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Frank cc29875842 research: how to make the two R9700s work together (and one correction to my own claim)

New page: LLM/Dual-R9700-Cooperation.md — registered in the vault index, with
the measured evidence rather than the theory.

**The answer.** Card #2 sits behind the B650 chipset, whose bridges advertise
`AtomicOpsCap: Routing-` (read-only), so ROCr refuses to fill the hostcall
buffer RCCL's kernels declare and no RCCL op can dispatch on it. Two paths fix
it: an M.2→PCIe x4 riser into the free, CPU-attached M.2_2 slot (~$30; per
ASUS's spec page M.2_1 and M.2_2 are CPU-attached, PCIEX16_2 is chipset in x1
mode, and there is no x8/x8 bifurcation on this board), or a board whose CPU x16
bifurcates to x8/x8. Bandwidth is not the constraint: ≈10 MB per token-step ≈
1.4 ms at Gen4 x4.

**New measured results.** A bare 2-rank torch.distributed run: rank 0 (CPU-lane
card) passes broadcast/all_reduce/barrier; rank 1 (chipset card) fails all
three, and `send`/`recv` fails too — which kills pipeline parallelism as an
escape, since vLLM's PP handoff is exactly that primitive.

**Correction.** I previously said no software path exists. That overshot. One is
open and unverified: recompiling RCCL so its kernels stop declaring a hostcall
buffer (`-mprintf-kind=buffered` is the claim). Counter-evidence recorded: RCCL's
device source contains no live printf/assert/__assertfail, so the trigger is
unexplained, and the claim traces to search summaries, not a primary source. The
page carries the two-command test that would settle it. Also corrected: 0.9.3 is
radiance's version, not vLLM's — the base is vLLM 0.27.1 / torch 2.11.0 / ROCm
7.14, and its shipped RCCL exposes no `ncclDevComm*`, so torch's symmetric-memory
path cannot run.

**Rule added to the benchmarking policy**: it covers ANY GPU experiment, not just
benchmarks — including a bare 2-rank probe. Running one against the live service
on 2026-09-16 preceded the host going hard down (no ARP, no ICMP, power cycle
required); a hung AQL dispatch wedging the driver is the plausible mechanism.
The policy also now says how to tell off from wedged: `ip neigh` from a peer.

2026-09-16 08:59:12 -07:00

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Server App Configs

Podman deployment configuration for two homelab servers: Dankserver and Dankclaw.

This repository is the single source of truth for both hosts. It tracks the container stacks and the LLM inference fleet. Edits flow through this repo, then deploy to the targets with scripts/deploy.sh (one script per target covers both workloads).

2026-08-22: the former vllmScripts repository (LLM fleet) is merged into this repo with its full git history. Its knowledge base now lives at serverAppConfigs-docs/LLM/index.md.

Hosts

Host	IP	Role	OS
Dankserver	192.168.0.235	Media & library stack	Ubuntu 24.04
Dankclaw	192.168.0.143	AI, search & development stack	Ubuntu 26.04

Stacks

Dankserver Stack — RomM, Copyparty, Calibre, Calibre-Web, Caddy
Dankclaw Stack — SearXNG (via Gluetun), ComfyUI, OpenWebUI, Hermes, Gitea, Grafana, Prometheus, Caddy

Architecture

Network Architecture — Caddy reverse proxy, hostname routing, Gluetun VPN path
Storage Policy — bind mounts, data locations, ownership
Deployment Flow — service-scoped git deploy, target map, and health checks
Testing Policy — the test seams and how to run them
E2E Suite — the Playwright suite that drives the live guard chain
Container Network Namespaces — which local services are addressable from each Podman network namespace on Dankclaw

Dankserver Storage

Entropy Volume — command-line unlock and mount helper

Dankserver Services

RomM — retro game manager
RomM-Scraping — metadata providers, cover art, naming conventions
Copyparty — file sharing and streaming
Jellyfin — media server (movies, TV, music)
Calibre — e-book library engine
Calibre-Web — e-book web frontend
ARR-Stack — automated media download overview
sonarr — TV show management
radarr — movie management
lidarr — music management
readarr — ebook/audiobook management
prowlarr — indexer management
qbittorrent — torrent download client
Plex — media server on Dankserver (lscr.io/linuxserver/plex container via quadlet; CPU decode only — no GPU passthrough)
Tautulli — Plex statistics and notifications (v2.18.1-ls242, quadlet unit)
mariadb — RomM database backend
redis — RomM cache/queue backend

