Had to use recovery image, after first setup 10/23/25

Just a note for others.

Received DGX Spark on Thursday, October 23. Was setting it up late last night in wireless appliance mode on WiFi and using a MacBook. Everything appeared to setup fine, the Spark showed on my network and I was able to connect with the Dashboard/Sync app from the Mac.

But, the GPU/Memory display in Dashboard was static, showing no activity. It also was indicating an “update available”.

So I clicked to run the update. A progress bar appeared and then the UI just froze in the Dashboard. I let it sit for an hour. My local WiFi and internet service running normally throughout.

I ssh’d into the Spark. It was live, but no processes were actively updating, so I rebooted it at the CLI. It came back up to the same condition, and I ssh’d into it again. nvidia-smi reported that it couldn’t communicated with the driver and gave no report.

After poking around a bit, it appears the post first-boot update probably failed at some point and the second update invoked from the Dashboard seems to have partly installed and failed too. Leaving things in a bad state.

Worked with apt via command line, and then the Wifi and 10gbe were dead.

Took it to a desk with a monitor and keyboard, surprised it booted to the screen and I logged in. The video-drivers were now installed active, but WiFi/BT/GbE all missing from the system. Looks like the SFP ports were present, but I don’t have cables for those.

At that point, figured it was dead in the water.

Downloaded the recovery image, made the USB image, followed the current instructions, re-flashed with the recovery image and it came up good.

Repeated the setup process in monitor/desktop/keyboard mode and all went smoothly after that.

It may be superstitious but I would recommend doing the first setup out of the box with a monitor/keyboard and wired ethernet if possible.

I just opened my new DGX Spark today and had nearly this exact experience attempting to setup from another machine via wifi. I only have a usb a thumb drive so looks like I am dead in the water until I can go out and purchase a usb c drive. Frustrating first experience for sure. Wish I had seen this post before I attempted the setup over wifi.

Reading everyone’s experience here before setting up my Sparks I connected everything via cable

  • Monitor
  • Ethernet
  • Keyboard
  • Mouse
  • Gen4 SSD w/ cooling

I struggled getting the Bluetooth to work, not sure when or why it finally recognized my devices.

It’s not superstitious at all, it’s an optimized approach.

I have also did the full wired setup, including the 10 Gb ethernet cable. I’m not the Network Appliance kinda guy.