CUDA accessing ALL devices, even those which are blacklisted

Hi all,

I’m using linux cgroups (through SLURM, http://www.schedmd.com/) to control CUDA and OpenCL jobs on machines with multiple nvidia gpu. Cgroups are nices since they isolate processes and prevent them from accessing unallocated resources.

I can effectively prevent code to run on unallocated gpu, but the it seems that just initializing CUDA requires visiting every nvidia gpu in the system. Because cgroups is preventing this, every run will fail. For example, running /opt/cuda/sdk/C/bin/linux/release/deviceQuery through this setup will fail:

standard output:

/opt/cuda/sdk/C/bin/linux/release/deviceQuery Starting...

CUDA Device Query (Runtime API) version (CUDART static linking)

cudaGetDeviceCount returned 10

-> invalid device ordinal

error output:

[deviceQuery] starting...

[deviceQuery] test results...

FAILED

> exiting in 3 seconds: 3...2...1...done!

srun: error: shockwave: task 0: Exited with exit code 1

Running deviceQuery outside of the queueing system works just fine:

$ /opt/cuda/sdk/C/bin/linux/release/deviceQuery

[deviceQuery] starting...

/opt/cuda/sdk/C/bin/linux/release/deviceQuery Starting...

CUDA Device Query (Runtime API) version (CUDART static linking)

Found 3 CUDA Capable device(s)

Device 0: "GeForce GTX 580"

  CUDA Driver Version / Runtime Version          4.1 / 4.1

  CUDA Capability Major/Minor version number:    2.0

  Total amount of global memory:                 3072 MBytes (3220897792 bytes)

  (16) Multiprocessors x (32) CUDA Cores/MP:     512 CUDA Cores

  GPU Clock Speed:                               1.54 GHz

  Memory Clock rate:                             2004.00 Mhz

  Memory Bus Width:                              384-bit

  L2 Cache Size:                                 786432 bytes

  Max Texture Dimension Size (x,y,z)             1D=(65536), 2D=(65536,65535), 3D=(2048,2048,2048)

  Max Layered Texture Size (dim) x layers        1D=(16384) x 2048, 2D=(16384,16384) x 2048

  Total amount of constant memory:               65536 bytes

  Total amount of shared memory per block:       49152 bytes

  Total number of registers available per block: 32768

  Warp size:                                     32

  Maximum number of threads per block:           1024

  Maximum sizes of each dimension of a block:    1024 x 1024 x 64

  Maximum sizes of each dimension of a grid:     65535 x 65535 x 65535

  Maximum memory pitch:                          2147483647 bytes

  Texture alignment:                             512 bytes

  Concurrent copy and execution:                 Yes with 1 copy engine(s)

  Run time limit on kernels:                     No

  Integrated GPU sharing Host Memory:            No

  Support host page-locked memory mapping:       Yes

  Concurrent kernel execution:                   Yes

  Alignment requirement for Surfaces:            Yes

  Device has ECC support enabled:                No

  Device is using TCC driver mode:               No

  Device supports Unified Addressing (UVA):      Yes

  Device PCI Bus ID / PCI location ID:           1 / 0

  Compute Mode:

     < Default (multiple host threads can use ::cudaSetDevice() with device simultaneously) >

Device 1: "GeForce 210"

  CUDA Driver Version / Runtime Version          4.1 / 4.1

  CUDA Capability Major/Minor version number:    1.2

  Total amount of global memory:                 512 MBytes (536674304 bytes)

  ( 2) Multiprocessors x ( 8) CUDA Cores/MP:     16 CUDA Cores

  GPU Clock Speed:                               1.23 GHz

  Memory Clock rate:                             600.00 Mhz

  Memory Bus Width:                              64-bit

  Max Texture Dimension Size (x,y,z)             1D=(8192), 2D=(65536,32768), 3D=(2048,2048,2048)

  Max Layered Texture Size (dim) x layers        1D=(8192) x 512, 2D=(8192,8192) x 512

  Total amount of constant memory:               65536 bytes

  Total amount of shared memory per block:       16384 bytes

  Total number of registers available per block: 16384

  Warp size:                                     32

  Maximum number of threads per block:           512

  Maximum sizes of each dimension of a block:    512 x 512 x 64

  Maximum sizes of each dimension of a grid:     65535 x 65535 x 1

  Maximum memory pitch:                          2147483647 bytes

  Texture alignment:                             256 bytes

  Concurrent copy and execution:                 Yes with 1 copy engine(s)