Dankclaw Services

SearXNG — privacy metasearch (VPN-routed)
SearXNG Providers — unblocking Google & other upstream engines behind the VPN
Gluetun — the VPN tunnel container
Valkey — SearXNG cache and limiter store
ComfyUI — node-based AI image generation (ROCm GPU, gfx1151 build)
OpenWebUI — chat UI for local LLMs
Hermes — the Nous Research agent
Hermes-Dashboard — the Hermes web management UI (config, keys, sessions)
Hermes-WebUI — the Hermex server (loopback API for the iPhone app, SSH-tunneled)
Gitea — Git hosting (migrated)
Postgres — Gitea database backend
Seerr — unified *arr request manager (guard-chained; fronts FrankBook-Pro's stack)
Marreta — content-cleaning proxy (guard-chained; shares SearXNG's Gluetun egress)

Infrastructure

LAN-DNS — name resolution, Pi-hole, router DNS hand-off
Pi-hole — the LAN DNS server (quadlet, records, web UI)
Caddy — reverse proxy and TLS
Anubis — bot challenge proxy fronting the guarded vhosts (chain, policy, gotchas)
Authentik — the homelab's SSO / OIDC provider (forward_auth)
authentik-postgres — Authentik database service
authentik-server — Authentik server + Caddy outpost service
authentik-worker — Authentik background worker service
Homepage — password-protected service index
Homepage Design Grilling — homepage decision log and open questions
Observability — Grafana, Prometheus, Loki, Alloy, node-exporter: the stack, its quadlet deployment, its exposure, and what is still missing (alert delivery)
Grafana — dashboards (datasource and the LLM fleet dashboard provisioned as code since 2026-09-16)
Prometheus — metrics collection (5 alert rules + 1 recording rule; evaluated but not delivered — no Alertmanager)
Node-Exporter — host metrics
Loki — log storage
Alloy — log shipping (replaces Promtail)
FrankBook-Pro — Mac mini *arr + qBittorrent inside podman machine (gluetun-gated)

Research

Service Research Brief — consolidated subagent research behind these pages
ComfyUI ROCm and Vulkan — live-verified GPU path for ComfyUI on Strix Halo
Lemonade and sd.cpp — the ggml-family image-generation alternative
Llama Cpp Runtimes — mainline vs charlie12345/ROCmFPX vs ik_llama.cpp: quantization + server fit
Llama Cpp Code Diff — code-level quantization diff of the three llama.cpp runtimes
SGLang — the structured-generation serving engine (llama.cpp/vLLM comparison + our fit)
Backblaze Integration — off-site backup plan (future)
Jellyfin — media server research brief
ARR-Stack — automated download stack research brief

LLM Fleet

The LLM inference fleet on the two hosts. Full index: serverAppConfigs-docs/LLM/index.md.

