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Observability in Rootless Mode

GPU Metrics Exporter

In rootless mode, the standard DCGM exporter cannot access the NVML library. Instead, we provide a custom GPU exporter that runs as a user service.

Setup GPU Exporter

# Install systemd service
cp scripts/exporters/gpu-exporter.service.template ~/.config/systemd/user/gpu-exporter.service

# Update the path in the service file to point to your repo
sed -i "s|/home/sbadakhc/src/github.com/xencon/aixcl|$(pwd)|g" ~/.config/systemd/user/gpu-exporter.service

# Start the service
systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user enable gpu-exporter.service
systemctl --user start gpu-exporter.service

# Verify it's working
curl http://localhost:9445/metrics

Metrics Available

  • nvidia_smi_utilization_gpu - GPU utilization percentage
  • nvidia_smi_memory_used_bytes - GPU memory used
  • nvidia_smi_memory_total_bytes - Total GPU memory
  • nvidia_smi_temperature_gpu - GPU temperature in Celsius
  • nvidia_smi_power_draw_watts - Power consumption in Watts

Working Dashboards

The following dashboards are fully functional in rootless Podman mode:

  1. AIXCL - System Overview (Prometheus)

    • CPU, Memory, Disk metrics
    • Network traffic
    • Container resource usage

  2. AIXCL - GPU Metrics (Prometheus)

    • NVIDIA GPU utilization
    • Memory usage
    • Temperature and power

  3. AIXCL - PostgreSQL Performance (Prometheus)

    • Query performance
    • Connection stats
    • Database health

Unavailable in Rootless

The following features require Docker socket access (incompatible with rootless):

  • Container Logs Dashboard (Loki)
  • Docker Containers Dashboard (Loki)

Workaround

Access logs directly via CLI:

# View specific service logs
./aixcl stack logs <service>

# Examples:
./aixcl stack logs ollama
./aixcl stack logs open-webui
./aixcl stack logs postgres

Why This Happens

  • Alloy (log shipper) requires Docker socket or journal access
  • Rootless Podman uses user-scoped journal (not accessible from containers)
  • File-based log collection is limited

Future Improvements

Consider:

  • Running Alloy on host instead of container
  • Configuring Podman to use file-based logging
  • Using podman logs command for log access