetches the NVIDIA kernel source from GitHub
Builds the NixOS baseline kernel config
Compares NVIDIA's annotations with NixOS defaults
Generates a terse config file with only the differences

Regeneration is needed when:

NVIDIA kernel version changes (update kernel-configs/nvidia-kernel-source.nix)
NixOS common-config changes (nixpkgs update)

You can also use a local kernel source for development:

nix run .#generate-kernel-config -- --kernel-source /path/to/NV-KernelsOther projects can import this flake and use the DGX Spark module:

{ inputs.dgx-spark.url = "github:graham33/nixos-dgx-spark"; outputs = { nixpkgs, dgx-spark, ... }: { nixosConfigurations.mySystem = nixpkgs.lib.nixosSystem { modules = [ dgx-spark.nixosModules.dgx-spark { # Enable DGX Spark support hardware.dgx-spark.enable = true; # Optionally use standard kernel: useNvidiaKernel = false; } # your other modules ]; }; }; }
For a complete NixOS configuration template specifically designed for DGX Spark systems, you can use the template:

```

Create a new directory for your NixOS configuration

mkdir my-dgx-spark-config
cd my-dgx-spark-config

Initialise with the DGX Spark template

nix flake init -t github:graham33/nixos-dgx-spark#dgx-spark
```
This creates a complete NixOS configuration with:

flake.nix- Flake configuration that imports the DGX Spark module
configuration.nix- Main system configuration optimised for DGX Spark
hardware-configuration.nix- Hardware configuration template

After initialising the template, you need to:

Generate hardware configuration and update template:# Generate hardware config to a temporary location to get the real UUIDs sudo nixos-generate-config --root /mnt --dir /tmp/nixos-config # Copy the real hardware UUIDs and settings from the generated file # Replace the placeholder UUIDs in hardware-configuration.nix with actual # values from /tmp/nixos-config/hardware-configuration.nix
Editconfiguration.nixto customise:- Change hostname from dgx-sparkto your preferred name
Update username from nixosto your preferred username
Add your SSH public keys for remote access
Set your timezone and locale preferences
Add any additional packages you need

- Change hostname from

Deploy the configuration to /etc/nixos:# Copy your configuration to /etc/nixos sudo cp -r . /etc/nixos/ # Apply the configuration sudo nixos-rebuild switch --flake /etc/nixos#dgx-spark

As noted in #32, only DGX OS can boot from the factory firmware. If NixOS can't boot from the factory firmware, you need to update firmware from DGX OS first.

The module enables fwupd for firmware updates. NVIDIA publishes DGX Spark firmware to the Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS). To check for available updates:

fwupdmgr get-updatesTo install available updates:

fwupdmgr updateThis repository includes devshells for NVIDIA DGX Spark playbooks from https://build.nvidia.com/spark:

| Playbook | Description | Type | Tested on NixOS | Tested on DGX OS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ComfyUI | Run ComfyUI with Stable Diffusion 1.5 for AI image generation | 🟢 Full Nix² | ✅ | ✅ |
| Connect Two Sparks | Connect two DGX Spark systems via QSFP | 🟢 Full Nix² | ✅ | ☑️¹ |
| DGX Dashboard | Set up DGX Dashboard for system monitoring | 🟢 Full Nix² | ✅ | ☑️¹ |
| FLUX.1 Dreambooth | FLUX.1 Dreambooth LoRA fine-tuning | 🟠 Container³ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Multi-Agent Chatbot | Build and deploy a multi-agent chatbot | 🟠 Container³ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Multi-modal Inference | Run multi-modal inference with vision-language models | 🟠 Container³ | ✅ | ✅ |
| NCCL for Two Sparks | Multi-node GPU communication with NCCL | 🟢 Full Nix² | ✅ | ☑️¹ |
| NVFP4 | FP4 model quantisation with TensorRT Model Optimizer | 🟠 Container³ | ✅ | |
| OpenShell | Secure long-running AI agents with OpenShell sandbox | 🔵 Nix + Container⁴ | ✅ | |
| PyTorch Fine-tuning Container | Fine-tune models with PyTorch on DGX Spark | 🟠 Container³ | ✅ | |
| PyTorch Fine-tuning Nix | Fine-tune models with PyTorch (Nix native, no containers) | 🟢 Full Nix² | ✅ | ✅ |
| Speculative Decoding | Speculative decoding for faster inference | 🟠 Container³ | ✅ | |
| TRT-LLM | TensorRT-LLM for optimised inference | 🟠 Container³ | ✅ | ✅ |
| vLLM Container | Run vLLM inference server with Qwen2.5-Math-1.5B-Instruct model | 🟠 Container³ | ✅ | ✅ |
| vLLM Nix | Run vLLM inference server natively (Nix native, no containers) | 🟢 Full Nix² | ✅ | ✅ |

¹ Pre-installed on DGX OS
² Full Nix: Fully reproducible — all dependencies installed via Nix
³ Container: Nix provides podman, but containers are pulled/built at runtime
⁴ Nix + Container: CLI tools packaged via Nix, but containers are managed by the tool at runtime

Flox distributes pre-built CUDA packages for aarch64-linux with NVIDIA's permission. This includes cudatoolkit, nccl, cuDNN, PyTorch, and other CUDA dependencies — dramatically reducing build times.

If you use the DGX Spark NixOS module, the Flox cache is configured
automatically as a substituter.

For standalone Nix (e.g. on DGX OS), add to /etc/nix/nix.conf:

extra-substituters = https://cache.flox.dev extra-trusted-public-keys = flox-cache-public-1:7F4OyH7ZCnFhcze3fJdfyXYLQw/aV7GEed86nQ7IsOs=
For packages built by this repo (e.g. dgx-dashboard, openshell):

cachix use graham33Install cachix first if needed: https://docs.cachix.org/installation

See https://nixos.wiki/wiki/CUDA for general CUDA caching details.

Warning

This has not been tested yet. Use at your own risk.

You can install NixOS on a DGX Spark remotely using nixos-anywhere. This is useful for headless setups where you have SSH access to the target machine.

nix run github:nix-community/nixos-anywhere -- --flake github:graham33/nixos-dgx-spark#dgx-spark root@<ip>This partitions the NVMe disk and installs NixOS with the DGX Spark module
enabled. You may want to customise nixos-anywhere/configuration.nix (e.g. to
add SSH keys or change the hostname) — clone the repo and point --flake at
your local checkout instead.

To test the disk configuration in a VM without installing:

nix run github:nix-community/nixos-anywhere -- --flake .#dgx-spark --vm-testSee the nixos-anywhere documentation for full details and requirements.

MIT License - see LICENSE for details.

Newspaper

Show HN: NixOS-DGX-Spark – Nix and NixOS on the DGX Spark

Create a new directory for your NixOS configuration

Initialise with the DGX Spark template

- Change hostname from