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4 Commits

Author SHA1 Message Date
NanoCode012
53a12282bc fix: log merge command once done 2026-02-14 00:45:01 +07:00
NanoCode012
7271754902 fix: handle plugin logging 2026-02-14 00:40:43 +07:00
NanoCode012
6d5257d92e fix: ignore ds_store 2026-02-14 00:33:53 +07:00
NanoCode012
0e357b5df6 fix: load gemma3 as text only model with dynamic weights 2026-02-14 00:32:48 +07:00
612 changed files with 4064 additions and 63360 deletions

View File

@@ -31,10 +31,7 @@ PRs are **greatly welcome**!
Please run below to setup env
```bash
# Install axolotl + dev and test dependencies from lockfile
export UV_TORCH_BACKEND=cu128 # or cu130
uv sync --extra flash-attn --extra deepspeed --group dev --group test
source .venv/bin/activate
pip3 install -r requirements-dev.txt -r requirements-tests.txt
pre-commit install
# test
@@ -71,12 +68,7 @@ You can skip certain CI checks by including specific keywords in your commit mes
### Code Style
axolotl uses [Ruff](https://docs.astral.sh/ruff/) as its code style guide. Please ensure that your code follows these guidelines.
Use the pre-commit linter to ensure that your code is formatted consistently.
```bash
pre-commit run --all-files
```
axolotl uses [{codestyle}]({URLofCodestyle}) as its code style guide. Please ensure that your code follows these guidelines.
### Commit Messages
@@ -86,6 +78,6 @@ Write clear and concise commit messages that briefly describe the changes made i
- [GitHub Help](https://help.github.com/)
- [GitHub Pull Request Documentation](https://docs.github.com/en/github/collaborating-with-issues-and-pull-requests)
- [Ruff](https://docs.astral.sh/ruff/)
- [{codestyle}]({URLofCodestyle})
Thank you once again for your interest in contributing to axolotl. We look forward to collaborating with you and creating an even better project together!

View File

@@ -15,9 +15,6 @@ on:
- '.github/workflows/base.yml'
workflow_dispatch:
permissions:
contents: read
jobs:
build-base:
if: ${{ github.repository_owner == 'axolotl-ai-cloud' && (github.event_name != 'pull_request' || !github.event.pull_request.draft) }}
@@ -30,6 +27,14 @@ jobs:
fail-fast: false
matrix:
include:
- cuda: "128"
cuda_version: 12.8.1
cudnn_version: ""
python_version: "3.11"
pytorch: 2.8.0
torch_cuda_arch_list: "7.0 7.5 8.0 8.6 8.7 8.9 9.0+PTX"
dockerfile: "Dockerfile-base"
platforms: "linux/amd64"
- cuda: "128"
cuda_version: 12.8.1
cudnn_version: ""
@@ -46,30 +51,14 @@ jobs:
torch_cuda_arch_list: "7.0 7.5 8.0 8.6 8.7 8.9 9.0+PTX"
dockerfile: "Dockerfile-base"
platforms: "linux/amd64,linux/arm64"
- cuda: "128"
cuda_version: 12.8.1
cudnn_version: ""
python_version: "3.11"
pytorch: 2.10.0
torch_cuda_arch_list: "7.0 7.5 8.0 8.6 8.7 8.9 9.0+PTX"
dockerfile: "Dockerfile-base"
platforms: "linux/amd64,linux/arm64"
- cuda: "128"
cuda_version: 12.8.1
- cuda: "129"
cuda_version: 12.9.1
cudnn_version: ""
python_version: "3.12"
pytorch: 2.10.0
pytorch: 2.9.1
torch_cuda_arch_list: "7.0 7.5 8.0 8.6 8.7 8.9 9.0+PTX"
dockerfile: "Dockerfile-base"
platforms: "linux/amd64,linux/arm64"
# - cuda: "129"
# cuda_version: 12.9.1
# cudnn_version: ""
# python_version: "3.12"
# pytorch: 2.9.1
# torch_cuda_arch_list: "7.0 7.5 8.0 8.6 8.7 8.9 9.0+PTX"
# dockerfile: "Dockerfile-base"
# platforms: "linux/amd64,linux/arm64"
- cuda: "130"
cuda_version: 13.0.0
cudnn_version: ""
@@ -86,14 +75,6 @@ jobs:
torch_cuda_arch_list: "9.0+PTX"
dockerfile: "Dockerfile-base"
platforms: "linux/amd64,linux/arm64"
- cuda: "130"
cuda_version: 13.0.0
cudnn_version: ""
python_version: "3.12"
pytorch: 2.10.0
torch_cuda_arch_list: "9.0+PTX"
dockerfile: "Dockerfile-base"
platforms: "linux/amd64,linux/arm64"
# - cuda: "128"
# cuda_version: 12.8.1
# cudnn_version: ""
@@ -119,7 +100,7 @@ jobs:
images: |
axolotlai/axolotl-base
- name: Login to Docker Hub
uses: docker/login-action@v3
uses: docker/login-action@v2
if: ${{ github.event_name != 'pull_request' && env.HAS_DOCKERHUB_CREDS == 'true' }}
with:
username: ${{ secrets.DOCKERHUB_USERNAME }}
@@ -127,7 +108,7 @@ jobs:
- name: Set up Docker Buildx
uses: docker/setup-buildx-action@v3
- name: Build
uses: docker/build-push-action@v5
uses: docker/build-push-action@v4
with:
context: .
file: ./docker/${{ matrix.dockerfile }}
@@ -156,14 +137,14 @@ jobs:
cuda_version: 12.8.1
cudnn_version: ""
python_version: "3.11"
pytorch: 2.9.1
pytorch: 2.8.0
torch_cuda_arch_list: "7.0 7.5 8.0 8.6 8.7 8.9 9.0+PTX"
dockerfile: "Dockerfile-uv-base"
platforms: "linux/amd64,linux/arm64"
platforms: "linux/amd64"
- cuda: "128"
cuda_version: 12.8.1
cudnn_version: ""
python_version: "3.12"
python_version: "3.11"
pytorch: 2.9.1
torch_cuda_arch_list: "7.0 7.5 8.0 8.6 8.7 8.9 9.0+PTX"
dockerfile: "Dockerfile-uv-base"
@@ -176,30 +157,14 @@ jobs:
torch_cuda_arch_list: "7.0 7.5 8.0 8.6 8.7 8.9 9.0+PTX"
dockerfile: "Dockerfile-uv-base"
platforms: "linux/amd64,linux/arm64"
- cuda: "128"
cuda_version: 12.8.1
cudnn_version: ""
python_version: "3.11"
pytorch: 2.10.0
torch_cuda_arch_list: "7.0 7.5 8.0 8.6 8.7 8.9 9.0+PTX"
dockerfile: "Dockerfile-uv-base"
platforms: "linux/amd64,linux/arm64"
- cuda: "128"
cuda_version: 12.8.1
- cuda: "129"
cuda_version: 12.9.1
cudnn_version: ""
python_version: "3.12"
pytorch: 2.10.0
pytorch: 2.9.1
torch_cuda_arch_list: "7.0 7.5 8.0 8.6 8.7 8.9 9.0+PTX"
dockerfile: "Dockerfile-uv-base"
platforms: "linux/amd64,linux/arm64"
# - cuda: "129"
# cuda_version: 12.9.1
# cudnn_version: ""
# python_version: "3.12"
# pytorch: 2.9.1
# torch_cuda_arch_list: "7.0 7.5 8.0 8.6 8.7 8.9 9.0+PTX"
# dockerfile: "Dockerfile-uv-base"
# platforms: "linux/amd64,linux/arm64"
- cuda: "130"
cuda_version: 13.0.0
cudnn_version: ""
@@ -216,14 +181,6 @@ jobs:
torch_cuda_arch_list: "9.0+PTX"
dockerfile: "Dockerfile-uv-base"
platforms: "linux/amd64,linux/arm64"
- cuda: "130"
cuda_version: 13.0.0
cudnn_version: ""
python_version: "3.12"
pytorch: 2.10.0
torch_cuda_arch_list: "9.0+PTX"
dockerfile: "Dockerfile-uv-base"
platforms: "linux/amd64,linux/arm64"
steps:
- name: Checkout
uses: actions/checkout@v4
@@ -234,7 +191,7 @@ jobs:
images: |
axolotlai/axolotl-base-uv
- name: Login to Docker Hub
uses: docker/login-action@v3
uses: docker/login-action@v2
if: ${{ github.event_name != 'pull_request' && env.HAS_DOCKERHUB_CREDS == 'true' }}
with:
username: ${{ secrets.DOCKERHUB_USERNAME }}
@@ -242,7 +199,7 @@ jobs:
- name: Set up Docker Buildx
uses: docker/setup-buildx-action@v3
- name: Build
uses: docker/build-push-action@v5
uses: docker/build-push-action@v4
with:
context: .
file: ./docker/${{ matrix.dockerfile }}

View File

@@ -6,16 +6,13 @@ on:
types: [opened, synchronize, reopened, ready_for_review]
paths:
- '**.py'
- 'pyproject.toml'
- 'requirements.txt'
- '.github/workflows/*.yml'
- "*.[q]md"
- "examples/**/*.y[a]?ml"
- ".pre-commit-config.yaml"
workflow_dispatch:
permissions:
contents: read
jobs:
pre-commit:
name: pre-commit

View File

@@ -8,9 +8,6 @@ on:
- "v*"
workflow_dispatch:
permissions:
contents: read
jobs:
build-axolotl:
if: ${{ ! contains(github.event.commits[0].message, '[skip docker]') && github.repository_owner == 'axolotl-ai-cloud' }}
@@ -18,6 +15,12 @@ jobs:
fail-fast: false
matrix:
include:
- cuda: 128
cuda_version: 12.8.1
python_version: "3.11"
pytorch: 2.8.0
axolotl_extras:
platforms: "linux/amd64"
- cuda: 128
cuda_version: 12.8.1
python_version: "3.11"
@@ -31,28 +34,16 @@ jobs:
axolotl_extras:
platforms: "linux/amd64,linux/arm64"
is_latest: true
- cuda: 128
cuda_version: 12.8.1
- cuda: 129
cuda_version: 12.9.1
python_version: "3.12"
pytorch: 2.10.0
axolotl_extras:
platforms: "linux/amd64,linux/arm64"
# - cuda: 129
# cuda_version: 12.9.1
# python_version: "3.12"
# pytorch: 2.9.1
# axolotl_extras:
# platforms: "linux/amd64,linux/arm64"
- cuda: 130
cuda_version: 13.0.0
python_version: "3.11"
pytorch: 2.9.1
axolotl_extras:
platforms: "linux/amd64,linux/arm64"
- cuda: 130
cuda_version: 13.0.0
python_version: "3.12"
pytorch: 2.10.0
python_version: "3.11"
pytorch: 2.9.1
axolotl_extras:
platforms: "linux/amd64,linux/arm64"
runs-on: axolotl-gpu-runner
@@ -95,91 +86,19 @@ jobs:
${{ (matrix.is_latest) && format('{0}-latest', steps.metadata.outputs.tags) || '' }}
labels: ${{ steps.metadata.outputs.labels }}
build-axolotl-uv:
if: ${{ ! contains(github.event.commits[0].message, '[skip docker]') && github.repository_owner == 'axolotl-ai-cloud' }}
strategy:
fail-fast: false
matrix:
include:
- cuda: 128
cuda_version: 12.8.1
python_version: "3.11"
pytorch: 2.9.1
axolotl_extras:
platforms: "linux/amd64,linux/arm64"
- cuda: 128
cuda_version: 12.8.1
python_version: "3.12"
pytorch: 2.9.1
axolotl_extras:
platforms: "linux/amd64,linux/arm64"
is_latest: true
- cuda: 128
cuda_version: 12.8.1
python_version: "3.12"
pytorch: 2.10.0
axolotl_extras:
platforms: "linux/amd64,linux/arm64"
- cuda: 130
cuda_version: 13.0.0
python_version: "3.11"
pytorch: 2.9.1
axolotl_extras:
platforms: "linux/amd64,linux/arm64"
- cuda: 130
cuda_version: 13.0.0
python_version: "3.12"
pytorch: 2.10.0
axolotl_extras:
platforms: "linux/amd64,linux/arm64"
runs-on: axolotl-gpu-runner
steps:
- name: Checkout
uses: actions/checkout@v4
- name: Docker metadata
id: metadata
uses: docker/metadata-action@v5
with:
images: |
axolotlai/axolotl-uv
tags: |
type=ref,event=branch
type=pep440,pattern={{version}}
- name: Set up Docker Buildx
uses: docker/setup-buildx-action@v3
- name: Login to Docker Hub
uses: docker/login-action@v3
with:
username: ${{ secrets.DOCKERHUB_USERNAME }}
password: ${{ secrets.DOCKERHUB_TOKEN }}
# guidance for testing before pushing: https://docs.docker.com/build/ci/github-actions/test-before-push/
- name: Build and export to Docker
uses: docker/build-push-action@v5
with:
context: .
platforms: ${{ matrix.platforms }}
build-args: |
BASE_TAG=${{ github.ref_type == 'tag' && 'main' || github.ref_name }}-base-py${{ matrix.python_version }}-cu${{ matrix.cuda }}-${{ matrix.pytorch }}
CUDA=${{ matrix.cuda }}
PYTORCH_VERSION=${{ matrix.pytorch }}
AXOLOTL_ARGS=${{ matrix.axolotl_args }}
AXOLOTL_EXTRAS=${{ matrix.axolotl_extras}}
file: ./docker/Dockerfile-uv
push: ${{ github.event_name != 'pull_request' }}
tags: |
${{ steps.metadata.outputs.tags }}-py${{ matrix.python_version }}-cu${{ matrix.cuda }}-${{ matrix.pytorch }}${{ matrix.axolotl_extras != '' && '-' || '' }}${{ matrix.axolotl_extras }}
${{ steps.metadata.outputs.tags }}-py${{ matrix.python_version }}-cu${{ matrix.cuda }}-${{ matrix.pytorch }}
${{ (matrix.is_latest) && format('{0}-latest', steps.metadata.outputs.tags) || '' }}
labels: ${{ steps.metadata.outputs.labels }}
build-axolotl-cloud:
needs: build-axolotl
if: ${{ ! contains(github.event.commits[0].message, '[skip docker]') && github.repository_owner == 'axolotl-ai-cloud' }}
# this job needs to be run on self-hosted GPU runners...
strategy:
fail-fast: false
matrix:
include:
- cuda: 128
cuda_version: 12.8.1
python_version: "3.11"
pytorch: 2.8.0
axolotl_extras:
platforms: "linux/amd64"
- cuda: 128
cuda_version: 12.8.1
python_version: "3.11"
@@ -193,28 +112,16 @@ jobs:
axolotl_extras:
is_latest: true
platforms: "linux/amd64,linux/arm64"
- cuda: 128
cuda_version: 12.8.1
- cuda: 129
cuda_version: 12.9.1
python_version: "3.12"
pytorch: 2.10.0
axolotl_extras:
platforms: "linux/amd64,linux/arm64"
# - cuda: 129
# cuda_version: 12.9.1
# python_version: "3.12"
# pytorch: 2.9.1
# axolotl_extras:
# platforms: "linux/amd64,linux/arm64"
- cuda: 130
cuda_version: 13.0.0
python_version: "3.11"
pytorch: 2.9.1
axolotl_extras:
platforms: "linux/amd64,linux/arm64"
- cuda: 130
cuda_version: 13.0.0
python_version: "3.12"
pytorch: 2.10.0
python_version: "3.11"
pytorch: 2.9.1
axolotl_extras:
platforms: "linux/amd64,linux/arm64"
runs-on: axolotl-gpu-runner
@@ -252,86 +159,11 @@ jobs:
${{ (matrix.is_latest) && format('{0}-latest', steps.metadata.outputs.tags) || '' }}
labels: ${{ steps.metadata.outputs.labels }}
build-axolotl-cloud-uv:
needs: build-axolotl-uv
if: ${{ ! contains(github.event.commits[0].message, '[skip docker]') && github.repository_owner == 'axolotl-ai-cloud' }}
# this job needs to be run on self-hosted GPU runners...
strategy:
fail-fast: false
matrix:
include:
- cuda: 128
cuda_version: 12.8.1
python_version: "3.11"
pytorch: 2.9.1
axolotl_extras:
platforms: "linux/amd64,linux/arm64"
- cuda: 128
cuda_version: 12.8.1
python_version: "3.12"
pytorch: 2.9.1
axolotl_extras:
is_latest: true
platforms: "linux/amd64,linux/arm64"
- cuda: 128
cuda_version: 12.8.1
python_version: "3.12"
pytorch: 2.10.0
axolotl_extras:
platforms: "linux/amd64,linux/arm64"
- cuda: 130
cuda_version: 13.0.0
python_version: "3.11"
pytorch: 2.9.1
axolotl_extras:
platforms: "linux/amd64,linux/arm64"
- cuda: 130
cuda_version: 13.0.0
python_version: "3.12"
pytorch: 2.10.0
axolotl_extras:
platforms: "linux/amd64,linux/arm64"
runs-on: axolotl-gpu-runner
steps:
- name: Checkout
uses: actions/checkout@v4
- name: Docker metadata
id: metadata
uses: docker/metadata-action@v5
with:
images: |
axolotlai/axolotl-cloud-uv
tags: |
type=ref,event=branch
type=pep440,pattern={{version}}
- name: Login to Docker Hub
uses: docker/login-action@v3
with:
username: ${{ secrets.DOCKERHUB_USERNAME }}
password: ${{ secrets.DOCKERHUB_TOKEN }}
- name: Set up Docker Buildx
uses: docker/setup-buildx-action@v3
- name: Build
uses: docker/build-push-action@v5
with:
context: .
platforms: ${{ matrix.platforms }}
build-args: |
BASE_TAG=${{ github.ref_type == 'tag' && 'main' || github.ref_name }}-py${{ matrix.python_version }}-cu${{ matrix.cuda }}-${{ matrix.pytorch }}${{ matrix.axolotl_extras != '' && '-' || '' }}${{ matrix.axolotl_extras }}
CUDA=${{ matrix.cuda }}
file: ./docker/Dockerfile-cloud-uv
push: ${{ github.event_name != 'pull_request' }}
tags: |
${{ steps.metadata.outputs.tags }}-py${{ matrix.python_version }}-cu${{ matrix.cuda }}-${{ matrix.pytorch }}${{ matrix.axolotl_extras != '' && '-' || '' }}${{ matrix.axolotl_extras }}
${{ (matrix.is_latest) && format('{0}-latest', steps.metadata.outputs.tags) || '' }}
labels: ${{ steps.metadata.outputs.labels }}
build-axolotl-cloud-no-tmux:
needs: build-axolotl
if: ${{ ! contains(github.event.commits[0].message, '[skip docker]') && github.repository_owner == 'axolotl-ai-cloud' }}
# this job needs to be run on self-hosted GPU runners...
strategy:
fail-fast: false
matrix:
include:
- cuda: 128

View File

@@ -3,24 +3,22 @@ name: docker-multigpu-tests-biweekly
on:
pull_request:
paths:
- "tests/e2e/multigpu/**.py"
- "pyproject.toml"
- ".github/workflows/multi-gpu-e2e.yml"
- "scripts/cutcrossentropy_install.py"
- "src/axolotl/core/trainers/mixins/sequence_parallel.py"
- "src/axolotl/utils/distributed.py"
- 'tests/e2e/multigpu/**.py'
- 'requirements.txt'
- 'setup.py'
- 'pyproject.toml'
- '.github/workflows/multi-gpu-e2e.yml'
- 'src/axolotl/core/trainers/mixins/sequence_parallel.py'
- 'src/axolotl/utils/distributed.py'
workflow_dispatch:
schedule:
- cron: "0 0 * * 1,4" # Runs at 00:00 UTC every monday & thursday
- cron: '0 0 * * 1,4' # Runs at 00:00 UTC every monday & thursday
# Cancel jobs on the same ref if a new one is triggered
concurrency:
group: ${{ github.workflow }}-${{ github.ref }}
cancel-in-progress: ${{ github.ref != 'refs/heads/main' }}
permissions:
contents: read
env:
MODAL_IMAGE_BUILDER_VERSION: "2025.06"
@@ -31,25 +29,31 @@ jobs:
fail-fast: false
matrix:
include:
# - cuda: 129
# cuda_version: 12.9.1
# python_version: "3.12"
# pytorch: 2.9.1
# axolotl_extras: "fbgemm-gpu"
# num_gpus: 2
# dockerfile: "Dockerfile-uv.jinja"
- cuda: 128
cuda_version: 12.8.1
python_version: "3.11"
pytorch: 2.8.0
axolotl_extras: fbgemm-gpu
num_gpus: 2
- cuda: 128
cuda_version: 12.8.1
python_version: "3.11"
pytorch: 2.9.1
axolotl_extras: "fbgemm-gpu"
num_gpus: 2
- cuda: 129
cuda_version: 12.9.1
python_version: "3.12"
pytorch: 2.9.1
axolotl_extras: "fbgemm-gpu"
num_gpus: 2
dockerfile: "Dockerfile-uv.jinja"
- cuda: 130
cuda_version: 13.0.0
python_version: "3.11"
pytorch: 2.9.1
axolotl_extras:
# axolotl_extras: fbgemm-gpu
num_gpus: 2
- cuda: 128
cuda_version: 12.8.1
python_version: "3.11"
pytorch: 2.10.0
axolotl_extras: "fbgemm-gpu"
# axolotl_extras: fbgemm-gpu
num_gpus: 2
runs-on: [self-hosted, modal]
timeout-minutes: 120
@@ -72,9 +76,8 @@ jobs:
echo "AXOLOTL_EXTRAS=${{ matrix.axolotl_extras}}" >> $GITHUB_ENV
echo "CUDA=${{ matrix.cuda }}" >> $GITHUB_ENV
echo "N_GPUS=${{ matrix.num_gpus }}" >> $GITHUB_ENV
echo "E2E_DOCKERFILE=${{ matrix.dockerfile || 'Dockerfile-uv.jinja'}}" >> $GITHUB_ENV
echo "CODECOV_TOKEN=${{ secrets.CODECOV_TOKEN }}" >> $GITHUB_ENV
echo "E2E_DOCKERFILE=${{ matrix.dockerfile || 'Dockerfile.jinja'}}" >> $GITHUB_ENV
- name: Run tests job on Modal
env:
CODECOV_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.CODECOV_TOKEN }}
run: |
modal run -m cicd.multigpu

View File

@@ -5,9 +5,6 @@ on:
schedule:
- cron: '0 0 * * *' # Runs at 00:00 UTC every day
permissions:
contents: read
jobs:
build-axolotl:
if: ${{ ! contains(github.event.commits[0].message, '[skip docker]') && github.repository_owner == 'axolotl-ai-cloud' }}
@@ -15,6 +12,11 @@ jobs:
fail-fast: false
matrix:
include:
- cuda: 128
cuda_version: 12.8.1
python_version: "3.11"
pytorch: 2.8.0
axolotl_extras:
- cuda: 128
cuda_version: 12.8.1
python_version: "3.11"
@@ -62,6 +64,11 @@ jobs:
strategy:
matrix:
include:
- cuda: 128
cuda_version: 12.8.1
python_version: "3.11"
pytorch: 2.8.0
axolotl_extras:
- cuda: 128
cuda_version: 12.8.1
python_version: "3.11"

View File

@@ -5,8 +5,6 @@ on:
- cron: '0 0 1 * *' # Run monthly
workflow_dispatch: # Manual kickoff
permissions: {}
jobs:
auto-update:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest

View File

@@ -14,8 +14,14 @@ on:
- .github/workflows/preview-docs.yml
permissions:
contents: read
checks: write
contents: write
deployments: write
issues: write
discussions: write
pages: write
pull-requests: write
statuses: write
jobs:
preview:

View File

@@ -3,14 +3,9 @@ name: publish pypi
on:
push:
tags:
- "v*"
- 'v*'
workflow_dispatch:
permissions: {}
env:
UV_SYSTEM_PYTHON: "1"
jobs:
setup_release:
name: Create Release
@@ -33,8 +28,7 @@ jobs:
name: pypi
url: https://pypi.org/p/axolotl
permissions:
contents: read
id-token: write # IMPORTANT: this permission is mandatory for trusted publishing
id-token: write # IMPORTANT: this permission is mandatory for trusted publishing
steps:
- name: Check out repository code
uses: actions/checkout@v4
@@ -44,19 +38,15 @@ jobs:
with:
python-version: "3.11"
- name: Install uv
uses: astral-sh/setup-uv@v7
- name: Install dependencies
run: |
uv pip install wheel packaging
uv pip install --no-build-isolation -e .
uv pip install black mypy pre-commit types-requests quartodoc jupyter blobfile tiktoken \
codecov codecov-cli pytest pytest-cov pytest-retry pytest-sugar pytest-xdist tbparse
pip3 install wheel packaging==26.0
pip3 install --no-build-isolation -e .
pip3 install -r requirements-dev.txt -r requirements-tests.txt
- name: Extract tag name
id: tag
run: echo "TAG_NAME=$(echo $GITHUB_REF | cut -d / -f 3)" >> "$GITHUB_OUTPUT"
run: echo ::set-output name=TAG_NAME::$(echo $GITHUB_REF | cut -d / -f 3)
- name: Update version in VERSION file
run: |

View File

@@ -2,17 +2,7 @@ name: Tests Nightly against upstream main
on:
workflow_dispatch:
schedule:
- cron: "0 0 * * *" # Runs at 00:00 UTC every day
pull_request:
types: [opened, synchronize, reopened, ready_for_review]
paths:
- ".github/workflows/tests-nightly.yml"
permissions:
contents: read
env:
UV_SYSTEM_PYTHON: "1"
- cron: '0 0 * * *' # Runs at 00:00 UTC every day
jobs:
pre-commit:
@@ -23,31 +13,20 @@ jobs:
- uses: actions/setup-python@v5
with:
python-version: "3.11"
cache: "pip" # caching pip dependencies
cache: 'pip' # caching pip dependencies
- uses: pre-commit/action@v3.0.1
env:
SKIP: no-commit-to-branch
prime-cdn-s3-cache:
name: Prefetch S3 once to prime the CDN cache
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
if: ${{ !github.event.pull_request.draft }}
timeout-minutes: 10
steps:
- name: Restore Cache from S3
id: hf-cache-restore-s3
run: |
curl -v -H "Range: bytes=0-1023" -L https://axolotl-ci.b-cdn.net/hf-cache.tar.zst > /dev/null
pytest:
name: PyTest
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
needs: [prime-cdn-s3-cache]
strategy:
fail-fast: false
max-parallel: 2
matrix:
python_version: ["3.12"] # TODO include py3.14 once https://github.com/mistralai/mistral-common/pull/194 is merged
pytorch_version: ["2.9.1", "2.10.0"]
python_version: ["3.11"]
pytorch_version: ["2.8.0", "2.9.0", "2.9.1"]
timeout-minutes: 20
steps:
@@ -58,40 +37,42 @@ jobs:
id: hf-cache-restore-s3
run: |
mkdir -p /home/runner/.cache/huggingface/hub
curl -L https://axolotl-ci.b-cdn.net/hf-cache.tar.zst | tar -xf - -C /home/runner/.cache/huggingface/hub/ --use-compress-program unzstd
curl -L https://d1dttdx32dkk5p.cloudfront.net/hf-cache.tar.zst | tar -xf - -C /home/runner/.cache/huggingface/hub/ --use-compress-program unzstd
- name: Setup Python
uses: actions/setup-python@v5
with:
python-version: ${{ matrix.python_version }}
cache: 'pip' # caching pip dependencies
- name: Install uv
uses: astral-sh/setup-uv@v7
- name: upgrade pip
run: |
pip3 install --upgrade pip
pip3 install --upgrade packaging==26.0 setuptools==75.8.0 wheel
- name: Install PyTorch
run: |
uv pip install torch==${{ matrix.pytorch_version }} torchvision
uv pip freeze | grep -E "^(torch|torchvision)==" > /tmp/torch-pin.txt
pip3 install torch==${{ matrix.pytorch_version }} torchvision
- name: Update requirements.txt
run: |
sed -i 's#^transformers.*#transformers @ git+https://github.com/huggingface/transformers.git@main#' requirements.txt
sed -i 's#^peft.*#peft @ git+https://github.com/huggingface/peft.git@main#' requirements.txt
sed -i 's#^accelerate.*#accelerate @ git+https://github.com/huggingface/accelerate.git@main#' requirements.txt
sed -i 's#^trl.*#trl @ git+https://github.com/huggingface/trl.git@main#' requirements.txt
sed -i 's#^datasets.*#datasets @ git+https://github.com/huggingface/datasets.git@main#' requirements.txt
- name: Install dependencies
run: |
uv pip install --no-build-isolation -e . --override /tmp/torch-pin.txt
python scripts/cutcrossentropy_install.py --uv | sh
uv pip install black mypy pre-commit types-requests quartodoc jupyter blobfile tiktoken \
codecov codecov-cli pytest pytest-cov pytest-retry pytest-sugar pytest-xdist tbparse
- name: Override with nightly HF packages
run: |
uv pip install --no-deps \
"transformers @ git+https://github.com/huggingface/transformers.git@main" \
"peft @ git+https://github.com/huggingface/peft.git@main" \
"accelerate @ git+https://github.com/huggingface/accelerate.git@main" \
"trl @ git+https://github.com/huggingface/trl.git@main" \
"datasets @ git+https://github.com/huggingface/datasets.git@main"
pip3 show torch
pip3 install --no-build-isolation -U -e .
python scripts/unsloth_install.py | sh
python scripts/cutcrossentropy_install.py | sh
pip3 install -r requirements-dev.txt -r requirements-tests.txt
- name: Make sure PyTorch version wasn't clobbered
run: |
python -c "import torch; assert '${{ matrix.pytorch_version }}' in torch.__version__, f'Expected torch ${{ matrix.pytorch_version }} but got {torch.__version__}'"
python -c "import torch; assert '${{ matrix.pytorch_version }}' in torch.__version__"
- name: Ensure axolotl CLI was installed
run: |
@@ -103,6 +84,9 @@ jobs:
pytest -v --durations=10 tests/patched/
pytest -v --durations=10 tests/cli/
- name: cleanup pip cache
run: |
find "$(pip cache dir)/http-v2" -type f -mtime +14 -exec rm {} \;
docker-e2e-tests:
if: github.repository_owner == 'axolotl-ai-cloud'
@@ -118,19 +102,13 @@ jobs:
- cuda: 128
cuda_version: 12.8.1
python_version: "3.11"
pytorch: 2.9.1
pytorch: 2.8.0
num_gpus: 1
axolotl_extras:
nightly_build: "true"
- cuda: 128
cuda_version: 12.8.1
python_version: "3.11"
pytorch: 2.10.0
num_gpus: 1
axolotl_extras:
- cuda: 130
cuda_version: 13.0.0
python_version: "3.12"
pytorch: 2.9.1
num_gpus: 1
axolotl_extras:
@@ -154,11 +132,9 @@ jobs:
echo "AXOLOTL_EXTRAS=${{ matrix.axolotl_extras}}" >> $GITHUB_ENV
echo "CUDA=${{ matrix.cuda }}" >> $GITHUB_ENV
echo "N_GPUS=${{ matrix.num_gpus }}" >> $GITHUB_ENV
echo "E2E_DOCKERFILE=${{ matrix.dockerfile || 'Dockerfile-uv.jinja'}}" >> $GITHUB_ENV
echo "NIGHTLY_BUILD=${{ matrix.nightly_build }}" >> $GITHUB_ENV
echo "CODECOV_TOKEN=${{ secrets.CODECOV_TOKEN }}" >> $GITHUB_ENV
- name: Run tests job on Modal
env:
CODECOV_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.CODECOV_TOKEN }}
run: |
modal run cicd.e2e_tests
docker-e2e-multigpu-tests:
@@ -199,8 +175,7 @@ jobs:
echo "CUDA=${{ matrix.cuda }}" >> $GITHUB_ENV
echo "N_GPUS=${{ matrix.num_gpus }}" >> $GITHUB_ENV
echo "NIGHTLY_BUILD=${{ matrix.nightly_build }}" >> $GITHUB_ENV
echo "CODECOV_TOKEN=${{ secrets.CODECOV_TOKEN }}" >> $GITHUB_ENV
- name: Run tests job on Modal
env:
CODECOV_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.CODECOV_TOKEN }}
run: |
modal run cicd.multigpu

View File

@@ -6,19 +6,21 @@ on:
branches:
- "main"
paths:
- "**.py"
- "pyproject.toml"
- ".github/workflows/*.yml"
- "cicd/cicd.sh"
- "cicd/Dockerfile-uv.jinja"
- '**.py'
- 'requirements.txt'
- '.github/workflows/*.yml'
- 'requirements-tests.txt'
- 'cicd/cicd.sh'
- 'cicd/Dockerfile.jinja'
pull_request:
types: [opened, synchronize, reopened, ready_for_review]
paths:
- "**.py"
- "pyproject.toml"
- ".github/workflows/*.yml"
- "cicd/cicd.sh"
- "cicd/Dockerfile-uv.jinja"
types: [opened, synchronize, reopened, ready_for_review]
paths:
- '**.py'
- 'requirements.txt'
- '.github/workflows/*.yml'
- 'requirements-tests.txt'
- 'cicd/cicd.sh'
- 'cicd/Dockerfile.jinja'
workflow_dispatch:
# Cancel jobs on the same ref if a new one is triggered
@@ -26,12 +28,8 @@ concurrency:
group: ${{ github.workflow }}-${{ github.ref }}
cancel-in-progress: ${{ github.ref != 'refs/heads/main' }}
permissions:
contents: read
env:
TRANSFORMERS_IS_CI: "yes"
UV_SYSTEM_PYTHON: "1"
jobs:
pre-commit:
@@ -43,35 +41,26 @@ jobs:
- uses: actions/setup-python@v5
with:
python-version: "3.11"
cache: "pip" # caching pip dependencies
cache: 'pip' # caching pip dependencies
- uses: pre-commit/action@v3.0.1
env:
SKIP: no-commit-to-branch
prime-cdn-s3-cache:
name: Prefetch S3 once to prime the CDN cache
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
if: ${{ !github.event.pull_request.draft }}
timeout-minutes: 10
steps:
- name: Restore Cache from S3
id: hf-cache-restore-s3
run: |
curl -v -H "Range: bytes=0-1023" -L https://axolotl-ci.b-cdn.net/hf-cache.tar.zst > /dev/null
pytest:
name: PyTest
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
if: ${{ !github.event.pull_request.draft }}
needs: [prime-cdn-s3-cache]
# needs: [preload-cache]
strategy:
fail-fast: false
matrix:
python_version: ["3.12", "3.14"]
pytorch_version: ["2.9.1", "2.10.0"]
python_version: ["3.11", "3.12"]
pytorch_version: ["2.8.0", "2.9.0", "2.9.1"]
exclude:
- python_version: "3.14"
pytorch_version: "2.9.1"
- python_version: "3.12"
pytorch_version: "2.8.0"
- python_version: "3.12"
pytorch_version: "2.9.0"
timeout-minutes: 20
steps:
@@ -86,32 +75,39 @@ jobs:
id: hf-cache-restore-s3
run: |
mkdir -p ~/.cache/huggingface/hub
curl -L https://axolotl-ci.b-cdn.net/hf-cache.tar.zst | tar -xpf - -C ~/.cache/huggingface/hub/ --use-compress-program unzstd --strip-components=1
curl -L https://d1dttdx32dkk5p.cloudfront.net/hf-cache.tar.zst | tar -xpf - -C ~/.cache/huggingface/hub/ --use-compress-program unzstd --strip-components=1
ls -ltr ~/.cache/huggingface/hub/
- name: Setup Python
uses: actions/setup-python@v5
with:
python-version: ${{ matrix.python_version }}
cache: 'pip' # caching pip dependencies
- name: Install uv
uses: astral-sh/setup-uv@v7
- name: upgrade pip
run: |
pip3 install --upgrade pip
pip3 install --upgrade packaging==26.0 setuptools==75.8.0 wheel
- name: Install PyTorch
run: |
uv pip install torch==${{ matrix.pytorch_version }} torchvision
uv pip freeze | grep -E "^(torch|torchvision)==" > /tmp/torch-pin.txt
pip3 install --no-cache-dir torch==${{ matrix.pytorch_version }} torchvision
- name: Install dependencies
run: |
uv pip install --no-build-isolation -e . --override /tmp/torch-pin.txt
python scripts/cutcrossentropy_install.py --uv | sh
uv pip install black mypy pre-commit types-requests quartodoc jupyter blobfile tiktoken \
codecov codecov-cli pytest pytest-cov pytest-retry pytest-sugar pytest-xdist tbparse
pip3 show torch
pip3 install --no-cache-dir --no-build-isolation -U -e .
python scripts/unsloth_install.py | sh
python scripts/cutcrossentropy_install.py | sh
pip3 install -r requirements-dev.txt -r requirements-tests.txt
- name: cleanup pip cache
run: |
find "$(pip cache dir)/http-v2" -type f -mtime +14 -exec rm {} \;
- name: Make sure PyTorch version wasn't clobbered
run: |
python -c "import torch; assert '${{ matrix.pytorch_version }}' in torch.__version__, f'Expected torch ${{ matrix.pytorch_version }} but got {torch.__version__}'"
python -c "import torch; assert '${{ matrix.pytorch_version }}' in torch.__version__"
- name: Ensure axolotl CLI was installed
run: |
@@ -150,16 +146,17 @@ jobs:
name: PyTest from Source Dist
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
if: ${{ !github.event.pull_request.draft }}
needs: [prime-cdn-s3-cache]
strategy:
fail-fast: false
matrix:
python_version: ["3.12", "3.14"]
pytorch_version: ["2.9.1", "2.10.0"]
python_version: ["3.11", "3.12"]
pytorch_version: ["2.8.0", "2.9.0", "2.9.1"]
exclude:
- python_version: "3.14"
pytorch_version: "2.9.1"
timeout-minutes: 30
- python_version: "3.12"
pytorch_version: "2.8.0"
- python_version: "3.12"
pytorch_version: "2.9.0"
timeout-minutes: 20
steps:
- name: cleanup node
@@ -173,49 +170,45 @@ jobs:
id: hf-cache-restore-s3
run: |
mkdir -p ~/.cache/huggingface/hub
curl -L https://axolotl-ci.b-cdn.net/hf-cache.tar.zst | tar -xpf - -C ~/.cache/huggingface/hub/ --use-compress-program unzstd --strip-components=1
curl -L https://d1dttdx32dkk5p.cloudfront.net/hf-cache.tar.zst | tar -xpf - -C ~/.cache/huggingface/hub/ --use-compress-program unzstd --strip-components=1
ls -ltr ~/.cache/huggingface/hub/
- name: Setup Python
uses: actions/setup-python@v5
with:
python-version: ${{ matrix.python_version }}
cache: 'pip' # caching pip dependencies
- name: Install uv
uses: astral-sh/setup-uv@v7
- name: upgrade pip
run: |
pip3 install --upgrade pip
pip3 install --upgrade packaging==26.0 setuptools==75.8.0 setuptools_scm build wheel psutil
- name: Install PyTorch
run: |
uv pip install torch==${{ matrix.pytorch_version }} torchvision
uv pip freeze | grep -E "^(torch|torchvision)==" > /tmp/torch-pin.txt
pip3 install --no-cache-dir torch==${{ matrix.pytorch_version }} torchvision
- name: Install dependencies
run: |
uv pip install packaging setuptools_scm build wheel psutil
pip3 show torch
python -m build --no-isolation --sdist
uv pip install --no-build-isolation dist/axolotl*.tar.gz --override /tmp/torch-pin.txt
python scripts/cutcrossentropy_install.py --uv | sh
uv pip install black mypy pre-commit types-requests quartodoc jupyter blobfile tiktoken \
codecov codecov-cli pytest pytest-cov pytest-retry pytest-sugar pytest-xdist tbparse
pip3 install --no-cache-dir --no-build-isolation dist/axolotl*.tar.gz
python scripts/unsloth_install.py | sh
python scripts/cutcrossentropy_install.py | sh
pip3 install -r requirements-dev.txt -r requirements-tests.txt
- name: cleanup pip cache
run: |
find "$(pip cache dir)/http-v2" -type f -mtime +14 -exec rm {} \;
- name: Make sure PyTorch version wasn't clobbered
run: |
python -c "import torch; assert '${{ matrix.pytorch_version }}' in torch.__version__, f'Expected torch ${{ matrix.pytorch_version }} but got {torch.__version__}'"
python -c "import torch; assert '${{ matrix.pytorch_version }}' in torch.__version__"
- name: Ensure axolotl CLI was installed
run: |
axolotl --help
- name: Verify agent docs are discoverable
run: |
# Agent docs live in docs/agents/ (source of truth) and are resolved
# at runtime from the repo checkout or via `axolotl fetch docs`
axolotl agent-docs --list
axolotl agent-docs | grep -q "Fine-tuning framework"
axolotl agent-docs grpo | grep -q "GRPO"
axolotl agent-docs sft | grep -q "SFT"
python -c "from axolotl.cli.agent_docs import get_doc, list_topics; assert len(list_topics()) >= 5; assert 'GRPO' in get_doc('grpo')"
- name: Show HF cache
run: hf cache ls
@@ -271,12 +264,13 @@ jobs:
fail-fast: false
matrix:
include:
- cuda: 130
cuda_version: 13.0.0
- cuda: 129
cuda_version: 12.9.1
python_version: "3.12"
pytorch: 2.9.1
num_gpus: 1
axolotl_extras:
dockerfile: "Dockerfile-uv.jinja"
steps:
- name: Checkout
uses: actions/checkout@v4
@@ -297,10 +291,9 @@ jobs:
echo "CUDA=${{ matrix.cuda }}" >> $GITHUB_ENV
echo "MODAL_IMAGE_BUILDER_VERSION=2024.10" >> $GITHUB_ENV
echo "N_GPUS=${{ matrix.num_gpus }}" >> $GITHUB_ENV
echo "E2E_DOCKERFILE=${{ matrix.dockerfile || 'Dockerfile-uv.jinja'}}" >> $GITHUB_ENV
echo "CODECOV_TOKEN=${{ secrets.CODECOV_TOKEN }}" >> $GITHUB_ENV
echo "E2E_DOCKERFILE=${{ matrix.dockerfile || 'Dockerfile.jinja'}}" >> $GITHUB_ENV
- name: Run tests job on Modal
env:
CODECOV_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.CODECOV_TOKEN }}
run: |
modal run cicd.e2e_tests
@@ -323,13 +316,14 @@ jobs:
- cuda: 128
cuda_version: 12.8.1
python_version: "3.11"
pytorch: 2.9.1
pytorch: 2.8.0
num_gpus: 1
axolotl_extras:
gpu_type: "B200"
axolotl_extras: fbgemm-gpu
- cuda: 128
cuda_version: 12.8.1
python_version: "3.11"
pytorch: 2.10.0
pytorch: 2.9.1
num_gpus: 1
axolotl_extras:
- cuda: 130
@@ -359,10 +353,9 @@ jobs:
echo "MODAL_IMAGE_BUILDER_VERSION=2024.10" >> $GITHUB_ENV
echo "N_GPUS=${{ matrix.num_gpus }}" >> $GITHUB_ENV
echo "GPU_TYPE=${{ matrix.gpu_type || 'L40S'}}" >> $GITHUB_ENV
echo "E2E_DOCKERFILE=${{ matrix.dockerfile || 'Dockerfile-uv.jinja'}}" >> $GITHUB_ENV
echo "CODECOV_TOKEN=${{ secrets.CODECOV_TOKEN }}" >> $GITHUB_ENV
echo "E2E_DOCKERFILE=${{ matrix.dockerfile || 'Dockerfile.jinja'}}" >> $GITHUB_ENV
- name: Run tests job on Modal
env:
CODECOV_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.CODECOV_TOKEN }}
run: |
modal run cicd.e2e_tests
@@ -376,9 +369,9 @@ jobs:
fail-fast: false
matrix:
include:
- cuda: 128
cuda_version: 12.8.1
python_version: "3.11"
- cuda: 129
cuda_version: 12.9.1
python_version: "3.12"
pytorch: 2.9.1
num_gpus: 1
axolotl_extras:
@@ -402,6 +395,7 @@ jobs:
echo "CUDA=${{ matrix.cuda }}" >> $GITHUB_ENV
echo "MODAL_IMAGE_BUILDER_VERSION=2024.10" >> $GITHUB_ENV
echo "N_GPUS=${{ matrix.num_gpus }}" >> $GITHUB_ENV
echo "CODECOV_TOKEN=${{ secrets.CODECOV_TOKEN }}" >> $GITHUB_ENV
- name: Run tests job on Modal
run: |
modal run cicd.cleanup

3
.gitignore vendored
View File

@@ -193,3 +193,6 @@ out/
# scm auto-versioning
src/axolotl/_version.py
# macOS
.DS_Store

View File

@@ -11,7 +11,7 @@ repos:
- id: no-commit-to-branch
args: ['--branch', 'main']
- repo: https://github.com/astral-sh/ruff-pre-commit
rev: v0.15.8
rev: v0.14.10
hooks:
- id: ruff
args: [--fix]
@@ -26,7 +26,7 @@ repos:
'pydantic>=2.5.3',
]
- repo: https://github.com/PyCQA/bandit
rev: 1.9.4
