Files
serverAppConfigs/dankclaw/voiceservice/quadlet/frank-tts-engine.container
T
Frank ea2fc6440b docs(frank-tts): record the iGPU cutover, close the NPU question
The cutover PR merged the runtime; this carries the surface that has to be
true afterwards.

- Engine page: the shape is now `--device Vulkan0` on the gfx1151 as a
  co-tenant beside frank-dragoon; the registry/thread/streaming laws gain a
  fourth — the device law — whose numbers stay in the verdict report, and the
  deploy record gets the cutover steps including the `glslc` configure gate.
  The CPU-era arm/rollback prose keeps the qualitative argument and drops the
  dead numbers per the purpose test.
- Endpoint page: "Where the engine computes" now says iGPU + co-tenancy, and
  states the NPU verdict in one paragraph instead of a research tour.
- Quadlet comment: it claimed supplementary groups are what grant render
  access. On this host the udev rule world-writes the render nodes and the
  container's `id` shows no groups at all, so keep-groups is belt-and-braces;
  the RSS note now matches the device shape instead of the CPU trial.
- Verdict report: gate 2 (contention) recorded as measured after the cutover,
  and the build-stage prediction corrected — the package is `glslc`, not
  `libvulkan-dev glslang-dev`.
- index.md regenerated (one description changed).
2026-10-19 14:37:29 -07:00

