Node state DRAIN: NVML health check timed out GPU uncorrectable ECC

Slurm drained the node because its NVML health check timed out while the GPU also reported uncorrectable ECC evidence. The timeout is a node-health failure, not a reason to return the GPU to service after a simple job retry. This entry explains how to confirm the cause, apply the fix, and separate it from adjacent slurm failures.

Symptom

Node state DRAIN: NVML health check timed out GPU uncorrectable ECC

Root cause

Slurm drained the node because its NVML health check timed out while the GPU also reported uncorrectable ECC evidence. The timeout is a node-health failure, not a reason to return the GPU to service after a simple job retry. The decisive evidence is the first log line that precedes "Node state DRAIN: NVML health check timed out GPU uncorrectable ECC" and differs from a healthy run.

Recommended fix

keep the node drained, preserve the health-check output and kernel log, and identify the GPU UUID with uncorrectable ECC activity.

How Denpex helps

Denpex investigates Node state DRAIN: NVML health check timed out GPU uncorrectable ECC using the evidence you provide or your connected workload collects. Earlier rank, host or application evidence is needed to distinguish an initiating failure from a downstream report.

The literal signature is "Node state DRAIN: NVML health check timed out GPU uncorrectable ECC". It is a infrastructure failure associated with Slurm GPU clusters and cgroup-constrained jobs. The line identifies the failing operation or subsystem, while the surrounding evidence decides whether it is the initiating fault or a downstream symptom.

Slurm drained the node because its NVML health check timed out while the GPU also reported uncorrectable ECC evidence. The timeout is a node-health failure, not a reason to return the GPU to service after a simple job retry. The failure becomes visible at this call site because the operation first requires the missing resource, valid state, healthy peer, or correct result. Earlier log lines and a known-good control carry more causal value than the final wrapper exception.

• The workload stops or loses forward progress after emitting "Node state DRAIN: NVML health check timed out GPU uncorrectable ECC".
• A retry on the same configuration reproduces the failure because the causal state has not changed.
• The outer framework exception can hide the rank, node, allocation, or dependency that failed first.
• Increasing timeouts or reducing workload size can suppress the symptom without correcting the cause.

• Slurm GPU clusters and cgroup-constrained jobs
• production-shaped multi-accelerator workloads
• containerized and bare-metal deployments of the same stack

Use this checklist to test the hypothesis against a small reproduction. No single line proves the root cause, so preserve the preceding events and compare one variable at a time.

• ✓Find the first occurrence of "Node state DRAIN: NVML health check timed out GPU uncorrectable ECC" and preserve at least 100 lines before it.
• ✓Identify which rank, node, device, or process emitted the first related warning.
• ✓run nvidia-smi -q and DCGM diagnostics out of band. Determine whether NVML is blocked by a wedged driver, GPU reset, or a device that no longer responds.
• ✓Repeat the same input after the targeted change and require the signature to disappear.
• ✓Resume from latest checkpoint on a healthy node only after the control passes.

• Slurm drained the node because its NVML health check timed out while the GPU also reported uncorrectable ECC evidence. The timeout is a node-health failure, not a reason to return the GPU to service after a simple job retry.
• The decisive evidence is the first log line that precedes "Node state DRAIN: NVML health check timed out GPU uncorrectable ECC" and differs from a healthy run.
• A nearby failure remains a competing hypothesis until a control separates configuration, capacity, transport, and hardware causes.

Node state DRAIN: NVML health check timed out GPU uncorrectable ECC

Use this text as a lookup key in logs and upstream issue trackers. It is not presented as a captured customer log. Confirm the cause from your own preceding events, versions, configuration and the cited references.

keep the node drained, preserve the health-check output and kernel log, and identify the GPU UUID with uncorrectable ECC activity. This changes the condition in the causal diagnosis instead of hiding the outer exception. The repeated control proves ownership before recovery from latest checkpoint on a healthy node.

# Preserve evidence before restarting
scontrol show job <job-id>
sacct -j <job-id> --format=JobID,State,ExitCode,MaxRSS

# Find the exact signature in the complete log
rg -n -F -- "Node state DRAIN: NVML health check timed out GPU uncorrectable ECC" <log-file>

Adapt the snippet to your framework. The same pattern holds for PyTorch Lightning, Hugging Face Trainer, DeepSpeed, Megatron-LM, and vLLM training wrappers. Where the wrapper exposes a config flag (for examplelr_scheduler_type in Trainer), prefer the flag over the imperative API to keep the schedule declarative and reproducible.

Select the traceback or open the failed terminal, then run Denpex locally to see the initiating rank, collateral failures, exact fix, and verification command without uploading the log.

Slurm GPU failures can occur before allocation, during cgroup creation or inside the workload. The hub joins job reason, GRES, memory, node-health and distributed-launch evidence.