  Run time limit on kernels:                     Yes

  Integrated GPU sharing Host Memory:            No

  Support host page-locked memory mapping:       Yes

  Concurrent kernel execution:                   No

  Alignment requirement for Surfaces:            Yes

  Device has ECC support enabled:                No

  Device is using TCC driver mode:               No

  Device supports Unified Addressing (UVA):      No

  Device PCI Bus ID / PCI location ID:           3 / 0

  Compute Mode:

     < Default (multiple host threads can use ::cudaSetDevice() with device simultaneously) >

Device 2: "GeForce GTX 580"

  CUDA Driver Version / Runtime Version          4.1 / 4.1

  CUDA Capability Major/Minor version number:    2.0

  Total amount of global memory:                 3072 MBytes (3220897792 bytes)

  (16) Multiprocessors x (32) CUDA Cores/MP:     512 CUDA Cores

  GPU Clock Speed:                               1.54 GHz

  Memory Clock rate:                             2004.00 Mhz

  Memory Bus Width:                              384-bit

  L2 Cache Size:                                 786432 bytes

  Max Texture Dimension Size (x,y,z)             1D=(65536), 2D=(65536,65535), 3D=(2048,2048,2048)

  Max Layered Texture Size (dim) x layers        1D=(16384) x 2048, 2D=(16384,16384) x 2048

  Total amount of constant memory:               65536 bytes

  Total amount of shared memory per block:       49152 bytes

  Total number of registers available per block: 32768

  Warp size:                                     32

  Maximum number of threads per block:           1024

  Maximum sizes of each dimension of a block:    1024 x 1024 x 64

  Maximum sizes of each dimension of a grid:     65535 x 65535 x 65535

  Maximum memory pitch:                          2147483647 bytes

  Texture alignment:                             512 bytes

  Concurrent copy and execution:                 Yes with 1 copy engine(s)

  Run time limit on kernels:                     No

  Integrated GPU sharing Host Memory:            No

  Support host page-locked memory mapping:       Yes

  Concurrent kernel execution:                   Yes

  Alignment requirement for Surfaces:            Yes

  Device has ECC support enabled:                No

  Device is using TCC driver mode:               No

  Device supports Unified Addressing (UVA):      Yes

  Device PCI Bus ID / PCI location ID:           65 / 0

  Compute Mode:

     < Default (multiple host threads can use ::cudaSetDevice() with device simultaneously) >

deviceQuery, CUDA Driver = CUDART, CUDA Driver Version = 4.1, CUDA Runtime Version = 4.1, NumDevs = 3, Device = GeForce GTX 580, Device = GeForce 210

[deviceQuery] test results...

PASSED

> exiting in 3 seconds: 3...2...1...done!

Is there a way to prevent CUDA from trying to access every possible devices on the system? Or at least not fail completely when it cannot access one device (that it shouldn’t access anyway)?

You can use the CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES environment variable to control visibility. If you ran :

CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0,2 /opt/cuda/sdk/C/bin/linux/release/deviceQuery

you will see output only for the GTX580’s. The driver will not try to initialize on the GT210.

(See http://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/DevZone/docs/html/C/doc/CUDA_C_Best_Practices_Guide.pdf Section 12.5 for a complete explanation of this variable and its effects)

Hi,

This is an old issue, but I believe it’s still there, even in CUDA 6.5. The CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES doesn’t seem to have any effect on the cudaGetDeviceCount() call.

I have the exact same setup as the original poster, and I can demonstrate this. On a server with 8 GPUs, I run a Slurm job in which I request only 1 CPU, so my job runs in a cgroup where access to all /dev/nvidiaX devices is forbidden except for one. nvidia-smi -L works fine:

$ nvidia-smi -L
GPU 0: Tesla K20Xm (UUID: GPU-88032b92-4cc2-0c14-0182-c3ccf6daba67)
Unable to determine the device handle for gpu 0000:05:00.0: Unknown Error
Unable to determine the device handle for gpu 0000:08:00.0: Unknown Error
Unable to determine the device handle for gpu 0000:09:00.0: Unknown Error
Unable to determine the device handle for gpu 0000:85:00.0: Unknown Error
Unable to determine the device handle for gpu 0000:86:00.0: Unknown Error
Unable to determine the device handle for gpu 0000:89:00.0: Unknown Error
Unable to determine the device handle for gpu 0000:8A:00.0: Unknown Error

Only access to GPU 0 is allowed.

But then, deviceQuery fails because it tries to access all the GPUs, even when CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES is set:

$ CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0 ./deviceQuery
./deviceQuery Starting...

