bench-conversation.py answers 'what does this endpoint feel like': ten real
jobs streamed once, TTFT split from decode tok/s, salted so no arm inherits a
warm cache, optional concurrent burst for capacity. Needed to compare the two
tensor-parallel runtimes the 2026-09-20 board swap unblocked.
dankserver-route-primary.sh pins eno1 (the fleet address, .235) as the
preferred default route after the board swap brought up eno2 with DHCP and a
lower metric; eno2 stays up as failover. nmcli device reapply, not connection
up, so the link this session rides is not torn down.
librccl DT_NEEDEDs librocm-core.so.1, so a GGML_HIP_RCCL=ON binary would not
exec from its bundled lib dir (measured: 'error while loading shared
libraries: librocm-core.so.1'). The layer-split build never pulled it in.
Layer split needs no collectives, so RCCL stayed OFF. The 2026-09-20 board
swap put both R9700s on CPU root ports with atomic routing, so a
tensor-parallel (row-split) runtime is now buildable: pass
GGML_HIP_RCCL=ON with a distinct BUILD_DIR beside the production one.
Reanalysis after the 2026-09-20 swap to an ASUS ProArt B850-Creator WiFi
NEO: both R9700s now sit on CPU GPP root ports (x8/x8 Gen5 bifurcation),
every bridge reads AtomicOpsCap Routing+, and both endpoints read
AtomicOpsCtl ReqEn+ (CAP_EXP+28.w = 0x1440) — the exact precondition
Dual-R9700-Cooperation's test plan named. TP=2 is therefore unblocked,
not proven: no collective has been dispatched since the swap,
GGML_HIP_RCCL is still OFF, and the 272 t/s "tensor" number on record
measured a butterfly fallback.
- Dual-R9700-Cooperation: short answer rewritten, re-measured 2026-09-20
topology table, rebuild-hypothesis door marked moot, probe plan is now
standing work.
- Dankserver System Specs: Motherboard section; GPU BDFs 0b:00.0 ->
07:00.0, iGPU 10:00.0 -> 11:00.0, kernel 7.0.0-31, SMT on, and the new
eno2 (192.168.0.247) second 5GbE port holding the low-metric default
route while eno1 keeps the fleet's static .235.
- frank-medium-llamacpp-dflash2: rationale and hardware row split past
from present; dated work-log sections stay as history.
- AGENTS.md + both indexes: no longer assert a wall that no longer exists.
Docs only; frank-medium stayed active and healthy throughout (verified
/health). ./tests/run.sh 331/331.
The frank-medium runbook's deployed-flags table still carried the
predecessor's values (35,30 / 393216 / 196608 / draft-mtp / BF16 mmproj);
updated to the deployed shape (32,33 / 327680 / 163840 / draft-dflash / f16
mmproj) from scripts/frank-medium.env. The halogen runbook still described
itself as 'the active frank-large runbook'; marked RETIRED 2026-09-19 with a
pointer to [[frank-large-ciru-orca]].
The CIRU launcher gates on hip/lib/libamdhip64.so + rocr/lib/libhsa-runtime64.so
under its runtime root and exits 2 without them; the build links the private
venv through its RUNPATH, so point those entries at the venv's unversioned
devel symlinks (idempotent ln -sfn). Without this the unit crash-looped for
the full 2400s health gate on first deploy.
Operator call 2026-09-19: switch the iGPU endpoint from
halogen-flash-server to jcbtc/Qwen3.8-Flash-CIRU-STRIX-Orca on the CIRU
v4.4.1 runtime with the QSA window hotfix (host build against the private
ROCm 10 SDK), one stream of the full 262144 trained window. The service
leaves the quadlet shape for a root unit (the same shape as frank-small and
frank-medium: a private-SDK host binary has no image to install and no
generated unit to dodge); the halogen quadlet is archived, the deploy
handler retires it on the host, gates on 7770, and its stray-run sweep
matches the model path so it cannot take frank-small down.
