The objective is simple, build a 3D workstation in the cloud with Rocky 9 Linux for running application like Blender, Maya, Nuke, etc…

If you prefer Ubuntu I have another guide here for that distro.

Prerequisites⌗

This guide assumes you already have an EC2 instance with an Nvidia GPU running Rocky 9.

Getting Started⌗

Update the system.

sudo dnf update -y

Install EPEL Repository. This will make it easy to install extra packages like the AWS CLI.

sudo dnf install epel-release -y
sudo dnf config-manager --set-enabled crb
sudo crb enable

AWS CLI

If you have installed the EPEL repository you can simply install with dnf.

sudo dnf install awscli -y

Or to install manually.

sudo dnf install unzip -y
curl "https://awscli.amazonaws.com/awscli-exe-linux-x86_64.zip" -o "awscliv2.zip"
unzip awscliv2.zip
sudo ./aws/install

Cleanup install files from manual installation.

rm -rf aws*

Install AWS SSM Agent (optional)⌗

Systems Manager (SSM) is a handy service for remote patching/monitoring/administrating. It needs an agent installed to work its magic on the remote system.

sudo dnf install -y https://s3.amazonaws.com/ec2-downloads-windows/SSMAgent/latest/linux_amd64/amazon-ssm-agent.rpm

Desktop Environment Installation⌗

Installing GDM⌗

Install GDM for login. Nice DCV only works with GDM at this stage.

sudo dnf install -y gdm
sudo systemctl enable gdm.service

Nvidia and Nice DCV currently don’t support Wayland so it needs to be disabled.

sudo sed '/WaylandEnable=false/s/^#//' -i /etc/gdm3/custom.conf

Installing a Desktop Environment⌗

Now you have a choice to make, which desktop environment to install…

Gnome

sudo dnf groupinstall "Workstation"

KDE

sudo dnf groupinstall "KDE Plasma Workspaces"

KDE will install its own desktop manager, it needs to be disabled so GDM can be used instead.

sudo systemctl disable --now sddm.service

Install Nvidia Drivers⌗

Disable Nouveau⌗

Disable the Nouveau open source driver so it can’t confict with the proprietary Nvidia driver.

echo "blacklist nouveau" | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-nouveau.conf
echo 'omit_drivers+=" nouveau "' | sudo tee /etc/dracut.conf.d/blacklist-nouveau.conf

OPTIONAL: Sometimes the desktop environment installation will also install Nouveau with it, so you’ll need to regenerate the initramfs to ensure Nouveau is not loaded by the kernel.

sudo dracut --regenerate-all --force
sudo depmod -a

Install dependencies for the driver.

sudo dnf install -y make gcc elfutils-libelf-devel libglvnd-devel dkms kernel-devel-$(uname -r)

NOTE: If you get an error such as Error: Unable to find a match: kernel-devel you might need to reboot to load the updated kernel.

Download the Nvidia driver⌗

There are a few options for getting the Nvidia driver. You can download directly from Nvidia’s website, however this might not always work depending on the instance type you are using. The best option is to get the driver direct from AWS, that way you know it will work correctly with EC2.

Here is a guide to downloading the driver direct from AWS

Install Nvidia driver⌗ 

chmod +x NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64*.run
sudo /bin/sh ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64*.run -s --dkms --install-libglvnd

Disable GSP.

sudo touch /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia.conf
echo "options nvidia NVreg_EnableGpuFirmware=0" | sudo tee --append /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia.conf

Update xorg.conf to enable multiple monitor support.

sudo nvidia-xconfig --preserve-busid --enable-all-gpus --connected-monitor=DFP-0,DFP-1,DFP-2,DFP-3

Test if its working.

nvidia-smi -q | head

Nice DCV Installation⌗

First we need to download Nice DCV by going to the Nice DCV website and grabbing the download URL.

Then use curl command to download Nice DCV from the URL we got from the website like below.

curl -O https://d1uj6qtbmh3dt5.cloudfront.net/2023.1/Servers/nice-dcv-2023.1-16220-el9-x86_64.tgz

Extract the tar file.

tar zxvf nice-dcv*.tgz

Change into the extracted directory using cd.

Install all the components for the Nice DCV server.

sudo dnf install ./nice-*.rpm -y

Install USB drivers.

sudo dcvusbdriverinstaller

When asked if you want to install the USB kernel module choose yes by pressing y then enter.

Do you want to install the kernel module and enable USB remotization? [y|n]

Make sure to use DKMS pressing y then enter.

Do you want to use DKMS to install the kernel module? [y|n]

Allow firewall

sudo firewall-cmd --zone=public --permanent --add-port=8443/tcp
sudo firewall-cmd --zone=public --permanent --add-port=8443/udp
sudo systemctl reload firewalld

Autostart DCV console session as current user.

sudo sed '/create-session = true/s/^#//' -i /etc/dcv/dcv.conf
sudo sed -i "s/#owner = \"\"/owner = \"$USER\"/" /etc/dcv/dcv.conf

Enable Nice DCV service.

sudo systemctl enable dcvserver.service

Set the system to boot into graphical mode.

sudo systemctl set-default graphical.target

Login⌗

Set a password for the user so you can login with DCV.

For example

sudo passwd $USER

Give it one final reboot!

sudo reboot

Once the system comes back up its ready to use!

Clean up⌗

Don’t forget to delete the Nice-DCV and Nvidia driver installers.

Troubleshooting⌗

- Connection refused by DCV

If firewalld service is running but has not added the rules to allow Nice DCV.

This usually happens if you get the error FirewallD is not running when adding the firewall rules.

To fix this just add the firewall rules again.

- Nice DCV shows a blank blue screen with a spinning wheel forever

This usually indicated Nice DCV is working but the graphical session is not.

The most likely culprit is the Nouveau driver is running instead of the Nvidia proprietary driver. You can check if this is the case by running this command.

lsmod | grep nouveau

If Nouveau is running try repeating the steps to disable Nouveau including running the dracut commands, then reboot the system.

Once the system has reboot check to see if the Nvidia driver is loaded by running.

lsmod | grep -i nvidia