 CUDA Device Query (Runtime API) version (CUDART static linking)

cudaGetDeviceCount returned 10
-> invalid device ordinal
Result = FAIL

It’s obvious when running it through strace:

$ CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0 strace ./deviceQuery
[...]
stat("/dev/nvidia0", {st_mode=S_IFCHR|0666, st_rdev=makedev(195, 0), ...}) = 0
open("/dev/nvidia0", O_RDWR)            = 4
fcntl(4, F_SETFD, FD_CLOEXEC)           = 0
ioctl(3, 0xc020462a, 0x7fffb0964550)    = 0
open("/proc/driver/nvidia/params", O_RDONLY) = 5
fstat(5, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0444, st_size=0, ...}) = 0
mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x7feaba2fa000
read(5, "Mobile: 4294967295\nResmanDebugLe"..., 1024) = 413
close(5)                                = 0
munmap(0x7feaba2fa000, 4096)            = 0
stat("/dev/nvidia1", {st_mode=S_IFCHR|0666, st_rdev=makedev(195, 1), ...}) = 0
open("/dev/nvidia1", O_RDWR)            = -1 EPERM (Operation not permitted)
ioctl(3, 0xc0104629, 0x7fffb0964720)    = 0
close(3)                                = 0
close(4)                                = 0
munmap(0x3231000000, 16149104)          = 0
write(1, "cudaGetDeviceCount returned 10\n", 31cudaGetDeviceCount returned 10
) = 31
write(1, "-> invalid device ordinal\n", 26-> invalid device ordinal
) = 26
write(1, "Result = FAIL\n", 14Result = FAIL
)         = 14
exit_group(1)

Could you please advise on this, and confirm that setting CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES should have an effect on the cudaGetDeviceCount() function? Because it apparently has none.

The enumeration order created by nvidia-smi may not match the enumeration order created by deviceQuery.

Therefore I think you are assuming that since nvidia-smi does not fail on device “0” that deviceQuery should be fine with device “0”. But they may not be the same physical device. Try running your deviceQuery command with all individual devices selected, one-by-one, and I think you will find one of them that works.

CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=“0” ./deviceQuery
CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=“1” ./deviceQuery
CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=“2” ./deviceQuery
etc.

Hi,

Thanks for your feedback.

The GPU ids are actually consistent across all tools, otherwise the CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES thing wouldn’t make any sense. And the strace bit I posted earlier showed that deviceQuery was trying to access at least 2 devices (nvidia0 and nvidia1) whereas CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES contained only 1 id.

Anyway, I tried your suggestion, and it doesn’t work:

$ for i in {0..7}; do echo -n "CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=$i: "; CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=$i ./deviceQuery | grep Result ; done
CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0: Result = FAIL
CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=1: Result = FAIL
CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=2: Result = FAIL
CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=3: Result = FAIL
CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=4: Result = FAIL
CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=5: Result = FAIL
CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=6: Result = FAIL
CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=7: Result = FAIL

what permissions are being set on the device control files? Do you have control over this?

The permissions are set through the cgroup devices subsystem, as described here: [url]https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/html/Resource_Management_Guide/sec-devices.html[/url]

The thing is I do want to restrict access to certain GPUs. I just want cudaGetDeviceCount() to report the number of GPUs available in CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES rather than failing when access is not allowed to a /dev/nvidiaX device.

can you list the numerical permissions on the files that are modified in the allocated state, as root if necessary, using ls -l?

i.e. create an allocation as if you were assigning a GPU to a user/job, same as the condition where you see the error. Then, in that state, as root, list the permissions of all 8 nvidia device files.

Sure, but the access restrictions being made by the cgroup devices subsystem (and thus by the kernel itself), the permissions on the device files are not modified:

$ ls -al /dev/nvidia[0-9]
crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 195, 0 Oct  2 07:55 /dev/nvidia0
crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 195, 1 Oct  2 07:55 /dev/nvidia1
crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 195, 2 Oct  2 07:55 /dev/nvidia2
crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 195, 3 Oct  2 07:55 /dev/nvidia3
crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 195, 4 Oct  2 07:55 /dev/nvidia4
crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 195, 5 Oct  2 07:55 /dev/nvidia5
crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 195, 6 Oct  2 07:55 /dev/nvidia6
crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 195, 7 Oct  2 07:55 /dev/nvidia7

Yet:

$ cat /dev/nvidia0
cat: /dev/nvidia0: Invalid argument

which is ok, cat doesn’t really make sense on /dev/nvidia0, but this is just to show that read() is actually allowed.

And:

$ cat /dev/nvidia1
cat: /dev/nvidia1: Operation not permitted

Access is denied.

For the record, I got confirmation from NVIDIA engineering that this problem will be fixed in CUDA 7.