rev: 1.9.2
hooks:
- id: bandit
args: [

View File

@@ -1,99 +0,0 @@
# Axolotl
Fine-tuning framework for LLMs. Config-driven: every training run is defined by a single YAML file.
## Tech Stack
Python, PyTorch, HuggingFace Transformers, TRL, PEFT (LoRA/QLoRA), DeepSpeed, FSDP, vLLM (for GRPO generation).
## Commands
```bash
axolotl train config.yaml # Train (single or multi-GPU, auto-detected)
axolotl preprocess config.yaml # Tokenize dataset and validate config
axolotl preprocess config.yaml --debug # Inspect tokenized samples and label masking
axolotl inference config.yaml # Interactive inference
axolotl merge-lora config.yaml # Merge LoRA adapter into base model
axolotl vllm-serve config.yaml # Start vLLM server for GRPO/EBFT training
axolotl fetch examples # Download example configs
axolotl agent-docs # Show agent-optimized docs (bundled with pip package)
axolotl agent-docs grpo # Topic-specific agent reference
axolotl config-schema # Dump config JSON schema
```
## Training Methods
| Method | Config Key | When to Use |
|--------|-----------|-------------|
| SFT | *(default)* | Input-output pairs, instruction tuning |
| DPO/IPO | `rl: dpo` / `rl: dpo, dpo_loss_type: ["ipo"]` | Paired preference data (chosen vs rejected) |
| KTO | `rl: kto` | Unpaired binary preference labels |
| ORPO | `rl: orpo` | Single-stage alignment, no ref model |
| GRPO | `rl: grpo` | RL with verifiable reward functions (math, code) |
| EBFT | `rl: ebft` | Feature-matching rewards from internal representations |
Agent-specific references:
- [docs/agents/sft.md](docs/agents/sft.md) — supervised fine-tuning
- [docs/agents/preference_tuning.md](docs/agents/preference_tuning.md) — DPO, IPO, KTO, ORPO, SimPO
- [docs/agents/grpo.md](docs/agents/grpo.md) — GRPO online RL with reward functions
- [docs/agents/reward_modelling.md](docs/agents/reward_modelling.md) — outcome and process reward models
- [docs/agents/pretraining.md](docs/agents/pretraining.md) — continual pretraining
- [docs/agents/model_architectures.md](docs/agents/model_architectures.md) — model-specific quirks (Gemma4, Qwen3.5 MoE, etc.)
- [docs/agents/new_model_support.md](docs/agents/new_model_support.md) — debugging and adding support for new model architectures
## Config Pattern
All training is config-driven. A YAML file specifies model, adapter, dataset(s), and hyperparameters:
```yaml
base_model: meta-llama/Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct
adapter: lora # or qlora, or omit for full fine-tune
datasets:
- path: my_dataset
type: chat_template # prompt strategy (see docs/dataset-formats/)
output_dir: ./outputs/lora-out
```
Config schema: `src/axolotl/utils/schemas/config.py` (AxolotlInputConfig).
## Project Structure
```
src/axolotl/
cli/ # CLI entry points (train, preprocess, inference, merge_lora, vllm_serve)
core/
builders/ # TrainerBuilder classes (causal.py for SFT, rl.py for RLHF)
trainers/ # Trainer classes, mixins (optimizer, scheduler, packing)
dpo/ # DPO trainer and config
grpo/ # GRPO trainer and sampler
loaders/ # Model, tokenizer, adapter, processor loading
prompt_strategies/ # Dataset format handlers (chat_template, alpaca, dpo/, kto/, orpo/)
utils/schemas/ # Pydantic config schemas (config, model, training, peft, trl, fsdp)
integrations/ # Plugins (liger, cut_cross_entropy, swanlab, nemo_gym)
monkeypatch/ # Runtime patches for HF transformers
examples/ # Example YAML configs by model (llama-3/, qwen2/, mistral/, ebft/)
deepspeed_configs/ # DeepSpeed JSON configs (zero2, zero3)
docs/ # Quarto documentation site
```
## Code Conventions
- Config-driven: features are toggled via YAML, not code changes
- Prompt strategies: `src/axolotl/prompt_strategies/` — each `type:` value maps to a function
- Plugin system: `plugins:` list in config loads integration modules
- Trainer mixins: `core/trainers/mixins/` for composable trainer behaviors
- Schemas: all config validation via Pydantic in `utils/schemas/`
## Key Documentation
- [Getting Started](docs/getting-started.qmd) — quickstart tutorial
- [Choosing a Method](docs/choosing_method.qmd) — SFT vs DPO vs GRPO decision guide
- [Config Reference](docs/config-reference.qmd) — all config options
- [Dataset Formats](docs/dataset-formats/) — chat_template, alpaca, input_output, completion
- [RLHF](docs/rlhf.qmd) — DPO, KTO, ORPO, GRPO, EBFT configs and dataset formats
- [GRPO Deep Dive](docs/grpo.qmd) — async training, custom rewards, scaling
- [vLLM Serving](docs/vllm_serving.qmd) — vLLM setup for GRPO/EBFT
- [Multi-GPU](docs/multi-gpu.qmd) — FSDP and DeepSpeed
- [Training Stability](docs/training_stability.qmd) — debugging loss, NaN, OOM
- [Debugging](docs/debugging.qmd) — VSCode setup, Docker debugging

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@@ -1,142 +0,0 @@
# `attn-implementation-refactor` branch review
Review target: `attn-implementation-refactor` (5 commits ahead of main, merge base `69904781`).
Scope: 16 files, +682 / 96.
## 1. What the branch is trying to do
Collapse seven boolean attention flags (`flash_attention`, `sdp_attention`, `xformers_attention`, `flex_attention`, `sage_attention`, `s2_attention`, `eager_attention`) into a single `attn_implementation` field, with derived capability flags (`attn_supports_packing`, `attn_uses_flash_lib`, `attn_needs_dtype_cast`) for the gates that used to be ad-hoc OR-chains.
Mechanism: `normalize_attn_implementation` (a `@model_validator(mode="before")` on `AxolotlInputConfig`) maps bidirectionally between the new field and the legacy flags, with a priority list for legacy combos (`s2 + flash → s2`), and then computes the three capability flags from frozen sets in `enums.py`.
Adjacent changes: `xformers` and `sage` now register as their own entries in `ALL_ATTENTION_FUNCTIONS` (with FA2 mask behavior) instead of stomping the `flash_attention_2` slot. New `fp8` backend wires `torchao.prototype.attention.apply_low_precision_attention` in `apply_post_model_load_patches`.
## 2. Target design
**`cfg.attn_implementation` is the single source of truth on the validated config.**
- Its type is `str | None`. Accepted values are **canonical names only** — no short-form aliases:
- HF-native: `eager`, `sdpa`, `flash_attention_2`, `flash_attention_3`, `flex_attention`. (`flash_attention_3` is net-new to axolotl — the current branch only encodes `flash_attention_2` under the short name `flash`.)
- Axolotl-owned (registered into `ALL_ATTENTION_FUNCTIONS` under exactly these names): `xformers`, `sage`, `s2`, `fp8`.
- Hub-kernel paths: `kernels-community/sage-attention`, `kernels-community/flash-attn3`, etc. — passthrough. Known-kernel allowlist in `enums.py` classifies the common ones into the capability tables.
Short forms like `flash`, `fa2`, `fa3`, `sdp`, `flex` are rejected (Pydantic validation error with a pointer to the canonical name).
- `model.py:_set_attention_config` passes `cfg.attn_implementation` to HF verbatim — no `_ATTN_IMPL_TO_HF` translation dict needed.
- Legacy booleans (`flash_attention: true`, `sdp_attention: true`, …) are the **only** input aliases, kept for backwards compatibility. The normalizer maps them to the canonical `attn_implementation` value, emits a one-time `DeprecationWarning` per flag, and removes them from `data` so they're never readable on the validated `cfg`. `deprecated=True` on each Field surfaces this in JSON schema. Mapping is 1:1 with the current legacy-flag semantics (`flash_attention → flash_attention_2`, `sdp_attention → sdpa`, `flex_attention → flex_attention`, `xformers_attention → xformers`, `sage_attention → sage`, `s2_attention → s2`, `eager_attention → eager`).
- Capability flags (`attn_supports_packing`, `attn_uses_flash_lib`, `attn_needs_dtype_cast`) are **`@computed_field` on the model**, not settable inputs. Lookup is keyed by the canonical `attn_implementation` string.
- Unknown / user-supplied strings (custom hub kernels) pass through to HF but get **conservative capability defaults** (packing=False, flash-lib=False, dtype-cast=True). Known hub kernels axolotl can classify live in a small allowlist.
- Downstream consumers read *only* `cfg.attn_implementation` and the capability flags. No `cfg.flash_attention`, `cfg.xformers_attention`, etc. anywhere in `src/`.
This is strictly what the branch is already *trying* to do — the gaps below are places it hasn't landed that goal yet.
## 3. Gaps and holes
### A. Legacy flags are still parallel state, not input-only
1. The normalizer *sets* the legacy flags on `data` (`impl_to_flag[attn_impl]` branch). It does not delete them. So `cfg.flash_attention` is still truthy after validation, and downstream code still reads it (see G).
2. Short-form enum values (`flash`, `sdpa`, `fp8`) are persisted as-is on `cfg.attn_implementation`, which is why `model.py` needs `_ATTN_IMPL_TO_HF` to translate before passing to HF. Source-of-truth implies canonicalize at normalize-time, not translate at consume-time.
3. Legacy flag + `attn_implementation` (consistent combo, e.g. `attn_implementation: flash + flash_attention: true`) emits no deprecation warning — only legacy-only path warns.
4. Legacy Field descriptions (`xformers_attention`, `sdp_attention`, etc.) don't have `deprecated=True`, so JSON schema still advertises them as first-class.
### B. Validators that still only check the legacy flag
5. **`check_ebft_activation_offloading`** (`validation.py:1607-1619`) reads only `data.get("flex_attention")`. Users on `attn_implementation: flex_attention` bypass the incompatibility check.
6. **`check_sample_packing_without_attention`** (`validation.py:188-203`) early-returns when `attn_implementation` is set but never validates the chosen backend actually supports packing. `attn_implementation: eager + sample_packing: true` silently passes; the old legacy-flag check warned.
### C. Non-enum strings fall through the capability tables
7. **HF-native `"flash_attention_2"`** is neither in `impl_to_flag` nor `FLASH_ATTN_LIB_IMPLS`. A user copy-pasting from HF docs gets `attn_uses_flash_lib=False`, silently disabling FA4 auto-apply, LLaMA flash hijack, `_patch_attention` (btlm, stablelm_epoch, mistral3, llava), and `_apply_flash_attention_peft_patches`.
8. **Hub kernel strings** (`kernels-community/flash-attn3`, `kernels-community/sage-attention`) default to `attn_supports_packing=True` (silently enters multipack with varlen `position_ids` — correctness depends on the kernel honoring them) and `attn_uses_flash_lib=False` (so `context_parallel_size > 1` raises "requires flash attention" even for FA3 hub kernels).
9. **Conflict trap for hub-kernel + legacy flag** (`config.py:1414-1419`): `attn_implementation: kernels-community/flash-attn3 + flash_attention: true` always raises, because `impl_to_flag.get(custom) is None` and the loop treats `flag != None` as conflict. Common combo in existing YAMLs breaks hard on upgrade.
### D. Silent behaviour change for xformers
10. Old `_apply_flash_attention_patches` did `self.cfg.flash_attention = True` for `xformers + sample_packing`. The new version doesn't, and xformers is not in `FLASH_ATTN_LIB_IMPLS`. Consumers that keyed off `cfg.flash_attention` now see falsy for xformers, silently dropping `_patch_attention` (btlm / stablelm_epoch+packing / mistral3 / llava model-type FA patches). Some of this is arguably correct cleanup (xformers has its own HF registry entry now), but the btlm/stablelm/mistral3 regression is not called out and not tested. Decide consciously, not by omission.
### E. Capability flags are writable Pydantic fields, not computed
11. `attn_supports_packing`, `attn_uses_flash_lib`, `attn_needs_dtype_cast` are declared `bool | None = Field(default=None)` on `AxolotlInputConfig`. YAML is not rejected — a user can set `attn_uses_flash_lib: true` and override the normalizer.
### F. Validator ordering (not covered by tests)
12. `AttentionValidationMixin.check_attention_fields` (inherited, `mode="before"`) and `normalize_attn_implementation` (subclass, `mode="before"`) both run during `model_validator` phase. Pydantic MRO may run the inherited one first. For legacy-only `s2_attention: true + flash_attention: true` (the test `test_s2_plus_flash_maps_to_s2` asserts this maps to `s2`), the inherited check may raise "multiple attention implementations set" before the normalizer runs. The test calls the classmethod directly and does not build the model, so this is unverified either way.
### G. Remaining legacy reads in `src/`
13. `src/axolotl/integrations/lm_eval/cli.py:120` reads `cfg.flash_attention`. Works for `attn_implementation=flash` only.
14. `tests/e2e/multigpu/test_llama.py:524-526` writes `cfg.flash_attention = True` / `cfg.flex_attention = True`. Stale pattern.
15. Dual-check idioms in `config.py` (lines 1464, 1478, 1570, 1586, 1774) and `validation.py` (198, 209, 221, 850, 1586, 1611) — `data.get("x_attention") or data.get("attn_implementation") == "x"` — are redundant once legacy flags are input-only; remove them.
### H. fp8 operational risk
16. The `fp8` docstring documents hard requirements (PyTorch ≥ 2.11, SM90+, flash-attn with FA3, torchao ≥ 0.17.0) and a runtime constraint (`config.use_cache = False`). None are validated — misconfig surfaces as a torchao runtime error. `xformers` and `sage` availability/compute-capability guards exist; `fp8` should match.
### I. Test coverage gaps
17. `test_attn_implementation.py` exercises the classmethod in isolation plus the constant sets. It does **not**:
- Build a full `AxolotlInputConfig(**data)` (so validator ordering — item 12 — is untested).
- Verify capability flags can't be overridden from YAML (item 11).
- Cover `check_sample_packing_without_attention` with `attn_implementation: eager` (item 6).
- Cover `check_ebft_activation_offloading` with `attn_implementation: flex_attention` (item 5).
- Cover hub-kernel + legacy flag combo (item 9).
- Cover `flash_attention_2` canonicalization (item 7).
## 4. Fix plan
Four phases, each commit-sized. Phases 12 are local and low-risk; phase 3 is the behaviour-changing cleanup; phase 4 is tests + docs.
### Phase 1 — Lock down the data model
1. Drop the `AttnImplementation` enum. `attn_implementation` becomes `str | None`, validated against a canonical allowlist (`eager`, `sdpa`, `flash_attention_2`, `flash_attention_3`, `flex_attention`, `xformers`, `sage`, `s2`, `fp8`) **or** a hub-kernel path (`startswith("kernels-")` / contains `/`). Reject short-form strings like `flash` / `fa2` / `sdp` / `flex` with an explicit error pointing at the canonical name.
2. Rewrite `normalize_attn_implementation` so its only job is mapping **legacy booleans → canonical `attn_implementation`** (for BC). Mapping is fixed:
- `flash_attention → flash_attention_2`
- `sdp_attention → sdpa`
- `flex_attention → flex_attention`
- `xformers_attention → xformers`
- `sage_attention → sage`
- `s2_attention → s2`
- `eager_attention → eager`
Priority for legacy combos stays as in the current branch (`s2 > sage > xformers > flex > flash > sdp > eager`). Emit a one-time `DeprecationWarning` per unique legacy flag seen. After mapping, delete the legacy flag keys from `data` so they never appear on validated `cfg`. If both a canonical `attn_implementation` and any legacy flag are set, raise (no silent precedence).
**Merge `AttentionValidationMixin.check_attention_fields` into this normalizer and delete the mixin method.** Pydantic v2 runs inherited `mode="before"` validators before subclass ones per MRO, so leaving them as siblings causes the inherited check to reject legacy combos like `s2 + flash` before the normalizer can map them. One validator, one source of conflict detection.
**Fix the gemma4-hybrid path**: change `data["attn_implementation"] = "flash"` to `data["attn_implementation"] = "flash_attention_2"` (the short name no longer validates after step 1).
3. Convert `attn_supports_packing`, `attn_uses_flash_lib`, `attn_needs_dtype_cast` to `@computed_field`. The three capability tables move to `enums.py` as module constants keyed by the canonical `attn_implementation` string (including `flash_attention_3` — missing from the current branch — and known hub kernels):
- Packing-capable: `{flash_attention_2, flash_attention_3, flex_attention, xformers, sage, kernels-community/flash-attn3, kernels-community/sage-attention}`.
- Flash-lib (axolotl's monkeypatch targets): `{flash_attention_2, flash_attention_3, s2, kernels-community/flash-attn3}`.
- No-dtype-cast: `{eager, sdpa}`.
Unknown strings: conservative defaults (`packing=False, flash_lib=False, dtype_cast=True`).
4. Delete `_ATTN_IMPL_TO_HF` from `model.py` and pass `cfg.attn_implementation` straight through. The gemma4-hybrid branch continues to override to `flash_attention_2` before passing to HF.
5. `deprecated=True` on each legacy boolean Field so JSON schema + Pydantic surface the deprecation.
### Phase 2 — Fix the validators
6. `check_sample_packing_without_attention`: drop the early-return and gate on `attn_supports_packing`. Warn (or raise — pick one and be consistent) if packing is enabled with a non-packing backend.
7. `check_ebft_activation_offloading`: replace `data.get("flex_attention")` with `attn_implementation == "flex_attention"`.
8. Sweep items (item 15): remove every `data.get("x_attention") or data.get("attn_implementation") == "x"` dual-check — after phase 1 the legacy side is always `None`. Reduces ~10 lines of noise and eliminates the "which side wins" class of bugs.
9. fp8 preflight (item 16): require `env_capabilities.compute_capability ≥ sm_90`, `torch_version ≥ 2.11`, and `torchao_version ≥ 0.17`. Warn if `use_cache` isn't explicitly `False`.
### Phase 3 — Migrate remaining consumers
10. `lm_eval/cli.py:120``flash_attention=cfg.attn_uses_flash_lib`.
11. `lm_eval/__init__.py:26` currently reads `(cfg.attn_implementation == "flash")` — after canonicalization `"flash"` is never stored, so this evaluates `False` for every backend. Change to `cfg.attn_uses_flash_lib`.
12. `validation.py:1137-1142` (NPU check) currently iterates `["flash_attention", "sdp_attention", "s2_attention"]` as string keys. Replace with `cfg.attn_implementation in {"flash_attention_2", "flash_attention_3", "sdpa", "s2"}` or the equivalent canonical-string set.
13. `tests/e2e/multigpu/test_llama.py:524-526``cfg.attn_implementation = "flash_attention_2"` / `"flex_attention"`.
14. **Xformers decision** (item 10): the old `cfg.flash_attention = True` side-effect activated `_patch_attention` for btlm/stablelm_epoch+packing/mistral3/llava. Two choices:
- Add `xformers` to the set that gates `_patch_attention` (restore old behaviour, keeps patches live).
- Document that those patches don't apply to xformers post-refactor and drop the paths if they're dead.
Pick one explicitly and leave a commit note. Do not leave it as silent breakage.
15. Add a repo-level check (`tests/test_no_legacy_attn_reads.py` or a ruff/grep pre-commit) that fails if anything outside `config.py`'s normalizer reads `cfg.flash_attention` / `cfg.sdp_attention` / etc. Keeps the invariant from rotting.
### Phase 4 — Tests + docs
14. Rewrite `test_attn_implementation.py` to build full `AxolotlInputConfig(**data)`, not just the classmethod. Covers validator ordering and the Pydantic-field-override issue.
15. Add one test per gap closed above: `attn_implementation: eager + sample_packing`; `attn_implementation: flex_attention + activation_offloading`; short-form `flash` rejected; `flash_attention_2` passthrough; `kernels-community/flash-attn3` capability lookup; `attn_uses_flash_lib: true` in YAML rejected; legacy boolean emits `DeprecationWarning` and is absent from validated `cfg`; fp8 preflight failures.
16. Update `docs/attention.qmd` for the single `attn_implementation` field + the deprecation table for legacy flags. One-paragraph migration note in the changelog.
17. `examples/` contains ~170 YAML files using legacy flags (`flash_attention: true` etc.). They still validate post-refactor (normalizer maps them with deprecation), but a follow-up sweep to convert them to `attn_implementation: flash_attention_2` is worth scheduling — call this out in the migration note so users know examples will be migrated on a later pass.
## 5. Ordering & risk
- Phase 1 is the keystone: it's the largest diff but each step is mechanical once the alias map is in place. No behaviour change for any consumer that was using `attn_implementation` correctly; behaviour change only for consumers that were reading legacy flags (phase 3 step 13 is the explicit decision point).
- Phase 2 is independent of phase 1 and can land first as a quick safety net.
- Phase 3 step 13 is the only judgment call — flag for review before choosing.
- Total: ~10-13 commits beyond what's on the branch, each scoped and individually revertable.

View File

@@ -1,7 +1,6 @@
include requirements.txt
include README.md
include LICENSE
include VERSION
include src/setuptools_axolotl_dynamic_dependencies.py
include src/axolotl/utils/chat_templates/templates/*.jinja
include AGENTS.md
recursive-include docs/agents *.md
recursive-include axolotl *.py

View File

@@ -29,23 +29,8 @@
## 🎉 Latest Updates
- 2026/03:
- New model support has been added in Axolotl for [Mistral Small 4](https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/axolotl/tree/main/examples/mistral4), [Qwen3.5, Qwen3.5 MoE](https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/axolotl/tree/main/examples/qwen3.5), [GLM-4.7-Flash](https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/axolotl/tree/main/examples/glm47-flash), [GLM-4.6V](https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/axolotl/tree/main/examples/glm46v), and [GLM-4.5-Air](https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/axolotl/tree/main/examples/glm45).
- [MoE expert quantization](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/expert_quantization.html) support (via `quantize_moe_experts: true`) greatly reduces VRAM when training MoE models (FSDP2 compat).
- 2026/02:
- [ScatterMoE LoRA](https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/axolotl/pull/3410) support. LoRA fine-tuning directly on MoE expert weights using custom Triton kernels.
- Axolotl now has support for [SageAttention](https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/axolotl/pull/2823) and [GDPO](https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/axolotl/pull/3353) (Generalized DPO).
- 2026/01:
- New integration for [EAFT](https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/axolotl/pull/3366) (Entropy-Aware Focal Training), weights loss by entropy of the top-k logit distribution, and [Scalable Softmax](https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/axolotl/pull/3338), improves long context in attention.
- 2025/12:
- Axolotl now includes support for [Kimi-Linear](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/models/kimi-linear.html), [Plano-Orchestrator](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/models/plano.html), [MiMo](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/models/mimo.html), [InternVL 3.5](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/models/internvl3_5.html), [Olmo3](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/models/olmo3.html), [Trinity](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/models/trinity.html), and [Ministral3](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/models/ministral3.html).
- [Distributed Muon Optimizer](https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/axolotl/pull/3264) support has been added for FSDP2 pretraining.
- 2025/12: Axolotl now includes support for [Kimi-Linear](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/models/kimi-linear.html), [Plano-Orchestrator](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/models/plano.html), [MiMo](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/models/mimo.html), [InternVL 3.5](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/models/internvl3_5.html), [Olmo3](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/models/olmo3.html), [Trinity](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/models/trinity.html), and [Ministral3](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/models/ministral3.html).
- 2025/10: New model support has been added in Axolotl for: [Qwen3 Next](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/models/qwen3-next.html), [Qwen2.5-vl, Qwen3-vl](https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/axolotl/tree/main/examples/qwen2_5-vl), [Qwen3, Qwen3MoE](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/models/qwen3.html), [Granite 4](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/models/granite4.html), [HunYuan](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/models/hunyuan.html), [Magistral 2509](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/models/magistral/vision.html), [Apertus](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/models/apertus.html), and [Seed-OSS](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/models/seed-oss.html).
<details>
<summary>Expand older updates</summary>
- 2025/09: Axolotl now has text diffusion training. Read more [here](https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/axolotl/tree/main/src/axolotl/integrations/diffusion).
- 2025/08: QAT has been updated to include NVFP4 support. See [PR](https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/axolotl/pull/3107).
- 2025/07:
@@ -54,10 +39,15 @@
- FP8 finetuning with fp8 gather op is now possible in Axolotl via `torchao`. Get started [here](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/mixed_precision.html#sec-fp8)!
- [Voxtral](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/models/voxtral.html), [Magistral 1.1](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/models/magistral.html), and [Devstral](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/models/devstral.html) with mistral-common tokenizer support has been integrated in Axolotl!
- TiledMLP support for single-GPU to multi-GPU training with DDP, DeepSpeed and FSDP support has been added to support Arctic Long Sequence Training. (ALST). See [examples](https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/axolotl/tree/main/examples/alst) for using ALST with Axolotl!
- 2025/06: Magistral with mistral-common tokenizer support has been added to Axolotl. See [docs](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/models/magistral.html) to start training your own Magistral models with Axolotl!
- 2025/05: Quantization Aware Training (QAT) support has been added to Axolotl. Explore the [docs](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/qat.html) to learn more!
- 2025/04: Llama 4 support has been added in Axolotl. See [docs](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/models/llama-4.html) to start training your own Llama 4 models with Axolotl's linearized version!
<details>
<summary>Expand older updates</summary>
- 2025/03: Axolotl has implemented Sequence Parallelism (SP) support. Read the [blog](https://huggingface.co/blog/axolotl-ai-co/long-context-with-sequence-parallelism-in-axolotl) and [docs](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/sequence_parallelism.html) to learn how to scale your context length when fine-tuning.
- 2025/06: Magistral with mistral-common tokenizer support has been added to Axolotl. See [docs](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/models/magistral.html) to start training your own Magistral models with Axolotl!
- 2025/04: Llama 4 support has been added in Axolotl. See [docs](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/models/llama-4.html) to start training your own Llama 4 models with Axolotl's linearized version!
- 2025/03: (Beta) Fine-tuning Multimodal models is now supported in Axolotl. Check out the [docs](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/multimodal.html) to fine-tune your own!
- 2025/02: Axolotl has added LoRA optimizations to reduce memory usage and improve training speed for LoRA and QLoRA in single GPU and multi-GPU training (DDP and DeepSpeed). Jump into the [docs](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/lora_optims.html) to give it a try.
- 2025/02: Axolotl has added GRPO support. Dive into our [blog](https://huggingface.co/blog/axolotl-ai-co/training-llms-w-interpreter-feedback-wasm) and [GRPO example](https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/grpo_code) and have some fun!
@@ -72,10 +62,10 @@ Axolotl is a free and open-source tool designed to streamline post-training and
Features:
- **Multiple Model Support**: Train various models like GPT-OSS, LLaMA, Mistral, Mixtral, Pythia, and many more models available on the Hugging Face Hub.
- **Multimodal Training**: Fine-tune vision-language models (VLMs) including LLaMA-Vision, Qwen2-VL, Pixtral, LLaVA, SmolVLM2, GLM-4.6V, InternVL 3.5, Gemma 3n, and audio models like Voxtral with image, video, and audio support.
- **Training Methods**: Full fine-tuning, LoRA, QLoRA, GPTQ, QAT, Preference Tuning (DPO, IPO, KTO, ORPO), RL (GRPO, GDPO), and Reward Modelling (RM) / Process Reward Modelling (PRM).
- **Multimodal Training**: Fine-tune vision-language models (VLMs) including LLaMA-Vision, Qwen2-VL, Pixtral, LLaVA, SmolVLM2, and audio models like Voxtral with image, video, and audio support.
- **Training Methods**: Full fine-tuning, LoRA, QLoRA, GPTQ, QAT, Preference Tuning (DPO, IPO, KTO, ORPO), RL (GRPO), and Reward Modelling (RM) / Process Reward Modelling (PRM).
- **Easy Configuration**: Re-use a single YAML configuration file across the full fine-tuning pipeline: dataset preprocessing, training, evaluation, quantization, and inference.
- **Performance Optimizations**: [Multipacking](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/multipack.html), [Flash Attention 2/3/4](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/attention.html#flash-attention), [Xformers](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/attention.html#xformers), [Flex Attention](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/attention.html#flex-attention), [SageAttention](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/attention.html#sageattention), [Liger Kernel](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/custom_integrations.html#liger-kernels), [Cut Cross Entropy](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/custom_integrations.html#cut-cross-entropy), [ScatterMoE](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/custom_integrations.html#kernels-integration), [Sequence Parallelism (SP)](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/sequence_parallelism.html), [LoRA optimizations](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/lora_optims.html), [Multi-GPU training (FSDP1, FSDP2, DeepSpeed)](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/multi-gpu.html), [Multi-node training (Torchrun, Ray)](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/multi-node.html), and many more!
- **Performance Optimizations**: [Multipacking](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/multipack.html), [Flash Attention](https://github.com/Dao-AILab/flash-attention), [Xformers](https://github.com/facebookresearch/xformers), [Flex Attention](https://pytorch.org/blog/flexattention/), [Liger Kernel](https://github.com/linkedin/Liger-Kernel), [Cut Cross Entropy](https://github.com/apple/ml-cross-entropy/tree/main), [Sequence Parallelism (SP)](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/sequence_parallelism.html), [LoRA optimizations](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/lora_optims.html), [Multi-GPU training (FSDP1, FSDP2, DeepSpeed)](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/multi-gpu.html), [Multi-node training (Torchrun, Ray)](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/multi-node.html), and many more!
- **Flexible Dataset Handling**: Load from local, HuggingFace, and cloud (S3, Azure, GCP, OCI) datasets.
- **Cloud Ready**: We ship [Docker images](https://hub.docker.com/u/axolotlai) and also [PyPI packages](https://pypi.org/project/axolotl/) for use on cloud platforms and local hardware.
@@ -86,8 +76,8 @@ Features:
**Requirements**:
- NVIDIA GPU (Ampere or newer for `bf16` and Flash Attention) or AMD GPU
- Python >=3.11 (3.12 recommended)
- PyTorch ≥2.9.1
- Python 3.11
- PyTorch ≥2.8.0
### Google Colab
@@ -95,19 +85,11 @@ Features:
### Installation
#### Using pip
```bash
# install uv if you don't already have it installed (restart shell after)
curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh
# change depending on system
export UV_TORCH_BACKEND=cu128
# create a new virtual environment
uv venv --python 3.12
source .venv/bin/activate
uv pip install torch==2.10.0 torchvision
uv pip install --no-build-isolation axolotl[deepspeed]
pip3 install -U packaging==26.0 setuptools==75.8.0 wheel ninja
pip3 install --no-build-isolation axolotl[flash-attn,deepspeed]
# Download example axolotl configs, deepspeed configs
axolotl fetch examples
@@ -118,7 +100,7 @@ axolotl fetch deepspeed_configs # OPTIONAL
Installing with Docker can be less error prone than installing in your own environment.
```bash
docker run --gpus '"all"' --ipc=host --rm -it axolotlai/axolotl:main-latest
docker run --gpus '"all"' --rm -it axolotlai/axolotl:main-latest
```
Other installation approaches are described [here](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/installation.html).
@@ -165,29 +147,6 @@ That's it! Check out our [Getting Started Guide](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/ge
- [API Reference](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/api/) - Auto-generated code documentation
- [FAQ](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/faq.html) - Frequently asked questions
## AI Agent Support
Axolotl ships with built-in documentation optimized for AI coding agents (Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, etc.). These docs are bundled with the pip package — no repo clone needed.
```bash
# Show overview and available training methods
axolotl agent-docs
# Topic-specific references
axolotl agent-docs sft # supervised fine-tuning
axolotl agent-docs grpo # GRPO online RL
axolotl agent-docs preference_tuning # DPO, KTO, ORPO, SimPO
axolotl agent-docs reward_modelling # outcome and process reward models
axolotl agent-docs pretraining # continual pretraining
axolotl agent-docs --list # list all topics
# Dump config schema for programmatic use
axolotl config-schema
axolotl config-schema --field adapter
```
If you're working with the source repo, agent docs are also available at `docs/agents/` and the project overview is in `AGENTS.md`.
## 🤝 Getting Help
- Join our [Discord community](https://discord.gg/HhrNrHJPRb) for support

