I already tried to install drivers

In case you already installed some drivers, purge them:

sudo apt-get -s purge 'nvidia-*'

and update initramfs:

sudo update-initramfs -u

Clean install

Driver installation

Add contrib and non-free repo:

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

and change the line

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ bullseye main

so it looks like

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ bullseye main contrib non-free

Ctrl +x to save, hit Y for yes Now install the Debian 11 driver:

sudo apt update
sudo apt -y install nvidia-driver firmware-misc-nonfree
sudo shutdown -r now

!!! note You might get a screen that nouveau is enabled and that you need to reboot, which we gonna do anyways, last command will make your instance reboot. Once rebooted and back logged in give

nvidia-smi

a try. If this fails, make sure you don’t have any repos, that might cause issues, purge and start over. If you’re in a Debian VM, make sure the GPU passthrough to the VM is working first.

Docker Setup for Nvidia

This will install and setup the needed keys, repo, software and configure docker to use Nvidia.

distribution=$(. /etc/os-release;echo $ID$VERSION_ID) \
      && curl -fsSL https://nvidia.github.io/libnvidia-container/gpgkey | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/nvidia-container-toolkit-keyring.gpg \
      && curl -s -L https://nvidia.github.io/libnvidia-container/$distribution/libnvidia-container.list | \
            sed 's#deb https://#deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/nvidia-container-toolkit-keyring.gpg] https://#g' | \
            sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nvidia-container-toolkit.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y nvidia-container-toolkit
sudo nvidia-ctk runtime configure --runtime=docker
sudo systemctl restart docker

Finally proceed with adding your gpu properly to your compose as per Docker specs.

    deploy:
      resources:
        reservations:
          devices:
            - driver: nvidia
              count: 1
              capabilities: [gpu]

Docker-compose up and voila, you’re able to use your GPU in an Emby or Plex container.

Side note

If nvidia-smi doesn’t show your card, it might be related to secure boot, have a read here https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers#Debian_11_.22Bullseye.22 I had the issue on proxmox as the vm bios had it enabled, i ended up disabling secure boot for the vm as i don’t need it, but mentioning it in case someone struggles. (Both, barebone and proxmox vm, tested with lscr.io/linuxserver/emby:latest)