GPU-Deep Learning with Docker for noobs
The point of this small tutorial is to make a comprehensible and simple notebook with useful tips and commands to use Docker with NVIDIA GPU for deep learning purposes. It aims to help new developper willing to have a controlled environment for testing and iterating fast.
First things first install your environment on your Ubuntu’s VM. I won’t cover anything else than docker related stuff.
1- Installing Cuda 8.0 for Ubuntu
# From NVIDIA websitewget http://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/repos/ubuntu1604/x86_64/cuda-repo-ubuntu1604_8.0.44-1_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i cuda-repo-ubuntu1604_8.0.44-1_amd64.deb
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install cuda
2- Installing Docker & Nvidia-Docker
# Install dockersudo apt-get install docker-ce# Install nvidia-docker & nvidia-docker-pluginwget -P /tmp https://github.com/NVIDIA/nvidia-docker/releases/download/v1.0.1/nvidia-docker_1.0.1-1_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i /tmp/nvidia-docker*.deb && rm /tmp/nvidia-docker*.deb# Getting rid of the sudo by allowing current user to manage containerssudo usermod -aG nvidia-docker $USER
3- Basics of Docker
Now that you have your environment all setup you need to learn the basics on how to build, run and manage your docker images. Here are a few basic commands:
# List of all Docker imagesnvidia-docker images# List of all Docker container runningnvidia-docker ps# Copy a file from you machine to a running containernvidia-docker cp path/to/your/file container-name:/destination# Monitoring you GPU with nvidia-sminvidia-smi
4- Running your Docker Image
Now I will cover how to build an image from the DockerFile, to run the image and to execute scripts inside of the container. I might add that having a clearer Dockerfile name is a good thing… So when you have your Dockerfile all set, there is still a few steps before being able to use the container. For the sake of this tutorial we will use the official GPU image from Tensorflow.
# Building the container from a filenvidia-docker build -f Dockerfile -t tag-name path/to/dockerfile# Run your docker image
# (-d to detach & print container ID; -p to open port for ipython notebook 6006 & tensorboard 8888)nvidia-docker run -d --name container_name -p 8888:8888 -p 6006:6006 gcr.io/tensorflow/tensorflow:latest-gpu# Connect to your containernvidia-docker exec -it container_name bash# Stop or Start a containernvidia-docker start || stop
If you want to access your Tensorboard or Notebook, you might want to use port forwarding on your local machine:
# Launch tensorboard on your containertensorboard --logdir=path/to/log-directory# Port forwarding ssh -L 8888:localhost:8888 -f -N user@yourserver
This is the end of the part 1 on Docker for GPU-Deep Learning. The next post will be about the Dockerfile and how to setup DeepLearning-ready environment with Tensorflow.
Cheers
If you have any questions or suggestions feel free to ask @fguilloc or in the comment section.