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@@ -1 +1 @@
0.16.0.dev0
0.15.0.dev0

View File

@@ -128,12 +128,15 @@ quartodoc:
- monkeypatch.mistral_attn_hijack_flash
- monkeypatch.multipack
- monkeypatch.relora
- monkeypatch.llama_expand_mask
- monkeypatch.lora_kernels
- monkeypatch.utils
- monkeypatch.btlm_attn_hijack_flash
- monkeypatch.llama_patch_multipack
- monkeypatch.stablelm_attn_hijack_flash
- monkeypatch.trainer_fsdp_optim
- monkeypatch.transformers_fa_utils
- monkeypatch.unsloth_
- monkeypatch.data.batch_dataset_fetcher
- monkeypatch.mixtral
- monkeypatch.gradient_checkpointing.offload_cpu
@@ -237,7 +240,6 @@ website:
- section: "Getting Started"
contents:
- docs/getting-started.qmd
- docs/choosing_method.qmd
- docs/installation.qmd
- docs/inference.qmd
- section: "Model Guides"
@@ -302,9 +304,6 @@ website:
contents:
- docs/multimodal.qmd
- docs/rlhf.qmd
- docs/grpo.qmd
- docs/ebft.qmd
- docs/vllm_serving.qmd
- docs/reward_modelling.qmd
- docs/lr_groups.qmd
- docs/lora_optims.qmd
@@ -326,17 +325,16 @@ website:
- section: "Advanced Features"
contents:
- docs/fsdp_qlora.qmd
- docs/unsloth.qmd
- docs/torchao.qmd
- docs/custom_integrations.qmd
- docs/sequence_parallelism.qmd
- docs/gradient_checkpointing.qmd
- docs/nd_parallelism.qmd
- docs/expert_quantization.qmd
- section: "Troubleshooting"
contents:
- docs/faq.qmd
- docs/training_stability.qmd
- docs/debugging.qmd
- docs/nccl.qmd

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@@ -1,208 +0,0 @@
"""Benchmark for entropy_from_logits Triton kernel vs original chunked implementation.
Usage: CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0 python benchmarks/bench_entropy.py
"""
import gc
import statistics
import torch
import torch.nn.functional as F
from axolotl.monkeypatch.trainer.utils import entropy_from_logits
V = 151936 # Qwen vocab
WARMUP = 5
BENCH_ITERS = 20
MEM_ITERS = 10
def entropy_from_logits_original(logits: torch.Tensor, chunk_size: int = 128):
"""Original chunked implementation (reference)."""
original_shape = logits.shape[:-1]
num_classes = logits.shape[-1]
flat_logits = logits.reshape(-1, num_classes)
entropies = []
for chunk in flat_logits.split(chunk_size, dim=0):
logps = F.log_softmax(chunk, dim=-1)
chunk_entropy = -(torch.exp(logps) * logps).sum(-1)
entropies.append(chunk_entropy)
return torch.cat(entropies, dim=0).reshape(original_shape)
def _clean_gpu():
gc.collect()
torch.cuda.empty_cache()
torch.cuda.reset_peak_memory_stats()
torch.cuda.reset_accumulated_memory_stats()
torch.cuda.synchronize()
def profile_time(fn, logits, n_iters=BENCH_ITERS):
for _ in range(WARMUP):
out = fn(logits, chunk_size=128)
del out
torch.cuda.synchronize()
times = []
for _ in range(n_iters):
s = torch.cuda.Event(enable_timing=True)
e = torch.cuda.Event(enable_timing=True)
s.record()
out = fn(logits, chunk_size=128)
e.record()
torch.cuda.synchronize()
times.append(s.elapsed_time(e))
del out
return times
def profile_memory(fn, logits, n_iters=MEM_ITERS):
for _ in range(WARMUP):
out = fn(logits, chunk_size=128)
del out
torch.cuda.synchronize()
peaks = []
for _ in range(n_iters):
_clean_gpu()
base = torch.cuda.max_memory_allocated()
out = fn(logits, chunk_size=128)
torch.cuda.synchronize()
peaks.append(torch.cuda.max_memory_allocated() - base)
del out
return [p / 1e6 for p in peaks]
def fmt(values, unit=""):
mean = statistics.mean(values)
std = statistics.stdev(values) if len(values) > 1 else 0.0
return f"{mean:8.2f} ± {std:5.2f} {unit} [min={min(values):.2f}, max={max(values):.2f}]"
def benchmark_contiguous():
print("=" * 60)
print(
f"CONTIGUOUS BENCHMARK (warmup={WARMUP}, time={BENCH_ITERS}, mem={MEM_ITERS})"
)
print("=" * 60)
configs = [
(1, 2048),
(1, 8192),
(1, 16384),
(4, 4096),
(8, 2048),
(16, 2048),
(16, 4096),
]
for B, L in configs:
mem_gb = B * L * V * 2 / 1e9
if mem_gb > 28:
print(f"\n skip B={B}, L={L} ({mem_gb:.1f} GB)")
continue
N = B * L
print(f"\n{'' * 60}")
print(f"B={B:2d}, L={L:5d} ({N:6d} rows, logits {mem_gb:.2f} GB)")
print(f"{'' * 60}")
torch.manual_seed(42)
logits = torch.randn(B, L, V, device="cuda", dtype=torch.bfloat16)
t_orig = profile_time(entropy_from_logits_original, logits)
t_triton = profile_time(entropy_from_logits, logits)
orig_mean = statistics.mean(t_orig)
triton_mean = statistics.mean(t_triton)
print(" TIME (ms):")
print(f" original: {fmt(t_orig, 'ms')}")
print(f" triton: {fmt(t_triton, 'ms')}")
print(f" speedup: {orig_mean / triton_mean:.2f}x")
m_orig = profile_memory(entropy_from_logits_original, logits)
m_triton = profile_memory(entropy_from_logits, logits)
orig_peak = statistics.mean(m_orig)
triton_peak = statistics.mean(m_triton)
print(" MEMORY (peak overhead):")
print(f" original: {fmt(m_orig, 'MB')}")
print(f" triton: {fmt(m_triton, 'MB')}")
print(f" saved: {orig_peak - triton_peak:.1f} MB")
del logits
_clean_gpu()
def benchmark_noncontiguous():
print("\n" + "=" * 60)
print(
f"NON-CONTIGUOUS BENCHMARK (warmup={WARMUP}, time={BENCH_ITERS}, mem={MEM_ITERS})"
)
print("=" * 60)
configs = [
(4, 2048, "transpose"),
(4, 8192, "transpose"),
(8, 2048, "transpose"),
(4, 4096, "slice_batch"),
]
for B, L, method in configs:
torch.manual_seed(42)
if method == "transpose":
raw = torch.randn(L, B, V, device="cuda", dtype=torch.bfloat16)
logits_nc = raw.transpose(0, 1)
raw_gb = L * B * V * 2 / 1e9
elif method == "slice_batch":
raw = torch.randn(B * 2, L, V, device="cuda", dtype=torch.bfloat16)
logits_nc = raw[::2]
raw_gb = B * 2 * L * V * 2 / 1e9
else:
continue
if raw_gb > 28:
print(f"\n skip B={B}, L={L}, {method} ({raw_gb:.1f} GB)")
del raw, logits_nc
torch.cuda.empty_cache()
continue
N = B * L
print(f"\n{'' * 60}")
print(f"B={B}, L={L} {method} ({N} rows, raw {raw_gb:.2f} GB)")
print(f"{'' * 60}")
def original_with_copy(logits, chunk_size=128):
return entropy_from_logits_original(
logits.contiguous(), chunk_size=chunk_size
)
t_orig = profile_time(original_with_copy, logits_nc)
t_triton = profile_time(entropy_from_logits, logits_nc)
orig_mean = statistics.mean(t_orig)
triton_mean = statistics.mean(t_triton)
print(" TIME (ms):")
print(f" orig+copy: {fmt(t_orig, 'ms')}")
print(f" triton-strided:{fmt(t_triton, 'ms')}")
print(f" speedup: {orig_mean / triton_mean:.2f}x")
m_orig = profile_memory(original_with_copy, logits_nc)
m_triton = profile_memory(entropy_from_logits, logits_nc)
orig_peak = statistics.mean(m_orig)
triton_peak = statistics.mean(m_triton)
print(" MEMORY (peak overhead):")
print(f" orig+copy: {fmt(m_orig, 'MB')}")
print(f" triton-strided:{fmt(m_triton, 'MB')}")
print(f" saved: {orig_peak - triton_peak:.1f} MB")
del raw, logits_nc
_clean_gpu()
if __name__ == "__main__":
benchmark_contiguous()
benchmark_noncontiguous()

View File

@@ -1,284 +0,0 @@
"""Benchmark for ScatterMoE LoRA Triton kernels.
Measures forward, backward dX, and backward dA/dB kernels at common MoE
model shapes. Reports per-kernel timings, LoRA overhead vs base scatter2scatter,
and full fwd+bwd autograd throughput.
Usage:
CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0 python benchmarks/bench_scattermoe_lora.py
CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0 python benchmarks/bench_scattermoe_lora.py --ranks 16 64
CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0 python benchmarks/bench_scattermoe_lora.py --models Qwen/Qwen3.5-35B-A3B
"""
import argparse
import gc
import time
from functools import partial
import torch
from axolotl.integrations.kernels.libs.scattermoe_lora.kernels import (
lora_ops,
ops as base_ops,
)
from axolotl.integrations.kernels.libs.scattermoe_lora.parallel_experts import (
flatten_sort_count,
)
from axolotl.integrations.kernels.libs.scattermoe_lora.parallel_linear_lora import (
ScatterMoELoRA,
)
DEVICE = "cuda"
DTYPE = torch.bfloat16
WARMUP = 5
ITERS = 20
# ─── Model configs ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
BUILTIN_CONFIGS = {
"Qwen3.5-35B-A3B": (256, 2048, 512, 8), # E, H, I, k
"Qwen3-30B-A3B": (128, 2048, 768, 8),
"OLMoE-1B-7B": (64, 2048, 1024, 8),
"Mixtral-8x7B": (8, 4096, 14336, 2),
}
def _resolve_config(spec):
"""Resolve a model spec to (E, H, I, k). Accepts builtin names or HF IDs."""
key = spec.lower().replace("/", "-")
for name, cfg in BUILTIN_CONFIGS.items():
if key in name.lower() or name.lower() in key:
return name, cfg
from transformers import AutoConfig
hf_cfg = AutoConfig.from_pretrained(spec, trust_remote_code=True)
if callable(getattr(hf_cfg, "get_text_config", None)):
tc = hf_cfg.get_text_config()
if hasattr(tc, "model_type") and tc.model_type != hf_cfg.model_type:
hf_cfg = tc
hidden = hf_cfg.hidden_size
inter = getattr(hf_cfg, "moe_intermediate_size", None) or hf_cfg.intermediate_size
experts = (
getattr(hf_cfg, "num_experts", None)
or getattr(hf_cfg, "num_local_experts", None)
or getattr(hf_cfg, "n_routed_experts", None)
)
top_k = (
getattr(hf_cfg, "num_experts_per_tok", None)
or getattr(hf_cfg, "num_experts_per_token", None)
or 2
)
name = spec.split("/")[-1]
return name, (experts, hidden, inter, top_k)
# ─── Benchmark helpers ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────
def _clean():
gc.collect()
torch.cuda.empty_cache()
torch.cuda.synchronize()
def _bench(fn, warmup=WARMUP, iters=ITERS):
for _ in range(warmup):
fn()
torch.cuda.synchronize()
times = []
for _ in range(iters):
torch.cuda.synchronize()
t0 = time.perf_counter()
fn()
torch.cuda.synchronize()
times.append((time.perf_counter() - t0) * 1000)
times.sort()
return times[len(times) // 2]
def _setup(num_experts, K, N, T, top_k, R):
torch.manual_seed(42)
x = torch.randn(T, K, device=DEVICE, dtype=DTYPE)
W = torch.randn(num_experts, K, N, device=DEVICE, dtype=DTYPE) * 0.02
lora_A = torch.randn(R * num_experts, K, device=DEVICE, dtype=DTYPE) * 0.01
lora_B = torch.randn(N, R * num_experts, device=DEVICE, dtype=DTYPE) * 0.01
logits = torch.randn(T, num_experts, device=DEVICE)
_, top_idx = torch.topk(torch.softmax(logits, dim=-1), top_k, dim=-1)
sei, ssi, eo = flatten_sort_count(top_idx, num_experts)
gx = base_ops.group(x, ssi, fan_out=top_k)
dy = torch.randn(gx.size(0), N, device=DEVICE, dtype=DTYPE)
return x, W, lora_A, lora_B, sei, ssi, eo, gx, dy
# ─── Kernel wrappers (avoid B023 loop-variable capture) ──────────────────────
def _call_fwd(x, W, sei, ssi, top_k, lA, lB):
return lora_ops.scatter2scatter_lora(
X=x,
W=W,
sorted_expert_idxs=sei,
sorted_scattered_idxs=ssi,
k=top_k,
lora_A=lA,
lora_B=lB,
scaling=2.0,
)
def _call_base(x, W, sei, ssi, top_k):
return base_ops.scatter2scatter(
X=x,
W=W,
sorted_expert_idxs=sei,
sorted_scattered_idxs=ssi,
k=top_k,
)
def _call_dx(dy, W, sei, ssi, lA, lB):
return lora_ops.scatter2scatter_lora_dX(
DY=dy,
W=W,
sorted_expert_idxs=sei,
sorted_scattered_idxs=ssi,
k=1,
lora_A=lA,
lora_B=lB,
scaling=2.0,
dy_grouped=True,
dx_grouped=False,
)
def _call_bwd(dy, gx, lA, lB, eo, num_experts):
return lora_ops.group_bwd_lora(
DY=dy,
X=gx,
lora_A=lA,
lora_B=lB,
expert_offsets=eo,
E=num_experts,
scaling=2.0,
)
# ─── Main ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
def main():
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description="ScatterMoE LoRA kernel benchmark")
parser.add_argument(
"--models",
"-m",
nargs="+",
help="Model names or HF IDs (default: all builtins)",
)
parser.add_argument("--ranks", "-r", nargs="+", type=int, default=[16, 32, 64])
parser.add_argument("--seq-len", "-T", type=int, default=2048)
args = parser.parse_args()
T = args.seq_len
print(f"GPU: {torch.cuda.get_device_name()}")
print(f"T={T}, ranks={args.ranks}\n")
if args.models:
configs = [_resolve_config(m) for m in args.models]
else:
configs = list(BUILTIN_CONFIGS.items())
for model_name, (num_experts, hidden, inter, top_k) in configs:
print(f"{'=' * 70}")
print(f" {model_name}: E={num_experts}, H={hidden}, I={inter}, k={top_k}")
print(f"{'=' * 70}")
for R in args.ranks:
for proj, K, N in [("gate_up", hidden, 2 * inter), ("down", inter, hidden)]:
_clean()
x, W, lA, lB, sei, ssi, eo, gx, dy = _setup(
num_experts, K, N, T, top_k, R
)
# Forward with LoRA (auto-dispatched: fused or split)
dispatch = (
"split"
if (
num_experts <= lora_ops._SPLIT_LORA_FWD_MAX_EXPERTS
and K * N >= lora_ops._SPLIT_LORA_FWD_THRESHOLD
)
else "fused"
)
t_fwd = _bench(partial(_call_fwd, x, W, sei, ssi, top_k, lA, lB))
t_base = _bench(partial(_call_base, x, W, sei, ssi, top_k))
t_dx = _bench(partial(_call_dx, dy, W, sei, ssi, lA, lB))
t_bwd = _bench(partial(_call_bwd, dy, gx, lA, lB, eo, num_experts))
total = t_fwd + t_dx + t_bwd
overhead = t_fwd / t_base - 1 if t_base > 0 else 0
print(
f" R={R:>2} {proj:<8} "
f"fwd={t_fwd:>6.2f}ms [{dispatch}] "
f"base={t_base:>6.2f}ms "
f"(+{overhead * 100:.0f}%) "
f"dx={t_dx:>6.2f}ms bwd={t_bwd:>6.2f}ms "
f"total={total:>6.2f}ms"
)
# Full autograd fwd+bwd with memory measurement
x_ag = x.clone().requires_grad_(True)
lA_ag = lA.clone().requires_grad_(True)
lB_ag = lB.clone().requires_grad_(True)
def _run_autograd(
_x=x_ag,
_W=W,
_k=top_k,
_sei=sei,
_ssi=ssi,
_eo=eo,
_lA=lA_ag,
_lB=lB_ag,
):
out = ScatterMoELoRA.apply(
_x,
_W,
_k,
_sei,
_ssi,
_eo,
_lA,
_lB,
2.0,
None,
None,
False,
False,
True,
False,
)
out.sum().backward()
_x.grad = None
_lA.grad = None
_lB.grad = None
t_full = _bench(_run_autograd)
_clean()
torch.cuda.reset_peak_memory_stats()
mem_before = torch.cuda.memory_allocated()
_run_autograd()
torch.cuda.synchronize()
mem_peak = torch.cuda.max_memory_allocated() - mem_before
print(
f" full_fwd_bwd={t_full:>6.2f}ms "
f"peak_delta={mem_peak / 1e6:>6.1f}MB"
)
print()
if __name__ == "__main__":
main()