Operator call 2026-09-19: switch the target to
orcarouter/Qwen3.8-27B-Uncensored-GGUF Q8_0 (gated repo; the fetch script now
requires an HF token and verifies sha256, not just size), take the drafter to
the Q4_K_M rung of z-lab/Qwen3.8-27B-DFlash2-GGUF, cut the pool to two
163840-token conversations (327680, entirely inside the trained 262144
window), and balance the tensors across the cards (32:33) in place of the
35:30 x16-lean. The in-file MTP head stays one SPEC_TYPE change away.
The vLLM detour (a2b39b1, same day) is retired: the Q4_K_M llama.cpp setup
is the requested shape and the vLLM KV-quant options on sm_86 all measured
dead (fp8 hardware-impossible, int8 page-size unification, turboquant
mm-prefix). Root unit restored, vLLM quadlet/Dockerfile/fetch script moved
to .AGENTTRASH, runbook listed as same-day-reverted. Rollback target:
frank-small-vllm-gemma4.
int8_per_token_head: page-size unification fails (scale tensor breaks
the 256/512 head-dim ratio). turboquant_k8v4: backend validation fails
(no mm-prefix attention, which Gemma4's vision/audio path requires).
fp8: hardware-dead on sm_86. bf16 it is; history documented in
frank-small.env, seam pins auto + no backend pin.
The VLLM_ATTENTION_BACKEND env var does not exist in this vLLM dev
build (warns 'Unknown vLLM environment variable' and is ignored), so
the pin landed nowhere and Gemma4's hook force-selected TRITON_ATTN
again. Pass --attention-backend TURBOQUANT as a CLI flag instead.
Gemma4's config hook force-selects TRITON_ATTN for the mixed 256/512
head dims whenever no backend is selected, and TRITON_ATTN rejects the
turboquant KV dtype (measured: 'kv_cache_dtype not supported', crash
loop). The TURBOQUANT backend accepts any head size and the
turboquant_* dtypes, and the Gemma4 MTP speculator carries the
target's selected backend through to the draft layers.
int8_per_token_head keeps a separate fp32 scale tensor per (token,
head); Gemma4's hybrid head dims (SWA 256 / full 512) make the
per-token page bytes 4160 vs 8256, not an integer ratio, so
unify_kv_cache_spec_page_size raises NotImplementedError — nine
crash-loop restarts measured. TurboQuant k8v4 packs its block scales
inside the tensor, keeps the 2:1 page ratio, and has a dedicated
backend with an explicit Ampere path. 289,647 -> ~772k-token pool.
fp8 KV is hardware-dead on the 3090 (sm_86, no cvt.e4m3x2), so int8 is
the cheapest quant the TRITON_ATTN backend can run: pure ALU dequant,
same backend, no fp8 tensor cores needed. 289,647 -> ~579k-token pool,
two -> four full-context sessions. Quality verified against the bf16
baseline (needle-in-haystack at 213k + short battery) before the swap.
podman 5.7.0's v1 quadlet generator rejects both ContainerEntrypoint
and Entry; the key is Entrypoint= (pkg/systemd/quadlet/quadlet.go
KeyEntrypoint, mapped to --entrypoint).
The podman 5.x v1 quadlet generator on dankclaw rejects
ContainerEntrypoint with 'unsupported key in group Container', so the
unit was never generated and the deploy died at restart with 'Unit
frank-small.service not found'. Entry= is the v1 spelling.
