NVIDIA vGPU 17.x (Driver 550.54.14) – CLS Licensing Fails with “Request body is not valid JSON”

avnanrahman
Thu, 12 Feb 2026 04:51:49 +0000
NVIDIA Virtual GPU Technology

Environment

GPU: NVIDIA L40S-24Q

Driver Version: 550.54.14

CUDA: 12.4

vGPU: RTX Virtual Workstation

Licensing: NVIDIA Cloud License Service (CLS)

OS: Ubuntu Server 24.04.3

Deployment: Kubevirt/Kubernetes with NVIDIA GPU Operator (vgpu-manager via DaemonSet)

Issue Description

We are encountering a licensing issue with nvidia-gridd.

Driver installed in Virtual machine:

Thu Feb 12 11:45:00 2026
±----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 550.54.14 Driver Version: 550.54.14 CUDA Version: 12.4 |
|-----------------------------------------±-----------------------±---------------------+
| GPU Name Persistence-M | Bus-Id Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan Temp Perf Pwr:Usage/Cap | Memory-Usage | GPU-Util Compute M. |
| | | MIG M. |
|=========================================+========================+======================|
| 0 NVIDIA L40S-24Q On | 00000000:08:00.0 Off | 0 |
| N/A N/A P0 N/A / N/A | 0MiB / 24576MiB | 0% Default |
| | | N/A |
±----------------------------------------±-----------------------±---------------------+

±----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes: |
| GPU GI CI PID Type Process name GPU Memory |
| ID ID Usage |
|=========================================================================================|
| No running processes found |
±----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Grid config:

When starting nvidia-gridd, the daemon attempts to acquire a license but fails with the following error:

Feb 12 11:34:51 svr-dinamika-2 nvidia-gridd[737656]: Shutdown (737656)
Feb 12 11:34:51 svr-dinamika-2 systemd[1]: nvidia-gridd.service: Deactivated successfully.
Feb 12 11:34:51 svr-dinamika-2 systemd[1]: Stopped nvidia-gridd.service - NVIDIA Grid Daemon.
Feb 12 11:38:11 svr-dinamika-2 systemd[1]: Starting nvidia-gridd.service - NVIDIA Grid Daemon…
Feb 12 11:38:11 svr-dinamika-2 nvidia-gridd[747996]: Started (747996)
Feb 12 11:38:11 svr-dinamika-2 systemd[1]: Started nvidia-gridd.service - NVIDIA Grid Daemon.
Feb 12 11:38:11 svr-dinamika-2 nvidia-gridd[747996]: vGPU Software package (0)
Feb 12 11:38:11 svr-dinamika-2 nvidia-gridd[747996]: Ignore service provider and node-locked licensing
Feb 12 11:38:11 svr-dinamika-2 nvidia-gridd[747996]: NLS initialized
Feb 12 11:38:11 svr-dinamika-2 nvidia-gridd[747996]: Acquiring license. (Info: api.cls.licensing.nvidia.com; NVIDIA RTX Virtual Workstation)
Feb 12 11:39:24 svr-dinamika-2 nvidia-gridd[747996]: Failed to process response from server (2)
Feb 12 11:39:24 svr-dinamika-2 nvidia-gridd[747996]: Failed to register client (2)
Feb 12 11:39:24 svr-dinamika-2 nvidia-gridd[747996]: Failed to process response from server (2)
Feb 12 11:39:24 svr-dinamika-2 nvidia-gridd[747996]: Failed to register client (2)
Feb 12 11:39:24 svr-dinamika-2 nvidia-gridd[747996]: Failed to acquire license from api.cls.licensing.nvidia.com (Info: NVIDIA RTX Virtual Workstation - Error: Request body is not valid JSON)
Feb 12 11:39:53 svr-dinamika-2 nvidia-gridd[747996]: Acquiring license. (Info: api.cls.licensing.nvidia.com; NVIDIA RTX Virtual Workstation)
Feb 12 11:39:53 svr-dinamika-2 nvidia-gridd[747996]: Failed to process response from server (2)
Feb 12 11:39:53 svr-dinamika-2 nvidia-gridd[747996]: Failed to register client (2)
Feb 12 11:39:54 svr-dinamika-2 nvidia-gridd[747996]: Failed to process response from server (2)
Feb 12 11:39:54 svr-dinamika-2 nvidia-gridd[747996]: Failed to register client (2)
Feb 12 11:39:54 svr-dinamika-2 nvidia-gridd[747996]: Failed to acquire license from api.cls.licensing.nvidia.com (Info: NVIDIA RTX Virtual Workstation - Error: Request body is not valid JSON)