View File

@@ -1,191 +0,0 @@
"""Benchmark for selective_log_softmax Triton kernel vs original implementation.
Usage: CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0 python benchmarks/bench_selective_logsoftmax.py
"""
import gc
import statistics
import torch
from axolotl.monkeypatch.trainer.utils import (
selective_log_softmax,
selective_log_softmax_original,
)
V = 151936 # Qwen vocab
WARMUP = 5
BENCH_ITERS = 20
MEM_ITERS = 10
def _clean_gpu():
gc.collect()
torch.cuda.empty_cache()
torch.cuda.reset_peak_memory_stats()
torch.cuda.reset_accumulated_memory_stats()
torch.cuda.synchronize()
def profile_time(fn, args, n_iters=BENCH_ITERS):
for _ in range(WARMUP):
fn(*args)
torch.cuda.synchronize()
times = []
for _ in range(n_iters):
s = torch.cuda.Event(enable_timing=True)
e = torch.cuda.Event(enable_timing=True)
s.record()
fn(*args)
e.record()
torch.cuda.synchronize()
times.append(s.elapsed_time(e))
return times
def profile_memory(fn, args, n_iters=MEM_ITERS):
for _ in range(WARMUP):
out = fn(*args)
del out
torch.cuda.synchronize()
peaks = []
for _ in range(n_iters):
_clean_gpu()
base = torch.cuda.max_memory_allocated()
out = fn(*args)
torch.cuda.synchronize()
peaks.append(torch.cuda.max_memory_allocated() - base)
del out
return [p / 1e6 for p in peaks]
def fmt(values, unit=""):
mean = statistics.mean(values)
std = statistics.stdev(values) if len(values) > 1 else 0.0
return f"{mean:8.2f} ± {std:5.2f} {unit} [min={min(values):.2f}, max={max(values):.2f}]"
def benchmark_forward():
print("=" * 60)
print(f"FORWARD BENCHMARK (warmup={WARMUP}, time={BENCH_ITERS}, mem={MEM_ITERS})")
print("=" * 60)
configs = [
(1, 2048),
(1, 8192),
(4, 4096),
(8, 2048),
(16, 2048),
(16, 4096),
]
for B, L in configs:
mem_gb = B * L * V * 2 / 1e9
if mem_gb > 28:
print(f"\n skip B={B}, L={L} ({mem_gb:.1f} GB)")
continue
N = B * L
print(f"\n{'' * 60}")
print(f"B={B:2d}, L={L:5d} ({N:6d} rows, logits {mem_gb:.2f} GB)")
print(f"{'' * 60}")
torch.manual_seed(42)
logits = torch.randn(B, L, V, device="cuda", dtype=torch.bfloat16)
index = torch.randint(0, V, (B, L), device="cuda")
t_orig = profile_time(selective_log_softmax_original, (logits, index))
t_triton = profile_time(selective_log_softmax, (logits, index))
orig_mean = statistics.mean(t_orig)
triton_mean = statistics.mean(t_triton)
print(" TIME (ms):")
print(f" original: {fmt(t_orig, 'ms')}")
print(f" triton: {fmt(t_triton, 'ms')}")
print(f" speedup: {orig_mean / triton_mean:.2f}x")
m_orig = profile_memory(selective_log_softmax_original, (logits, index))
m_triton = profile_memory(selective_log_softmax, (logits, index))
orig_peak = statistics.mean(m_orig)
triton_peak = statistics.mean(m_triton)
print(" MEMORY (peak overhead):")
print(f" original: {fmt(m_orig, 'MB')}")
print(f" triton: {fmt(m_triton, 'MB')}")
print(f" saved: {orig_peak - triton_peak:.1f} MB")
del logits, index
_clean_gpu()
def benchmark_backward():
print("\n" + "=" * 60)
print(f"FWD+BWD BENCHMARK (warmup={WARMUP}, time={BENCH_ITERS}, mem={MEM_ITERS})")
print("=" * 60)
configs = [
(1, 2048),
(1, 8192),
(4, 4096),
(8, 2048),
(16, 2048),
(16, 4096),
]
def fwd_bwd_original(logits, index):
logits.grad = None
out = selective_log_softmax_original(logits, index)
out.sum().backward()
def fwd_bwd_triton(logits, index):
logits.grad = None
out = selective_log_softmax(logits, index)
out.sum().backward()
for B, L in configs:
mem_gb = B * L * V * 2 / 1e9
if mem_gb > 20:
print(f"\n skip B={B}, L={L} ({mem_gb:.1f} GB, need room for grads)")
continue
N = B * L
print(f"\n{'' * 60}")
print(f"B={B:2d}, L={L:5d} ({N:6d} rows, logits {mem_gb:.2f} GB)")
print(f"{'' * 60}")
torch.manual_seed(42)
logits_orig = torch.randn(
B, L, V, device="cuda", dtype=torch.bfloat16, requires_grad=True
)
logits_tri = logits_orig.detach().clone().requires_grad_(True)
index = torch.randint(0, V, (B, L), device="cuda")
t_orig = profile_time(fwd_bwd_original, (logits_orig, index))
t_triton = profile_time(fwd_bwd_triton, (logits_tri, index))
orig_mean = statistics.mean(t_orig)
triton_mean = statistics.mean(t_triton)
print(" FWD+BWD TIME (ms):")
print(f" original: {fmt(t_orig, 'ms')}")
print(f" triton: {fmt(t_triton, 'ms')}")
print(f" speedup: {orig_mean / triton_mean:.2f}x")
m_orig = profile_memory(fwd_bwd_original, (logits_orig, index))
m_triton = profile_memory(fwd_bwd_triton, (logits_tri, index))
orig_peak = statistics.mean(m_orig)
triton_peak = statistics.mean(m_triton)
print(" FWD+BWD MEMORY (peak overhead):")
print(f" original: {fmt(m_orig, 'MB')}")
print(f" triton: {fmt(m_triton, 'MB')}")
print(f" saved: {orig_peak - triton_peak:.1f} MB")
del logits_orig, logits_tri, index
_clean_gpu()
if __name__ == "__main__":
benchmark_forward()
benchmark_backward()

View File

@@ -11,7 +11,7 @@ ENV NIGHTLY_BUILD="{{ NIGHTLY_BUILD }}"
ENV HF_HOME="{{ HF_HOME }}"
RUN apt-get update && \
apt-get install -y --allow-change-held-packages vim curl nano zstd libnccl2 libnccl-dev ibverbs-providers ibverbs-utils infiniband-diags librdmacm-dev librdmacm1 rdmacm-utils slurm-wlm
apt-get install -y --allow-change-held-packages vim curl nano libnccl2 libnccl-dev ibverbs-providers ibverbs-utils infiniband-diags librdmacm-dev librdmacm1 rdmacm-utils slurm-wlm
WORKDIR /workspace
@@ -22,30 +22,28 @@ WORKDIR /workspace/axolotl
RUN git fetch origin +$GITHUB_REF && \
git checkout FETCH_HEAD
RUN uv pip install packaging==26.0 setuptools==78.1.1
# If AXOLOTL_EXTRAS is set, append it in brackets
RUN if [ "$NIGHTLY_BUILD" = "true" ] ; then \
sed -i 's#^transformers.*#transformers @ git+https://github.com/huggingface/transformers.git@main#' requirements.txt; \
sed -i 's#^peft.*#peft @ git+https://github.com/huggingface/peft.git@main#' requirements.txt; \
sed -i 's#^accelerate.*#accelerate @ git+https://github.com/huggingface/accelerate.git@main#' requirements.txt; \
sed -i 's#^trl.*#trl @ git+https://github.com/huggingface/trl.git@main#' requirements.txt; \
sed -i 's#^datasets.*#datasets @ git+https://github.com/huggingface/datasets.git@main#' requirements.txt; \
fi
RUN uv pip install packaging==26.0 setuptools==75.8.0
RUN uv pip install torchvision
RUN uv pip uninstall causal_conv1d
RUN if [ "$AXOLOTL_EXTRAS" != "" ] ; then \
uv pip install --no-build-isolation -e .[deepspeed,flash-attn,ring-flash-attn,optimizers,ray,$AXOLOTL_EXTRAS] $AXOLOTL_ARGS; \
else \
uv pip install --no-build-isolation -e .[deepspeed,flash-attn,ring-flash-attn,optimizers,ray] $AXOLOTL_ARGS; \
fi
# Override with nightly HF packages for nightly builds
RUN if [ "$NIGHTLY_BUILD" = "true" ] ; then \
uv pip install --no-deps \
"transformers @ git+https://github.com/huggingface/transformers.git@main" \
"peft @ git+https://github.com/huggingface/peft.git@main" \
"accelerate @ git+https://github.com/huggingface/accelerate.git@main" \
"trl @ git+https://github.com/huggingface/trl.git@main" \
"datasets @ git+https://github.com/huggingface/datasets.git@main"; \
fi
RUN python scripts/unsloth_install.py --uv | sh
RUN python scripts/cutcrossentropy_install.py --uv | sh
# So we can test the Docker image
RUN uv pip install black mypy pre-commit types-requests quartodoc jupyter blobfile tiktoken \
codecov codecov-cli pytest pytest-cov pytest-retry pytest-sugar pytest-xdist tbparse
RUN uv pip install -r requirements-dev.txt -r requirements-tests.txt
# fix so that git fetch/pull from remote works
RUN git config remote.origin.fetch "+refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*" && \

53
cicd/Dockerfile.jinja Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,53 @@
FROM axolotlai/axolotl-base:{{ BASE_TAG }}
ENV TORCH_CUDA_ARCH_LIST="7.0 7.5 8.0 8.6 8.7 8.9 9.0+PTX"
ENV AXOLOTL_EXTRAS="{{ AXOLOTL_EXTRAS }}"
ENV AXOLOTL_ARGS="{{ AXOLOTL_ARGS }}"
ENV CUDA="{{ CUDA }}"
ENV PYTORCH_VERSION="{{ PYTORCH_VERSION }}"
ENV GITHUB_REF="{{ GITHUB_REF }}"
ENV GITHUB_SHA="{{ GITHUB_SHA }}"
ENV NIGHTLY_BUILD="{{ NIGHTLY_BUILD }}"
ENV HF_HOME="{{ HF_HOME }}"
ENV AXOLOTL_DATASET_NUM_PROC="8"
RUN apt-get update && \
apt-get install -y --allow-change-held-packages vim curl nano libnccl2 libnccl-dev ibverbs-providers ibverbs-utils infiniband-diags librdmacm-dev librdmacm1 rdmacm-utils slurm-wlm
WORKDIR /workspace
RUN git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/axolotl.git
WORKDIR /workspace/axolotl
RUN git fetch origin +$GITHUB_REF && \
git checkout FETCH_HEAD
# If AXOLOTL_EXTRAS is set, append it in brackets
RUN if [ "$NIGHTLY_BUILD" = "true" ] ; then \
sed -i 's#^transformers.*#transformers @ git+https://github.com/huggingface/transformers.git@main#' requirements.txt; \
sed -i 's#^peft.*#peft @ git+https://github.com/huggingface/peft.git@main#' requirements.txt; \
sed -i 's#^accelerate.*#accelerate @ git+https://github.com/huggingface/accelerate.git@main#' requirements.txt; \
sed -i 's#^trl.*#trl @ git+https://github.com/huggingface/trl.git@main#' requirements.txt; \
sed -i 's#^datasets.*#datasets @ git+https://github.com/huggingface/datasets.git@main#' requirements.txt; \
fi
RUN pip install packaging==26.0 setuptools==75.8.0 psutil
RUN if [ "$AXOLOTL_EXTRAS" != "" ] ; then \
pip install --no-build-isolation -e .[deepspeed,flash-attn,ring-flash-attn,optimizers,ray,$AXOLOTL_EXTRAS] $AXOLOTL_ARGS; \
else \
pip install --no-build-isolation -e .[deepspeed,flash-attn,ring-flash-attn,optimizers,ray] $AXOLOTL_ARGS; \
fi
RUN python scripts/unsloth_install.py | sh
RUN python scripts/cutcrossentropy_install.py | sh
# So we can test the Docker image
RUN pip install -r requirements-dev.txt -r requirements-tests.txt
# fix so that git fetch/pull from remote works
RUN git config remote.origin.fetch "+refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*" && \
git config --get remote.origin.fetch
# helper for huggingface-login cli
RUN git config --global credential.helper store

View File

@@ -1,25 +1,7 @@
#!/bin/bash
set -e
python -c "import torch; assert '$PYTORCH_VERSION' in torch.__version__, f'Expected torch $PYTORCH_VERSION but got {torch.__version__}'"
set -o pipefail
for i in 1 2 3; do
if curl --silent --show-error --fail -L \
https://axolotl-ci.b-cdn.net/hf-cache.tar.zst \
| tar -xpf - -C "${HF_HOME}/hub/" --use-compress-program unzstd --strip-components=1; then
echo "HF cache extracted successfully"
break
fi
echo "Attempt $i failed, cleaning up and retrying in 15s..."
rm -rf "${HF_HOME}/hub/"*
sleep 15
done
# hf download "NousResearch/Meta-Llama-3-8B"
# hf download "NousResearch/Meta-Llama-3-8B-Instruct"
# hf download "microsoft/Phi-4-reasoning"
# hf download "microsoft/Phi-3.5-mini-instruct"
# hf download "microsoft/Phi-3-medium-128k-instruct"
python -c "import torch; assert '$PYTORCH_VERSION' in torch.__version__"
# Run unit tests with initial coverage report
pytest -v --durations=10 -n8 \

View File

@@ -17,7 +17,7 @@ template_loader = jinja2.FileSystemLoader(searchpath=cicd_path)
template_env = jinja2.Environment(
loader=template_loader, autoescape=select_autoescape()
)
dockerfile = os.environ.get("E2E_DOCKERFILE", "Dockerfile-uv.jinja")
dockerfile = os.environ.get("E2E_DOCKERFILE", "Dockerfile.jinja")
df_template = template_env.get_template(dockerfile)
df_args = {

View File

@@ -16,7 +16,7 @@ template_loader = jinja2.FileSystemLoader(searchpath=cicd_path)
template_env = jinja2.Environment(
loader=template_loader, autoescape=select_autoescape()
)
dockerfile = os.environ.get("E2E_DOCKERFILE", "Dockerfile-uv.jinja")
dockerfile = os.environ.get("E2E_DOCKERFILE", "Dockerfile.jinja")
df_template = template_env.get_template(dockerfile)
df_args = {
@@ -68,6 +68,10 @@ def run_cmd(cmd: str, run_folder: str):
sp_env["AXOLOTL_DATASET_NUM_PROC"] = "8"
# Propagate errors from subprocess.
exit_code = subprocess.call(cmd.split(), cwd=run_folder, env=sp_env) # nosec
if exit_code:
raise RuntimeError(f"Command '{cmd}' failed with exit code {exit_code}")
try:
exit_code = subprocess.call(cmd.split(), cwd=run_folder, env=sp_env) # nosec
if exit_code:
print(f"Command '{cmd}' failed with exit code {exit_code}")
return exit_code
except Exception as e: # pylint: disable=broad-except
print(f"Command '{cmd}' failed with exception {e}")

View File

@@ -37,7 +37,6 @@ coverage:
only_pulls: false
flags: null
paths: null
informational: true
parsers:
gcov:

View File

@@ -22,7 +22,6 @@ RUN git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/axolotl.git
WORKDIR /workspace/axolotl
# If AXOLOTL_EXTRAS is set, append it in brackets; don't install deepspeed with arm64
RUN pip uninstall -y causal_conv1d
RUN if [ "$TARGETARCH" = "arm64" ]; then \
BASE_EXTRAS="flash-attn,ring-flash-attn,optimizers,ray"; \
else \
@@ -32,7 +31,7 @@ RUN if [ "$TARGETARCH" = "arm64" ]; then \
pip install --no-build-isolation -e .[$BASE_EXTRAS,$AXOLOTL_EXTRAS] $AXOLOTL_ARGS; \
else \
pip install --no-build-isolation -e .[$BASE_EXTRAS] $AXOLOTL_ARGS; \
fi && \
fi && \ python scripts/unsloth_install.py | sh && \
python scripts/cutcrossentropy_install.py | sh && \
pip install pytest && \
pip cache purge

View File

@@ -59,18 +59,34 @@ RUN git lfs install --skip-repo && \
pip3 install -U --no-cache-dir pydantic==1.10.10 && \
pip3 cache purge
# Map Python version (e.g., 3.12 -> cp312)
RUN PYTHON_CP="cp$(echo $PYTHON_VERSION | tr -d '.')" && \
# Map PyTorch version (e.g., 2.9.1 -> torch2.9, 2.10.0 -> torch2.10)
TORCH_TAG="torch$(echo $PYTORCH_VERSION | grep -oP '^\d+\.\d+')" && \
# Map architecture
case "$TARGETARCH" in \
amd64) ARCH_TAG="x86_64" ;; \
arm64) ARCH_TAG="aarch64" ;; \
*) echo "Unsupported architecture: $TARGETARCH"; exit 1 ;; \
esac && \
WHL_VERSION="v0.7.16" && \
WHL_FILE="flash_attn-2.8.3+cu${CUDA}${TORCH_TAG}-${PYTHON_CP}-${PYTHON_CP}-linux_${ARCH_TAG}.whl" && \
wget -nv "https://github.com/mjun0812/flash-attention-prebuild-wheels/releases/download/${WHL_VERSION}/${WHL_FILE}" && \
pip3 install --no-cache-dir "${WHL_FILE}" && \
rm "${WHL_FILE}"
RUN case "$PYTORCH_VERSION" in \
2.9.[0-9]*) \
if [ "$CUDA" = "128" ]; then \
if [ "$TARGETARCH" = "amd64" ]; then \
WHL_FILE="flash_attn-2.8.3+cu128torch2.9-cp311-cp311-linux_x86_64.whl"; \
WHL_VERSION="v0.5.4"; \
elif [ "$TARGETARCH" = "arm64" ]; then \
WHL_FILE="flash_attn-2.8.3+cu128torch2.9-cp311-cp311-linux_aarch64.whl"; \
WHL_VERSION="v0.6.4"; \
else \
echo "Unsupported architecture: $TARGETARCH"; exit 1; \
fi; \
wget -nv https://github.com/mjun0812/flash-attention-prebuild-wheels/releases/download/${WHL_VERSION}/${WHL_FILE}; \
pip3 install --no-cache-dir ${WHL_FILE}; \
rm ${WHL_FILE}; \
elif [ "$CUDA" = "130" ]; then \
if [ "$TARGETARCH" = "amd64" ]; then \
WHL_FILE="flash_attn-2.8.3+cu130torch2.9-cp311-cp311-linux_x86_64.whl"; \
WHL_VERSION="v0.5.4"; \
elif [ "$TARGETARCH" = "arm64" ]; then \
WHL_FILE="flash_attn-2.8.3+cu130torch2.9-cp311-cp311-linux_aarch64.whl"; \
WHL_VERSION="v0.6.4"; \
else \
echo "Unsupported architecture: $TARGETARCH"; exit 1; \
fi; \
wget -nv https://github.com/mjun0812/flash-attention-prebuild-wheels/releases/download/${WHL_VERSION}/${WHL_FILE}; \
pip3 install --no-cache-dir ${WHL_FILE}; \
rm ${WHL_FILE}; \
fi \
;; \
esac

View File

@@ -1,31 +0,0 @@
ARG BASE_TAG=main
FROM axolotlai/axolotl-uv:$BASE_TAG
ENV HF_DATASETS_CACHE="/workspace/data/huggingface-cache/datasets"
ENV HF_HUB_CACHE="/workspace/data/huggingface-cache/hub"
ENV HF_HOME="/workspace/data/huggingface-cache/hub"
ENV HF_HUB_ENABLE_HF_TRANSFER="1"
EXPOSE 8888
EXPOSE 22
COPY scripts/cloud-entrypoint.sh /root/cloud-entrypoint.sh
COPY scripts/motd /etc/motd
RUN uv pip install jupyterlab notebook ipywidgets && \
jupyter lab clean
RUN apt update && \
apt install --yes --no-install-recommends openssh-server tmux iproute2 nvtop && \
rm -rf /var/cache/apt/archives && \
rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/* && \
mkdir -p ~/.ssh && \
chmod 700 ~/.ssh && \
printf "\n[[ -z \"\$TMUX\" ]] && { tmux attach-session -t ssh_tmux || tmux new-session -s ssh_tmux; exit; }\n" >> ~/.bashrc && \
printf "[ ! -z \"\$TERM\" -a -r /etc/motd ] && cat /etc/motd\n" >> ~/.bashrc && \
printf "source /workspace/axolotl-venv/bin/activate\n" >> ~/.bashrc && \
chmod +x /workspace/axolotl/scripts/cloud-entrypoint.sh && \
chmod +x /root/cloud-entrypoint.sh && \
echo 'set-option -g history-limit 5000' >> ~/.tmux.conf
ENTRYPOINT ["/root/cloud-entrypoint.sh"]
CMD ["sleep", "infinity"]

View File

@@ -1,47 +0,0 @@
ARG BASE_TAG=main-base
FROM axolotlai/axolotl-base-uv:$BASE_TAG
ARG TORCH_CUDA_ARCH_LIST="7.0 7.5 8.0 8.6+PTX"
ARG AXOLOTL_EXTRAS=""
ARG AXOLOTL_ARGS=""
ARG CUDA="118"
ARG PYTORCH_VERSION="2.1.2"
ARG TARGETARCH
ENV PYTORCH_VERSION=$PYTORCH_VERSION
RUN apt-get update && \
apt-get install -y --allow-change-held-packages vim curl nano libnccl2 libnccl-dev rsync s3fs && \
rm -rf /var/cache/apt/archives && \
rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*
WORKDIR /workspace
RUN git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/axolotl.git
WORKDIR /workspace/axolotl
# If AXOLOTL_EXTRAS is set, append it in brackets; don't install deepspeed with arm64
RUN uv pip uninstall causal_conv1d
RUN if [ "$TARGETARCH" = "arm64" ]; then \
BASE_EXTRAS="flash-attn,ring-flash-attn,optimizers,ray"; \
else \
BASE_EXTRAS="deepspeed,flash-attn,ring-flash-attn,optimizers,ray"; \
fi && \
if [ "$AXOLOTL_EXTRAS" != "" ]; then \
uv pip install --no-build-isolation -e .[$BASE_EXTRAS,$AXOLOTL_EXTRAS] $AXOLOTL_ARGS; \
else \
uv pip install --no-build-isolation -e .[$BASE_EXTRAS] $AXOLOTL_ARGS; \
fi && \
python scripts/cutcrossentropy_install.py --uv | sh && \
uv pip install pytest && \
uv cache clean
# fix so that git fetch/pull from remote works with shallow clone
RUN git config remote.origin.fetch "+refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*" && \
git config --get remote.origin.fetch && \
git config --global credential.helper store
COPY .axolotl-complete.bash /root/.axolotl-complete.bash
RUN chmod +x /root/.axolotl-complete.bash && \
echo 'source /root/.axolotl-complete.bash' >> ~/.bashrc

View File

@@ -6,7 +6,6 @@ ARG TARGETARCH
FROM nvidia/cuda:$CUDA_VERSION-cudnn$CUDNN_VERSION-devel-ubuntu$UBUNTU_VERSION AS base-builder
ARG TARGETARCH
ARG PYTHON_VERSION="3.11"
ARG PYTORCH_VERSION="2.6.0"
ARG CUDA="126"
@@ -36,22 +35,32 @@ RUN uv pip install packaging setuptools wheel psutil \
&& uv pip install awscli pydantic
RUN if [ "$TARGETARCH" = "amd64" ]; then \
MAMBA_SKIP_CUDA_BUILD=TRUE CAUSAL_CONV1D_SKIP_CUDA_BUILD=TRUE uv pip install --no-build-isolation mamba_ssm causal_conv1d; \
uv pip install --no-build-isolation "causal_conv1d @ git+https://github.com/Dao-AILab/causal-conv1d.git@main"; \
uv pip install "mamba_ssm @ git+https://github.com/state-spaces/mamba.git@main"; \
fi
# Map Python version (e.g., 3.12 -> cp312)
RUN PYTHON_CP="cp$(echo $PYTHON_VERSION | tr -d '.')" && \
# Map PyTorch version (e.g., 2.9.1 -> torch2.9, 2.10.0 -> torch2.10)
TORCH_TAG="torch$(echo $PYTORCH_VERSION | grep -oP '^\d+\.\d+')" && \
LINUX_TAG="manylinux_" && \
# Map architecture
case "$TARGETARCH" in \
amd64) ARCH_TAG="2_24_x86_64.manylinux_2_28_x86_64" ;; \
arm64) ARCH_TAG="2_34_aarch64" ;; \
*) echo "Unsupported architecture: $TARGETARCH"; exit 1 ;; \
esac && \
WHL_VERSION="v0.7.16" && \
WHL_FILE="flash_attn-2.8.3+cu${CUDA}${TORCH_TAG}-${PYTHON_CP}-${PYTHON_CP}-${LINUX_TAG}${ARCH_TAG}.whl" && \
wget -nv "https://github.com/mjun0812/flash-attention-prebuild-wheels/releases/download/${WHL_VERSION}/${WHL_FILE}" && \
uv pip install --no-cache-dir "${WHL_FILE}" && \
rm "${WHL_FILE}"
RUN case "$PYTORCH_VERSION" in \
2.9.[0-9]*) \
if [ "$TARGETARCH" = "amd64" ]; then \
if [ "$CUDA" = "128" ]; then \
wget -nv https://github.com/mjun0812/flash-attention-prebuild-wheels/releases/download/v0.5.4/flash_attn-2.8.3+cu128torch2.9-cp311-cp311-linux_x86_64.whl; \
uv pip install --no-cache-dir flash_attn-2.8.3+cu128torch2.9-cp311-cp311-linux_x86_64.whl; \
rm flash_attn-2.8.3+cu128torch2.9-cp311-cp311-linux_x86_64.whl; \
elif [ "$CUDA" = "130" ]; then \
wget -nv https://github.com/mjun0812/flash-attention-prebuild-wheels/releases/download/v0.5.4/flash_attn-2.8.3+cu130torch2.9-cp311-cp311-linux_x86_64.whl; \
uv pip install --no-cache-dir flash_attn-2.8.3+cu130torch2.9-cp311-cp311-linux_x86_64.whl; \
rm flash_attn-2.8.3+cu130torch2.9-cp311-cp311-linux_x86_64.whl; \
fi \
elif [ "$TARGETARCH" = "arm64" ]; then \
if [ "$CUDA" = "128" ]; then \
wget -nv https://github.com/mjun0812/flash-attention-prebuild-wheels/releases/download/v0.6.4/flash_attn-2.8.3+cu128torch2.9-cp311-cp311-linux_aarch64.whl; \
uv pip install --no-cache-dir flash_attn-2.8.3+cu128torch2.9-cp311-cp311-linux_aarch64.whl; \
rm flash_attn-2.8.3+cu128torch2.9-cp311-cp311-linux_aarch64.whl; \
elif [ "$CUDA" = "130" ]; then \
wget -nv https://github.com/mjun0812/flash-attention-prebuild-wheels/releases/download/v0.6.4/flash_attn-2.8.3+cu130torch2.9-cp311-cp311-linux_aarch64.whl; \
uv pip install --no-cache-dir flash_attn-2.8.3+cu130torch2.9-cp311-cp311-linux_aarch64.whl; \
rm flash_attn-2.8.3+cu130torch2.9-cp311-cp311-linux_aarch64.whl; \
fi \
fi \
;; \
esac

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@@ -1,71 +0,0 @@
# GRPO — Agent Reference
Online RL with verifiable reward functions. For full config reference, async features, and scaling, see [grpo.qmd](../grpo.qmd). For vLLM setup, see [vllm_serving.qmd](../vllm_serving.qmd).
## Architecture
```
Terminal 1 (GPU 0) Terminal 2 (GPU 1)
┌──────────────────────┐ ┌──────────────────────────────────┐
│ vLLM Server │ HTTP │ Trainer │
│ Serves base model │◄────────────►│ 1. Send prompts to vLLM │
│ + LoRA adapter │ /generate │ 2. Score completions (rewards) │
│ │ /set_lora │ 3. Compute advantages │
│ Punica kernels for │ │ 4. PPO-clip gradient update │
│ LoRA inference │ │ 5. Sync LoRA weights to vLLM │
└──────────────────────┘ └──────────────────────────────────┘
```
## Components Required
1. A YAML config with `rl: grpo`
2. A reward module (Python file with reward functions)
3. A running vLLM server (`axolotl vllm-serve config.yaml`)
## Reward Function Signature
```python
def my_reward(completions, **kwargs) -> list[float]:
# completions[i][0]["content"] = text of i-th completion
# **kwargs contains dataset columns not removed by transform
return [score_for_each_completion]
```
Multiple rewards: `reward_funcs: [r1, r2]` with `reward_weights: [1.0, 0.5]`.
## Key Async Features
| Feature | Config | Purpose |
|---------|--------|---------|
| Async prefetch | `async_prefetch: true` | Overlap generation with training |
| LoRA sync | `vllm_lora_sync: true` | Fast adapter sync via filesystem |
| Streaming scoring | `streaming_partial_batch: true` | Score one group at a time |
| Zero-adv skip | `skip_zero_advantage_batches: true` | Skip batches with no learning signal |
| Replay buffer | `replay_buffer_size: 100` | Cache high-signal groups |
| IS correction | `vllm_importance_sampling_correction: true` | Fix off-policy distribution shift |
## Health Checks
- `rewards/*/mean` > 0.15 within 20 steps (else: test reward function standalone)
- `reward_std` > 0 on most steps (else: no learning signal)
- `entropy` 0.05-0.5 (< 0.01 = mode collapse)
- `grad_norm` 0.001-1.0 (> 10 = unstable, 0.0 = zero-advantage skip)
See [training_stability.qmd](../training_stability.qmd) for detailed diagnostics.
## File Map
```
src/axolotl/
cli/train.py # Entry point
cli/vllm_serve.py # Entry point for vLLM server
core/trainers/grpo/
trainer.py # AxolotlGRPOTrainer
sampler.py # Sampling utilities
core/builders/rl.py # HFRLTrainerBuilder — routes rl type → trainer
scripts/vllm_serve_lora.py # vLLM serve script with LoRA sync support
utils/schemas/trl.py # TRL config schema (all trl: options)
docs/grpo.qmd # Full user docs: async, rewards, scaling, config reference
docs/vllm_serving.qmd # vLLM server modes, LoRA sync, weight sync
```