Deployment and Topology

deployment — unified deploy and update process for both servers
frank-redo-2026-08-17 — the 2026-08-17 topology change
frank-medium-radiance-mxfp4 — the ACTIVE frank-medium runbook: the vllm-radiance MXFP4 stack serving just1moremodel/Qwen3.8-27B-Uncensored-MXFP4-awq on Dankserver's 2x Radeon AI PRO R9700 as two single-GPU replicas behind a round-robin proxy, plus the PCIe-atomics evidence that rules out TP=2 on this host (since 2026-09-15/16)
Dual-R9700-Cooperation — why the two R9700s cannot run tensor-parallel together: the PCIe-atomics gate quoted from ROCclr, the measured RCCL matrix (collectives and P2P send/recv both fail on card #2, which rules out pipeline parallelism too), what is closed and what is still open, and the two hardware paths — a ~$30 M.2→PCIe x4 riser into the free, CPU-attached M.2_2 slot, or a board whose CPU x16 bifurcates to x8/x8
frank-medium-rocmfpx — PRIOR frank-medium deployment (llama.cpp era): charlie12345/ROCmFPX serving kingjones777/ Qwen3.8-27B-ROCmFPX-Q8_0-AGENT-GGUF; kept as the record of the runtime it replaced
freetoken-benchmark-sweep — KV pool vs decode speed sweep (bs1/bs3/bs4/bs6, 8k–700k KV) on the retired Dankserver RTX 3090
kingjones-strix-mtp — the Qwen3.8-27B-Q6_0 ROCmFPX AGENT era with the standalone MTP draft (Dankclaw, 2026-08-25 → 2026-08-29; historical)
agentionai-fast-imatrix — the retired frank-large runbook: agentionai/Qwen3.8-Flash-Next-ROCmFP4-FAST-imatrix (87.06 GiB, Q4_0_ROCMFP4_FAST) + own MTP draft, build-qwen38 (retired 2026-08-30; rollback record)
frank-large-ik-uncensored — the ACTIVE frank-large runbook since 2026-09-15: ik_llama.cpp serving mradermacher/Qwen3.8-Flash-Next- Uncensored-i1-Q4_K_M on the RTX 3090 + Strix Halo hybrid (root systemd unit, port 7770) — measured performance envelope and traps
halogen-flash-server — the RETIRED 2026-09-15 halogen runbook and rollback target: peonist-ai/halogen-flash-server 0.5.8 serving peonist-ai/halogen-qwen3.8-flash-next (w4b) as a rootless Quadlet container on Dankclaw, port 7770 — flags, memory model, client contract
dankclaw-iommu-translation-off — why Dankclaw boots with amd_iommu=off since 2026-09-11 (13-16 % prefill), what it cost (the NPU endpoint), and how to revert
kingjones-strix-rocmfp4 — the PRIOR frank-large runbook (2026-08-30 → 2026-09-11) and the rollback target: kingjones777/Qwen3.8-Flash-Next-ROCmFP4-STRIX-GGUF on the card's pinned kingjones30/ROCmFPX build
kingjones-q8agent-rocmfpx — the retired Q8_0-AGENT investigation and set_rows failure
eemin-rocmi4-mtp — the former caf-eemin Qwen3.8-27B ROCmI4 embedded-MTP model on Dankclaw
ciru-activefpx-promptforge — the RETIRED v3 CIRU PromptForge runtime on Dankclaw (superseded 2026-08-24)
kingjones-strix-mtp — the kingjones Qwen3.8-27B ROCmFP4 STRIX MTP model on Dankclaw (active)
dealign-ornith-crack — the retired Ornith-1.5-35B-A3B CRACK model on Dankserver (retired 2026-09-02)
ikllama-ornith-dankserver — the retired ik_llama.cpp runtime for the old frank-small (q8_0 + Hadamard KV cache, split-mode none; 2026-08-26)
freetoken-frank-small — RETIRED 2026-09-15: the FreeToken/CUDA frank-small runbook, retired with the RTX 3090
kairic-edge — the retired Kairic Edge IU4 experiment (2026-08-22)
dflash2-large-vulkan — the retired DFlash2 Vulkan deployment (2026-08-21)
Dankserver System Specs — the 2x R9700 box hardware (frank-medium)
Dankclaw System Specs — the Strix Halo gfx1151 box (frank-large)
Dankclaw Improvements — host-level changes on the Strix Halo box
Swap Configuration — the 64 GiB /swap.img host swapfile (raised from 8 GiB 2026-09-12): fstab-driven swap.img.swap unit, the safe resize ordering that drains the old file into fresh swap instead of into a host whose MemAvailable lies by the size of the model, and the swappiness caveat
frank-npu — the RETIRED FLM NPU endpoint on Dankclaw (2026-09-11): Gemma4 E4B vision+audio pack on the XDNA2 NPU, port 7771; kept as the retirement record, including the IOMMU/SVA err=-19 root cause and where every dependent route moved

Benchmarks and Sizing

frank-large-benchmark — backend/spec benchmark behind the old head
ubatch-benchmark-large — active-model llama-bench ubatch sweep plan and results
frank-small-benchmark — the small-model benchmark suite
Running Qwen3.6 35B A3B FP8 on Dankserver — Qwen3.6-35B-A3B hardware notes
Running Qwen3.6 27B FP8 on Dankclaw — Qwen3.6-27B sizing on the iGPU
qwen3.8-strix-optimizations — Strix Halo tuning notes

Memory and Hardware

RAM CPU Offloading in VLLM — KV cache swap between GPU VRAM and system RAM
Hybrid CPU GPU Processing Dankserver — NVIDIA GPU compute with system RAM offload
Shared Memory Architecture Dankclaw — AMD unified memory and ROCm configuration
dankserver-vram-growth — VRAM/RAM growth behind the retired cuBLAS crash
Quantization by Hardware Architecture — which quant format fits which GPU/CPU

Retired Topology and History

Qwen3.8 PP Deployment — the retired pipeline-parallel head + worker
qwen3.8-spec-matrix — Qwen3.8-27B spec history (superseded by FastMTP)
FastFlowLM NPU Inference — the retired FastFlowLM NPU endpoint
DFlash DSpark Speculative Decoding — retired DFlash/DSpark drafting
ling-3.0-flash-trial — the Ling-3.0-Flash trial runbook
ling-3.0-flash-vllm-plan — the Ling-3.0-Flash vLLM plan (retired)

vLLM Reference (historical)

VLLM Overview — installation, CLI, API, architecture, quantization, parallelism
VLLM Index — quick reference with commands, endpoints, and parameter table
vllm_research_findings — research findings from the vLLM era

Pipeline Parallelism (archive)

Ethernet Bandwidth Math — the bandwidth budget for the PP pair
Expected Performance — expected PP throughput
llama.cpp RPC — the RPC transport between head and worker
Mixed-Vendor Experiments — cross-vendor PP experiments
Qwen3.6 27B Spec Methods — spec-decoding methods for the 27B
Sample Script Set — reference scripts for the PP pair
vLLM Pipeline Parallelism — vLLM's PP implementation

Update Log

log — chronological record of knowledge-base changes

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