sgpu 0.8.6

Simple GPU monitor for the SGVR H200 lab (MLXP) - kubectl-native dashboards, in-pod TUI, per-user usage stats

SGPU

SGVR GPU / Simple GPU monitor for the lab's MLXP H200 nodes. Check GPU ownership, utilization, storage, and usage history before launching another Kubernetes pod.

• Every GPU process is attributed to its pod and owner, not just a PID.
• One client can survey both H200 nodes with sgpu --all once, or pick a node with sgpu -n 1 / sgpu -n 2.
• In-pod TUI via kubectl exec -it: smooth refresh, scrolling, sorting, owner filtering, and a stats screen.
• Usage stats 24/7: per-owner GPU-hours, awards, KST activity heatmaps, and idle-allocation warnings.
• Shared storage (pv-01/pv-02) usage at a glance.
• Monitor pod is read-only, always-on, and requests no GPU.

Install

uv tool install sgpu   # persistent install via uv (recommended)
pipx install sgpu      # or pipx
pip install sgpu       # or plain pip (needs pip; WSL/Ubuntu often lacks it)
uvx sgpu               # or run once without installing

Upgrade with the tool you installed with — uv tool upgrade sgpu, pipx upgrade sgpu, or pip install -U sgpu. sgpu tells you the right one when it detects your client is behind the server.

Needs kubectl with an MLXP kubeconfig (setup). One kubeconfig covers both H200 servers - the two downloads (sgvr-node-01/-02) share the same token and contexts, so either file works for every node.

Use

sgpu               interactive TUI      sgpu stats [days]  usage report + awards
sgpu once          one-shot dashboard   sgpu apps          processes + owners
sgpu watch [sec]   dumb-terminal loop   sgpu nvitop        raw nvitop
sgpu pods|smi|gpustat|json|health|version|--help

Pick a node

MLXP has two H200 servers (p-sgvr-node-01, p-sgvr-node-02):

sgpu -n 1 once        node-01   (shorthand for p-sgvr-node-01)
sgpu -n 2 once        node-02
sgpu --all once       survey both nodes at once (any text command)
sgpu --all stats      ONE lab-wide merged report: combined leaderboard,
                      awards and heatmaps with a NODE column per owner
sgpu once             uses your current kubectl context's namespace

In the TUI stats screen, n toggles the same thing: LOCAL (this node) ↔ LAB (all nodes combined, with each owner's home node).

TUI keys:

j/k       scroll
Tab       switch pane
s         sort
o         owner filter
p         pause
t         stats screen
h/d/w/m   stats axis: hour/day/week/month
a         cycle stats axis
r         refresh
q         quit

Options: -n namespace, --pod, -r refresh, --no-color. Env: SGPU_NAMESPACE, SGPU_POD, SGPU_NO_UPDATE_CHECK=1 (silence the upgrade nudge).

Staying up to date

The monitor server is upgraded centrally (one image redeploy updates the dashboard/stats UI for everyone — no client action needed). The client (this pip package) only changes for client-side features (-n, --all, reconnect). When your client falls behind the server, sgpu shows a yellow ↑ update available banner in the TUI and a one-line hint after text commands — just run pip install -U sgpu (or uv tool upgrade sgpu).

Screenshots

Multi-node Survey

Process Attribution

Usage Stats

Zero Install

Anyone with kubectl access can use the monitor pod without installing sgpu.

kubectl exec -it -n p-sgvr-node-01 sangmin-gpu-monitor -- python3 /opt/gpu-monitor/tui.py
kubectl exec -n p-sgvr-node-01 sangmin-gpu-monitor -- curl -fsS http://127.0.0.1:8080/table

Endpoints on :8080:

/table /apps /json /stats /pods /smi /topo /gpustat /health /version
/stats/files /stats/raw?date=YYYYMMDD

Text endpoints support ?color=1&cols=N&ascii=1.

