About

I am going to put my notes and interesting things related to self-hosting AI solutions.

Hardware

My current hardware is Asus Aspire GX10 (almost full clone of Nvidia DGX Spark GB-10). It is 1k cheaper than Spark, has no vapor chamber and 1TB drive only. I may update to 4TB later when Samsung PM9E1 will be generally available.

Comet KVM + DGX Spark: HDMI "No Signal" Fix

I use Gl.Inet Comet PoE as remote KVM. The DGX Spark has a known bug where the NVIDIA GH100 display engine enters a bad state after DPMS (Display Power Management Signaling) puts the display to sleep. The GPU registers start returning 0xbadf5600 errors, Xorg loses the display, and HDMI output dies. The Comet then correctly reports "No HDMI signal detected". Same story if your screen doesn't want to wake up with Spark.

Diagnosis (on Comet via SSH):

ssh root@<comet-ip>  # password = admin password from web UI
dmesg | grep 6911
# "check chipid ok" = hardware is fine
# "0xD211 is 0" = no HDMI signal from source
# "unsupported resolution" = source outputs a resolution the LT6911C chip rejects

Diagnosis (on Spark via SSH):

sudo dmesg | tail -30
# Look for: NVRM: gpuHandleSanityCheckRegReadError_GH100: Possible bad register read: regvalue: 0xbadf5600
# This confirms the GPU display engine is in a bad state

Fix — disable ALL display power management layers on the Spark:

1. GNOME GUI: Settings → Power → Screen Blank → "Never"; Settings → Privacy & Security → Screen Lock → disable
2. gsettings:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.session idle-delay 0
gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power idle-dim false
gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-inactive-ac-timeout 0

3. Disable DPMS at Xorg level:

sudo mkdir -p /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d
sudo tee /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/90-disable-dpms.conf << EOF
Section "Extensions"
    Option "DPMS" "Disable"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
    Option "StandbyTime" "0"
    Option "SuspendTime" "0"
    Option "OffTime" "0"
    Option "BlankTime" "0"
EndSection
EOF

4. Persist xset at login:

mkdir -p ~/.config/autostart
cat > ~/.config/autostart/disable-dpms.desktop << EOF
[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=Disable DPMS
Exec=bash -c "xset s off -dpms && xset dpms 0 0 0"
X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true
EOF

5. systemd-logind — edit /etc/systemd/logind.conf:

IdleAction=ignore
IdleActionSec=infinity

6. sudo reboot

Verify:

export DISPLAY=:0
export XAUTHORITY=/run/user/1000/gdm/Xauthority
xset q | grep -A 5 "DPMS"
# Should show: "DPMS is Disabled"

Tips&Tricks

echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bashrc
echo "printf '\e[?2004l'" >> ~/.bashrc  #fix arrows in the terminal
source ~/.bashrc

mount NFS folder on NAS drive

echo '10.0.0.2:/volume2/media	/mnt/nas/media	nfs	rw,_netdev,vers=3,noatime,x-systemd.automount 0 0' | sudo tee -a /etc/fstab

Packets I cant live without

sudo apt install nvtop btop tree ncdu duf uv mc

FW

Reboot into BIOS

sudo systemctl reboot --firmware-setup

Get FW updates

sudo fwupdmgr get-devices
sudo fwupdmgr refresh
sudo fwupdmgr get-updates
sudo fwupdmgr update # this updates the firmware
sudo fwupdmgr get-history

LLMs

Best models so far:

• Qwen3.6 27b NVFP4 + DFlash

• vLLM: Abliterated GPT-OSS-120b 1, 2

  • abliterated
  • fast on vLLM with full context (131k)
  • gives detailed answers, similar to GPT4

Interesting models:

• Dark Desires
• CWC
  • interesting medical model which provides alternative view on the pharma industry (e.g., a lot of argumented critics for different Big Pharma products.

Links

• Nvidia forum https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/c/accelerated-computing/dgx-spark-gb10/dgx-spark-gb10/721
• Reddit's localLLM community https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLM/ https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/
• Nice youtube videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCajiMK_CY9icRhLepS8_3ug
• Spark models benchmarks https://spark-arena.com/leaderboard