XServer on headless Root Server with NVIDIA GPU - permission error

I am running Ubuntu 20.04.3 (HWE) LTS on a root server with a NVIDIA GeForce GT 710 and no attached monitor (headless). I have installed Ubuntu-desktop for some rendering stuff. The connection to the server is handled via teamviewer which is working pretty good with custom xorg.conf (see below). But I have two issues and I hope you can help me.

  1. Xorg.log shows a permission issue regarding the sideband socket (see below). According to several forum posts XServer is not running with root permissions by default. I found a recommendation to install “xserver-xorg-legacy” and modify /etc/X11/Xwrapper.config to require root permissions (see below). Unfortunately this didn’t worked and the error still exists. Any ideas?
  2. When running “nvidia-smi” there are no processes shown using the GPU. But /usr/lib/xorg/Xorg should using the GPU or I’m wrong?

XServer configuration to work headless

/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/xorg.conf

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Layout0"
    Screen      0  "Screen0"
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Mouse0"
    Driver         "mouse"
    Option         "Protocol" "auto"
    Option         "Device" "/dev/psaux"
    Option         "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
    Option         "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Keyboard0"
    Driver         "kbd"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier     "Monitor0"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "Samsung S22C350"
    Option         "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BoardName      "NVIDIA GeForce GT 710"
    BusID          "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Device0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "Stereo" "0"
    Option         "AllowEmptyInitialConfiguration" "True"
    Option         "UseDisplayDevice" "DFP-0"
    Option         "CustomEDID" "DFP-0:/usr/share/X11/edid.txt"
    Option         "ConnectedMonitor" "DFP-0"
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

XServer legacy configuration

sudo apt install xserver-xorg-legacy

/etc/X11/Xwrapper.config

needs_root_rights=yes
allowed_users=anybody

XServer log file

~/.local/share/xorg/Xorg.1.log

…
    [    33.910] (WW) NVIDIA: Failed to bind sideband socket to
    [    33.910] (WW) NVIDIA:     '/var/run/nvidia-xdriver-b203c470' Permission denied
…

nvidia-smi

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 470.86       Driver Version: 470.86       CUDA Version: 11.4     |
|-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
| GPU  Name        Persistence-M| Bus-Id        Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan  Temp  Perf  Pwr:Usage/Cap|         Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
|                               |                      |               MIG M. |
|===============================+======================+======================|
|   0  NVIDIA GeForce ...  Off  | 00000000:01:00.0 N/A |                  N/A |
| 50%   42C    P8    N/A /  N/A |    160MiB /   981MiB |     N/A      Default |
|                               |                      |                  N/A |
+-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
                                                                               
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes:                                                                  |
|  GPU   GI   CI        PID   Type   Process name                  GPU Memory |
|        ID   ID                                                   Usage      |
|=============================================================================|
|  No running processes found                                                 |

You can safely ignore that message, it’s only needed with special setups, running xorg in a user namespace and e.g. wanting to use gsync.

That message is just misleading, your GT710 doesn’t support listing running processes, previously the message was “Not supported” but was changed in recent driver versions for whatever reason. Also, just ignore.

1 Like

ok. Thanks for your reply!

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