Stats

SGPU samples every 15 seconds around the clock into raw JSONL, gzips and rolls up daily summaries, and stores the results on the shared volume at pv-01/sangmin/sgpu.

Retention defaults to 365 days and is capped at 2 GB. sgpu stats 30 shows the leaderboard, awards, daily activity, and KST hour heatmaps.

The monitor pod must stay running for stats to accumulate. It is designed to do that with tini init, restartPolicy: Always, and no GPU allocation.

Leaderboard & awards

sgpu stats [days] (or sgpu --all stats for the whole lab) ranks everyone by GPU-hours and hands out playful badges. Example:

SGPU usage report — last 7 days — all nodes (node-01+node-02)
data: 7 days, coverage 168.0h

Awards
🏆 Best researcher: jiwon    — 92.4 effective GPU-h (81% avg over 114.1 GPU-h)
⚡ Power user:      jiwon    — 114.1 GPU-h
🎯 Sharpshooter:    minseo   — 97% avg SM over 40.2 GPU-h
🧠 Memory heavyweight: haeun — 139.7 GiB peak
🦉 Night owl:       doyun    — 71% of activity in KST 0-5h
💤 Most headroom:   sangho   — 22% avg util over 48 GPU-h (free speedup waiting)
🪑 Seat warmer:     taemin   — 9.8 idle GPU-h allocated

Leaderboard
#   OWNER    NODE     GPU-H  EFF-H  AVG-SM%  AVG-UTIL%  PEAK-MEM  ALLOC-H  IDLE-H  IDLE%
1.  jiwon    node-01  114.1   92.4       81         81      81.1    114.5     0.4      0
2.  sangho   node-02   48.0   10.6       22         30     129.2     50.1     2.1      4
3.  minseo   node-02   40.2   39.0       97         97      62.9     40.2     0.0      0
4.  haeun    node-01   37.9   27.2       72         72     139.7     39.4     1.6      4
5.  taemin   node-01   11.6    0.1        7         25     139.0     21.4     9.8     46

Ranking is by GPU-H (GPU-hours). Each owner holds at most 3 badges.

Badge	Awarded to	Threshold
🏆 Best researcher	Most effective GPU-hours (GPU-H × avg util) — busiest and actually computing	≥40% avg util, ≥1 GPU-H
⚡ Power user	Most GPU-hours overall	≥1 GPU-H
🎯 Sharpshooter	Highest average SM% — squeezes the most out of each GPU	≥2 GPU-H
🧠 Memory heavyweight	Highest peak GPU memory used	≥32 GiB
🦉 Night owl	Biggest share of own activity in KST 00–05h	≥1 GPU-H in window
💤 Most headroom	Lowest avg util among heavy users — a free speedup is waiting	≥4 GPU-H and util <40%
🪑 Seat warmer	Most idle allocated GPU-hours (holds GPUs without using them)	≥2 idle GPU-H (needs the pod-allocation view)

Column meanings (GPU-H, EFF-H, SM%, PEAK-MEM, ALLOC-H, IDLE-H, …) are in What the numbers mean. The NODE column (lab-wide view) shows each person's home node, or both if they split their work across nodes.

Names above are illustrative. Press ? in the TUI for the same reference in-app.

What the numbers mean

Press ? in the TUI for this same reference in-app.

Column	Meaning
[N/M free +K idle]	Summary line under the GPU table: N = GPUs a new pod could request right now (total minus pods' GPU requests; green >0, red 0). +K idle (yellow) = GPUs reserved by Running pods that aren't using them — physically idle and reclaimable if the holder releases them. ~N/M = process-based estimate (pod API unavailable).
UTIL	Whole-GPU utilization %: share of time the GPU did any work (NVML/nvidia-smi).
SM%	Per-process SM (streaming-multiprocessor) activity — how hard that process drove the GPU cores.
MEM / PEAK-MEM	GPU memory in use / highest seen (each H200 ≈ 140 GiB).
GPU-H	GPU-hours: time integrated over how many GPUs an owner had processes on.
EFF-H	Effective GPU-hours = GPU-H × avg util (compute actually done, not just held).
ALLOC-H	Allocated GPU-hours from pods' nvidia.com/gpu requests.
IDLE-H / IDLE%	Allocated but no process running — a wasted reservation.
REQ / ACT	(pods table) GPUs a pod requested vs. actively using right now.
POWER / TEMP	Power draw / cap, and temperature.
STORAGE	Shared pv-01/pv-02 volume usage (used / total / free).