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@@ -1,198 +0,0 @@
# Model Architectures — Agent Reference
Model-specific quirks, required settings, and known issues. Check this before debugging training failures on specific model families.
## VLM (Vision Language Model) Quick Start
All VLM configs require these four lines:
```yaml
processor_type: AutoProcessor
skip_prepare_dataset: true
remove_unused_columns: false
sample_packing: false
```
Decision tree for VLM config:
```text
Is the model multimodal (has vision/audio encoder)?
├─ YES: Add `freeze_mm_modules: true` if training text only
│ Add `chat_template: <model_template>` (e.g. gemma4, qwen3_5, gemma3)
│ LoRA: use regex `lora_target_modules` to restrict to language model
└─ NO: Train as a regular text model
Is the model MoE (e.g. Gemma4 26B-A4B, Qwen3.5 35B-A3B)?
├─ YES: Add `lora_target_parameters` for expert LoRA
│ Consider ScatterMoE kernels (see Plugins section)
└─ NO: Standard LoRA config
```
## Plugins & Optimizations
### Cut Cross Entropy (CCE)
Computes loss from hidden states + lm_head weight without materializing the full logits tensor, saving significant VRAM. Install if not already present:
```bash
uv pip install "cut-cross-entropy[transformers] @ git+https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/ml-cross-entropy.git@main"
```
```yaml
plugins:
- axolotl.integrations.cut_cross_entropy.CutCrossEntropyPlugin
```
### ScatterMoE Kernels
Fuses expert + LoRA computation into a single kernel for MoE models. Significant speedup for models with many experts.
```yaml
plugins:
- axolotl.integrations.kernels.KernelsPlugin
use_kernels: true
use_scattermoe: true
experts_implementation: scattermoe
# Expert LoRA targets (3D parameter tensors, not nn.Linear):
lora_target_parameters:
- experts.gate_up_proj
- experts.down_proj
```
Supported: Gemma4 (`gemma4_text`), Mixtral, Qwen MoE variants. The plugin auto-detects model type and routing function. Without ScatterMoE, expert LoRA still works but runs base expert matmul and LoRA as separate operations.
## Gemma 4
**Models**: `google/gemma-4-26B-A4B` (MoE), `google/gemma-4-31B` (dense), `google/gemma-4-E2B`, `google/gemma-4-E4B`
**Architecture**: Multimodal wrapper (`Gemma4ForConditionalGeneration`) over a text backbone (`Gemma4TextModel`), with optional vision/audio encoders. All Gemma4 HF repos have `model_type: "gemma4"` — even text-only variants load as multimodal with a vision tower.
### Required settings
```yaml
# Always needed for Gemma4:
freeze_mm_modules: true # Freeze vision/audio encoders for text-only training
gradient_checkpointing_kwargs:
use_reentrant: false # Shared per-layer norms cause "marked ready twice" with reentrant
# LoRA target — restrict to language model only (DO NOT use lora_target_linear: true):
lora_target_modules: 'model.language_model.layers.[\d]+.(_checkpoint_wrapped_module.)?(mlp|self_attn).(up|down|gate|q|k|v|o)_proj'
```
### Auto-detection
Axolotl auto-detects Gemma4 and applies:
- `use_reentrant: false` for gradient checkpointing
- `ddp_find_unused_parameters: true` for DDP (skipped when `activation_offloading: true`)
### Multi-GPU
| Strategy | Works? | Notes |
|----------|--------|-------|
| DDP | Yes | Auto-sets `ddp_find_unused_parameters=True` |
| DDP + activation_offloading | Yes | `find_unused_parameters` is skipped (conflicts with checkpoint wrappers) |
| FSDP1 | No | OOM during dequantization/sharding with QLoRA |
| FSDP2 | Yes | Use `Gemma4TextDecoderLayer` (not `Gemma4DecoderLayer`) as wrap class |
| FSDP2 + activation_offloading | Yes | Lowest VRAM (~26 GiB/GPU for 26B-A4B) |
FSDP2 config:
```yaml
fsdp:
- full_shard
- auto_wrap
fsdp_config:
fsdp_version: 2
fsdp_auto_wrap_policy: TRANSFORMER_BASED_WRAP
fsdp_transformer_layer_cls_to_wrap: Gemma4TextDecoderLayer
```
### MoE (26B-A4B)
- `enable_moe_block: true`, 256 experts, top-k routing
- No separate `SparseMoeBlock` — MoE is embedded in each decoder layer
- Expert LoRA targets 3D parameter tensors:
```yaml
lora_target_parameters:
- experts.gate_up_proj
- experts.down_proj
```
- ScatterMoE kernel acceleration:
```yaml
plugins:
- axolotl.integrations.kernels.KernelsPlugin
use_kernels: true
use_scattermoe: true
experts_implementation: scattermoe
```
### VLM (Vision) Training
All Gemma4 models load as `Gemma4ForConditionalGeneration` with a vision tower. No custom `ProcessingStrategy` needed — the base class auto-detects the image token.
```yaml
base_model: google/gemma-4-E2B-it # or E4B-it, 26B-A4B
processor_type: AutoProcessor
freeze_mm_modules: true
chat_template: gemma4
skip_prepare_dataset: true
remove_unused_columns: false
sample_packing: false
```
A starting VLM loss of ~8-15 is typical. In most runs, loss converges below 1.0 within ~30-50 steps, though results may vary across configurations.
For the 26B-A4B MoE variant with ScatterMoE + expert LoRA + CCE, add:
```yaml
plugins:
- axolotl.integrations.cut_cross_entropy.CutCrossEntropyPlugin
- axolotl.integrations.kernels.KernelsPlugin
use_kernels: true
use_scattermoe: true
experts_implementation: scattermoe
lora_target_parameters:
- experts.gate_up_proj
- experts.down_proj
```
### Common issues
| Symptom | Cause | Fix |
|---------|-------|-----|
| `mm_token_type_ids is required` in DDP | `model.config` not accessible through DDP wrapper | Already fixed — `unwrap_model()` in `compute_loss` and `prediction_step` |
| `marked a variable ready twice` in DDP | `ddp_find_unused_parameters=True` + activation_offloading checkpoint wrappers | Auto-handled — `find_unused_parameters` is skipped when `activation_offloading: true` |
| Loss ~12 instead of ~0.5 | Using `lora_target_linear: true` (applies LoRA to vision/audio modules) | Use the regex `lora_target_modules` pattern instead |
| FSDP2 `Could not find Gemma4AudioLayer` | Auto-wrap detects `_no_split_modules` including audio layers that don't exist | Explicitly set `fsdp_transformer_layer_cls_to_wrap: Gemma4TextDecoderLayer` |
| `Gemma4ClippableLinear not supported` by PEFT | Vision tower uses a non-standard linear wrapper | Axolotl patches this automatically via `_patch_peft_clippable_linear()` |
### E2B/E4B dense models
These have `hidden_size_per_layer_input: 256` (per-layer input embeddings) and `attention_k_eq_v: False`. Known issue: loss starts higher than expected (~12 vs ~0.5 for 26B). Root cause under investigation — may be related to the per-layer input mechanism or the `Gemma4ForConditionalGeneration` loss computation.
## Gemma 3
**Models**: `google/gemma-3-*`
- `ddp_find_unused_parameters: true` needed (multimodal unused params)
- `use_reentrant: false` recommended
- Attention mask must be dropped for sample packing (handled automatically)
- Multi-GPU test currently skipped (`tests/e2e/multigpu/test_gemma3.py`)
## Qwen 3.5 MoE
**Models**: `Qwen/Qwen3.5-35B-A3B`
- Hybrid architecture: DeltaNet linear attention (30 layers) + full attention (10 layers)
- 256 experts, 8 active per token
- Known weight scale drift in late DeltaNet layers (36-38) due to AdamW + rare expert interaction
- Fix: `normalize_weight_scales` config to detect and rescale outliers:
```yaml
normalize_weight_scales:
- name_pattern: 'linear_attn\.conv1d\.weight'
threshold: 1.3
```
## General MoE Notes
- `lora_target_linear: true` with multimodal MoE models will apply LoRA to ALL linear modules including vision/audio encoders — use regex `lora_target_modules` to restrict to language model only
- Rare experts get larger effective learning rate from AdamW (small second-moment estimates) — can cause weight drift in recurrent/SSM components. Use `normalize_weight_scales` with `dry_run: true` to detect.
- For ScatterMoE kernel support, set `experts_implementation: scattermoe` and add the KernelsPlugin

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@@ -1,181 +0,0 @@
# New Model Support — Agent Reference
Guide for debugging and adding support for new model architectures in axolotl. Based on lessons learned from Gemma4, Gemma3, Qwen2-VL, and other multimodal/MoE models.
## Quick Validation Checklist
When testing a new model, run through these checks in order:
1. **Does the model load?** `axolotl preprocess config.yaml` — catches config schema errors
2. **Does LoRA apply?** Check for "Unsupported layer type" warnings from PEFT
3. **Is the initial loss sane?** First-step loss for a pretrained model should be 0.52.0 for SFT
4. **Does sample packing work?** Compare loss with `sample_packing: true` vs `false` — should be similar
5. **Is CCE active?** Check for "Applying Cut Cross Entropy" log and verify peak VRAM is lower
## Loss Debugging
### Expected initial loss
A pretrained model doing SFT should start with loss roughly in the 0.52.0 range. If loss starts above 3.0, something is wrong. If it's near `log(vocab_size)` (≈ 12 for 262K vocab), the model is predicting at random — attention masking or model weights are broken.
### Direct comparison technique
The fastest way to isolate a loss issue — bypass the trainer entirely:
```python
# Load model via axolotl's pipeline (applies all patches)
from axolotl.cli.config import load_cfg
from axolotl.utils.config import normalize_config, prepare_plugins
from axolotl.loaders.tokenizer import load_tokenizer
from axolotl.loaders.model import ModelLoader
cfg = load_cfg("your_config.yaml")
normalize_config(cfg)
prepare_plugins(cfg)
tokenizer = load_tokenizer(cfg)
model, _ = ModelLoader(cfg, tokenizer).load()
# Forward pass on preprocessed data
model.train()
out = model(input_ids, labels=labels)
print(f"Direct loss: {out.loss.item()}") # Compare to trainer's reported loss
```
If direct loss is correct (~1.0) but trainer reports 34x higher, check `model_accepts_loss_kwargs` (see below).
### `model_accepts_loss_kwargs` inflation
HF Trainer checks if the model's `forward()` has `**kwargs` and sets `model_accepts_loss_kwargs=True`. This changes loss normalization: the trainer does NOT divide loss by `gradient_accumulation_steps` before logging. The gradient is correct — only the logged loss is inflated.
**Symptom**: Logged loss ≈ actual_loss × gradient_accumulation_steps.
**Which models are affected**: Any model with `**kwargs` in forward (common in multimodal models for extra inputs like `mm_token_type_ids`, `pixel_values`, etc.).
**Fix location**: `src/axolotl/core/trainers/base.py` `__init__()` — after `super().__init__()`, check if the unwrapped model actually has `num_items_in_batch` in its forward signature. If not, set `self.model_accepts_loss_kwargs = False`.
## Multimodal Models (ForConditionalGeneration)
Many recent models use `ForConditionalGeneration` as the top-level class, not `ForCausalLM`:
- Gemma3 → `Gemma3ForConditionalGeneration`
- Gemma4 → `Gemma4ForConditionalGeneration`
- Qwen2-VL → `Qwen2VLForConditionalGeneration`
- LLaVA → `LlavaForConditionalGeneration`
### Why this matters
| Component | Targets `ForCausalLM` | Needs `ForConditionalGeneration` |
|-----------|----------------------|--------------------------------|
| CCE patches | ✅ (default) | ❌ silently inactive if not patched |
| PEFT LoRA | ✅ | May fail on custom layer types |
| HF Trainer label handling | ✅ | May need extra inputs |
### Required extra inputs
Multimodal models require special inputs during training even for text-only data:
| Model | Required Input | Value for Text-Only |
|-------|---------------|-------------------|
| Gemma4 | `mm_token_type_ids` | `torch.zeros_like(input_ids)` |
| Gemma3 | `token_type_ids` | `torch.zeros_like(input_ids)` |
Auto-inject in `compute_loss()` when not provided by the data collator. See `core/trainers/base.py`.
### Custom layer types and PEFT
Vision towers often use custom module wrappers that PEFT doesn't support:
| Model | Custom Layer | Wraps | Fix |
|-------|-------------|-------|-----|
| Gemma4 | `Gemma4ClippableLinear` | `nn.Linear` | Redirect to `.linear` child |
Fix location: `src/axolotl/loaders/adapter.py` `_patch_peft_clippable_linear()`.
## Sample Packing
### How packed sequence detection works (transformers ≥ 5.x)
`transformers.masking_utils._preprocess_mask_arguments()` detects packed sequences from `position_ids` resets. But **only when `attention_mask is None`**:
```python
# From masking_utils.py:
if position_ids is not None and attention_mask is None and past_key_values is None:
packed_sequence_mask = find_packed_sequence_indices(position_ids)
```
If the collator provides an all-ones `attention_mask`, packing detection is **skipped** and the model builds a single causal mask spanning all packed sequences → cross-sequence attention leakage → very high loss.
### Fix for models using `create_causal_mask_mapping`
For Gemma3, Gemma4, and similar models that use the new transformers masking system, remove `attention_mask` from inputs when sample packing is active:
```python
# In compute_loss():
if (
self.args.sample_packing
and model_type in ("gemma4", "gemma3")
and "attention_mask" in inputs
and "position_ids" in inputs
):
del inputs["attention_mask"]
```
Fix location: `src/axolotl/core/trainers/base.py` `compute_loss()`.
### Models that DON'T need this fix
Older models that use `_prepare_4d_causal_attention_mask` (Llama, Mistral, Qwen2, etc.) handle sample packing via axolotl's multipack attention monkeypatch instead. Only models using the new `create_causal_mask_mapping` / `create_causal_mask` masking system need the `attention_mask` removal.
## Attention Backend Selection
| Backend | Config | head_dim limit | torch_compile | Notes |
|---------|--------|---------------|---------------|-------|
| FA2 | `attn_implementation: flash_attention_2` | 256 | ✅ | Fastest when supported |
| FA4 | auto with `attn_implementation: flash_attention_2` | 256 (SM90+) | ✅ | Auto-detected on H100+ |
| SDPA | `attn_implementation: sdpa` | None | ✅ | Universal fallback |
| flex | `attn_implementation: flex_attention` | None | ⚠️ Triton OOM for large head_dim | Good for variable head dims |
| eager | `attn_implementation: eager` | None | ✅ | Slowest, always works |
**Check model support**: Look at `_supports_flash_attn_2`, `_supports_flex_attn`, `_supports_sdpa` attributes on the model class.
**head_dim gotcha**: The 256 limit is specific to flash-attn CUDA kernels, NOT PyTorch-level. SDPA and flex_attention both handle arbitrary head_dim. Models with `global_head_dim > 256` (Gemma4: 512) must use SDPA or flex.
**flex + compile gotcha**: `torch_compile` with flex_attention can hit Triton shared memory OOM for large head_dim. Falls back to eager per-function (not a crash, but slower). Unsloth disables flex for Gemma4 for this reason.
## Cut Cross Entropy (CCE)
### How CCE patches work
CCE replaces the model's `forward()` with a fused version that computes loss from hidden states + lm_head weight without materializing the full logits tensor. This saves ~`batch × seq_len × vocab_size × dtype_bytes` of VRAM.
### Adding CCE for a new model
1. Check if the model type is in `cut_cross_entropy.transformers.patch.PATCH_FNS`
2. If not, axolotl's generic fallback (`integrations/cut_cross_entropy/__init__.py` `patch_llama_like()`) patches `{Prefix}ForCausalLM.forward` with `cce_forward`
3. For multimodal models (`ForConditionalGeneration`), a model-specific patch is needed in `ml-cross-entropy` repo
4. The multimodal `cce_forward` must accept all extra kwargs (pixel_values, mm_token_type_ids, etc.) and pop any that would conflict before calling `self.model()`
### Common CCE pitfall
If CCE appears active (log says "Applying Cut Cross Entropy") but peak VRAM doesn't decrease, check which class was patched. If the model loads as `ForConditionalGeneration` but CCE patched `ForCausalLM`, the patch is silently inactive.
## MoE Models
### Dense MLP vs MoE experts
Some MoE models (e.g., Gemma4) have BOTH dense MLP layers and MoE expert layers at every decoder layer:
- `gate_proj/up_proj/down_proj` → targets the **dense MLP** (`Gemma4TextMLP`)
- `experts.gate_up_proj/experts.down_proj` → targets the **MoE experts** (`Gemma4TextExperts`)
LoRA on the dense MLP works normally. Expert LoRA via `lora_target_parameters` requires PEFT support for the specific expert module type (may warn "Unsupported layer type").
### ScatterMoE kernels
`use_scattermoe: true` with `experts_implementation: scattermoe` registers fused expert kernels via transformers' `ExpertsInterface`. Significant speedup for MoE models. Requires the kernels plugin:
```yaml
plugins:
- axolotl.integrations.kernels.KernelsPlugin
use_kernels: true
use_scattermoe: true
experts_implementation: scattermoe
```
## Where to Add Model-Specific Fixes
| What | Where | Example |
|------|-------|---------|
| Missing forward inputs | `core/trainers/base.py` `compute_loss()` | mm_token_type_ids injection |
| Attention mask fixes | `core/trainers/base.py` `compute_loss()` | Sample packing mask removal |
| Loss logging fixes | `core/trainers/base.py` `__init__()` | model_accepts_loss_kwargs override |
| PEFT/LoRA patches | `loaders/adapter.py` | ClippableLinear redirect |
| Attention patches | `monkeypatch/attention/` | FA4 tuple fix |
| Model-specific patches | `loaders/patch_manager.py` `_apply_model_specific_patches()` | Llama4, Kimi, NemotronH |
| CCE patches | `ml-cross-entropy` repo `transformers/` | Per-model cce_forward |
| Example configs | `examples/<model>/` | Validated YAML |
| Config validation | `utils/schemas/validation.py` | Compatibility checks |

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@@ -1,121 +0,0 @@
# Preference Learning (RLHF) — Agent Reference
Reference for DPO, IPO, KTO, ORPO, and SimPO. For config templates and dataset format examples, see [rlhf.qmd](../rlhf.qmd). For GRPO, see [grpo.qmd](../grpo.qmd). For EBFT, see [ebft.qmd](../ebft.qmd).
## Method Overview
| Method | Data Requirement | Key Idea | Best For |
|--------|-----------------|----------|----------|
| **DPO** | Paired (chosen + rejected) | Implicit reward via preference pairs | General alignment, most common |
| **IPO** | Paired (chosen + rejected) | DPO with different loss (avoids overfitting) | When DPO overfits |
| **KTO** | Unpaired (completion + binary label) | Kahneman-Tversky loss, no pairs needed | When you only have thumbs-up/down |
| **ORPO** | Paired (chosen + rejected) | Combined SFT + preference, no ref model | Single-stage alignment, saves VRAM |
| **SimPO** | Paired (chosen + rejected) | Length-normalized, no ref model | Simple setup, length-robust |
Default: start with DPO. All methods require `sample_packing: false`.
## Architecture
```
┌──────────────┐ ┌───────────────┐ ┌───────────────┐
│ Policy Model │ │ Reference │ │ Preference │
│ (trainable) │ │ Model (frozen)│ │ Dataset │
└──────┬───────┘ └──────┬────────┘ └──────┬────────┘
└──────────┬───────┘ │
v │
Forward pass on chosen + rejected <─────┘
Preference Loss (DPO/IPO/KTO/...)
Backprop + Update
Exception: ORPO and SimPO do NOT use a reference model (~50% less VRAM).
```
No vLLM server needed (unlike GRPO). Offline RL with pre-collected preference data.
## Method Selection
1. Paired preference data (chosen + rejected)?
- Default → `rl: dpo`
- Overfitting → `rl: dpo, dpo_loss_type: ["ipo"]`
- VRAM-limited → `rl: orpo` (no ref model)
- Length-sensitive → `rl: simpo` (no ref model)
2. Only binary labels (good/bad)? → `rl: kto`
3. Single-stage training (no separate SFT)? → `rl: orpo`
| | DPO | IPO | KTO | ORPO | SimPO |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| **Reference model** | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| **VRAM overhead** | ~2x model | ~2x model | ~2x model | ~1x model | ~1x model |
| **TRL trainer class** | DPOTrainer | DPOTrainer | KTOTrainer | ORPOTrainer | CPOTrainer |
## Prompt Strategy Resolution
The `type` field resolves to a Python function:
```
type: "chatml.intel"
→ axolotl.prompt_strategies.dpo.chatml.intel(cfg, **kwargs)
→ returns transform_fn(sample) → {"prompt", "chosen", "rejected"}
type: "chat_template.default"
→ axolotl.prompt_strategies.dpo.chat_template.default(cfg, dataset_idx, **kwargs)
type: {"field_prompt": "prompt", ...} (dict)
→ axolotl.prompt_strategies.dpo.user_defined.default(...)
```
Module base: `axolotl.prompt_strategies.{rl_method}` — replace `dpo` with `kto` or `orpo`.
## Healthy Training Indicators
| Metric | Healthy Range | Problem |
|--------|--------------|---------|
| `train/loss` | Decreasing, 0.3-0.7 | Flat or increasing = broken data or too high LR |
| `rewards/chosen` | Increasing | Flat = model not learning preferences |
| `rewards/rejected` | Decreasing | Increasing = model prefers wrong responses |
| `rewards/margins` | Positive and increasing | Negative = prefers rejected over chosen |
| `rewards/accuracies` | > 0.5, toward 0.7+ | < 0.5 = worse than random |
| `logps/rejected` | Decreasing | Increasing = reward hacking |
| `grad_norm` | 0.01 - 10.0 | > 100 = exploding gradients |
Method-specific: DPO/IPO watch `rewards/margins`; KTO loss is noisier; ORPO monitor SFT + odds ratio components; SimPO check length-normalized reward separation.
## Known Issues
| Issue | Fix |
|-------|-----|
| Sample packing crash | Set `sample_packing: false` (required for all preference methods) |
| KTO `KeyError: 'label'` | Ensure dataset has boolean `label` column |
| ORPO/KTO `KeyError` during tokenization | Add `remove_unused_columns: false` |
| ORPO template not applied | ORPO requires explicit `chat_template` setting |
| OOM with ref model (DPO/IPO/KTO) | Use LoRA/QLoRA, or switch to ORPO/SimPO (no ref model) |
| IPO + label_smoothing | Do not set `dpo_label_smoothing` when `rl: ipo` |
Full troubleshooting: [training_stability.qmd](../training_stability.qmd)
## File Map
```
src/axolotl/
core/trainers/dpo/ # DPO trainer, args, strategy
core/builders/rl.py # HFRLTrainerBuilder — routes rl type → trainer class
core/training_args.py # AxolotlKTOConfig, AxolotlORPOConfig, AxolotlCPOConfig
prompt_strategies/
dpo/ # DPO/IPO/SimPO dataset strategies
chat_template.py # chat_template.default, chat_template.argilla_chat
chatml.py # chatml.default/intel/icr/argilla_chat/prompt_pairs/ultra
llama3.py # llama3 variants (same subtypes as chatml)
user_defined.py # Custom field mapping
passthrough.py # No transform
kto/ # KTO dataset strategies (chatml, llama3, user_defined)
orpo/ # ORPO dataset strategies (chat_template.argilla)
utils/schemas/enums.py # RLType enum (dpo, ipo, kto, orpo, simpo, grpo, gdpo, ebft)
utils/schemas/config.py # All rl/dpo/kto/orpo/simpo config fields
docs/rlhf.qmd # Full user docs: all dataset formats, config templates
docs/choosing_method.qmd # SFT vs DPO vs GRPO decision guide
examples/qwen2/dpo.yaml # DPO example
examples/llama-3/qlora-1b-kto.yaml # KTO example
```

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@@ -1,75 +0,0 @@
# Pretraining / Continual Pretraining — Agent Reference
Train on raw text with no input masking. Two approaches depending on dataset size.
## When to Use
- Continual pretraining on domain-specific corpora
- Adapting a base model to a new language or domain before fine-tuning
- Pretraining-style data where the entire text is the training signal
## Choosing an Approach
| | Non-streaming (`type: completion`) | Streaming (`pretraining_dataset`) |
|---|---|---|
| **Dataset size** | Fits in memory | Too large to fit in memory |
| **Tokenization** | Pre-tokenized before training | On-demand during training |
| **Config key** | `datasets:` | `pretraining_dataset:` |
| **Long text handling** | Splits texts exceeding `sequence_len` | Concatenates into fixed-length sequences |
| **Benefit** | Can preprocess on CPU, transfer to GPU | Start training immediately, no preprocessing |
## Non-Streaming: `type: completion`
For smaller datasets that fit in memory. Pre-tokenizes the entire dataset.
```yaml
datasets:
- path: my_corpus
type: completion
# field: text # Column name (default: "text")
```
## Streaming: `pretraining_dataset`
For large corpora. Streams data on-demand without loading everything into memory.
```yaml
pretraining_dataset:
- path: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu
type: pretrain
text_column: text
split: train
max_steps: 1000 # Required — axolotl can't infer dataset size
streaming_multipack_buffer_size: 10000 # Buffer for sample packing
pretrain_multipack_attn: true # Prevent cross-attention between packed samples
```
`max_steps` is required for streaming — one step = `sequence_len * micro_batch_size * gradient_accumulation_steps * num_gpus` tokens.
Full streaming docs: [streaming.qmd](../streaming.qmd)
## Dataset Format
```json
{"text": "The complete document text goes here."}
```
## Key Settings
- `sample_packing: true` + `pad_to_sequence_len: true` — pack documents into fixed-length sequences
- `flash_attention: true` — required for sample packing
- No adapter — typically full fine-tune for pretraining
- `train_on_inputs: true` — default for completion (all tokens trained on)
## File Map
```
src/axolotl/
prompt_strategies/completion.py # Non-streaming: completion prompt strategy (no masking)
utils/data/sft.py # Non-streaming: dataset loading and processing
utils/data/streaming.py # Streaming: encode_streaming(), wrap_streaming_dataset()
utils/schemas/config.py # Config fields: pretraining_dataset, pretrain_multipack_attn, etc.
examples/streaming/pretrain.yaml # Full streaming pretraining example config
```

View File

@@ -1,48 +0,0 @@
# Reward Modelling — Agent Reference
Train models to score responses for use as reward signals in RL. For full docs, see [reward_modelling.qmd](../reward_modelling.qmd).
## Types
### Outcome Reward Models (ORM)
Train a classifier to predict preference over entire interactions. Uses `AutoModelForSequenceClassification`.
```yaml
base_model: google/gemma-2-2b
model_type: AutoModelForSequenceClassification
num_labels: 1
reward_model: true
chat_template: gemma
datasets:
- path: argilla/distilabel-intel-orca-dpo-pairs
type: bradley_terry.chat_template
```
Dataset format: `{"system": "...", "input": "...", "chosen": "...", "rejected": "..."}`
### Process Reward Models (PRM)
Train a token classifier to score each reasoning step. Uses `AutoModelForTokenClassification`.
```yaml
base_model: Qwen/Qwen2.5-3B
model_type: AutoModelForTokenClassification
num_labels: 2
process_reward_model: true
datasets:
- path: trl-lib/math_shepherd
type: stepwise_supervised
```
Dataset format: see [stepwise_supervised.qmd](../dataset-formats/stepwise_supervised.qmd).
## File Map
```
src/axolotl/
core/builders/causal.py # Handles reward_model flag in trainer builder
prompt_strategies/bradley_terry/ # Bradley-Terry prompt strategies
prompt_strategies/stepwise_supervised.py # PRM dataset strategy
utils/schemas/config.py # reward_model, process_reward_model config fields
```

View File

@@ -1,139 +0,0 @@
# SFT — Agent Reference
Supervised fine-tuning pipeline reference. For config templates and dataset format examples, see [getting-started.qmd](../getting-started.qmd) and [dataset-formats/](../dataset-formats/).
## Architecture
```
YAML Config → axolotl train config.yaml
1. Load base model (+ quantization if QLoRA/8-bit)
2. Apply adapter layers (LoRA/QLoRA) if configured
3. Load + tokenize dataset(s)
- Apply prompt template (chat_template / alpaca / custom)
- Mask inputs (train_on_inputs: false)
- Pack samples into sequences (sample_packing: true)
4. Training loop (HuggingFace Trainer)
- forward → loss → backward → optimizer step → lr scheduler step
5. Save model / adapter weights + tokenizer
Multi-GPU: FSDP or DeepSpeed shards model across GPUs automatically.
```
## Components Required
1. A YAML config — model, dataset(s), adapter settings, hyperparameters
2. A dataset — HuggingFace Hub, local JSONL/JSON/Parquet, or S3/GCS path
3. (Optional) A custom prompt strategy — for non-standard dataset formats
No external server processes needed (unlike GRPO which requires vLLM).
## Dataset Format Decision Tree
```
Is your data in chat/message format?
├─ YES: OpenAI message format (role/content)?
│ ├─ YES ──────────────────────> type: chat_template (recommended)
│ └─ NO (custom field names) ──> type: chat_template + message_property_mappings
└─ NO: Instruction/response pairs?
├─ YES ──> type: alpaca (instruction, input, output)
└─ NO: Raw text?
├─ YES with segments ─────> type: input_output (template-free masking)
└─ YES continuous ────────> type: completion (pretraining-style)
```
Full format specs: [dataset-formats/](../dataset-formats/)
## Model Size to Adapter Choice
| Model Size | LoRA | QLoRA (4-bit) | Full Fine-Tune | VRAM (approx) |
|-----------|------|---------------|----------------|---------------|
| 1-3B | Preferred | Low-budget option | Single GPU OK | 8-16 GB (LoRA) |
| 7-8B | Preferred | Good balance | Needs multi-GPU | 16-24 GB (LoRA) |
| 13-14B | Preferred | Good balance | Multi-GPU required | 24-40 GB (LoRA) |
| 30-70B | LoRA or QLoRA | Preferred for single GPU | Multi-node | 40-80 GB (QLoRA) |
## Hyperparameter Ranges
| Parameter | LoRA | QLoRA | Full FT |
|-----------|------|-------|---------|
| `learning_rate` | 1e-4 to 3e-4 | 1e-4 to 3e-4 | 1e-5 to 5e-5 |
| `lora_r` | 16-64 | 16-64 | N/A |
| `lora_alpha` | 1-2x `lora_r` | 1-2x `lora_r` | N/A |
| `micro_batch_size` | 2-8 | 2-4 | 1-2 |
| `gradient_accumulation_steps` | 2-8 | 4-16 | 4-16 |
| `num_epochs` | 1-3 | 1-3 | 1-3 |
| `optimizer` | `adamw_8bit` | `adamw_bnb_8bit` | `adamw_torch_fused` |
Effective batch = micro_batch * grad_accum * num_gpus. Lower LR for larger models.
## Healthy Training Indicators
| Metric | Healthy | Problem |
|--------|---------|---------|
| `train_loss` | Decreasing, starting ~2-4 for chat models | Flat or increasing from step 1 — data or LR issue |
| `eval_loss` | Decreasing, tracks train_loss | Increasing while train_loss decreases — overfitting |
| `grad_norm` | 0.1-10, relatively stable | Spikes >100 — instability. 0.0 — frozen weights |
| `learning_rate` | Follows scheduler curve | Flat or NaN — config issue |
Watch for: loss never decreasing (check `train_on_inputs`, dataset, LR), loss goes to 0 quickly (overfitting), eval_loss diverging (reduce epochs, add regularization). See [training_stability.qmd](../training_stability.qmd).
## Known Issues
| Issue | Fix |
|-------|-----|
| OOM during training | Reduce `micro_batch_size`, enable `gradient_checkpointing`, reduce `sequence_len` |
| `sample_packing` + SDPA + bf16 = 0.0 loss | Use `attn_implementation: flash_attention_2` or disable `sample_packing` |
| Missing chat template error | Set `chat_template: chatml` explicitly |
| Label masking wrong | Run `axolotl preprocess config.yaml --debug` and inspect labels |
| Loss NaN | Use `bf16: auto`, lower LR, check data for empty samples |
| Tokenizer pad token / infinite loss | Set `special_tokens: pad_token: "<\|end_of_text\|>"` |
| FSDP save hangs | Use `fsdp_state_dict_type: FULL_STATE_DICT` |
| DeepSpeed CheckpointError | Set `use_reentrant: true` in `gradient_checkpointing_kwargs` |
## Profiling
To profile training and identify optimization opportunities:
```yaml
# Profile steps 3-7 (after warmup/autotuning settles)
profiler_steps_start: 3
profiler_steps: 5
```
This produces `profiler_trace.json` (Chrome trace) and `snapshot.pickle` (memory snapshot) in `output_dir`.
View the Chrome trace at `chrome://tracing`.
To programmatically inspect the trace:
```bash
python scripts/analyze_profile.py output_dir/
```
The trace shows per-kernel CUDA times, memory allocations, and operator-level breakdown. Look for:
- **Large matmul kernels**: candidates for fusion or quantization
- **Memory copies (H2D/D2H)**: unnecessary data movement
- **Small frequent kernels**: candidates for kernel fusion
- **Gaps between kernels**: pipeline bubbles from CPU overhead
Full troubleshooting: [training_stability.qmd](../training_stability.qmd), [debugging.qmd](../debugging.qmd)
## File Map
```
src/axolotl/
cli/train.py # Entry point for `axolotl train`
cli/preprocess.py # Entry point for `axolotl preprocess`
core/builders/causal.py # HFCausalTrainerBuilder — wires config → SFT trainer
core/trainers/base.py # AxolotlTrainer — base trainer class
core/trainers/mixins/ # Packing, optimizer, scheduler, checkpoints
prompt_strategies/ # Format handlers: chat_template, alpaca, completion, input_output
utils/schemas/config.py # AxolotlInputConfig — main config schema
utils/schemas/datasets.py # SFTDataset, DatasetConfig
utils/schemas/peft.py # LoraConfig — LoRA parameters
integrations/liger/ # Liger kernel plugin
examples/llama-3/ # LoRA, QLoRA, full FT example configs
docs/getting-started.qmd # Quickstart with config templates
docs/optimizations.qmd # Flash attention, gradient checkpointing, sample packing
docs/multi-gpu.qmd # FSDP and DeepSpeed setup
```

