DGX Spark – Unable to Load NVIDIA Drivers / DGX Dashboard Updates Stuck

Accelerated Computing DGX Spark / GB10 User Forum DGX Spark / GB10
1

Hello,

We recently purchased an NVIDIA DGX Spark, and I am facing issues installing or loading the NVIDIA GPU drivers. I would appreciate guidance from the DGX Spark support team or anyone who has experience with similar issues.

Problem Summary

  • Running nvidia-smi returns:
NVIDIA-SMI has failed because it couldn't communicate with the NVIDIA driver.
Make sure that the latest NVIDIA driver is installed and running.

  • The DGX Dashboard opens correctly through NVIDIA Sync, but:

    • There is no clear option to install GPU drivers

    • The Updates page often gets stuck at “Downloading and installing update”

    • Rebooting does not help

    • Running updates multiple times does not fix the issue

Troubleshooting Already Done

  1. Rebooted the system multiple times (sudo reboot)

  2. Verified that nvidia-smi fails

  3. Collected logs:

    • dmesg

    • journalctl

    • sosreport -a

  4. Shared the logs with NVIDIA live support (they advised me to post here)

dmesg.txt (99.3 KB)

journalctl.txt (319.5 KB)
Sosreport

Any help, documentation, or troubleshooting steps would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

3

Updating through DGX Dashboard will automatically reboot your system and may take some time. If it is not working, however, you can run the update through the command line instead.

sudo apt update
sudo apt dist-upgrade
sudo fwupdmgr refresh
sudo fwupdmgr upgrade
sudo reboot
4

Can you please attach the contents of /var/log/apt/history.log? I’m curious what happened to the drivers that were preinstalled. Please also try running dpkg -l | grep 580. You should see driver components like these:

root@spark:~# dpkg -l | grep 580
ii  libnvidia-cfg1-580:arm64                         580.95.05-0ubuntu0.24.04.3               arm64        NVIDIA binary OpenGL/GLX configuration library
ii  libnvidia-common-580                             580.95.05-0ubuntu0.24.04.3               all          Shared files used by the NVIDIA libraries
ii  libnvidia-compute-580:arm64                      580.95.05-0ubuntu0.24.04.3               arm64        NVIDIA libcompute package
ii  libnvidia-decode-580:arm64                       580.95.05-0ubuntu0.24.04.3               arm64        NVIDIA Video Decoding runtime libraries
ii  libnvidia-encode-580:arm64                       580.95.05-0ubuntu0.24.04.3               arm64        NVENC Video Encoding runtime library
ii  libnvidia-extra-580:arm64                        580.95.05-0ubuntu0.24.04.3               arm64        Extra libraries for the NVIDIA driver
ii  libnvidia-fbc1-580:arm64                         580.95.05-0ubuntu0.24.04.3               arm64        NVIDIA OpenGL-based Framebuffer Capture runtime library
ii  libnvidia-gl-580:arm64                           580.95.05-0ubuntu0.24.04.3               arm64        NVIDIA OpenGL/GLX/EGL/GLES GLVND libraries and Vulkan ICD
ii  libxnvctrl0:arm64                                580.105.08-0ubuntu1                      arm64        NV-CONTROL X extension (runtime library)
ii  linux-modules-nvidia-580-open-6.14.0-1013-nvidia 6.14.0-1013.13                           arm64        Linux kernel nvidia modules for version 6.14.0-1013
ii  linux-modules-nvidia-580-open-nvidia-hwe-24.04   6.14.0-1013.13                           arm64        Extra drivers for nvidia-580-open for the nvidia-hwe-24.04 flavour
ii  nvidia-compute-utils-580                         580.95.05-0ubuntu0.24.04.3               arm64        NVIDIA compute utilities
ii  nvidia-driver-580-open                           580.95.05-0ubuntu0.24.04.3               arm64        NVIDIA driver (open kernel) metapackage
ii  nvidia-firmware-580-580.95.05                    580.95.05-0ubuntu0.24.04.3               arm64        Firmware files used by the kernel module
ii  nvidia-kernel-common-580                         580.95.05-0ubuntu0.24.04.3               arm64        Shared files used with the kernel module
ii  nvidia-kernel-source-580-open                    580.95.05-0ubuntu0.24.04.3               arm64        NVIDIA kernel source package
ii  nvidia-modprobe                                  580.105.08-0ubuntu1                      arm64        Load the NVIDIA kernel driver and create device files
ii  nvidia-settings                                  580.105.08-0ubuntu1                      arm64        Tool for configuring the NVIDIA graphics driver
ii  nvidia-utils-580                                 580.95.05-0ubuntu0.24.04.3               arm64        NVIDIA driver support binaries
ii  xserver-xorg-video-nvidia-580                    580.95.05-0ubuntu0.24.04.3               arm64        NVIDIA binary Xorg driver

If those packages are missing, we can try to figure out the right apt command to restore them, or you can reinstall the OS from the recovery image.

5

Hi @parthp, are you still running into this issue?