Runtime swap on the RTX 3090 (port 7771):
- vLLM gemma-x86_64-cu129 dev build, digest-pinned, audio extra pip-installed
into localhost/vllm/vllm-openai:frank-small (Dockerfile, no COPY lines)
- google/gemma-4-12B-it-qat-w4a16-ct (10.26 GiB int4) + Google's bf16 MTP
assistant (845 MB) — the w4a16-ct assistant cannot draft in vLLM (drafter
path skips Marlin; acceptance 1.00), bf16 measures 2.80-3.56
- root systemd unit -> rootless Quadlet (dankclaw/frank-small/quadlet/);
manual CUDA device+lib mounts (no nvidia-container-toolkit on host)
- bf16 KV (fp8 hardware-dead on sm_86), 289,647-token pool, 2 concurrent
full-context sessions, CUDA graphs on
- native text+image+audio: the fleet's multimodal endpoint
- measured: pp@67k 1293 t/s, pp@213k 608 t/s, tg@213k ~13.6 t/s,
tg@85k ~17.6 t/s
- host driver 610.57.04 (Ubuntu 26.04); sm_86 is correct, no arch override
- planner/scoping: frank-small now selected by dankclaw/frank-small/ +
env/serve/download trio; old unit retired to scripts/.AGENTTRASH/
- docs: new runbook frank-small-vllm-gemma4.md; AGENTS.md, LLM index,
top docs index updated; old runbook moved to retired
--cache-ram caps the total bytes of saved prompt states in HOST RAM, and
alloc() refuses any single state larger than the whole cap. That refusal was
firing in production: 137 times in the two days from 2026-09-16, at 11.0-11.4
GiB per state, so every conversation past ~170k tokens was uncacheable and
re-prefilled from scratch on its next turn.
The state law at this shape is 68 KiB/token (16 full-attention layers x 4 kv
heads x 256 dim x 2 B x 2 for K/V, plus the MTP draft context's 4096 B), so
8192 MiB held ~120k tokens and 16384 holds ~240k: a FULL 196608-token slot
state (~12.8 GiB) now fits with ~3 GiB spare.
Host RAM only, allocated on demand and never pinned, so the VRAM fit is
untouched. New seam: the cap must clear one full slot's state and stay under
half the host's RAM (it fails on the old 8192 and passes on 16384). Also
corrects the adjacent claim that 0 is the build's default for
--ctx-checkpoints -- this binary's --help says 32.
Isolated-port (:7790) 2k-token decode with AVG rocm-smi util over the
request (peak util lies: a layer split touches both cards every token):
35:30 draft ROCm1 31.52 t/s util0 41% util1 98% <- deployed
36:29 draft ROCm1 31.49 t/s util0 43% util1 98%
35:30 draft ROCm0 31.52 t/s util0 42% util1 98%
36:29 draft ROCm0 31.48 t/s util0 43% util1 98%
The x1 card (ROCm1) stays the 98% bottleneck in every configuration.
Moving the MTP drafter to the x16 card does not flip the balance: the
per-step cost is the verify phase (both cards run the full target) plus
the logits, which are pinned to the card holding the last layers. A
target-layer move (36:29) buys 2 points on the x16 card and erodes its
VRAM margin (fit free 0.45 GiB) for no throughput change. The x1 card is
compute-bound, not PCIe-bound (~5.2 MB activation per ubatch on the link),
so saturating it costs no tokens. 35:30 is the balance; no split change.
A pending entry for frank-default-sightsound (FLM NPU endpoint retired
2026-09-11) survived in the dankclaw state store and made every --pending
run exit 2 at the dispatcher before the Playwright e2e gate could
execute. The pending pass now drops entries the target no longer allows
into ~/.AGENTTRASH and keeps going. Behavioral seam test added.
