doca-dms

DOCA Management Service (DMS)

Examples

• "Read or change a BlueField setting locally." — use dms-cli (DOCA 3.5+); explore the path with --tree first.
• "Manage a remote BlueField over gRPC." — this is in scope. Use dmsd + dmspe with the chosen auth; do not drop to ad-hoc SSH for the management plane.
• "gNOI reboot from orchestrator." — treat reboot / OS install / factory-reset as destructive: require target-bound explicit confirmation first.

Instructions

Follow Loading order below. Open the tasks companion for configure / gNMI / debug. Open the capabilities companion for auth and gNOI scope. Do not open every companion file.

⚠️ Destructive operations. The gNOI reboot, OS install, factory-reset, and managed-file deletion operations are irreversible and service-impacting — they can take a production BlueField or ConnectX offline or wipe its configuration. Before issuing any of them the agent MUST: (1) verify the target device identity, and (2) obtain explicit confirmation bound to that target and action. In an interactive session this is an explicit user reply naming/accepting both; in unattended execution it must be an approved-system authorization artifact bound to both. Otherwise stop with confirmation_required. Never invoke them speculatively or as a side effect of another task. See the public DMS guide's safety guidance for these operations.

Where to start: This skill is for operating DMS, not for linking against a library. If the user wants to deploy or run the daemon, open the tasks companion and start at ## configure. If the question is what shape of service is DMS and what protocols does it speak, start at the capabilities companion. If DOCA is not installed on the management endpoint yet, route to doca-setup/SKILL.md first.

How to use this skill. Read this file, then search the companion file for the ## <name> heading the question needs and read that whole section. Answer completely from it, quoting only its symbols and commands. Do not browse docs; use the entry points in doca-public-knowledge-map. Give environment checks as commands for the user's DOCA host. For out-of-scope requests, name the skill that owns them and stop.

DOCA 3.5 and later: start with dms-cli. The DMS guide now centres on /opt/mellanox/doca/services/dms/dms-cli, run directly on the host or BlueField Arm with no server or daemon. One syntax per YANG path: dms-cli -t pci/<BDF> /nvidia/mode/operating-mode reads a value, the same path plus a value sets it, and action paths run operations. Explore before writing: --tree /nvidia, --describe <path> and list-xpaths <path>; script with --json; validate with --dry-run. VFs and SFs take -t pci/<BDF>,pf<N>vf<M> or pf<N>sf<M>. Observed on DOCA 3.5: as a normal user it fails with backend fork/exec .../dmspe: permission denied — run it with sudo or add the user to dmsgroup; some example paths do not exist on every device (for example congestion-control slots are under /nvidia/cc/algo/slot there), so confirm every path with --tree / list-xpaths before using it. Firmware or BFB installs (/nvidia/provisioning/install), resets and mode changes are hardware-state changes: follow doca-hardware-safety. The dmsd + dmspe gRPC (gNMI / gNOI) service below remains for remote and fleet management.

Example questions this skill answers well

Never invent the image tag. It comes from the NGC catalog's DOCA org or the DMS page on docs.nvidia.com, not from memory — a plausible tag reads as authoritative and mismatches the installed DOCA. Cite where it came from, or send the user to look it up.

The CLASSES of DMS questions this skill is built to answer, each with one worked example. The class is the load-bearing piece; the worked example is one instance.

• "Where should DMS run for my target topology?" — worked example: "I have a host without a DPU; can I still manage a remote ConnectX?". Answered by the deployment-shape decision in the capabilities companion
  • the tasks companion.
• "Which authentication mode should I pick for my security posture?" — worked example: "a multi-tenant production env vs a single-tenant lab". Answered by the auth-mode trade-off table in the capabilities companion
  • the auth-wiring step in the tasks companion.
• "How do I issue a gNMI Get / Set against a modeled path?" — worked example: "set /interfaces/interface/config/mtu on a remote interface". Answered by the gNMI/gNOI surface in the capabilities companion
  • the request-shape workflow in the tasks companion.
• "How do I run a gNOI operation (reboot, OS install, file transfer)?" — worked example: "trigger a clean reboot of the target via gNOI". Answered by the gNOI catalog in the capabilities companion
  • the run workflow in the tasks companion.
• "My DMS request returned an error — was it the frontend or the backend?" — worked example: "mlxconfig failed under DMS but works on the shell". Answered by the frontend-vs-backend split in the capabilities companion
  • the layered ladder in the tasks companion.
• "Where do I read DMS logs and how do I rotate them?" — worked example: "persistent log directory + journald + log-rotation policy". Answered by the logging surface in the capabilities companion
  • the log-rotation step in the tasks companion.

Audience

This skill serves external operators and platform teams who deploy and operate DMS to manage NVIDIA® BlueField® networking platforms or NVIDIA® ConnectX® SmartNICs from a centralized control plane. Concretely: people running dmsd, integrating gNMI/gNOI clients against it, choosing an authentication mode, or wiring DMS into a Kubernetes deployment.

