Prequisites

This guide walks you through installing prerequisites prior to registering your machine as a Node on the Dispersed Network.

The Dispersed client (DisNet) is a zero-trust client. Jobs can access anything your computer can access over the network or disk. We strongly recommend using an Isolated Network or DMZ.

Linux

Supported Systems

The Dispersed client (disNet) is built and tested on Ubuntu 22.04 and Ubuntu 24.04. Other Linux distributions may work but are not officially supported.

1. Verify NVIDIA GPU Drivers

Ensure your NVIDIA GPU drivers are installed:

nvidia-smi

If the command fails, install drivers from NVIDIA Drivers.

2. Verify NVIDIA CUDA Toolkit

Check that CUDA is installed:

nvcc --version

If not installed, follow the NVIDIA CUDA Toolkit installation guide.

3. Install Docker

3.1 Add Docker’s GPG key:

curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg

3.2 Set permissions:

sudo chmod a+r /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg

3.3 Add Docker repository:

echo "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu $(. /etc/os-release && echo "$VERSION_CODENAME") stable" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null

3.4 Update and install:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-buildx-plugin docker-compose-plugin

4. Install NVIDIA Container Toolkit

4.1 Add NVIDIA repository:

curl -fsSL https://nvidia.github.io/libnvidia-container/gpgkey | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/nvidia-container-toolkit-keyring.gpg
curl -s -L https://nvidia.github.io/libnvidia-container/stable/deb/nvidia-container-toolkit.list | \
  sed 's#deb https://#deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/nvidia-container-toolkit-keyring.gpg] https://#g' | \
  sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nvidia-container-toolkit.list

4.2 Update and install:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y nvidia-container-toolkit

4.3 Configure runtime:

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

5. Verify Container GPU Access

sudo docker run --rm --runtime=nvidia --gpus all ubuntu nvidia-smi

You should see your GPU information displayed.

6. Install OpenGL Libraries (Recommended)

For rendering workloads, install the OpenGL libraries matching your driver version:

6.1 Check available versions:

apt-cache search --names-only "libnvidia-gl*"

6.2 Install (replace 550 with your driver version):

sudo apt-get install -y libnvidia-gl-550

You should see your GPU information displayed.

Windows

For the windows client you will need WSL2 installed and Docker Desktop. Docker Desktop needs to be running otherwise the client will quit with an error.

1. Install WSL2

Details and setup instructions for installing WSL2 are at https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install

Open PowerShell as Administrator:

wsl --install

Follow the prompts to complete the installation and create a user.

WSL assigns only half the RAM on the machine to WSL VMs by default. If you would like to change this amount, refer to Advanced Settings Configuration in WSL from Microsoft Learn.

1. Reboot your computer

After reboot You can find WSL Setup window via the Windows Start Menu.

To verify the installed WSL and its version:

wsl -l -v

wsl --version

3. Install Docker Desktop

Details and setup instructions for installing WSL2 are at https://docs.docker.com/desktop/setup/install/windows-install/

If your largest disk is not your boot drive, we recommend installing Docker Desktop via the command line. This allows you to specify the largest disk to store docker images. For example:

"Docker Desktop Installer.exe" install --backend=wsl-2 --always-run-service --wsl-default-data-root=D:\docker

Test that docker was installed correctly by invoking a new command window and typing at the prompt:

docker run hello-world

Test that docker was installed correctly by invoking a new command window and typing at the prompt:

docker run hello-world

When both WSL and Docker Desktop are successfully installed, you should be able to access your Ubuntu distro from a new terminal window:

To run a Docker container:

docker run --rm --runtime=nvidia --gpus all ubuntu nvidia-smi

You can now proceed to registering your node.