NornicDB

Reply: Config loading, GPU usage, embeddings, and /help behavior ​

Thanks for the detailed report — you’re not imagining it. There are a few rough edges here (some are docs/UX, some are actual behavior/flags), and we’ve made changes to address them.

1) Config file: --config unknown / “is /config/nornicdb.yaml loaded?” ​

What was happening ​

  • The docs referenced --config, but the CLI didn’t actually expose that flag in some builds, so nornicdb serve --config ... failed as “unknown flag”.
  • Config auto-discovery existed, but it wasn’t container-friendly and it wasn’t obvious from logs whether a config file was used or not.

What’s fixed now (in code) ​

  • Added a global --config flag to nornicdb (works as nornicdb serve --config /config/nornicdb.yaml).
  • Added NORNICDB_CONFIG=/config/nornicdb.yaml support.
  • Added /config/nornicdb.yaml and /config/config.yaml to the auto-discovery search order.
  • Startup now prints whether a config file was loaded or not.

What to do (Docker) ​

Pick one of these (explicit is best):

Option A (recommended):

bash
docker run ... \
  -e NORNICDB_CONFIG=/config/nornicdb.yaml \
  -v /path/on/host/nornicdb.yaml:/config/nornicdb.yaml:ro \
  timothyswt/nornicdb-amd64-cuda-bge-heimdall:latest

Option B:

bash
docker run ... \
  timothyswt/nornicdb-amd64-cuda-bge-heimdall:latest \
  nornicdb serve --config /config/nornicdb.yaml

If config is loading, startup logs should include something like:

  • Loaded config from: /config/nornicdb.yaml

If you paste the first ~50 lines of container logs after startup, we can confirm immediately.

2) “Is CUDA being used?” and the confusing “ SLM model loaded on CPU” ​

There are two separate “GPU stories” that can be conflated:

  1. CUDA/Metal/OpenCL/Vulkan for vector search / embedding math (NornicDB pkg/gpu)
  2. GPU offload for local GGUF models (embedding model and/or Heimdall SLM via llama.cpp/yzma)

What was confusing ​

  • You can see llama.cpp CUDA buffer logs (meaning CUDA backend exists / tried to allocate), but then still see:
    • SLM model loaded on CPU (slower but functional)

That message is emitted when Heimdall tries GPU offload and falls back. It didn’t report why clearly enough, and some config paths made “cpu-only vs auto” ambiguous.

What’s fixed now (in code) ​

  • Heimdall gpu_layers: 0 now correctly means CPU-only (previously it could be treated as “auto” depending on where it was set).
  • Heimdall now prints a clearer “Compute: GPU=…” status when the generator backend can report it.

What to collect from the user (to diagnose CUDA) ​

Please include:

  • the relevant config section for Heimdall and embeddings
  • the startup log lines containing:
    • Loading Heimdall model: ...
    • GPU layers: ...
    • any subsequent GPU loading failed...
    • and the Compute: GPU=... line (newer builds)

3) “Zero embeddings” / “it’s word search with zero semantic functionality” ​

Likely root cause ​

In current releases, embedding generation is disabled by default unless explicitly enabled via config/env/CLI. If embeddings are disabled (or the embedder fails health checks), NornicDB falls back to keyword/full-text style behavior and you’ll see “no embeddings” symptoms.

What’s fixed now (docs + UX) ​

  • The docs now explicitly call out that embeddings are disabled by default and show how to enable them.
  • Server startup now prints whether embeddings are enabled/disabled.

What to do ​

Enable embeddings (pick one):

Env:

bash
export NORNICDB_EMBEDDING_ENABLED=true

CLI:

bash
nornicdb serve --embedding-enabled

Then verify embeddings are actually ready:

  • Look for logs like:
    • Loading embedding model: ...
    • Embeddings ready: ...
  • If the embedder can’t load (model path wrong, model missing, etc.), the logs currently say it’s falling back to full-text.

4) /help opens a blank page — we need one screenshot to be sure ​

There are two different things that look like “/help”:

  1. A chat command inside the Heimdall/Bifrost panel

    • You open the UI, open the chat panel, type /help into the chat input.
    • Expected behavior: it prints an in-chat help message (it should not navigate).

  2. A browser URL path

    • You type http://host:7474/help in the address bar.
    • Expected behavior (newer builds): the UI SPA should load and route you back to the app (no blank page).
    • Older builds could fall through to the Neo4j discovery handler and look like a “blank” page depending on the browser and auth state.

What’s fixed now (for URL /help) ​

  • The server router now serves the UI for browser requests on deep links so /help won’t fall through to the discovery JSON.

What we need from you to reproduce precisely ​

Please send one of:

  • a screenshot of your browser address bar showing /help, plus the blank page content, or
  • a screenshot of the Bifrost/Heimdall chat panel after typing /help.

Also tell us:

  • are you typing /help into the chat input, or into the browser URL?

Minimal “known-good” Docker snippet to validate end-to-end ​

If you want a quick sanity run, use a config file and explicit envs:

bash
docker run --rm -it \
  -p 7474:7474 -p 7687:7687 \
  -v $PWD/nornicdb.yaml:/config/nornicdb.yaml:ro \
  -e NORNICDB_CONFIG=/config/nornicdb.yaml \
  -e NORNICDB_EMBEDDING_ENABLED=true \
  timothyswt/nornicdb-amd64-cuda-bge-heimdall:latest

Then paste the startup log lines that mention:

  • config file loaded
  • embeddings ready (or why they failed)
  • Heimdall model loaded + GPU status
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