WiFi, Ethernet not working on initial boot setup

Hi all,

I am not able to fully set up my DGX Spark due to network connectivity issues. When it comes to the step where I have to choose the WiFi network, it always says “could not connect to the network”. I think Ethernet is not detected as well. (According to the docs if Ethernet was detected, it should not prompt for WiFi setup.)

Things I have tried,

However, I noticed that my (other) working DGX Spark is using the os VERSION=“1.81.38”. I was not able to find a download link for that version. I assume installing that version could work.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

PS: I already tried customer support, but they eventually directed me to this forum.

  1. Did you have ethernet plugged in before you powered on the machine?
  2. Does the unit’s initial startup hotspot work?
  3. When it says “VERSION=1.81.38”, that is the initial version the unit was flashed with, not it’s current version

Thank you for the reply.

  1. Yes I had Ethernet plugged in before powering on
  2. Yes initial startup hotspot works. I proceeded with that setup as well (i.e. network-based setup without connecting mouse/keyboard). Was able to connect to it from another PC, but still fails at the same step - the Wi-Fi connection step
  3. didn’t know that, thank you. I just did cat /etc/fastos-release to get the version in the working unit.

@aniculescu

Update: I tried again with the recovery image from Dell as well. (Support for Dell Pro Max with GB10 FCM1253 | Drivers & Downloads | Dell US). But the same problem persists. Are there any other images I could try installing? Or should we get a replacement unit?

Thank you.

Be aware if you are using the newest version of the Nvidia Sync app there may be a bug that is causing the Sparks to keeping reassigning themselves new hostnames every 20 seconds. I am having the same problems and it looks like the Nvidia sync app is the culprit, but I am still investigating. If you quit the Nvidia Sync app and reboot your sparks - if they were setup far enough you should be able to ssh into them again manually (don’t use Nvidia Sync).

When I know more I will try to post a more comprehensive write up.

Update: I posted a bug report in a new forum post

1 Like

update: after trying multiple attempts I was able to configure it using a mobile hotspot. (Just putting this here in case some encountered the same problem.)

For some reason it was not connecting to the same WiFi network where there was an already connected (another) DGX Spark. After setting up the second Spark using the hotspot eventually it was able to connect to the same WiFi network as the other DGX Spark. Ethernet is also working now : ). Maybe this is related to what @west4 , or maybe not.

We have seen reports of units not syncing their internal time correctly which results in not being able to succesfully connect to ethernet or wifi. Since you can access the UEFI menu, I would suggest trying to set the time manually and seeing if that helps.