- services.json: frank-large/medium/small move from admin-only to the user
page with current descriptions (halogen w4b iGPU; 35:30 layer-split MTP
27B on the R9700s; Gemma4-12B QAT vision path on the 3090) and docs
links to /docs#models
- docs.html: static user documentation (access chain, model guide, media
how-tos, troubleshooting); served at /docs via the post-auth homepage
listener; shipped by deploy_homepage; footer + index link to it
- tests: pages seam asserts the docs contract (page, link, Caddy route,
deployer copy)
- vault: Homepage.md synced (docs landing shipped, cards reclassified)
The two R9700s sit on unequal PCIe paths: ROCm0 (03:00.0) is CPU-root-port
Gen4 x16 (~31.5 GB/s); ROCm1 (0b:00.0) rides the B650 chipset through
bridges negotiating Gen4 x1 (~1.97 GB/s). With the MTP drafter, output
layers and heavier compute buffers pinned to the last-layers card, live
rocm-smi read 98% busy on the x1 card vs 40% on the x16 card. Moving one
DeltaNet layer (34) to ROCm0 shifts ~0.43 GiB off the bottlenecked card;
the seam fit lands 30.59/30.01 with gap 0.58 GiB, inside floor and slack.
36:29 fails both gates, so this lever is spent.
signal-cli 0.14.7 parses an all-digit -a value as a phone number (the
numeric account name never resolves), and the message is a -m option,
not a positional (a positional is parsed as a second recipient).
Verified live: corrected invocation returns type SUCCESS.
Every webhook died on 'cannot access local variable _last_sent' because
the prune comprehension rebound the module global inside the function.
Prune in place instead.
The bridge-subnet-only pair dropped the host's own health probe
(source 192.168.0.143/127.0.0.1) and failed a healthy deploy. The
deployer now installs the full set: ACCEPT 127.0.0.1, ACCEPT the host
IP, ACCEPT 10.89.0.0/16, then DROP.
169.254.1.2 is not a local address on this host (netavark runs its
bridges in aardvark-dns' netns), so the relay cannot bind it — and a
loopback bind refuses container traffic. Probe-socket proof: a host
socket on 192.168.0.143:18094 answers the container's 169.254.1.2:18094
dial while the LAN IP refuses from the container. The relay binds
192.168.0.143:18093 and the deployer installs an iptables INPUT pair
(ACCEPT 10.89.0.0/16, DROP rest) so the unauthenticated endpoint stays
off the LAN.
A socket bound to 127.0.0.1 refuses container traffic that arrives via
the podman bridge: the first live webhook failed with 'dial tcp
169.254.1.2:18093: connection refused'. The relay now binds the
host-gateway endpoint — link-local to the podman bridge, off the LAN —
and the deployer's health probe follows it there.
- runbook: identity now 4x262144, audio verified, throughput table with
the OOM and negative-result rows, deployed flags updated to reality.
- AGENTS.md frank-small paragraph matches the deployed shape.
- log.md: the sweep entry.
- scripts/frank-small.env: my earlier line-range edit had clobbered
NGL=999 and FLASH_ATTN=on out of the file; the seams caught it. The
live service was unaffected because the script's defaults match the
declared values exactly, but the file contract is restored.
Suite: ALL TESTS PASSED (321), vault 125 pages 0 unresolved.
Swept on the 3090 at the deployed 4x262144 geometry, salted API probes:
- ubatch 512: pp@254k ~918 t/s, tg@250k 90-204 (noisy)
- ubatch 1024: pp@254k 962 t/s (+4.8%), tg@250k 257-302
- ubatch 2048: OOM — the MTP draft context needs ~3.3 GiB of pp compute
buffer against 2.2 GiB headroom; do not try.
- draft depth 4 + poll 100 decoded WORSE at 250k (230-257) than 3/50:
the longer verification round re-reads more long-ctx attention than the
extra accepted token earns. Kept 3/50, now with the evidence attached.
Idle VRAM 23,300 MiB; all ubatch-1024 variants idled identically
(compute buffers reserved at max graph size), so 8192 buys the deepest
prefill window for free over 4096.
The 393216/34:31/MTP deploy measured 30.78 GiB on ROCm1 against the
fit's 28.32 — the MTP draft buffers (one nextn layer's KV, 4096 B/pos,
plus draft buffers) came in 2.46 GiB above the estimate. Recalibrate
the seam's MTP constant to the measured 4.20 GiB total charge on card
1 and drop the floor 1.5 -> 1.0 GiB for this shape (ROCm1's 1.08 GiB
headroom is real; 35:30/36:29 fail card 0's floor at this pool, so
34:31 is the only split that fits 2x196k).
