Agent skill · software engineering · nvidia
doca-bare-metal-deployment
Running a DOCA-linked binary directly on the hardware, with no container or kubelet: on host x86 with a BlueField NIC over PCIe, or bare-metal on BlueField Arm. Use this skill for launching and supervising it (direct, tmux, systemd), and when it "exits 1 right after launch", "systemd keeps restarting it", reports "no matching device on the BF", or the BlueField itself is unhealthy: "bfb-install exited 0 but DPU is dead", "ping 192.168.100.2 works but ssh fails", "host PFs aren't showing netdevs". Refuse service containers under kubelet (doca-container-deployment). Covers PCI/NUMA/CPU/IRQ binding, co-tenant isolation (cgroup-v2/netns/numactl), a seven-layer error taxonomy, platform lifecycle (BFB install, RShim/TMFIFO, host PF rebind, post-BFB recovery) and a six-state BlueField lifecycle classifier. Destructive firmware burn / mlxconfig set requires explicit confirmation via doca-hardware-safety; library APIs, env prep, and build use other skills.
Why this skill is useful
Adds specific commands and workflows for deploying DOCA-linked binaries directly on hardware, which are not commonly found in public documentation.
What it needs
Requires doca installed locally. About 6k tokens when loaded. Last updated 2026-08-07. 2,816 stars on the source repository.
What this skill does
DOCA bare-metal deployment Examples "The binary exits 1 right after launch." — this is in scope. Treat it as a launch / device-bind / isolation failure before rewriting application code. "systemd keeps restarting my DOCA app." — a restart loop on hardware is high-stakes. Debug the first exit before enabling Restart=always. Instructions Follow Loading order below. Open the tasks companion for launch / supervise / recover, and the capabilities companion for the runtime contract. Do not open every companion file. Where to start: This skill is the bundle's home for operating a DOCA-linked application binary directly on hardware — no container, no kubelet, no static-pod manifest. It is the parallel of doca-container-deployment/SKILL.md for the non-container path. If the user has a DOCA-linked binary they built (per the canonical workflow in doca-programming-guide/SKILL.md) and they want to know how to actually run it on the host or on the BlueField Arm cores correctly, open the tasks companion and start at configure. If the question is what shape does the bare-metal runtime even have and what is the deployment contract, start at the capabilities companion. If the user is not yet sure whether their target system shape is the container path or the bare-metal path, route the recognition step to doca-setup/SKILL.md first; only return here once bare-metal is the confirmed shape. …
How to use it
Reference it in AdaL, Claude Code, Cursor or any coding agent — nothing to install:
@skills nvidia/doca-bare-metal-deployment