🌿 Setup Fedora 43 on NVIDIA Nodes

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 05:00:00 GMT

0) Baseline OS prep

On a fresh Fedora 43 install:

Update packages.
Create users + add SSH keys.
Install kernel headers/devel for DKMS.

sudo dnf -y upgrade
sudo dnf -y install kernel-devel-matched kernel-headers

1) NVIDIA drivers (Fedora 43 use Fedora 42 CUDA repo)

Fedora 43 doesn’t have official NVIDIA repos yet; Fedora 42 works.

Add the repo:

sudo dnf config-manager addrepo --from-repofile=https://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/repos/fedora42/x86_64/cuda-fedora42.repo

Install open kernel modules (all our lab hardware supports this):

Compute-only nodes (servers)

sudo dnf -y install nvidia-driver-cuda kmod-nvidia-open-dkms

Workstations (GUI)

sudo dnf -y install nvidia-open

2) Mellanox NICs via DOCA (OFED/ROCE only)

Use the RHEL/Rocky 10 DOCA repo. On Fedora 43, doca-all / doca-networking depend on Python 3.12 and won’t work; doca-ofed and doca-roce work fine (and are all we need).

Create the repo file:

sudo tee /etc/yum.repos.d/doca.repo >/dev/null <<'EOF'
[doca]
name=DOCA Online Repo
baseurl=https://linux.mellanox.com/public/repo/doca/3.2.1/rhel10/x86_64/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0
EOF

Install:

sudo dnf clean all
sudo dnf -y install doca-ofed

Reboot and verify:

sudo reboot

After reboot:

nvidia-smi should see the GPU
Mellanox tooling should see the NIC

nvidia-smi

sudo mst start
sudo mst status

3) NVIDIA Container Toolkit (Podman + Docker)

Some tools require Docker, so install it:

sudo dnf -y install docker docker-compose
sudo systemctl enable --now docker
sudo usermod -aG docker $USER

Add NVIDIA Container Toolkit repo:

curl -s -L https://nvidia.github.io/libnvidia-container/stable/rpm/nvidia-container-toolkit.repo | \
  sudo tee /etc/yum.repos.d/nvidia-container-toolkit.repo

Install toolkit:

sudo dnf -y install nvidia-container-toolkit

Podman: CDI config + test

sudo nvidia-ctk cdi generate --output=/etc/cdi/nvidia.yaml

podman run --rm \
  --device nvidia.com/gpu=all \
  --security-opt=label=disable \
  docker.io/nvidia/cuda:12.4.1-base-ubuntu22.04 nvidia-smi

Docker: configure runtime + test

sudo nvidia-ctk runtime configure --runtime=docker
sudo systemctl restart docker

sudo docker run --rm --gpus all nvidia/cuda:12.4.1-base-ubuntu22.04 nvidia-smi

4) Experiment network (100GbE + 100Gb IB between two nodes)

4.1 Identify Mellanox device + set link types

sudo mst start
sudo mst status

Set port 1 = Ethernet and port 2 = InfiniBand (use the correct device from mst status):

sudo mlxconfig -d /dev/mst/mt4123_pciconf0 set LINK_TYPE_P1=2 LINK_TYPE_P2=1

Reboot to apply:

sudo reboot

4.2 Bring up InfiniBand (Subnet Manager)

Pick one node to run the subnet manager:

sudo systemctl enable --now opensmd
sudo systemctl status opensmd --no-pager

Verify IB link status:

ibstat
sudo iblinkinfo

Expected:

State: Active
Physical state: LinkUp
On ConnectX-6 dual 100G: typically negotiates 4x 25Gbps

4.3 (Optional) IPoIB sanity test

# Host 1
sudo ip link set ibs93f1 up
sudo ip addr add 10.10.10.1/24 dev ibs93f1

# Host 2
sudo ip link set ibs93f1 up
sudo ip addr add 10.10.10.2/24 dev ibs93f1

Ping:

ping -c 3 10.10.10.2 # from node 1
ping -c 3 10.10.10.1 # from node 2

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