View File

@@ -3,73 +3,31 @@ title: Attention
description: Supported attention modules in Axolotl
---
Axolotl routes attention via a single config field:
## SDP Attention
This is the default built-in attention in PyTorch.
```yaml
attn_implementation: <backend>
sdp_attention: true
```
`attn_implementation` is passed through to `transformers` verbatim (via
`model.config._attn_implementation`). Accepted values are the HF-native
backends, axolotl-registered backends, or a hub-kernel path.
For more details: [PyTorch docs](https://docs.pytorch.org/docs/stable/generated/torch.nn.functional.scaled_dot_product_attention.html)
## Backends
## Flash Attention 2
| `attn_implementation` | Description |
|---|---|
| `eager` | Plain PyTorch attention. No packing support. |
| `sdpa` | PyTorch `scaled_dot_product_attention`. No packing support. |
| `flash_attention_2` | Dao-AILab Flash Attention 2. |
| `flash_attention_3` | Dao-AILab Flash Attention 3 (Hopper+). |
| `flex_attention` | Torch Flex Attention (requires torch ≥ 2.6). |
| `xformers` | xFormers memory-efficient attention. |
| `sage` | SageAttention (QK int8 / PV fp16). |
| `s2` | Shifted-Sparse Attention (LLaMA only, FA2 under the hood). |
| `fp8` | torchao FP8 low-precision attention (requires SM90+, torch ≥ 2.11). Loaded as SDPA and patched post-load. |
| `kernels-community/flash-attn3` | HF hub FA3 kernel. |
| `kernels-community/sage-attention` | HF hub SageAttention kernel. |
| Other `<org>/<name>` path | Any hub-kernel path supported by `transformers`. |
Short-form aliases (`flash`, `fa2`, `flex`, `sdp`, etc.) are **not accepted** —
set the canonical name above.
### Capability flags
Axolotl derives three boolean capability flags from `attn_implementation` and
exposes them on the validated config:
- `cfg.attn_supports_packing` — backend supports varlen sample packing via
`position_ids`. Gates multipack patches and `sample_packing_drop_attention_mask`.
- `cfg.attn_uses_flash_lib` — backend needs the `flash_attn` (Dao-AILab)
monkeypatches (FA4 auto, LLaMA flash hijack, ring-FA).
- `cfg.attn_needs_dtype_cast` — backend requires fp16/bf16 embeddings
(everything except `eager` and `sdpa`).
These are **computed** — they cannot be overridden from YAML.
## Per-backend notes
### SDPA
Default PyTorch attention. See
[PyTorch docs](https://docs.pytorch.org/docs/stable/generated/torch.nn.functional.scaled_dot_product_attention.html).
Uses efficient kernels to compute attention.
```yaml
attn_implementation: sdpa
flash_attention: true
```
### Flash Attention
For more details: [Flash Attention](https://github.com/Dao-AILab/flash-attention/)
Axolotl supports FA2, FA3, and FA4. The best available version is used
automatically based on your installed packages and GPU.
### Nvidia
```yaml
attn_implementation: flash_attention_2 # or flash_attention_3
```
Requirements: Ampere, Ada, or Hopper GPUs
#### Flash Attention 2
Requirements: Ampere, Ada, or Hopper GPUs (Turing or lower not supported)
Note: For Turing GPUs or lower, please use other attention methods.
```bash
pip install flash-attn --no-build-isolation
@@ -77,8 +35,7 @@ pip install flash-attn --no-build-isolation
::: {.callout-tip}
If you get `undefined symbol` while training, ensure you installed PyTorch prior to Axolotl.
Alternatively, try reinstall or downgrade a version.
If you get `undefined symbol` while training, ensure you installed PyTorch prior to Axolotl. Alternatively, try reinstall or downgrade a version.
:::
@@ -89,66 +46,44 @@ Requirements: Hopper only and CUDA 12.8 (recommended)
```bash
git clone https://github.com/Dao-AILab/flash-attention.git
cd flash-attention/hopper
python setup.py install
```
#### Flash Attention 4
### AMD
Requirements: Hopper or Blackwell GPUs. Auto-applied when `attn_uses_flash_lib`
is true and FA4 is importable.
Requirements: ROCm 6.0 and above.
```bash
pip install flash-attn-4
```
See [Flash Attention AMD docs](https://github.com/Dao-AILab/flash-attention/tree/main?tab=readme-ov-file#amd-rocm-support).
Or from source:
## Flex Attention
```bash
git clone https://github.com/Dao-AILab/flash-attention.git
cd flash-attention/flash_attn/cute
pip install -e .
A flexible PyTorch API for attention used in combination with `torch.compile`.
# FA2's flash_attn package includes a cute/ stub that shadows FA4.
# Remove it so Python can find the real FA4 module:
rm -r $(python -c "import flash_attn; print(flash_attn.__path__[0])")/cute
```yaml
flex_attention: true
# recommended
torch_compile: true
```
::: {.callout-note}
**Hopper (SM90) users**: The backward kernel is not yet included in the pip package. To use FA4
for training on Hopper, install from source using the instructions above.
We recommend using latest stable version of PyTorch for best performance.
:::
::: {.callout-warning}
For more details: [PyTorch docs](https://pytorch.org/blog/flexattention/)
FA4 only supports head dimensions up to 128 (`d ≤ 128`). The DeepSeek shape `(192, 128)` is
also supported but only on Blackwell. Axolotl automatically detects incompatible head dimensions
and falls back to FA2/3.
## SageAttention
:::
### AMD
Requirements: ROCm 6.0 and above. See
[Flash Attention AMD docs](https://github.com/Dao-AILab/flash-attention/tree/main?tab=readme-ov-file#amd-rocm-support).
### Flex Attention
Attention kernels with QK Int8 and PV FP16 accumulator.
```yaml
attn_implementation: flex_attention
torch_compile: true # recommended
sage_attention: true
```
Requires torch ≥ 2.6. See [PyTorch docs](https://pytorch.org/blog/flexattention/).
### SageAttention
Requirements: Ampere, Ada, or Hopper GPUs.
```yaml
attn_implementation: sage
```
Requirements: Ampere, Ada, or Hopper GPUs
```bash
pip install sageattention==2.2.0 --no-build-isolation
@@ -156,85 +91,50 @@ pip install sageattention==2.2.0 --no-build-isolation
::: {.callout-warning}
Only LoRA/QLoRA recommended. Full finetuning has been observed to drop loss to 0. See
[GitHub Issue](https://github.com/thu-ml/SageAttention/issues/198).
Only LoRA/QLoRA recommended at the moment. We found loss drop to 0 for full finetuning. See [GitHub Issue](https://github.com/thu-ml/SageAttention/issues/198).
:::
For more details: [Sage Attention](https://github.com/thu-ml/SageAttention).
For more details: [Sage Attention](https://github.com/thu-ml/SageAttention)
### xFormers
::: {.callout-note}
We do not support SageAttention 3 at the moment. If you are interested on adding this or improving SageAttention implementation, please make an Issue.
:::
## xFormers
```yaml
attn_implementation: xformers
xformers_attention: true
```
::: {.callout-tip}
Recommended for Turing GPUs or below (e.g. Colab T4).
We recommend using with Turing GPUs or below (such as on Colab).
:::
### Shifted Sparse Attention
For more details: [xFormers](https://github.com/facebookresearch/xformers)
## Shifted Sparse Attention
::: {.callout-warning}
Planned for deprecation. Prefer one of the backends above.
We plan to deprecate this! If you use this feature, we recommend switching to methods above.
:::
Requirements: LLaMA model architecture. Loaded as FA2 under the hood and
patched to implement shifted-sparse attention. Does not support sample packing.
Requirements: LLaMA model architecture
```yaml
attn_implementation: s2
flash_attention: true
s2_attention: true
```
### FP8
::: {.callout-tip}
torchao low-precision attention. Loaded as SDPA and patched post-load.
Requirements: SM90+ (Hopper/Blackwell), PyTorch ≥ 2.11, torchao ≥ 0.17,
flash-attn with FA3. KV caching must be disabled.
```yaml
attn_implementation: fp8
```
### Hub kernels
```yaml
attn_implementation: kernels-community/flash-attn3
```
Passed through to `transformers`; axolotl does not install the kernel itself.
For recognized hub paths the capability flags are set automatically; for
arbitrary paths axolotl uses conservative defaults (`attn_supports_packing=False`,
`attn_uses_flash_lib=False`).
## Migrating from legacy boolean flags
The following legacy config fields are **deprecated** and will be removed in a
future release. Each emits a `DeprecationWarning` when set and is stripped from
the validated config.
| Legacy | Canonical |
|---|---|
| `flash_attention: true` | `attn_implementation: flash_attention_2` |
| `sdp_attention: true` | `attn_implementation: sdpa` |
| `xformers_attention: true` | `attn_implementation: xformers` |
| `flex_attention: true` | `attn_implementation: flex_attention` |
| `sage_attention: true` | `attn_implementation: sage` |
| `s2_attention: true` | `attn_implementation: s2` |
| `eager_attention: true` | `attn_implementation: eager` |
Combining `attn_implementation` with a legacy flag (e.g. `attn_implementation:
flash_attention_2` **and** `flash_attention: true`) raises — pick one.
::: {.callout-note}
Existing example configs under `examples/` still use the legacy flags. They
continue to work with a deprecation warning; they will be migrated in a
follow-up pass.
No sample packing support!
:::

View File

@@ -1,206 +0,0 @@
---
title: "Which Fine-Tuning Method Should I Use?"
description: "A decision guide for choosing the right fine-tuning method, adapter, and hardware configuration in Axolotl."
format:
html:
toc: true
toc-depth: 3
number-sections: true
execute:
enabled: false
---
## Overview {#sec-overview}
Axolotl supports four broad categories of fine-tuning, each suited to different data types, objectives, and resource constraints.
| Method | What It Does | Data You Need |
|--------|-------------|---------------|
| **Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT)** | Teaches the model to produce specific outputs given inputs | Input-output pairs (instructions, conversations, completions) |
| **Preference Learning (DPO/KTO/ORPO)** | Steers the model toward preferred outputs and away from dispreferred ones | Chosen/rejected response pairs (DPO, ORPO) or binary labels (KTO) |
| **Reinforcement Learning (GRPO)** | Optimizes the model against a reward signal through online generation | A reward function (code or model-based) and a prompt dataset |
| **Reward Modeling** | Trains a model to score responses, for use as a reward signal in RL | Preference pairs ranked by quality |
Each method is configured through a YAML file with `rl: <method>` (or omitted for SFT). All methods support LoRA, QLoRA, and full fine-tuning unless otherwise noted.
## Decision Tree {#sec-decision-tree}
Use the following flowchart to choose your method. Start at the top and follow the path that matches your situation.
```
Do you have a reward function (code-based or model-based)?
├── YES
│ └── Use GRPO (rl: grpo)
│ The model generates its own completions and learns from reward scores.
│ Best for: math, code, reasoning, tasks with verifiable answers.
│ See: rlhf.qmd#grpo
└── NO
Do you have preference pairs (chosen vs. rejected responses)?
├── YES
│ │
│ Are they paired (same prompt, one chosen, one rejected)?
│ ├── YES → Use DPO (rl: dpo)
│ │ Direct optimization without a separate reward model.
│ │ See: rlhf.qmd#dpo
│ │
│ └── NO (only binary good/bad labels)
│ └── Use KTO (rl: kto)
│ Works with unpaired preference data.
│ See: rlhf.qmd#kto
└── NO
Do you have input-output examples?
├── YES → Use SFT
│ The simplest and most common method.
│ See: getting-started.qmd
└── NO
└── You need to create training data first.
Consider generating preference pairs with an LLM judge,
or writing a reward function for GRPO.
```
::: {.callout-tip}
**When in doubt, start with SFT.** It is the most straightforward method and works well for most tasks. You can always move to preference learning or RL later to further refine behavior.
:::
### Method Comparison at a Glance
| Criterion | SFT | DPO | KTO | GRPO |
|-----------|-----|-----|-----|------|
| Data complexity | Low (input-output pairs) | Medium (preference pairs) | Medium (binary labels) | Low (prompts + reward code) |
| Compute cost | Low | Medium | Medium | High (requires vLLM server) |
| Learning signal | Supervised | Contrastive | Contrastive | Online reward |
| Online generation | No | No | No | Yes |
| Reward model needed | No | No | No | No (uses reward functions) |
| Best for | Task adaptation, instruction following | Safety, style alignment | Unpaired preference data | Reasoning, math, code |
::: {.callout-note}
**ORPO** is an alternative to DPO that combines SFT and preference optimization in a single training stage, removing the need for a separate SFT step. Configure with `rl: orpo`. See [rlhf.qmd](rlhf.qmd) for details.
:::
## Adapter Selection {#sec-adapter-selection}
Once you have chosen a method, decide how to apply the parameter updates. The three main options trade off VRAM usage against model quality.
### QLoRA
- **How it works**: The base model is loaded in 4-bit (NF4) quantization. Small low-rank adapter matrices are trained in higher precision on top.
- **VRAM savings**: Roughly 4x reduction in model memory compared to full fine-tuning.
- **Quality**: Slight degradation due to quantization noise, but often negligible for task-specific fine-tuning.
- **When to use**: When your GPU cannot fit the model in full precision, or when you want fast experimentation.
```yaml
adapter: qlora
load_in_4bit: true
lora_r: 32
lora_alpha: 64
lora_target_linear: true
```
### LoRA
- **How it works**: The base model is loaded at full precision (or 8-bit). Low-rank adapter matrices are trained alongside.
- **VRAM savings**: Roughly 2-3x reduction compared to full fine-tuning (model weights are frozen, only adapters + optimizer states for adapters are stored).
- **Quality**: Very close to full fine-tuning for most tasks, especially with higher rank values.
- **When to use**: When you have enough VRAM for the base model but not for full optimizer states.
```yaml
adapter: lora
lora_r: 32
lora_alpha: 64
lora_target_linear: true
```
::: {.callout-tip}
For GRPO training, LoRA is strongly recommended. The vLLM server needs to sync weights from the trainer, and LoRA sync (`trl.vllm_lora_sync: true`) is far more efficient than syncing full merged weights. See [vLLM Serving](vllm_serving.qmd) for details.
:::
### Full Fine-Tuning
- **How it works**: All model parameters are updated during training. No adapters.
- **VRAM savings**: None. Requires memory for model weights, gradients, and optimizer states (roughly 4x model size in bf16 with AdamW).
- **Quality**: Highest potential quality, especially for large distribution shifts.
- **When to use**: When you have ample GPU memory or multi-GPU setups, and need maximum performance. Also required for pre-training.
```yaml
# No adapter or load_in_* lines needed
micro_batch_size: 1
gradient_accumulation_steps: 16
```
### Quick Comparison
| | QLoRA | LoRA | Full |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trainable params | ~0.1-1% | ~0.1-1% | 100% |
| Model memory | ~25% of full | ~50-100% of full | 100% |
| Optimizer memory | Tiny (adapters only) | Tiny (adapters only) | 2x model size (AdamW) |
| Training speed | Slower (dequantization overhead) | Baseline | Faster per-step (no adapter overhead) |
| Inference | Merge or serve with adapter | Merge or serve with adapter | Direct |
| Multi-GPU required? | Rarely | For 13B+ models | For 7B+ models |
## Hardware Mapping {#sec-hardware-mapping}
The tables below provide approximate GPU memory requirements. Actual usage depends on context length, batch size, and optimizer choice.
### SFT / Preference Learning
| Model Size | QLoRA (4-bit) | LoRA (bf16) | Full (bf16 + AdamW) |
|------------|--------------|-------------|---------------------|
| 1-3B | 6-8 GB | 8-12 GB | 24-32 GB |
| 7-8B | 10-14 GB | 16-24 GB | 60-80 GB |
| 13-14B | 16-20 GB | 28-40 GB | 120+ GB |
| 30-34B | 24-32 GB | 64-80 GB | 2-4x 80 GB |
| 70-72B | 40-48 GB | 2x 80 GB | 4-8x 80 GB |
::: {.callout-important}
These estimates assume a short context length (512-2048 tokens) and micro_batch_size of 1-2. Longer sequences and larger batches increase memory significantly due to activations. Use [gradient checkpointing](gradient_checkpointing.qmd) to reduce activation memory at the cost of ~30% slower training.
:::
### GRPO (RL Training)
GRPO requires additional GPU(s) for the vLLM generation server. Plan for at least two GPUs: one for training, one for vLLM.
| Model Size | Training GPU (LoRA, bf16) | vLLM GPU | Total GPUs |
|------------|--------------------------|----------|------------|
| 0.5-3B | 1x 24 GB | 1x 24 GB | 2x 24 GB |
| 7-8B | 1x 80 GB | 1x 80 GB | 2x 80 GB |
| 13-14B | 1-2x 80 GB | 1-2x 80 GB | 2-4x 80 GB |
| 30-72B | 2-4x 80 GB (FSDP/DeepSpeed) | 2-4x 80 GB (tensor parallel) | 4-8x 80 GB |
::: {.callout-tip}
For single-GPU GRPO, use `vllm_mode: colocate` with `vllm_enable_sleep_mode: true`. The vLLM engine shares the GPU and offloads VRAM when not generating. This works for smaller models (up to ~3B on a 24 GB GPU) but is slower than the two-GPU server mode.
:::
### Multi-GPU Threshold
You need multi-GPU training when:
- **Full fine-tuning** of models 7B+ (use FSDP or DeepSpeed ZeRO)
- **LoRA** of models 30B+ (or 13B+ with long contexts)
- **GRPO** almost always (separate vLLM server), unless using colocate mode
See [Multi-GPU Training](multi-gpu.qmd) for FSDP and DeepSpeed configuration.
## Quick Links {#sec-quick-links}
| Method | Config Key | Documentation | Example Config |
|--------|-----------|---------------|----------------|
| SFT | *(default, no `rl:` key)* | [Getting Started](getting-started.qmd) | `examples/llama-3/lora-1b.yml` |
| DPO | `rl: dpo` | [RLHF - DPO](rlhf.qmd#dpo) | See rlhf.qmd |
| KTO | `rl: kto` | [RLHF - KTO](rlhf.qmd#kto) | See rlhf.qmd |
| ORPO | `rl: orpo` | [RLHF - ORPO](rlhf.qmd#orpo) | See rlhf.qmd |
| GRPO | `rl: grpo` | [RLHF - GRPO](rlhf.qmd#grpo), [vLLM Serving](vllm_serving.qmd) | See rlhf.qmd |
| Reward Modeling | `rl: reward_trainer` | [Reward Modelling](reward_modelling.qmd) | See reward_modelling.qmd |
### Related Guides
- [Configuration Reference](config-reference.qmd) -- Full list of all config options
- [Dataset Formats](dataset-formats) -- How to structure your training data
- [Optimizations](optimizations.qmd) -- Flash attention, gradient checkpointing, mixed precision
- [Multi-GPU Training](multi-gpu.qmd) -- FSDP and DeepSpeed setup
- [vLLM Serving](vllm_serving.qmd) -- Setting up vLLM for GRPO training

View File

@@ -210,8 +210,6 @@ axolotl lm-eval config.yml
Configuration options:
```yaml
lm_eval_model: # model to evaluate (local or hf path)
# List of tasks to evaluate
lm_eval_tasks:
- arc_challenge
@@ -220,7 +218,7 @@ lm_eval_batch_size: # Batch size for evaluation
output_dir: # Directory to save evaluation results
```
See [LM Eval Harness integration docs](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/custom_integrations.html#language-model-evaluation-harness-lm-eval) for full configuration details.
See [LM Eval Harness](https://github.com/EleutherAI/lm-evaluation-harness) for more details.
### delinearize-llama4

View File

@@ -108,14 +108,6 @@ datasets:
type: chat_template
```
::: {.callout-tip}
`chat_template_jinja` also accepts a file path to a `.jinja2` file instead of an inline string:
```yaml
chat_template_jinja: ./path/to/my_template.jinja2
```
:::
::: {.callout-important}
Please make sure that your `tokenizer.eos_token` is same as EOS (End-of-Sequence) token in template. Otherwise, set `eos_token` under `special_tokens: `.
:::
@@ -302,113 +294,6 @@ datasets:
It is not necessary to set both `message_field_training` and `message_field_training_detail` at once.
:::
#### Content parts with per-part training control
Instead of using character offsets with `train_detail`, you can split a message's content into a list of parts, each with its own training flag. This is useful when you want to mask specific sections of a response (e.g., mask reasoning but train on the answer).
```{.json filename="data.jsonl"}
{
"messages": [
{"role": "user", "content": [{"type": "text", "text": "What is 2+2?"}]},
{
"role": "assistant",
"content": [
{"type": "text", "text": "Let me think step by step...", "train": false},
{"type": "text", "text": " The answer is 4.", "train": true}
]
}
]
}
```
The configuration is the same as standard `chat_template` — no extra fields needed:
```yaml
datasets:
- path: ...
type: chat_template
roles_to_train: ["assistant"]
```
Each content part supports:
- `type`: `"text"` (required)
- `text`: the text value (also accepts `content` or `value` as the key)
- `train`: `true`/`false` (optional) — whether to train on this part
- `weight`: `0`/`1` (optional) — alternative to `train`
If a part has no `train` or `weight` flag, it inherits the turn-level training decision (from `roles_to_train`, `message_field_training`, or `train_on_inputs`).
::: {.callout-warning title="Whitespace at part boundaries"}
BPE tokenizers (used by Llama, Qwen, Mistral, GPT, etc.) prepend spaces to word tokens. For example, `" answer"` is a single token — the space is part of it. This means **where you place whitespace between content parts matters**:
**Split BEFORE spaces** (space goes with the next part):
```json
[
{"type": "text", "text": "Let me think...", "train": false},
{"type": "text", "text": " The answer is 4.", "train": true}
]
```
**DON'T put trailing spaces** on a part (the space merges with the next word into one token that straddles the boundary, and straddling tokens are masked):
```json
[
{"type": "text", "text": "Let me think... ", "train": false},
{"type": "text", "text": "The answer is 4.", "train": true}
]
```
In the bad example, `" The"` becomes a single token that spans both parts. Because it straddles the boundary, it is conservatively **masked** (not trained) — even though the second part has `train: true`.
**Newlines** typically merge with preceding punctuation (e.g., `":\n"` is one token). Keep newlines with the preceding part:
```json
[
{"type": "text", "text": "Thinking:\n", "train": false},
{"type": "text", "text": "The answer is 4.", "train": true}
]
```
Axolotl will log a warning if it detects trailing whitespace at a boundary between parts with different training flags.
:::
::: {.callout-note}
When all content parts in a message are strings, they are concatenated before being passed to the chat template. This means content parts work with **any** Jinja template — the template sees a plain string, and the per-part training flags are applied during tokenization.
:::
##### Per-part training on reasoning_content
For templates that support a separate `reasoning_content` field (e.g., `qwen3`), the same content-parts format works on `reasoning_content`. This is useful for masking incorrect reasoning steps while training on self-corrections:
```{.json filename="data.jsonl"}
{
"messages": [
{"role": "user", "content": [{"type": "text", "text": "What is 2+2?"}]},
{
"role": "assistant",
"reasoning_content": [
{"type": "text", "text": "Hmm maybe 2+2=5.", "train": false},
{"type": "text", "text": " Wait no, 2+2=4.", "train": true}
],
"content": [
{"type": "text", "text": "The answer is 4.", "train": true}
]
}
]
}
```
The `reasoning_content` and `content` fields are handled independently — each has its own token boundaries and per-part masking. No additional configuration is needed beyond what the template already requires.
::: {.callout-tip}
When `reasoning_content` is provided as a separate field, `split_thinking` is not needed — the reasoning is already separated from the content in the data.
:::
The same whitespace rules apply to `reasoning_content` parts as to `content` parts — split before spaces, keep newlines with the preceding part.
#### Reasoning split
(For Qwen3 template only) Enable reasoning split, where the reasoning is split from the content and passed as a separate field into the template.

View File

@@ -22,47 +22,90 @@ For `pretraining_dataset:` specifically, please refer to the [Pre-training secti
## Pre-training
Pre-training trains on raw text corpora with no input masking. The dataset format is simple:
When aiming to train on large corpora of text datasets, pre-training is your go-to choice. Due to the size of these datasets, downloading the entire-datasets before beginning training would be prohibitively time-consuming. Axolotl supports [streaming](https://huggingface.co/docs/datasets/en/stream) to only load batches into memory at a time.
A sample format for a pre-training dataset is as follows:
```json
{"text": "first row"}
{"text": "second row"}
...
```
Axolotl supports two approaches:
It is typically recommended to save your dataset as `.jsonl` due to its flexibility and simplicity.
### Streaming (large datasets)
Axolotl supports loading from a Hugging Face hub repo or from local files.
For large corpora that don't fit in memory, use `pretraining_dataset` with [streaming](../streaming.qmd). Data is tokenized on-demand during training.
### Pre-training from Hugging Face hub datasets
As an example, to train using a Hugging Face dataset `hf_org/name`, you can pass the following config:
```yaml
pretraining_dataset: hf_org/name
```
### Pre-training from local dataset files
Given a few corpus files: `A.jsonl`, `B.jsonl`, and `C.jsonl`, your config will look like the below:
```yaml
pretraining_dataset:
- path: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu
type: pretrain
text_column: text
split: train
- path: json
data_files:
- A.jsonl
- B.jsonl
- C.jsonl
```
::: {.callout-important}
Streaming requires `max_steps` in your config — Axolotl cannot infer the dataset size. One step = `sequence_len * micro_batch_size * gradient_accumulation_steps * num_gpus` tokens.
:::
While we recommend `.jsonl`, you can also use the other formats (`csv`, `parquet`, `arrow`, `SQL`, `Webdataset`) that are supported by [`Dataset.load_dataset`](https://huggingface.co/docs/datasets/loading#local-and-remote-files)
See [Streaming Datasets](../streaming.qmd) for full configuration details.
### Pre-training without streaming
### Non-streaming (smaller datasets)
In the case that the dataset is small and can be loaded entirely into memory, another approach to running pre-training is to use the `completion` format. This would mean that the entire dataset is pre-tokenized instead of on-demand in streaming.
For datasets that fit in memory, use `type: completion` under `datasets:`. The entire dataset is pre-tokenized before training, which can be done on a CPU-only machine.
One benefit of this is that the tokenization can be performed separately on a CPU-only machine, and then transferred to a GPU machine for training to save costs.
From Hugging Face:
```yaml
datasets:
- path: my_corpus
- path: hf_org/name
type: completion
```
::: {.callout-note}
With `completion`, texts exceeding `sequence_len` are split into multiple samples automatically.
From local files:
```yaml
datasets:
- path: A.jsonl
type: completion
- path: B.jsonl
type: completion
```
::: {.callout-important}
For `completion` only, Axolotl would split texts if it exceeds the context length into multiple smaller prompts. If you are interested in having this for `pretraining_dataset` too, please let us know or help make a PR!
:::
### Pre-training dataset configuration tips
#### Setting max_steps
When using streaming for large datasets, Axolotl does not know in advance how large the dataset is and does not know when to stop.
Therefore, it is necessary to set `max_steps: int` in your config for pre-training to run, so that Axolotl knows when to stop training.
One step is equal to `sequence_len * micro_batch_size * gradient_accumulation_steps * total_num_gpus` tokens.
#### Group_by_length
It is recommended to leave this off if downloading from Hugging Face hub as it would download the entire dataset which can be very large.
### Reference
Please see docs [here](pretraining.qmd).
## Supervised fine-tuning (SFT)
Supervised fine-tuning is the process of training models to respond to an instruction or chat input.