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INI

# Quadlet unit: frank-tts-engine (rootless, boot-persistent).
#
# Install path on dankclaw: ~/.config/containers/systemd/frank-tts-engine.container
# Unit name: frank-tts-engine.service (container name: frank-tts-engine)
#
# WHAT IT IS. The arm A TTS engine: qwentts.cpp (pinned commit
# 5916bf7c79dbb4e66fc059cdc507a79a23a28bb4) built into an image by
# dankclaw/voiceservice/Containerfile.engine, running its resident `tts-server`
# with the 1.7 B base talker Q4_K_M and the Q8_0 12 Hz tokenizer loaded ONCE at
# startup. It is deliberately NOT a fleet endpoint: the endpoint consumers
# address is **frank-tts on 7772** ([[Frank TTS]]), which resolves voice names,
# re-encodes to mp3 and owns the timeout budget. Runbook: [[Frank TTS Engine]].
#
# WHY THIS ENGINE (Frank's call, 2026-10-18, criterion "whatever is better for
# live output"): server-side time-to-first-audio 94-112 ms (86-451 ms end to
# end through the façade), streaming that stays ahead of real time at warm RTF
# 0.55-0.67, and a run-to-run spread of +-0.01 — against the mainline CLI path's
# 0.93-0.99 at +-0.25, which crosses 1.0 often enough to stall a live stream.
# The A/B that decided it is "Decision: arm A for live output" in
# [[Local TTS and Voice Cloning]].
#
# IMAGE. Built locally by deploy-remote.sh (build_compose_image), like
# loki/alloy/frank-tts. `Pull=never` plus the `localhost/` prefix are required:
# this host's quadlet path cannot resolve a locally built tag from local storage
# otherwise. The build is a network operation (it clones the pinned commit) and
# is skipped when the Containerfile hash label already matches.
#
# NETWORK, AND WHY IT PUBLISHES NOTHING. The container sits on exactly one
# network: the private `frank-tts-engine.network` (10.89.5.0/24). The façade
# joins the same network and dials `http://frank-tts-engine:8880` — the
# container DNS name, on the network that owns it. There is no `PublishPort` of
# any kind, not even `127.0.0.1:8880`, and the reason is the lesson that 502'd
# hermes: netavark DNATs published ports only, so a host-loopback publish is not
# a path to a peer container — the façade could never have used it, and a bridge
# container cannot reach the host's own loopback bind either (see
# [[Container Network Namespaces]]). A publish would therefore buy exactly one
# thing: an extra reachable surface on an engine that has no authentication, on
# a box whose CPU is also carrying the text endpoints. Diagnostics do not need
# it either — `podman exec frank-tts-engine curl http://127.0.0.1:8880/health`
# speaks to the server from inside its own namespace, which is where the address
# is valid.
#
# MEMORY / THE RENDER NODE. Host RSS is ~1.7 GiB, not the size of the GGUFs:
# the Vulkan backend copies both tensors into device memory at load, so they
# stop counting in the process's RSS (measured after the 2026-10-19 cutover —
# `podman stats` / `ps -o rss`). No memory limit is set: the box has the room
# and a limit would convert a busy moment into an OOM kill mid-utterance.
#
# `AddDevice=/dev/dri` is what makes the iGPU visible; without it the Vulkan
# ICD enumerates nothing and the server dies on device lookup after it has
# already read both GGUFs. `GroupAdd=keep-groups` is belt-and-braces, not the
# thing that works here: the units podman spawns carry no supplementary groups
# at all, and this host grants render access a different way — the udev rule
# that makes the render nodes world-writable (same rule ComfyUI rides, see
# dankclaw/comfyui). Measured: `id` inside this container lists only the
# container's own group, and `tts-server` still holds renderD129.
# The node is NOT named: this host is hybrid, renderD128 is the NVIDIA card and
# renderD129 the amdgpu iGPU, so a node number in the unit is a guess that a
# re-probe can invalidate, while the directory hands the container every render
# node and the driver picks by name.
#
# /dev/kfd stays absent on purpose: that is the ROCm compute interface, owned by
# the engines that use HIP. A Vulkan endpoint has no use for it, and handing a
# container a second way onto the GPU is surface for nothing.
#
# THE VOICE MOUNT IS READ-ONLY AND IS FOR THE WARMER, NOT THE ENGINE. A voice
# becomes known to the engine only through POST /v1/audio/voices, and the
# registration is MEMORY ONLY — it does not survive a restart, which is exactly
# why the warm hook below runs on every start. That hook runs INSIDE this
# container (see ExecStartPost), so it reads the packs at /voices; `tts-server`
# itself never opens the directory, it receives the reference audio as base64 in
# the registration body. The façade mounts the same host directory read-only for
# its own name list, so one directory stays the single source of a voice name.
#
# REGISTRY LAW, THE REASON EXECSTARTPOST EXISTS. The voice registry is memory
# only: a restart forgets every voice, and re-registering does not warm one —
# only synthesizing does — so a boot without this hook leaves the façade
# answering 400 for every name. The per-voice cold penalty is real but small, and
# not the trial's 6.2-8.0 s: measured on the built container 2026-10-18 against an
# empty registry, the first synthesis of a freshly registered voice cost 1,883 ms
# against 1,226-1,283 ms for the requests after it. The warm pass runs serially
# (two short syntheses per voice, ~5 s each) and `TimeoutStartSec=900` keeps a growing library from
# tripping systemd's default 90 s start deadline. The leading `-` on
# ExecStartPost is load-bearing: with `Restart=always`, a warmer that exits
# non-zero (a pack missing its reference.wav, the engine still loading past the
# warmer's own patience) would restart the whole container and crash-loop the
# endpoint forever. A failed warm must be a journal line, not a restart.
#
# The hook is `podman exec`, not a host script, because there is no address the
# host could dial: this container publishes nothing (above). Exec-ing into it
# also means the warmer inherits this unit's EnvironmentFile, so every knob it
# has lives in scripts/frank-tts-engine.env beside the engine's own, and it sees
# the same /voices and 127.0.0.1:8880 the engine does.
#
# HEALTH. `GET /health` answers `{"status":"ok"}` from the HTTP thread, not the
# synthesis queue, so a busy engine still reads healthy and a dead one does not.
# HealthStartPeriod covers the first model load. The command is argument-only
# and needs /bin/sh — the generator wraps HealthCmd as CMD-SHELL — so the image
# installs curl (see the opposite case in dankclaw/loki, whose distroless base
# has no shell).
[Unit]
Description=frank-tts-engine (arm A qwentts.cpp TTS engine, internal :8880)
After=network-online.target
Wants=network-online.target
[Container]
ContainerName=frank-tts-engine
Image=localhost/franksdank/frank-tts-engine:latest
Pull=never
Network=frank-tts-engine.network
# No PublishPort, at all: the only reachable address this server has is the
# bridge address the façade resolves by name. Diagnostics use `podman exec`.
EnvironmentFile=/home/dank/serverAppConfigs/scripts/frank-tts-engine.env
Volume=/home/dank/models/Qwen3-TTS-GGUF:/models:ro
Volume=/home/dank/voices:/voices:ro
# Render access for the iGPU (see MEMORY / THE RENDER NODE above).
AddDevice=/dev/dri
GroupAdd=keep-groups
HealthCmd=curl -fsS http://127.0.0.1:8880/health
HealthInterval=30s
HealthTimeout=10s
HealthRetries=3
HealthStartPeriod=120s
[Service]
Restart=always
RestartSec=10
# Model load (tens of seconds) plus two short syntheses per registered voice.
TimeoutStartSec=900
ExecStartPost=-/usr/bin/podman exec frank-tts-engine /app/warm-voices.sh
[Install]
WantedBy=default.target