Is it correct that "nvidia-smi" on Docker does not show "Processes"?

Question

Is it normal that when I run "nvidia-smi" on Docker, it doesn't show up in the "Processes" section?

I'm building an environment for deep learning on ubuntu with Docker + GPU on ubuntu.

I think it's almost done, but there is one thing that bothers me. When I do "nvidia-smi" on Ubuntu, I see "processes".

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 440.100      Driver Version: 440.100      CUDA Version: 10.2     |
|-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
| GPU  Name        Persistence-M| Bus-Id        Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan  Temp  Perf  Pwr:Usage/Cap|         Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
|===============================+======================+======================|
|   0  GeForce GTX 166...  Off  | 00000000:01:00.0  On |                  N/A |
| 42%   37C    P8     8W / 125W |    249MiB /  5936MiB |      3%      Default |
+-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
                                                                               
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes:                                                       GPU Memory |
|  GPU       PID   Type   Process name                             Usage      |
|=============================================================================|
|    0      1127      G   /usr/lib/xorg/Xorg                            35MiB |
|    0      2006      G   /usr/lib/xorg/Xorg                            94MiB |
|    0      2202      G   /usr/bin/gnome-shell                          97MiB |
|    0      6565      G   /usr/lib/firefox/firefox                       2MiB |
|    0      7875      G   /usr/lib/firefox/firefox                       2MiB |
|    0     10070      G   /usr/lib/firefox/firefox                       2MiB |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

When I do 'nvidia-smi' on Docker, I don't see the 'processes'.

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 440.100      Driver Version: 440.100      CUDA Version: 10.2     |
|-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
| GPU  Name        Persistence-M| Bus-Id        Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan  Temp  Perf  Pwr:Usage/Cap|         Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
|===============================+======================+======================|
|   0  GeForce GTX 166...  Off  | 00000000:01:00.0  On |                  N/A |
| 42%   36C    P8     8W / 125W |    342MiB /  5936MiB |      2%      Default |
+-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
                                                                               
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes:                                                       GPU Memory |
|  GPU       PID   Type   Process name                             Usage      |
|=============================================================================|
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

When I run "Jupyter Notebook", the GPU seems to be running.

”It's a spec," I read an article written a few years ago.

Is it a "spec" that Process is still not showing up today? Or is it because I'm not doing the right installation?

Lend me your wisdom. Thanks in advace!

Answer 1

Yes, you will not be able to see, due to driver not being aware of PID namespace. You can peruse the thread and the work-around using Python in particular, at

https://github.com/NVIDIA/nvidia-docker/issues/179#issuecomment-598059213

(I presume you are not using a VM, since persistence mode is OFF in the log shown).