View File

@@ -4,9 +4,29 @@ description: Data format for a pre-training completion task.
order: 1
---
::: {.callout-note}
Pre-training documentation has been consolidated:
For pretraining, there is no prompt template or roles. The only required field is `text`:
```{.json filename="data.jsonl"}
{"text": "first row"}
{"text": "second row"}
...
```
:::{.callout-note}
### Streaming is recommended for large datasets
Axolotl usually loads the entire dataset into memory. This will be challenging for large datasets. Use the following config to enable streaming:
```{.yaml filename="config.yaml"}
pretraining_dataset:
- name:
path:
split:
text_column: # column in dataset with the data, usually `text`
type: pretrain
trust_remote_code:
skip: # number of rows of data to skip over from the beginning
```
- **Streaming pretraining** (large datasets): See [Streaming Datasets](../streaming.qmd#pretraining-with-streaming)
- **Non-streaming pretraining** (`type: completion`): See [Dataset Formats](index.qmd#pre-training)
:::

View File

@@ -6,10 +6,6 @@ description: How to debug Axolotl
This document provides some tips and tricks for debugging Axolotl. It also provides an example configuration for debugging with VSCode. A good debugging setup is essential to understanding how Axolotl code works behind the scenes.
::: {.callout-tip}
For training-specific debugging (loss spikes, NaN gradients, OOM errors, RL training stability), see [Training Stability & Debugging](training_stability.qmd).
:::
## Table of Contents
- [General Tips](#general-tips)
@@ -76,9 +72,8 @@ datasets:
Make sure you have an [editable install](https://setuptools.pypa.io/en/latest/userguide/development_mode.html) of Axolotl, which ensures that changes you make to the code are reflected at runtime. Run the following commands from the root of this project:
```bash
export UV_TORCH_BACKEND=cu128 # or cu130
uv sync --extra flash-attn --extra deepspeed --group dev --group test
source .venv/bin/activate
pip3 install packaging
pip3 install --no-build-isolation -e '.[flash-attn,deepspeed]'
```
#### Remote Hosts
@@ -90,7 +85,7 @@ If you developing on a remote host, you can easily use VSCode to debug remotely.
The easiest way to get started is to modify the [.vscode/launch.json](../.vscode/launch.json) file in this project. This is just an example configuration, so you may need to modify or copy it to suit your needs.
For example, to mimic the command `cd devtools && CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0 axolotl train dev_chat_template.yml`, you would use the below configuration[^1]. Note that we add additional flags that override the axolotl config and incorporate the tips above (see the comments). We also set the working directory to `devtools` and set the `env` variable `HF_HOME` to a temporary folder that is later partially deleted. This is because we want to delete the HF dataset cache before each run in order to ensure that the data preprocessing code is run from scratch.
For example, to mimic the command `cd devtools && CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0 accelerate launch -m axolotl.cli.train dev_chat_template.yml`, you would use the below configuration[^1]. Note that we add additional flags that override the axolotl config and incorporate the tips above (see the comments). We also set the working directory to `devtools` and set the `env` variable `HF_HOME` to a temporary folder that is later partially deleted. This is because we want to delete the HF dataset cache before each run in order to ensure that the data preprocessing code is run from scratch.
```json
// .vscode/launch.json
@@ -209,17 +204,17 @@ cd axolotl
Next, run the desired docker image and mount the current directory. Below is a docker command you can run to do this:[^2]
```bash
docker run --privileged --gpus '"all"' --shm-size 10g --rm -it --name axolotl --ipc=host --ulimit memlock=-1 --ulimit stack=67108864 --mount type=bind,src="${PWD}",target=/workspace/axolotl -v ${HOME}/.cache/huggingface:/root/.cache/huggingface axolotlai/axolotl-uv:main-latest
docker run --privileged --gpus '"all"' --shm-size 10g --rm -it --name axolotl --ipc=host --ulimit memlock=-1 --ulimit stack=67108864 --mount type=bind,src="${PWD}",target=/workspace/axolotl -v ${HOME}/.cache/huggingface:/root/.cache/huggingface axolotlai/axolotl:main-py3.10-cu118-2.0.1
```
>[!Tip]
> To understand which containers are available, see the [Docker section of the README](../README.md#docker) and the [DockerHub repo](https://hub.docker.com/r/axolotlai/axolotl/tags). For details of how the Docker containers are built, see axolotl's [Docker CI builds](../.github/workflows/main.yml).
You will now be in the container. Next, install Axolotl with dev dependencies:
You will now be in the container. Next, perform an editable install of Axolotl:
```bash
uv sync --extra flash-attn --extra deepspeed --group dev --group test
source .venv/bin/activate
pip3 install packaging
pip3 install --no-build-isolation -e '.[flash-attn,deepspeed]'
```
### Attach To Container
@@ -247,6 +242,6 @@ style="border-radius: 10px; display: block; margin: auto;" width="560" height="3
</div>
<br>
[^1]: The VSCode config uses `accelerate.commands.launch` as the Python module entry point, which is what `axolotl train` invokes under the hood.
[^1]: The config actually mimics the command `CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0 python -m accelerate.commands.launch -m axolotl.cli.train devtools/chat_template.yml`, but this is the same thing.
[^2]: Many of the below flags are recommended best practices by Nvidia when using nvidia-container-toolkit. You can read more about these flags [here](https://docs.nvidia.com/deeplearning/frameworks/user-guide/index.html).

View File

@@ -6,30 +6,23 @@ format:
toc-depth: 4
---
This section describes the different Docker images that are released by AxolotlAI at
[Docker Hub](https://hub.docker.com/u/axolotlai).
This section describes the different Docker images that are released by AxolotlAI at [Docker Hub](https://hub.docker.com/u/axolotlai).
::: {.callout-important}
For Blackwell GPUs, please use the tags with PyTorch 2.9.1 and CUDA 12.8.
:::
::: {.callout-tip}
Each image below is available in a **uv variant** that uses [uv](https://docs.astral.sh/uv/) with
a relocatable venv (`/workspace/axolotl-venv`) instead of Miniconda + pip. Append `-uv` to the image name
(e.g. `axolotlai/axolotl-base-uv`). Tags follow the same format. We recommend the uv images for new deployments.
For Blackwell GPUs, please use the tags with PyTorch 2.7.1 and CUDA 12.8.
:::
## Base
The base image is the most minimal image that can install Axolotl. It is based on the `nvidia/cuda` image.
It includes python, torch, git, git-lfs, awscli, pydantic, and more.
The base image is the most minimal image that can install Axolotl. It is based on the `nvidia/cuda` image. It includes python, torch, git, git-lfs, awscli, pydantic, and more.
#### Image
| Variant | Image | Docker Hub |
|---------|-------|------------|
| pip | `axolotlai/axolotl-base` | [Link](https://hub.docker.com/r/axolotlai/axolotl-base) |
| uv | `axolotlai/axolotl-base-uv` | [Link](https://hub.docker.com/r/axolotlai/axolotl-base-uv) |
```
axolotlai/axolotl-base
```
Link: [Docker Hub](https://hub.docker.com/r/axolotlai/axolotl-base)
#### Tags format
@@ -39,10 +32,8 @@ main-base-py{python_version}-cu{cuda_version}-{pytorch_version}
Tags examples:
- `main-base-py3.11-cu128-2.8.0`
- `main-base-py3.11-cu128-2.9.1`
- `main-base-py3.12-cu128-2.10.0`
- `main-base-py3.12-cu130-2.9.1`
- `main-base-py3.12-cu130-2.10.0`
## Main
@@ -50,10 +41,11 @@ The main image is the image that is used to run Axolotl. It is based on the `axo
#### Image
| Variant | Image | Docker Hub |
|---------|-------|------------|
| pip | `axolotlai/axolotl` | [Link](https://hub.docker.com/r/axolotlai/axolotl) |
| uv | `axolotlai/axolotl-uv` | [Link](https://hub.docker.com/r/axolotlai/axolotl-uv) |
```
axolotlai/axolotl
```
Link: [Docker Hub](https://hub.docker.com/r/axolotlai/axolotl)
#### Tags format {#sec-main-tags}
@@ -61,7 +53,7 @@ The main image is the image that is used to run Axolotl. It is based on the `axo
# on push to main
main-py{python_version}-cu{cuda_version}-{pytorch_version}
# latest main (currently torch 2.9.1, python 3.11, cuda 12.8)
# latest main (currently torch 2.6.0, python 3.11, cuda 12.4)
main-latest
# nightly build
@@ -79,12 +71,11 @@ There may be some extra tags appended to the image, like `-vllm` which installs
Tags examples:
- `main-py3.11-cu128-2.8.0`
- `main-py3.11-cu128-2.9.1`
- `main-py3.12-cu128-2.10.0`
- `main-py3.12-cu130-2.9.1`
- `main-py3.12-cu130-2.10.0`
- `main-latest`
- `main-20260315-py3.11-cu128-2.9.1`
- `main-20250303-py3.11-cu124-2.6.0`
- `main-20250303-py3.11-cu126-2.6.0`
- `0.12.0`
## Cloud
@@ -99,10 +90,11 @@ Jupyter lab is run by default. Set `JUPYTER_DISABLE=1` in the environment variab
#### Image
| Variant | Image | Docker Hub |
|---------|-------|------------|
| pip | `axolotlai/axolotl-cloud` | [Link](https://hub.docker.com/r/axolotlai/axolotl-cloud) |
| uv | `axolotlai/axolotl-cloud-uv` | [Link](https://hub.docker.com/r/axolotlai/axolotl-cloud-uv) |
```
axolotlai/axolotl-cloud
```
Link: [Docker Hub](https://hub.docker.com/r/axolotlai/axolotl-cloud)
#### Tags format

View File

@@ -1,556 +0,0 @@
---
title: "EBFT Training"
description: "Energy-Based Fine-Tuning uses feature-matching rewards from internal representations to train language models without external reward functions."
order: 9
back-to-top-navigation: true
toc: true
toc-expand: 2
toc-depth: 4
---
## Overview
Energy-Based Fine-Tuning (EBFT) is a training method that optimizes language models by matching the **internal feature representations** of generated text to those of ground-truth completions. Instead of relying on external reward models or hand-crafted reward functions, EBFT extracts hidden states from intermediate layers of a frozen copy of the model and uses cosine similarity between generated and reference features as the reward signal.
Paper: ["Matching Features, Not Tokens: Energy-Based Fine-Tuning of Language Models"](https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.12248) (Jelassi et al., 2026)
### How EBFT Differs from Other RL Methods
| Method | Reward Signal | Requires | Best For |
|--------|--------------|----------|----------|
| **GRPO** | External reward function(s) | Custom reward code or reward model | Tasks with verifiable answers (math, code) |
| **DPO** | Preference pairs (chosen vs rejected) | Paired preference data | Alignment with human preferences |
| **EBFT** | Feature similarity to ground truth | Ground-truth completions | Any task with reference outputs |
EBFT's key advantage is that it needs only ground-truth completions -- no reward engineering, no preference annotation, and no reward model training. The model's own internal representations serve as the reward signal. This makes it particularly effective for:
- Code generation (match features of known-good solutions)
- Instruction following with reference outputs
- Continual pretraining on unstructured text (strided mode)
- Multi-turn dialogue with reference conversations
### Reward Formulation
The EBFT reward for each generated completion is:
```
reward = alignment_coef * cosine_similarity(gen_features, gt_features)
- diversity_coef * mean_pairwise_similarity(gen_features)
```
- **Alignment**: How closely the generated output's internal representations match the ground truth. Higher is better.
- **Diversity**: Penalizes generated samples that are too similar to each other (prevents mode collapse). Lower is better.
- **CFM loss** (Cross-Feature Matching): Tracks `||mean(gen_features) - gt_features||^2` as a diagnostic. This is the quantity that EBFT ultimately minimizes.
## Modes
EBFT supports three operational modes, each suited to different use cases.
### Structured Mode (Sync)
Uses vLLM on a separate GPU for generation, with sequential generate-score-train steps. This is the simplest mode and recommended for getting started.
```
GPU 0: vLLM Server (generates completions, receives weight syncs)
GPU 1: Trainer (feature extraction, reward computation, GRPO training)
```
**When to use**: Standard instruction-following or QA datasets where you have prompt/completion pairs. Requires 2 GPUs.
### Structured Mode (Async)
Same architecture as sync, but overlaps generation of the next batch with training on the current batch. Faster throughput at the cost of slightly stale weights during generation.
**When to use**: Same data as sync mode, but when you want faster training and can tolerate weight staleness (controlled by `vllm_sync_interval`).
### Strided Mode
Runs entirely on a single GPU with no vLLM dependency. Places anchor points throughout a document and generates short rollouts at each anchor using block-parallel attention patterns.
```
Single GPU: Base model + LoRA adapter
- Strided block-parallel generation (flex_attention)
- Feature extraction via disable_adapter()
- No vLLM needed
```
**When to use**: Unstructured text data (raw code, prose, documents) where there is no natural prompt/completion split. Also works with structured data that includes prompt boundaries. Requires only 1 GPU.
## Quick Start
### Structured Mode
This minimal example fine-tunes Qwen2-0.5B on code data using EBFT with vLLM generation.
**Step 1**: Create a config file `ebft_quickstart.yaml`:
```yaml
base_model: Qwen/Qwen2-0.5B-Instruct
rl: ebft
ebft:
feature_layers: [0.25, 0.5, 0.75]
embed_method: last_token
alignment_coef: 1.0
diversity_coef: 1.0
trl:
num_generations: 4
max_completion_length: 256
temperature: 0.7
use_vllm: true
vllm_server_host: 0.0.0.0
vllm_server_port: 8000
vllm_lora_sync: true
vllm_sync_interval: 3
use_data_producer: true
async_prefetch: false
scale_rewards: true
loss_type: grpo
vllm:
gpu_memory_utilization: 0.5
max_model_len: 1024
datasets:
- path: nvidia/OpenCodeInstruct
type: ebft_opencode.transform
split: train[:500]
# Standard training settings (see getting-started.qmd for details)
adapter: lora
lora_r: 16
lora_alpha: 32
lora_target_linear: true
sequence_len: 1024
micro_batch_size: 2
gradient_accumulation_steps: 4
max_steps: 20
learning_rate: 5.0e-6
bf16: auto
attn_implementation: flash_attention_2
gradient_checkpointing: true
output_dir: ./outputs/ebft-quickstart
```
**Step 2**: Start vLLM on GPU 0:
```bash
CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0 axolotl vllm-serve ebft_quickstart.yaml
```
**Step 3**: Wait approximately 30 seconds for vLLM to initialize, then start training on GPU 1:
```bash
CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=1 axolotl train ebft_quickstart.yaml
```
::: {.callout-important}
The `micro_batch_size` must be divisible by `num_generations`. For example, with `num_generations: 4`, valid values are 4, 8, 12, etc.
:::
### Dataset Format
Structured mode datasets must produce two fields after the transform:
- `prompt`: Either a string or a list of chat messages (`[{"role": "user", "content": "..."}]`)
- `ground_truth`: A string containing the reference completion
Example raw dataset row:
```json
{
"input": "Write a function to compute fibonacci numbers.",
"output": "def fibonacci(n):\n if n <= 1:\n return n\n return fibonacci(n-1) + fibonacci(n-2)"
}
```
The `ebft_opencode.transform` converts this to the required `{prompt, ground_truth}` format automatically.
## Feature Extraction
EBFT extracts hidden states from intermediate transformer layers and pools them into per-sequence embeddings. These embeddings are compared between generated and ground-truth completions to compute rewards.
### Feature Layers
The `feature_layers` parameter specifies which layers to extract, as fractions of total model depth:
```yaml
ebft:
feature_layers: [0.25, 0.5, 0.75] # Quarter, middle, three-quarter depth
```
For a 32-layer model, this extracts layers 8, 16, and 24. The hidden states from all selected layers are concatenated along the feature dimension, producing embeddings of size `num_layers * hidden_dim`.
::: {.callout-tip}
Using multiple layers captures both low-level syntactic features (early layers) and high-level semantic features (later layers). The default `[0.25, 0.5, 0.75]` works well across model sizes.
:::
### Embed Methods
The `embed_method` controls how per-token hidden states are pooled into a single vector per sequence:
| Method | Description | Output Shape | Notes |
|--------|-------------|-------------|-------|
| `last_token` | Hidden state at the last non-padding token | `(B, D)` | Default. Good for autoregressive models where the last token summarizes the sequence. |
| `mean_pooling` | Mean of all non-padding token states | `(B, D)` | Considers the entire sequence equally. |
| `completion_mean` | Mean over completion tokens only (excludes prompt) | `(B, D)` | Focuses reward signal on generated content. Requires prompt length information. |
| `concat` | Concatenation of states at 25%, 50%, 75% positions | `(B, 3*D)` | Captures positional structure. Higher dimensional. |
```yaml
ebft:
embed_method: completion_mean # Focus on completion features
```
### SVD Whitening
Whitening decorrelates the feature dimensions so that no single direction dominates the feature-matching loss. This is computed via SVD on the generated embeddings, with the same transform applied to the ground-truth embeddings.
```yaml
ebft:
use_whitening: true
```
When whitening is enabled, the reward computation applies a whitening matrix `W = U @ diag(1/S) @ U^T` derived from the SVD of generated embeddings. This ensures all feature dimensions contribute equally to the alignment reward.
::: {.callout-note}
Singular values scale with `sqrt(batch_size)`, so reward magnitudes are batch-size dependent. This is acceptable because the number of samples per prompt (`n_samples_per_prompt` or `num_generations`) is fixed during training.
:::
### Alignment and Diversity Coefficients
The two reward components are weighted by coefficients:
```yaml
ebft:
alignment_coef: 1.0 # Weight for cosine similarity with ground truth
diversity_coef: 1.0 # Weight for pairwise similarity penalty
```
Both values are scaled by 2 internally (per paper equation 7). The final reward per sample is:
```
reward_j = 2 * alignment_coef * cos(gen_j, gt)
- 2 * diversity_coef * (1/(n-1)) * sum_{j' != j} dot(gen_j, gen_j')
```
Setting `diversity_coef: 0.0` disables the diversity penalty entirely, which may be appropriate when `num_generations` is small (e.g., 2).
## Strided Mode
Strided mode is designed for training on unstructured text data where there is no natural prompt/completion boundary. Instead of generating full completions with vLLM, it places **anchor points** at regular intervals throughout each document and generates short rollouts at each anchor using block-parallel attention.
### How Block-Parallel Generation Works
Given a document of length `S` tokens:
1. **Anchor placement**: Starting at position `anchor_offset`, place anchors every `stride` tokens. Each anchor defines a block.
2. **Context window**: Each block sees `context_length` tokens of preceding context from the original document.
3. **Generation**: At each anchor, generate `generate_max_len` tokens autoregressively, conditioned only on the context window.
4. **Parallelism**: All blocks are processed in a single forward pass using a specialized attention mask that prevents information leakage between blocks.
```
Document: [tok0, tok1, ..., tok_S]
| | |
anchor_0 anchor_1 anchor_2
| | |
[ctx][gen] [ctx][gen] [ctx][gen]
```
The attention mask ensures:
- Prompt tokens use standard causal attention
- Each generated block attends to its own context window and its own preceding generated tokens
- Blocks do not attend to each other's generated tokens
When `flex_attention` is available (PyTorch >= 2.5), the mask is compiled into efficient fused kernels. Otherwise, a dense 4D attention mask is used as a fallback.
### Strided Mode Configuration
```yaml
base_model: meta-llama/Llama-3.2-1B
rl: ebft
ebft:
mode: strided
stride: 8 # Tokens between anchor points
context_length: 8 # Context window per block
generate_max_len: 8 # Tokens to generate per block
n_samples_per_prompt: 4 # Independent rollouts per document
temperature: 0.6
feature_layers: [0.25, 0.5, 0.75]
embed_method: last_token
use_whitening: true
alignment_coef: 1.0
diversity_coef: 1.0
rl_coef: 1.0 # RL policy gradient loss weight
ce_coef: 0.03 # Cross-entropy loss on GT tokens
advantage_estimator: rloo # rloo, group_norm, or reinforce
min_completion_prefix: 8 # Skip anchors in prompt region
datasets:
- path: nvidia/OpenCodeInstruct
type: ebft_strided_structured.transform
split: train[:1%]
sequence_len: 2048
micro_batch_size: 1
gradient_accumulation_steps: 2
adapter: lora
lora_r: 16
lora_alpha: 32
lora_target_linear: true
bf16: auto
attn_implementation: flex_attention
gradient_checkpointing: true
gradient_checkpointing_kwargs:
use_reentrant: true # Required with flex_attention
```
Run with a single command (no vLLM needed):
```bash
CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0 axolotl train config.yaml
```
### Advantage Estimators
Strided mode supports three advantage estimation methods:
| Estimator | Formula | Requirements |
|-----------|---------|-------------|
| `rloo` | Leave-one-out baseline: `reward_j - mean(rewards_{-j})` | `n_samples_per_prompt >= 2` |
| `group_norm` | Group normalization: `(reward_j - mean) / std` | `n_samples_per_prompt >= 2` |
| `reinforce` | Raw reward as advantage (no baseline) | Works with `n_samples_per_prompt = 1` |
::: {.callout-warning}
When `n_samples_per_prompt: 1`, the trainer automatically falls back to `reinforce` and disables the diversity penalty (which requires multiple samples).
:::
### Strided Mode Constraints
- **`flex_attention: true`** is strongly recommended. Without it, dense 4D masks consume significantly more memory.
- **`torch_compile: true`** must NOT be set. `flex_attention` compiles its own kernels internally; adding `torch_compile` causes conflicts and OOM.
- **Gradient checkpointing** must use `use_reentrant: true`. Non-reentrant checkpointing causes `CheckpointError` with `flex_attention` block masks.
- **`activation_offloading`** is incompatible with `flex_attention`.
### Cross-Entropy Loss
Strided mode supports an optional cross-entropy loss term on ground-truth tokens. This acts as a regularizer to prevent the model from drifting too far from the original distribution:
```yaml
ebft:
ce_coef: 0.03 # Small CE coefficient
rl_coef: 1.0 # RL loss coefficient
```
The total loss is `rl_coef * rl_loss + ce_coef * ce_loss`. For structured mode, `ce_coef` is typically `0.0` since vLLM generation provides sufficient learning signal.
## Dataset Formats
EBFT provides several built-in dataset transforms in `src/axolotl/prompt_strategies/ebft/`.
### Built-In Transforms
| Transform | Input Format | Output Fields | Use Case |
|-----------|-------------|---------------|----------|
| `ebft_opencode.transform` | `{input, output}` | `{prompt, ground_truth}` | OpenCodeInstruct, structured QA |
| `ebft_strided_structured.transform` | `{input, output}` | `{input_ids, labels, prompt_length}` | Strided mode with structured data |
| `ebft_strided_chat.transform` | `{messages: [...]}` | `{input_ids, labels, prompt_length}` | Strided mode with chat data |
| `ebft_chat_multiturn.transform` | `{messages: [...]}` | `{prompt, ground_truth, remaining_turns}` | Multi-turn: first-turn target |
| `ebft_chat_multiturn.transform_last_turn` | `{messages: [...]}` | `{prompt, ground_truth}` | Multi-turn: last-turn target |
| `ebft_chat_multiturn.transform_all_turns` | `{messages: [...]}` | `{prompt[], ground_truth[]}` | Multi-turn: one example per turn |
| `ebft_reasoning.transform` | `{messages: [...]}` (with `<think>`) | `{prompt, ground_truth}` | Reasoning/thinking datasets |
### Structured Mode Datasets
For structured (sync/async) mode, the transform must produce `prompt` and `ground_truth` fields:
```yaml
datasets:
- path: nvidia/OpenCodeInstruct
type: ebft_opencode.transform
split: train[:500]
```
### Multi-Turn Datasets
Multi-turn transforms extract conversation data for sequential rollout. The `transform` variant targets the first assistant turn, while `transform_last_turn` targets the final turn:
```yaml
datasets:
- path: your/multiturn-dataset
type: ebft_chat_multiturn.transform
```
When `remaining_turns` is present in the dataset output, the trainer performs sequential rollouts: it generates the first assistant turn with vLLM, then continues generating subsequent turns by building up the conversation history.
### Strided Mode Datasets
Strided transforms tokenize the full document and produce `input_ids`, `labels`, and `prompt_length`:
```yaml
datasets:
- path: nvidia/OpenCodeInstruct
type: ebft_strided_structured.transform
split: train[:1%]
```
### Custom Transforms
To use your own dataset format, write a transform function:
```python
def transform(cfg, **kwargs):
def transform_fn(example, tokenizer=None):
return {
"prompt": [{"role": "user", "content": example["question"]}],
"ground_truth": example["answer"],
}
return transform_fn, {"remove_columns": "__all__"}
```
The `"__all__"` sentinel removes all original dataset columns after the mapping step. Reference this transform in your config:
```yaml
datasets:
- path: your/dataset
type: your_module.transform
```
## Configuration Reference
### Common Parameters (All Modes)
These parameters are set under the `ebft:` key in the YAML config.
| Parameter | Type | Default | Description |
|-----------|------|---------|-------------|
| `mode` | `"structured"` or `"strided"` | `"structured"` | EBFT operating mode |
| `feature_layers` | `list[float]` | `[0.25, 0.5, 0.75]` | Fractional layer depths for feature extraction |
| `embed_method` | `string` | `"last_token"` | Pooling method: `last_token`, `mean_pooling`, `completion_mean`, or `concat` |
| `use_whitening` | `bool` | `false` | Apply SVD whitening to feature embeddings before reward computation |
| `alignment_coef` | `float` | `1.0` | Weight for alignment reward (cosine similarity with ground truth) |
| `diversity_coef` | `float` | `1.0` | Weight for diversity penalty (pairwise dot product between samples) |
| `ce_coef` | `float` | `0.0` | Cross-entropy loss coefficient on ground-truth tokens |
| `adaptive_max_tokens` | `bool` | `true` | Dynamically set vLLM `max_tokens` based on ground-truth length (structured mode) |
| `gt_length_multiplier` | `float` | `1.5` | Multiplier for ground-truth token count when computing adaptive max tokens (min 0.1) |
### Strided Mode Parameters
These additional parameters apply only when `mode: strided`.
| Parameter | Type | Default | Description |
|-----------|------|---------|-------------|
| `stride` | `int` | `8` | Number of tokens between anchor points (must be >= 1) |
| `context_length` | `int` | `8` | Context window size for each generated block (must be >= 1) |
| `generate_max_len` | `int` | `8` | Number of tokens to generate per block (must be >= 1) |
| `n_samples_per_prompt` | `int` | `4` | Number of independent rollouts per document (must be >= 1) |
| `temperature` | `float` | `0.6` | Sampling temperature for strided generation |
| `top_p` | `float` | `1.0` | Top-p nucleus sampling threshold |
| `rl_coef` | `float` | `1.0` | RL policy gradient loss coefficient |
| `advantage_estimator` | `string` | `"rloo"` | Advantage estimation method: `rloo`, `group_norm`, or `reinforce` |
| `min_completion_prefix` | `int` | `0` | Minimum tokens into the completion span before placing anchors |
### Structured Mode TRL Parameters
These are set under the `trl:` key and control the GRPO training loop.
| Parameter | Type | Default | Description |
|-----------|------|---------|-------------|
| `num_generations` | `int` | -- | Number of completions generated per prompt |
| `max_completion_length` | `int` | -- | Maximum tokens per generated completion |
| `temperature` | `float` | `0.7` | Sampling temperature for vLLM generation |
| `use_vllm` | `bool` | -- | Enable vLLM generation backend |
| `vllm_lora_sync` | `bool` | `false` | Sync LoRA adapters via filesystem (recommended) |
| `vllm_sync_interval` | `int` | `1` | Steps between weight syncs to vLLM |
| `use_data_producer` | `bool` | -- | Required for sync mode with LoRA sync |
| `async_prefetch` | `bool` | `false` | Enable async generation (overlaps with training) |
| `streaming_partial_batch` | `bool` | `false` | Score groups incrementally (async mode) |
| `skip_zero_advantage_batches` | `bool` | `false` | Skip micro-batches where all advantages are zero |
| `scale_rewards` | `bool` | -- | Normalize rewards within each prompt group |
| `loss_type` | `string` | `"grpo"` | Loss type for policy optimization |
| `epsilon` | `float` | `0.2` | Clipping parameter for importance sampling |
### Stop Tokens
vLLM needs explicit stop token IDs for generation. Common configurations:
```yaml
trl:
generation_kwargs:
stop_token_ids: [151645, 151643] # Qwen: <|im_end|>, <|endoftext|>
```
### Multi-Turn Chat Settings
For multi-turn conversations with Qwen3.5, disable thinking mode to prevent `<think>` tags in completions:
```yaml
trl:
chat_template_kwargs:
enable_thinking: false
```
## Monitoring
### Key Metrics
EBFT logs several custom metrics to wandb and the training console. Here is what to watch for:
| Metric | Healthy Range | Interpretation |
|--------|--------------|----------------|
| `ebft/alignment` | 0.3 -- 0.9, trending upward | Cosine similarity between generated and ground-truth features. Higher means the model is learning to produce representations that match the reference. |
| `ebft/diversity` | 0.01 -- 0.1 | Mean pairwise similarity between different generations for the same prompt. Values above 1.0 indicate mode collapse. |
| `ebft/cfm_loss` | Below 10, trending downward | Cross-Feature Matching loss. This is the core quantity being minimized. Consistently above 100 indicates instability. |
| `ebft/reward` | Trending upward (may start negative) | Combined reward signal. If stuck at -1.0, the diversity penalty is dominating alignment. |
| `grad_norm` | 0.1 -- 3.0 | Gradient magnitude. Values of 0.0 indicate zero-advantage skip (normal). Values above 10 suggest instability. |
| `entropy` | 0.05 -- 0.5 | Policy entropy. Values below 0.01 suggest mode collapse. |
| `IS ratio min` | Above 0.1 | Importance sampling ratio minimum. Near-zero values mean the policy is too far off-policy; increase `vllm_sync_interval`. |
### Console Log Example
During training, you will see periodic EBFT reward logs:
```
ebft reward | align +0.412 ^ | divers +0.023 v | cfm 4.231 v | reward +0.389 ^
```
The arrows indicate the desired direction: alignment and reward should trend upward, while diversity and CFM loss should trend downward.
### Troubleshooting
| Symptom | Likely Cause | Fix |
|---------|-------------|-----|
| `alignment` stays below 0.1 | Feature layers not capturing useful information | Try different `feature_layers` or `embed_method` |
| `diversity` exceeds 1.0 | Mode collapse -- generations are too similar | Increase `diversity_coef` or `temperature` |
| `reward` stuck at -1.0 | Diversity penalty dominates alignment | Reduce `diversity_coef` or increase `alignment_coef` |
| `grad_norm` consistently 0.0 | All micro-batches have zero advantage | Increase `num_generations` or check data quality |
| `CheckpointError` in strided mode | Incompatible gradient checkpointing settings | Set `use_reentrant: true` in `gradient_checkpointing_kwargs` |
| OOM during training | Logits tensor too large | Reduce `sequence_len` or `micro_batch_size`; strided mode uses chunked lm_head to mitigate this |
| vLLM 500 errors | `truncate_prompt_tokens` not supported | Ensure you are using `axolotl vllm-serve` (not `trl vllm-serve`) |
### Feature Network Memory
In PEFT (LoRA) mode, the feature network shares base weights with the actor model by using the `disable_adapter()` context manager. This saves an entire model copy in VRAM (approximately 1--16 GB depending on model size). For non-PEFT training, a separate frozen deepcopy is created.
::: {.callout-note}
The `disable_adapter()` approach relies on an invariant: `merge_adapter()` is never called on the base weights. All weight sync paths (LoRA sync, HTTP, NCCL) compute merged weights as new tensors or save the adapter to the filesystem, leaving base weights unmodified.
:::
## Examples
Complete example configurations are available in `examples/ebft/`:
| Config | Model | Mode | Description |
|--------|-------|------|-------------|
| `llama-1b-ebft-strided-structured.yaml` | Llama 3.2 1B | Strided | Single-GPU strided training on code data |
| `qwen3-4b-ebft-structured.yaml` | Qwen3 4B | Structured (sync) | Two-GPU structured training |
| `qwen3-4b-ebft-structured-async.yaml` | Qwen3 4B | Structured (async) | Two-GPU async training with prefetch |
| `qwen3-8b-ebft-structured.yaml` | Qwen3 8B | Structured (sync) | Two-GPU structured training for larger model |
| `qwen35-4b-ebft-structured.yaml` | Qwen3.5 4B | Structured (sync) | Two-GPU with Qwen3.5 |
| `qwen35-4b-ebft-structured-async.yaml` | Qwen3.5 4B | Structured (async) | Two-GPU async with Qwen3.5 |
| `qwen35-9b-ebft-structured.yaml` | Qwen3.5 9B | Structured (sync) | Two-GPU structured for 9B model |

View File

@@ -1,67 +0,0 @@
---
title: "MoE Expert Quantization"
description: "Reduce VRAM usage when training MoE model adapters by quantizing expert weights on load"
---
Transformers v5 changed MoE expert layers from `nn.Linear` to fused `nn.Parameter` (3D+ tensors).
This means `bitsandbytes` can no longer quantize them during model loading, resulting in all expert
weights being loaded in full bf16 precision and causing massive VRAM usage.
`quantize_moe_experts` solves this by quantizing expert weights during model loading.
It intercepts the weight loading process, quantizes each expert tensor on the fly, and
immediately frees the original bf16 tensor from VRAM. This dramatically reduces peak memory.
