QVAC for DAppNode

This package runs the official QVAC CLI as a private, OpenAI-compatible AI server on DAppNode.

The image includes QVAC's upstream worker and native Linux addons. The built-in configuration UI provides a searchable model library and manages QVAC settings without shell or File Manager access.

Variants

The repository publishes two packages from the same image and configuration:

Variant	Package	Hostname	Hardware behavior
CPU	qvac.dnp.dappnode.eth	qvac.dappnode	Does not request a GPU and runs on every DAppNode
GPU	qvac-gpu.dnp.dappnode.eth	qvac-gpu.dappnode	Reserves every GPU exposed by Docker's GPU/CDI runtime

On either hostname, the configuration UI uses port 8080, the OpenAI-compatible API uses /v1 on port 11434, and the interactive API documentation is at /docs on port 11434.

Defaults

• QVAC CLI: 0.12.0
• Model: QWEN3_600M_INST_Q4
• API alias: qwen3-600m
• Model cache: /data/models
• Configuration: /data/config/qvac.config.json

Model downloads, configuration, and backups persist in the data volume.

CPU and GPU behavior

Docker treats a Compose GPU reservation as a hard requirement and fails before starting the container when no GPU vendor is available. The CPU package therefore omits that reservation. The GPU package requests every GPU through Docker's vendor-neutral gpu capability and requires a working AMD or NVIDIA container toolkit/CDI configuration. Both variants use the same image, which includes the Vulkan loader, Mesa Vulkan drivers, and vulkaninfo.

Configuration ownership

The installation wizard is limited to settings that must exist before the package starts:

• API bearer token
• Optional host mapping for the API port
• Data-volume location

After installation, open port 8080 on your variant's hostname for model selection, aliases, preload/default behavior, engine configuration, logging, download behavior, browser origins, JSON import/export, validation, and backup restore.

Development

Build and run the CPU variant locally without IPFS:

docker compose -f docker-compose.yml -f package_variants/cpu/docker-compose.yml build
docker compose -f docker-compose.yml -f package_variants/cpu/docker-compose.yml up -d

Confirm that the CPU-safe service is running:

docker compose -f docker-compose.yml -f package_variants/cpu/docker-compose.yml ps
API_PORT=$(docker compose -f docker-compose.yml -f package_variants/cpu/docker-compose.yml port qvac 11434 | sed 's/.*://')
curl --fail "http://127.0.0.1:${API_PORT}/v1/models"

Use package_variants/gpu/docker-compose.yml instead to test the GPU variant on a host where docker run --rm --gpus all ubuntu:24.04 true succeeds. CI and the release workflow build and publish both variants with the SDK's --all-variants option.

Use make dev-tar only when a Docker image tarball is needed for a DAppNode development upload.

Upstream

• QVAC source
• QVAC documentation