Segment 7
In this sub-session, the VAST_CONTAINERLABEL mystery was definitively resolved—Vast.ai injects it as a non-exported shell variable, invisible to `env` but available to the Docker entrypoint, validating the original design. The Docker image was rebuilt and pushed, and the old instance 32709851 was destroyed. A new instance (32710471) was created but required an `--onstart-cmd` workaround because `--ssh` mode replaces the Docker ENTRYPOINT. A critical bug was fixed in the vast-manager monitor where it matched instances solely by the API's `label` field (which is null unless explicitly set), causing incorrect kills; an ID-based fallback map was added. The benchmark and entrypoint scripts were hardened to handle warmup proof failures gracefully. The remaining old manual instance (32705217) was destroyed and stale DB entries cleaned. Two new instances (32711932 in BC Canada with 2x RTX 3090/125GB RAM, and 32711934 in Norway with 1x RTX 4090/500GB RAM) were created and started successfully. The Norway instance completed its warmup proof, validating the entire pipeline, while the BC Canada instance was OOM killed during benchmark due to insufficient RAM for uncached PCE with default partition workers. This shifted focus to hardware-aware pipeline configuration, proposing to reduce partition workers for the warmup proof to avoid OOM in low-memory environments.
From Platform Quirks to Resource Constraints: The Hardening of a Distributed GPU Proving System