AGENTS.md and the runbook move to the MTP drafter: 34:31, 393216 pool
(196608 per conversation), the DFlash2 sidecar documented as a
one-line revert, and a dated part-2 section with the fit/measured
table and the recalibration.
Both were implicit build defaults (3 and 50); the throughput sweep needs
to move them without editing the exec line each time. Defaults preserve
current behavior exactly. Additive only.
DFlash2's sidecar (1.92 GiB + buffers on ROCm1) kept the 393216 pool off the table; the MTP head lives in the target file, so its cost is one nextn layer's KV (4096 B/pos) plus small buffers. Fit: ROCm0 29.77 / ROCm1 28.32 GiB, over the floor, 34:31 the balance point at this pool. n_max 3 is the measured MTP winner. The seam's fit is now drafter-aware, the slack is the deployed integer gap (1483 MiB), the ctx cap 393216 with the rope caveat (top 131k extrapolates on the base rope).
CTX_SIZE=1048576 / PARALLEL=4: every slot gets the model's full trained
window. Measured fit arithmetic on the 3090: 1 full-context slot idles
at 11,996 MiB, 4 at 22,346 -> 3,450 MiB per slot, ~8,546 MiB fixed.
A 5th slot projects 25.8 GiB past the 24,576 MiB card, and the KV pool
allocates upfront, so 4 is the ceiling. Explicit CTX_SIZE bypasses --fit
on purpose: fit maximises the TOTAL pool and would divide a smaller
window across slots at parallel>1. The slot-grid seam now pins both the
full-window division and the budget inequality so a future capacity
bump fails pre-deploy, not in the boot allocation.
Audio verified while measuring: the mmproj's audio encoder transcribes
input_audio parts verbatim (JFK WAV sample). Header comments updated.
AGENTS.md topology, Active Services, the CUDA-quant-KV lesson (f16 is no
longer why), and the runbook index. New frank-small-gemma4-12b runbook:
payload digests, the SWA/q8 arithmetic behind --fit's 262k window, the
MTP-sidecar + ngram-mod chain, the always-accepted reasoning_effort, and
the fit-probe error that looks like a fault at boot. The Qwen runbook and
both indexes carry the retirement; work log updated.
AGENTS.md topology row and section, and the runbook: the pool is 327680
positions (163840 per conversation over two slots), the split is 36:29 -- one
layer past the 34:31 balance at this context, on purpose, for headroom on the
drafter card (fit 29.19/26.04, measured 28.40/26.66 GiB at load, 3.46/5.20
headroom) -- and vision is on via the explicit --mmproj flag, because this
build has no autoload (the first deploy came up text-only and 500'd image
requests). The rope caveat is written down where the cap lives: the GGUF has
no scaling keys, so the top 65k of the pool extrapolates on the base rope.
The Qwen3.8-27B IQ3_S file carried its own MTP head; Gemma4's ships as a
separate assistant file (mtp-gemma-4-12B-it.gguf, arch gemma4-assistant,
4 nextn layers) that loads via --model-draft and shares the target's last
layers' KV. The draftless ngram-mod matcher chains behind it in the same
--spec-type value — two context-backed drafters cannot share one process,
so this chain is the only shape that carries both.
KV is q8_0 (16 KiB/token/layer vs 32 at f16) and CTX_SIZE is unset so
--fit sizes the pool against what the 7.4 GiB of payloads leave on the
24 GiB card. build-cuda was rebuilt with -DGGML_CUDA_FA_ALL_QUANTS=ON,
which quantized KV on CUDA requires. The three seams that pinned the Qwen
contract (MTP-in-file, the Qwen mmproj name, the f16 KV arithmetic) now
pin the Gemma4 contract instead, and the deploy handler's presence check
points at the new payload.
Frank