UTIL vs SM%: UTIL is the whole card being busy at all; SM% is how saturated the compute cores are for a specific process. High UTIL with low SM% usually means the GPU is waiting on data (I/O, small batches), not computing hard — that's where EFF-H and the "Most headroom" award come in.

Deploy / Operate

The monitor runs from a public image (docker.io/alex6095/sgpu-monitor), so no registry login or pull secret is needed. Deploy one pod per node - always pass -n (a bare kubectl apply would hit your current context's namespace):

# For each node namespace (p-sgvr-node-01 and/or p-sgvr-node-02):
kubectl apply -n p-sgvr-node-01 -f k8s/gpu-monitor.yaml
kubectl wait --for=condition=Ready pod/sangmin-gpu-monitor -n p-sgvr-node-01 --timeout=180s

Pods are immutable, so to roll out a new image: kubectl delete pod sangmin-gpu-monitor -n <ns> then apply again.

Optional, for the pod-allocation view and idle stats (kubelet syncs it in within a minute, no restart; use the same -n):

kubectl -n p-sgvr-node-01 create secret generic sgpu-kubeconfig --from-file=config=$HOME/.kube/config

Anyone with exec access to the monitor pod can read that token. This is fine inside a trusting lab namespace; use a least-privileged kubeconfig.

Maintainer: build & publish the image

docker build -f docker/Dockerfile.gpu-monitor -t docker.io/alex6095/sgpu-monitor:X.Y.Z .
docker push docker.io/alex6095/sgpu-monitor:X.Y.Z   # keep the repo public

Bump the tag on every change - never repush a tag (imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent would keep a node's cached layer). The NVIDIA driver (580.126.16) is pinned in the image; if a node runs a different driver the server degrades to source=nvidia-smi or /health 503 instead of crashing.

kubectl Setup (Linux/WSL)

mkdir -p ~/.local/bin ~/.kube
V=$(curl -fsSL https://dl.k8s.io/release/stable.txt)
curl -fsSL -o ~/.local/bin/kubectl "https://dl.k8s.io/release/${V}/bin/linux/amd64/kubectl" && chmod +x ~/.local/bin/kubectl
cp /path/to/sgvr-node-01-kubeconfig.yaml ~/.kube/config && chmod 600 ~/.kube/config
# Either node's kubeconfig works for both - pick the node with `sgpu -n 1|2`.
kubectl get pods -n p-sgvr-node-02   # connectivity test

Development

SGPU_MOCK=1 python3 tools/gpu-monitor/server.py   # full pipeline, no GPU needed
SGPU_MOCK=1 python3 tools/gpu-monitor/tui.py
python3 -m unittest discover -s tests
python3 tools/render_readme_images.py        # synthetic public screenshots
SGPU_README_LIVE=1 python3 tools/render_readme_images.py  # optional live capture

How it works: sgpu is a thin Python client. It uses kubectl exec to reach the monitor pod, where server.py renders the dashboard. Process-to-pod attribution reads /proc/<pid>/environ (HOSTNAME = pod name), and owner is inferred from the pod-name prefix.

Known limits: pods overriding spec.hostname and MPS may show as ?.

Troubleshooting:

TUI died with exit 137            -> the monitor pod was recreated (usually an
                                     update rollout); sgpu >=0.7.3 restores the
                                     terminal and reconnects by itself
broken terminal after dropped TUI -> reset (older clients)
frozen TUI                         -> rerun sgpu
garbled bars                       -> Windows Terminal or --no-color