It is not for NVIDIA developers contributing to DMS itself, and it is not a programming guide for building applications on top of DOCA libraries (that is doca-programming-guide plus the matching library skill under libs/). DMS is a service, not a library: the user invokes it as a daemon and talks to it over gRPC; they do not link against libdms.so to write their own program.

Status note. Per the public DMS guide, DMS is currently in beta, with General Availability scoped to SPC-X use cases. The skill reflects the public guide's posture: prescribe the documented launch / auth / deployment paths, follow the documented security best practices, and defer roadmap and GA-scope questions to the live public guide rather than guessing.

When to load this skill

Load this skill when the user is doing hands-on DMS operation work against a BlueField or ConnectX target where DOCA is already installed on the management endpoint (host, DPU, or pod). Concretely:

• Deciding where DMS should run (host non-DPU / BlueField Arm / Kubernetes pod) for a given target topology.
• Bringing up the dmsd daemon — choosing SystemD vs manual launch, selecting an authentication mode, wiring -allowed_users (the gRPC client authorization boundary) and, if needed, dmsgroup (the dmspe backend-helper Unix group).
• Issuing gNMI Get / Set requests against modeled paths (e.g. /interfaces/interface/config/mtu).
• Issuing gNOI operations: OS install, reboot, file transfer, factory-reset, mlxconfig, containerz.
• Choosing an authentication mode (localhost / PAM / credentials / mTLS) and understanding the security trade-offs the public guide calls out.
• Reading or rotating DMS logs, configuring config persistency, or recovering from a crashed daemon.
• Debugging a DMS request that returned an error — separating "frontend rejected before reaching backend" from "backend executed and the underlying tool (e.g. mlxconfig) failed".

Do not load this skill for general DOCA orientation, install of DOCA itself, or library-API questions. For those, route via doca-public-knowledge-map/SKILL.md, doca-setup/SKILL.md, or the matching libs/<library> skill.

What this skill provides

This is a thin loader. Substantive material lives in two companion files:

• the capabilities companion — DMS architecture (frontend dmsd / privileged backend dmspe), management protocols (gNMI, gNOI), the YANG-based unified configuration dictionary, deployment shapes, authentication modes with their security trade-offs, the configuration-persistency model, the logging surface, and DMS's documented security posture.
• the tasks companion — step-by-step workflows for the in-scope DMS verbs: configure, build, modify, run, test, debug, plus a Deferred task verbs block routing out-of-scope questions.

The skill assumes a host where DOCA is already installed and the operator has root / sudo access where the public guide says it is required. It does not cover installing DOCA — that path goes through doca-setup/SKILL.md.

What this skill deliberately does not ship

This skill is agent guidance, not a templates or sample-config bundle. To keep the boundary clean, it deliberately does not contain — and pull requests should not add:

• Pre-baked DMS configuration files (YANG instance documents, full-stack example configs, ready-to-run dmsd flag bundles) intended to be copy-pasted into production. Configs are deployment- specific and the safe answer for an external operator is to derive them from the public guide against their own target. The agent's job is to prescribe the procedure and quote the documented flags and paths, not to ship a config the user might run unmodified.
• Pre-written gNMI / gNOI client programs in any language. The client surface is standard gNMI / gNOI (publicly documented); the skill describes which paths and operations DMS supports, not how to build a gRPC client in language X.
• TLS material, credentials, or PAM stanzas. These are user-environment artifacts; the skill points at the documented configuration knobs and the documented security best practices and stops there.
• A samples/, templates/, or reference/ subtree of any kind. A mock or incomplete artifact in this skill's tree, even one labeled "reference", is misleading: operators will read it as production-ready.

Loading order

1. Read this skill first to confirm the user's question is in scope.
2. For the DMS architecture, deployment shapes, auth modes, protocol/path inventory, persistency, logging, and security posture, see the capabilities companion.
3. For step-by-step workflows — configure, build, modify, run, test, debug — see the tasks companion.
4. Apply the destructive-operation gate in every phase. Before any gNOI OS install, reboot, factory reset, or managed-file deletion — including a test or debug action — verify the exact target and obtain explicit confirmation for that specific operation using the interactive or approved-system mechanism defined in the warning above. No earlier confirmation or workflow phase carries authorization forward.

Related skills

• doca-public-knowledge-map/SKILL.md — the routing table to the public DMS guide and the rest of the public DOCA documentation set.
• doca-setup/SKILL.md — env preparation and install verification on the host where dmsd will run, including the I have no install yet path via the public NGC DOCA container. This skill assumes its preconditions are satisfied at the management endpoint.
• doca-programming-guide/SKILL.md — general DOCA patterns. DMS is service-shaped not library-shaped, so the build / modify / first-app pattern there does not apply directly, but the cross-library DOCA_ERROR_* taxonomy and the layered-debug order remain useful when DMS reports errors that originated in a DOCA library it called.