For example, GLM-4.7-Flash QLoRA drops from ~127GiB to ~23GiB reserved memory.
## Usage
Enable expert quantization in your Axolotl config:
```yaml
quantize_moe_experts: true
```
This works with both 4-bit (QLoRA) and 8-bit (LoRA) quantization.
### Expert LoRA targeting
You can optionally apply LoRA adapters directly to expert weights using `lora_target_parameters`:
```yaml
lora_target_parameters:
- mlp.experts.gate_up_proj
- mlp.experts.down_proj
# - mlp.gate.weight # router
```
::: {.callout-note}
`lora_dropout` must be `0` when using `lora_target_parameters`.
:::
## Requirements
- Requires (`adapter: lora` and `load_in_8bit: true`) or (`adapter: qlora` and `load_in_4bit: true`)
- CUDA GPUs only (not tested with ROCm or other backends)
- FSDP2 compatible for distributed training
## Limitations
- `lora_target_linear` is not compatible with `quantize_moe_experts`. See [Expert LoRA targeting](#expert-lora-targeting) instead.
- `cpu_ram_efficient_loading` hangs / takes long time with FSDP2 + QLoRA.
- Total model parameter count may display incorrectly (trainable param count is correct).
- FSDP LoRA (8-bit) may have a large initial VRAM spike at the first 1-2 steps, which then drops. QLoRA does not exhibit this.
- FSDP2 may use more VRAM per GPU than single GPU training due to not all layers being properly sharded across ranks.
- Model loading takes longer due to on-demand quantization, even on consecutive runs.
- DeepSpeed has not been tested.
## Implementation details
The quantization is applied by patching transformers to intercept weight loading.
When a 3D+ CUDA tensor with "expert" in its name is detected:
- **4-bit mode:** Uses bitsandbytes NF4 parametrization (configurable via `bnb_4bit_quant_type`).
- **8-bit mode:** Uses a custom row-wise int8 parametrization with bitsandbytes dequantization.
The original bf16 tensor is freed immediately after quantization. Multiple sub-patches are applied to
transformers, PEFT and accelerate FSDP2 to support these parametrized expert modules.
For full implementation details, see [PR #3439](https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/axolotl/pull/3439).

View File

@@ -170,26 +170,17 @@ More details can be found in [Merging LoRA weights](inference.qmd#sec-merging).
## Next Steps {#sec-next-steps}
Now that you have the basics, explore these guides based on what you want to do:
Now that you have the basics, you might want to:
**Choose your path:**
- Try different model architectures
- Experiment with hyperparameters
- Use more advanced training methods
- Scale up to larger models
- [Choosing a Fine-Tuning Method](choosing_method.qmd) — SFT vs LoRA vs QLoRA vs GRPO vs DPO, with hardware recommendations
Check our other guides for details on these topics:
**Core guides:**
- [Dataset Loading](dataset_loading.qmd) — Loading datasets from various sources
- [Dataset Formats](dataset-formats) — Working with different data formats
- [Optimizations](optimizations.qmd) — Flash attention, gradient checkpointing, sample packing
- [Training Stability & Debugging](training_stability.qmd) — Monitoring metrics, fixing NaN, OOM debugging
**Advanced training methods:**
- [RLHF / Preference Learning](rlhf.qmd) — DPO, KTO, GRPO, EBFT
- [GRPO Training](grpo.qmd) — RL with custom rewards and vLLM generation
- [vLLM Serving](vllm_serving.qmd) — Setting up vLLM for GRPO
**Scaling up:**
- [Multi-GPU Training](multi-gpu.qmd) — DeepSpeed, FSDP, DDP
- [Multi-Node Training](multi-node.qmd) — Distributed training across machines
- [Configuration Guide](config-reference.qmd) - Full configuration options
- [Dataset Loading](dataset_loading.qmd) - Loading datasets from various sources
- [Dataset Formats](dataset-formats) - Working with different data formats
- [Multi-GPU Training](multi-gpu.qmd)
- [Multi-Node Training](multi-node.qmd)

View File

@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
---
title: Gradient Checkpointing, Activation Offloading, and Layer Offloading
title: Gradient Checkpointing and Activation Offloading
---
Gradient checkpointing and activation offloading are techniques used to optimize the performance of deep learning
@@ -27,33 +27,3 @@ The `activation_offloading: legacy` naively offloads activations to CPU and with
For resource constrained environments with limited CPU memory, `activation_offloading: disk` offloads
activations to disk instead of CPU RAM so that much larger context lengths can be trained with minimal memory.
### Enabling Layer Offloading
```yaml
layer_offloading: true
```
Layer offloading reduces GPU memory usage by moving frozen (non-trainable) decoder layer parameters to CPU
and streaming them back to GPU one layer at a time during the forward and backward passes. This is
particularly useful for LoRA/QLoRA training where most of the model's parameters are frozen — only the
trainable adapter weights stay on GPU permanently.
During training, forward and backward hooks on each decoder layer handle the transfer automatically:
- **Forward pass:** Before a layer executes, its frozen params are loaded to GPU. The next layer is
prefetched asynchronously on a separate CUDA stream for overlap.
- **Backward pass:** Same pattern in reverse — the current layer's frozen params are loaded and the
previous layer is prefetched.
After each layer finishes, its frozen params are offloaded back to CPU pinned memory.
This approach trades some CPU-GPU transfer overhead for significant GPU memory savings — the freed memory
is roughly equal to the size of all frozen parameters across all decoder layers, minus one layer's worth
that is kept on GPU at any given time.
**Requirements:**
- CUDA GPU (CPU-only training is not supported for this feature)
- Works with any HuggingFace model architecture that uses decoder layers (Llama, Mistral, Qwen, etc.)
- Best combined with LoRA/QLoRA where most parameters are frozen

View File

@@ -1,611 +0,0 @@
---
title: "GRPO Training"
description: "Group Relative Policy Optimization — a reinforcement learning method for training language models with verifiable reward functions."
order: 8
---
## Overview
Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) is a reinforcement learning method that improves language models by generating multiple completions per prompt, scoring them with reward functions, and using the relative ranking within each group to compute advantage estimates. Unlike DPO, which requires pre-collected preference pairs, GRPO generates its own training data online and can work with any programmatic reward signal (math correctness, format compliance, code execution results, etc.).
Use GRPO when you have a task with a verifiable reward signal and want the model to discover solution strategies on its own. Use DPO when you already have human preference data. Use SFT when you have gold-standard completions to imitate directly.
Axolotl's GRPO implementation builds on TRL and adds async generation, streaming scoring, importance sampling correction, replay buffers, and multi-GPU scaling via FSDP and DeepSpeed.
## Architecture
GRPO training uses a two-process architecture: a vLLM server for fast generation and a trainer process for scoring and gradient updates.
```
Terminal 1 (GPU 0) Terminal 2 (GPU 1)
┌──────────────────────┐ ┌──────────────────────────────────┐
│ vLLM Server │ │ Trainer │
│ │ HTTP │ │
│ Serves base model │◄────────────►│ Background thread: │
│ + LoRA adapter │ /generate │ Send prompts to vLLM │
│ │ /set_lora │ Pad & collate completions │
│ Punica kernels for │ │ │
│ LoRA inference │ │ Main thread: │
│ │ │ Score completions (rewards) │
└──────────────────────┘ │ Compute policy log-probs │
│ Calculate advantages │
│ PPO-clip gradient update │
│ Sync LoRA weights to vLLM │
└──────────────────────────────────┘
```
**Data flow for each training step:**
1. The background thread sends prompts to vLLM, which generates `num_generations` completions per prompt.
2. The main thread scores completions using your reward functions.
3. Advantages are computed within each prompt group (group-relative normalization).
4. Policy log-probabilities are computed by running a forward pass on the training model.
5. The PPO-clip loss is computed and gradients are applied.
6. Periodically, LoRA adapter weights are synced back to vLLM so future generations reflect the updated policy.
With async prefetch enabled, step 1 for the *next* batch runs concurrently with steps 2-6 for the *current* batch.
## Quick Start
A GRPO training run requires three components: a YAML config, a reward module (Python file), and a running vLLM server.
### 1. Write a reward module
Create a file called `rewards.py` in your working directory:
```python
# rewards.py
import re
def accuracy_reward(completions, answer, **kwargs) -> list[float]:
"""Check if the completion contains the correct numerical answer."""
rewards = []
for completion, correct in zip(completions, answer):
text = completion[0]["content"]
# Extract the last number from the completion
numbers = re.findall(r"-?\d+(?:\.\d+)?", text)
predicted = numbers[-1] if numbers else ""
rewards.append(1.0 if predicted == str(correct) else 0.0)
return rewards
def format_reward(completions, **kwargs) -> list[float]:
"""Reward completions that use a structured thinking format."""
rewards = []
for completion in completions:
text = completion[0]["content"]
has_think = "<think>" in text and "</think>" in text
has_answer = "<answer>" in text and "</answer>" in text
rewards.append(1.0 if has_think and has_answer else 0.0)
return rewards
def prompt_transform(cfg, *args, **kwargs):
"""Convert GSM8K dataset rows into chat prompts."""
def transform_fn(example, tokenizer=None):
label = example["answer"].split("####")[-1].strip().replace(",", "")
return {
"prompt": [
{"role": "system", "content": "Solve the math problem. Show your reasoning in <think> tags and your final numerical answer in <answer> tags."},
{"role": "user", "content": example["question"]},
],
"answer": label,
}
return transform_fn, {"remove_columns": ["question"]}
```
### 2. Write the config
Create `config.yaml`:
```yaml
base_model: Qwen/Qwen2.5-1.5B-Instruct
rl: grpo
chat_template: tokenizer_default
vllm:
host: 0.0.0.0
port: 8000
gpu_memory_utilization: 0.85
dtype: auto
max_model_len: 2048
adapter: lora
lora_r: 32
lora_alpha: 64
lora_target_linear: true
trl:
use_vllm: true
use_data_producer: true
vllm_server_host: 0.0.0.0
vllm_server_port: 8000
vllm_server_timeout: 300
vllm_lora_sync: true
num_generations: 8
max_completion_length: 512
temperature: 0.7
reward_funcs:
- rewards.accuracy_reward
- rewards.format_reward
reward_weights:
- 1.0
- 0.5
datasets:
- path: openai/gsm8k
name: main
type: rewards.prompt_transform
split: train
skip_prepare_dataset: true
val_set_size: 0.0
sequence_len: 512
micro_batch_size: 2
gradient_accumulation_steps: 4
max_steps: 200
learning_rate: 5.0e-6
optimizer: adamw_torch_fused
lr_scheduler: cosine
warmup_steps: 10
bf16: true
attn_implementation: flash_attention_2
gradient_checkpointing: true
special_tokens:
pad_token: "<|endoftext|>"
output_dir: ./grpo-output
logging_steps: 1
```
### 3. Start vLLM and train
```bash
# Terminal 1: Start vLLM server on GPU 0
CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0 axolotl vllm-serve config.yaml
# Wait 30-90 seconds for model loading and CUDA graph capture
# Terminal 2: Train on GPU 1
CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=1 axolotl train config.yaml
```
:::{.callout-tip}
Use `tmux` or separate terminal sessions to manage the two processes. The vLLM server must remain running for the entire training duration.
:::
## Custom Reward Functions
### Function signature
TRL calls reward functions with this signature:
```python
def my_reward(completions, **kwargs) -> list[float]:
```
- `completions` is a list of single-element lists, where each element is a dict `{"role": "assistant", "content": "..."}`. So `completions[i][0]["content"]` gives you the text of the i-th completion.
- `**kwargs` contains all dataset columns that were *not* removed by the dataset transform. This is how you pass ground truth answers, metadata, or any other information to your reward function.
- Return a `list[float]` with the same length as `completions`. You may return `None` for individual elements to exclude them from aggregation.
### Example: accuracy reward with answer extraction
```python
def accuracy_reward(completions, answer, **kwargs) -> list[float]:
rewards = []
for completion, correct_answer in zip(completions, answer):
text = completion[0]["content"]
# Extract answer from <answer>...</answer> tags
match = re.search(r"<answer>(.*?)</answer>", text, re.DOTALL)
predicted = match.group(1).strip() if match else ""
rewards.append(1.0 if predicted == str(correct_answer) else 0.0)
return rewards
```
### Example: length penalty
```python
def length_penalty(completions, **kwargs) -> list[float]:
"""Penalize very short or very long completions."""
rewards = []
for completion in completions:
length = len(completion[0]["content"])
if length < 50:
rewards.append(-0.5)
elif length > 2000:
rewards.append(-0.2)
else:
rewards.append(0.0)
return rewards
```
### Multiple rewards and weighting
You can combine multiple reward functions with different weights:
```yaml
trl:
reward_funcs:
- rewards.accuracy_reward
- rewards.format_reward
- rewards.length_penalty
reward_weights:
- 1.0 # accuracy is most important
- 0.5 # format compliance
- 0.1 # mild length preference
```
Rewards are combined by the `multi_objective_aggregation` strategy:
- `sum_then_normalize` (default): weights and sums all rewards first, then normalizes across the group.
- `normalize_then_sum` (GDPO): normalizes each reward independently, then sums. This prevents one reward from dominating and is recommended when using multiple reward functions with different scales.
```yaml
trl:
multi_objective_aggregation: normalize_then_sum
```
### Dataset transforms
The dataset transform converts raw HuggingFace dataset rows into chat-format prompts:
```python
def prompt_transform(cfg, *args, **kwargs):
def map_fn(example, tokenizer=None):
return {
"prompt": [
{"role": "system", "content": "You are a helpful assistant."},
{"role": "user", "content": example["question"]},
],
# Keep 'answer' column for the reward function
"answer": example["answer"],
}
# Remove columns consumed by the transform; keep columns needed by rewards
return map_fn, {"remove_columns": ["question"]}
```
The transform returns a tuple of `(map_function, kwargs_dict)`. The `remove_columns` in the kwargs dict removes columns that are no longer needed. Columns that your reward functions reference via `**kwargs` (like `answer`) must *not* be removed.
:::{.callout-warning}
The reward module must be importable from the directory where you run `axolotl train`. If your reward file is `rewards.py`, the import path is `rewards.accuracy_reward`. If it is inside a package `my_rewards/scoring.py`, use `my_rewards.scoring.accuracy_reward`.
:::
### Reward models (neural network rewards)
Instead of a Python function, you can pass a HuggingFace model path as a reward function. TRL will load it as a reward model and use its scalar output as the reward:
```yaml
trl:
reward_funcs:
- OpenAssistant/reward-model-deberta-v3-large-v2
- rewards.format_reward
reward_weights:
- 1.0
- 0.3
```
### Using math_verify
The `math_verify` library provides robust mathematical answer verification but uses `signal.alarm()` internally, which only works in the main thread. If you use `math_verify` in a reward function, set `reward_num_workers` to use subprocess workers:
```yaml
trl:
reward_num_workers: 4
```
Each worker runs in its own subprocess with its own main thread, so `signal.alarm()` works correctly.
## vLLM Setup
GRPO requires a running vLLM server for generation. For a complete guide on server modes, LoRA sync, weight synchronization, and restart procedures, see [vLLM Serving](vllm_serving.qmd).
The minimal setup:
```yaml
vllm:
host: 0.0.0.0
port: 8000
gpu_memory_utilization: 0.85
trl:
use_vllm: true
vllm_lora_sync: true # Recommended with LoRA — faster sync, no NCCL contention
vllm_sync_interval: 5 # Sync weights every 5 steps
```
```bash
CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0 axolotl vllm-serve config.yaml # GPU 0: vLLM
CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=1 axolotl train config.yaml # GPU 1: training
```
:::{.callout-warning}
vLLM must be restarted between experiments — stale weight syncs corrupt server state. See [Restart Requirements](vllm_serving.qmd#sec-restart).
:::
## Async Training Features
Async GRPO overlaps generation and training to reduce wall-clock time. While the model trains on the current batch, the next batch is already being generated by vLLM.
### Enabling async prefetch
```yaml
trl:
use_data_producer: true
async_prefetch: true
prefetch_depth: 1
vllm_sync_interval: 2
```
- `use_data_producer: true` enables the data producer protocol (required for all async features).
- `async_prefetch: true` runs generation in a background thread.
- `prefetch_depth` controls how many batches to prefetch ahead (1 is usually sufficient).
- `vllm_sync_interval` controls how often LoRA weights are synced to vLLM (every N optimizer steps). Lower values mean fresher generations but more sync overhead.
:::{.callout-tip}
Because the background thread generates with slightly stale model weights, async mode benefits from importance sampling correction (see next section). Enable `vllm_importance_sampling_correction: true` when using `async_prefetch: true`.
:::
### Streaming partial batch
Instead of scoring the entire batch at once, streaming mode scores one prompt group at a time. This reduces peak memory during scoring and enables finer-grained zero-advantage skipping.
```yaml
trl:
streaming_partial_batch: true
streaming_min_groups: 1
```
`streaming_min_groups` controls the minimum number of prompt groups scored per chunk. Setting it to 1 gives maximum granularity.
### Zero-advantage batch skipping
When all advantages in a micro-batch are zero (every completion in the group got the same reward), there is no learning signal. This feature skips the forward/backward pass entirely for such micro-batches.
```yaml
trl:
skip_zero_advantage_batches: true # default
```
This is enabled by default and logged as `skipped_zero_adv_batches` in training metrics. It is a safety net, not a major optimization -- it only saves significant time when the model cannot solve any prompts in the batch.
### Replay buffer
The replay buffer caches rollout groups that had learning signal (non-zero reward variance) and replaces zero-signal groups in later batches. This improves data utilization when many prompts yield no reward variance.
```yaml
trl:
replay_buffer_size: 100
replay_recompute_logps: true
```
:::{.callout-warning}
When `replay_recompute_logps: false`, replayed data uses stale log-probabilities which creates an IS mismatch. Keep the default `true` unless you have a specific reason to disable it.
:::
### Deferred re-rolling
Prompts where the model gets zero reward for all generations are buffered and re-injected into later batches, when the model may have improved enough to produce useful completions.
```yaml
trl:
reroll_start_fraction: 0.5 # Start re-rolling after 50% of training
reroll_max_groups: 1 # Max groups to replace per batch
```
Set `reroll_start_fraction: 1.0` to disable. This is most useful for tasks where the model starts weak but steadily improves.
### Parallel reward workers
Reward functions that use `signal.alarm()` (like `math_verify`) only work in the main thread. Parallel reward workers run each function in its own subprocess:
```yaml
trl:
reward_num_workers: 4
```
Work is sharded across workers by prompt group. For simple reward functions, a single worker is usually sufficient -- the overhead of IPC can exceed the computation time.
## Importance Sampling and Off-Policy Correction
When using async prefetch, completions are generated from a slightly older policy. IS correction adjusts the gradient to account for this mismatch.
```yaml
trl:
vllm_importance_sampling_correction: true
importance_sampling_level: token # 'token' recommended (especially with Liger kernel)
off_policy_mask_threshold: 0.5 # KL threshold — masks sequences that are too off-policy
```
Use `token` level IS. Sequence-level has numerical issues with Liger's chunked computation. The `off_policy_mask_threshold` (OPSM) is a safety net that drops sequences where KL divergence exceeds the threshold — 0.5 is a reasonable starting point.
For detailed coverage of IS modes (`token_mask`, `token_truncate`, etc.), capping, and bias-corrected KL, see [vLLM Serving — IS Correction](vllm_serving.qmd#sec-weight-sync).
## Scaling
### FP8 training
FP8 quantization halves model VRAM usage with minimal impact on training quality. It does not significantly speed up computation for small models but allows larger models to fit in memory.
```yaml
fp8: true
torch_compile: true
```
:::{.callout-warning}
FP8 requires patching for zero-padding edge cases. The `act_quant_kernel` can produce NaN when input is all zeros (padding positions). If you see NaN in grad norms, check whether your padding token embedding is non-zero.
:::
### FSDP (Fully Sharded Data Parallel)
FSDP distributes model parameters across multiple GPUs for training while vLLM runs on a separate GPU:
```yaml
fsdp:
- full_shard
- auto_wrap
fsdp_config:
fsdp_transformer_layer_cls_to_wrap: Qwen2DecoderLayer
gradient_checkpointing_kwargs:
use_reentrant: false
```
Launch with:
```bash
# GPU 0: vLLM
CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0 axolotl vllm-serve config.yaml
# GPUs 0,1: Training (FSDP will use both visible GPUs)
CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0,1 axolotl train config.yaml
```
:::{.callout-warning}
`async_prefetch: true` can deadlock with FSDP because background threads perform unsynchronized FSDP collectives across ranks. With multi-GPU FSDP, only rank 0 generates in the background thread and results are broadcast to all ranks. If you still see hangs, set `async_prefetch: false`.
:::
### DeepSpeed ZeRO-3
```yaml
deepspeed: deepspeed_configs/zero3_bf16.json
gradient_checkpointing_kwargs:
use_reentrant: true # Required -- non-reentrant causes CheckpointError with ZeRO-3
```
:::{.callout-note}
DeepSpeed ZeRO-3 requires `use_reentrant: true` for gradient checkpointing. This is the opposite of the FSDP recommendation. Non-reentrant checkpointing causes tensor metadata mismatches during recomputation with ZeRO-3's parameter partitioning.
:::
### Multi-GPU considerations
| Concern | Recommendation |
|---------|---------------|
| vLLM GPU allocation | Dedicate one or more GPUs to vLLM; do not share with trainer GPUs |
| Weight sync contention | Use `vllm_lora_sync: true` to avoid NCCL contention between training and vLLM |
| FSDP + async | Use `async_prefetch: false` or rely on rank-0-only background generation |
| DeepSpeed + gradient checkpoint | Must use `use_reentrant: true` |
| OOM during scoring | Reduce `micro_batch_size` or `num_generations`. The logits tensor scales with `batch_size * vocab_size` |
## Monitoring and Debugging
For detailed metric ranges, failure diagnosis, and OOM debugging, see [Training Stability & Debugging](training_stability.qmd).
Quick health checks during GRPO training:
- `rewards/*/mean` should be > 0.15 within 20 steps — if it stays at 0, test your reward function standalone
- `reward_std` should be > 0 on most steps — all-zero means no learning signal
- `entropy` in 0.05-0.5 — below 0.01 suggests mode collapse
- `grad_norm` in 0.001-1.0 — > 10 is unstable, 0.0 is expected when zero-advantage skip fires
:::{.callout-tip}
Pipe training output to a log file: `axolotl train config.yaml 2>&1 | tee /tmp/training.log`
:::
## Configuration Reference
All GRPO-specific options live under the `trl:` key in your config. Standard training options (`learning_rate`, `micro_batch_size`, etc.) are set at the top level as usual.
### Core GRPO
| Option | Type | Default | Description |
|--------|------|---------|-------------|
| `use_vllm` | bool | `false` | Enable vLLM for generation |
| `vllm_mode` | `"server"` or `"colocate"` | `null` | vLLM deployment mode |
| `vllm_server_host` | str | `"0.0.0.0"` | vLLM server hostname |
| `vllm_server_port` | int | `8000` | vLLM server port |
| `vllm_server_timeout` | int | `null` | Timeout (seconds) for vLLM responses |
| `num_generations` | int | `null` | Completions generated per prompt |
| `generation_batch_size` | int | `null` | Number of unique prompts per generation step |
| `max_completion_length` | int | `null` | Maximum tokens per completion |
| `beta` | float | `null` | KL penalty coefficient |
| `num_iterations` | int | `null` | Iterations per batch (mu in the GRPO paper) |
| `epsilon` | float | `null` | PPO clipping lower bound |
| `epsilon_high` | float | `null` | PPO clipping upper bound |
| `loss_type` | str | `null` | Loss formulation: `grpo`, `bnpo`, or `dr_grpo` |
| `scale_rewards` | bool | `true` | Normalize rewards by standard deviation |
| `mask_truncated_completions` | bool | `false` | Exclude truncated completions from loss |
### Reward functions
| Option | Type | Default | Description |
|--------|------|---------|-------------|
| `reward_funcs` | list[str] | `null` | Import paths to reward functions or HF model IDs |
| `reward_weights` | list[float] | `null` | Relative weights for each reward function |
| `multi_objective_aggregation` | str | `null` | `"sum_then_normalize"` (GRPO) or `"normalize_then_sum"` (GDPO) |
| `rollout_func` | str | `null` | Import path to custom rollout function for OpenEnv-style tasks |
### Generation parameters
| Option | Type | Default | Description |
|--------|------|---------|-------------|
| `temperature` | float | `null` | Sampling temperature |
| `top_p` | float | `null` | Nucleus sampling probability |
| `top_k` | int | `null` | Top-k sampling |
| `min_p` | float | `null` | Minimum probability threshold |
| `repetition_penalty` | float | `null` | Penalty for repeated tokens |
| `generation_kwargs` | dict | `null` | Additional vLLM SamplingParams (e.g., `stop_token_ids`) |
| `chat_template_kwargs` | dict | `null` | Chat template kwargs (e.g., `{enable_thinking: false}`) |
| `vllm_guided_decoding_regex` | str | `null` | Regex constraint for guided decoding |
### Async pipeline
| Option | Type | Default | Description |
|--------|------|---------|-------------|
| `use_data_producer` | bool | `false` | Enable data producer protocol (required for async features) |
| `async_prefetch` | bool | `false` | Generate next batch in background thread |
| `prefetch_depth` | int | `null` | Number of batches to prefetch ahead |
| `vllm_sync_interval` | int | `null` | Sync LoRA weights to vLLM every N steps |
| `vllm_lora_sync` | bool | `false` | Use filesystem LoRA sync instead of NCCL merge |
| `streaming_partial_batch` | bool | `null` | Score prompt groups incrementally |
| `streaming_min_groups` | int | `null` | Minimum groups per streaming chunk |
| `skip_zero_advantage_batches` | bool | `true` | Skip micro-batches with zero learning signal |
| `reward_num_workers` | int | `1` | Subprocess workers for reward computation |
| `vllm_enable_sleep_mode` | bool | `null` | Offload vLLM weights when idle (colocate mode) |
### Importance sampling
| Option | Type | Default | Description |
|--------|------|---------|-------------|
| `vllm_importance_sampling_correction` | bool | `null` | Enable IS correction for async distribution shift |
| `importance_sampling_level` | `"token"` or `"sequence"` | `null` | Granularity of IS ratios. Use `token` with Liger |
| `vllm_importance_sampling_mode` | str | `null` | `token_mask`, `token_truncate`, `sequence_mask`, or `sequence_truncate` |
| `vllm_importance_sampling_cap` | float | `null` | Cap C for IS ratio clipping/masking |
| `off_policy_mask_threshold` | float | `null` | KL threshold for off-policy sequence masking (OPSM) |
| `use_bias_correction_kl` | bool | `null` | Apply IS correction to KL divergence term |
### Replay and re-roll
| Option | Type | Default | Description |
|--------|------|---------|-------------|
| `replay_buffer_size` | int | `0` | Max cached high-signal groups. 0 = disabled |
| `replay_recompute_logps` | bool | `true` | Recompute log-probs for replayed data with current model |
| `reroll_start_fraction` | float | `1.0` | Start re-rolling failed prompts after this fraction of training. 1.0 = disabled |
| `reroll_max_groups` | int | `1` | Max prompt groups to replace with re-rolls per batch |
### Reference model
| Option | Type | Default | Description |
|--------|------|---------|-------------|
| `sync_ref_model` | bool | `false` | Periodically sync reference model with training model |
| `ref_model_mixup_alpha` | float | `0.9` | EMA coefficient for reference model sync |
| `ref_model_sync_steps` | int | `64` | Sync reference model every N steps |
### Logging
| Option | Type | Default | Description |
|--------|------|---------|-------------|
| `log_completions` | bool | `false` | Log sample completions to W&B |
| `num_completions_to_print` | int | `null` | Number of completions to print per step |
| `use_liger_loss` | bool | `null` | Use Liger fused kernel for GRPO loss (reduces VRAM) |

View File

@@ -15,30 +15,64 @@ This guide covers all the ways you can install and set up Axolotl for your envir
- NVIDIA GPU (Ampere architecture or newer for `bf16` and Flash Attention) or AMD GPU
- Python ≥3.11
- PyTorch ≥2.9.0
- PyTorch ≥2.6.0
## Installation {#sec-installation}
## Installation Methods {#sec-installation-methods}
::: {.callout-important}
Please make sure to have Pytorch installed before installing Axolotl in your local environment.
Follow the instructions at: [https://pytorch.org/get-started/locally/](https://pytorch.org/get-started/locally/)
:::
::: {.callout-important}
For Blackwell GPUs, please use Pytorch 2.9.1 and CUDA 12.8.
:::
### Quick Install {#sec-uv}
### PyPI Installation (Recommended) {#sec-pypi}
Axolotl uses [uv](https://docs.astral.sh/uv/) as its package manager. uv is a fast, reliable Python package installer and resolver built in Rust.
```{.bash}
pip3 install -U packaging setuptools wheel ninja
pip3 install --no-build-isolation axolotl[flash-attn,deepspeed]
```
Install uv if not already installed:
We use `--no-build-isolation` in order to detect the installed PyTorch version (if
installed) in order not to clobber it, and so that we set the correct version of
dependencies that are specific to the PyTorch version or other installed
co-dependencies.
### uv Installation {#sec-uv}
uv is a fast, reliable Python package installer and resolver built in Rust. It offers significant performance improvements over pip and provides better dependency resolution, making it an excellent choice for complex environments.
Install uv if not already installed
```{.bash}
curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh
source $HOME/.local/bin/env
```
Choose your CUDA version (e.g. `cu128`, `cu130`), create a venv, and install:
Choose your CUDA version to use with PyTorch; e.g. `cu124`, `cu126`, `cu128`,
then create the venv and activate
```{.bash}
export UV_TORCH_BACKEND=cu128 # or cu130
export UV_TORCH_BACKEND=cu126
uv venv --no-project --relocatable
source .venv/bin/activate
uv pip install --no-build-isolation axolotl[flash-attn,deepspeed]
```
Install PyTorch
- PyTorch 2.6.0 recommended
```{.bash}
uv pip install packaging setuptools wheel
uv pip install torch==2.6.0
uv pip install awscli pydantic
```
Install axolotl from PyPi
```{.bash}
uv pip install --no-build-isolation axolotl[deepspeed,flash-attn]
# optionally install with vLLM if you're using torch==2.6.0 and want to train w/ GRPO
uv pip install --no-build-isolation axolotl[deepspeed,flash-attn,vllm]
```
### Edge/Development Build {#sec-edge-build}
@@ -48,17 +82,14 @@ For the latest features between releases:
```{.bash}
git clone https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/axolotl.git
cd axolotl
export UV_TORCH_BACKEND=cu128 # or cu130
uv sync --extra flash-attn --extra deepspeed
source .venv/bin/activate
pip3 install -U packaging setuptools wheel ninja
pip3 install --no-build-isolation -e '.[flash-attn,deepspeed]'
```
`uv sync` creates a `.venv`, installs exact pinned versions from `uv.lock`, and sets up an editable install automatically.
### Docker {#sec-docker}
```{.bash}
docker run --gpus '"all"' --rm -it --ipc=host axolotlai/axolotl-uv:main-latest
docker run --gpus '"all"' --rm -it axolotlai/axolotl:main-latest
```
For development with Docker:
@@ -75,12 +106,12 @@ docker run --privileged --gpus '"all"' --shm-size 10g --rm -it \
--ulimit memlock=-1 --ulimit stack=67108864 \
--mount type=bind,src="${PWD}",target=/workspace/axolotl \
-v ${HOME}/.cache/huggingface:/root/.cache/huggingface \
axolotlai/axolotl-uv:main-latest
axolotlai/axolotl:main-latest
```
:::
::: {.callout-important}
For Blackwell GPUs, please use `axolotlai/axolotl-uv:main-py3.11-cu128-2.9.1` or the cloud variant `axolotlai/axolotl-cloud-uv:main-py3.11-cu128-2.9.1`.
For Blackwell GPUs, please use `axolotlai/axolotl:main-py3.11-cu128-2.9.1` or the cloud variant `axolotlai/axolotl-cloud:main-py3.11-cu128-2.9.1`.
:::
Please refer to the [Docker documentation](docker.qmd) for more information on the different Docker images that are available.
@@ -91,7 +122,7 @@ Please refer to the [Docker documentation](docker.qmd) for more information on t
For providers supporting Docker:
- Use `axolotlai/axolotl-cloud-uv:main-latest`
- Use `axolotlai/axolotl-cloud:main-latest`
- Available on:
- [RunPod](https://runpod.io/gsc?template=v2ickqhz9s&ref=6i7fkpdz)
- [Vast.ai](https://cloud.vast.ai?ref_id=62897&template_id=bdd4a49fa8bce926defc99471864cace&utm_source=axolotl&utm_medium=partner&utm_campaign=template_launch_july2025&utm_content=docs_link)
@@ -110,7 +141,7 @@ For providers supporting Docker:
### macOS {#sec-macos}
```{.bash}
uv pip install --no-build-isolation -e '.'
pip3 install --no-build-isolation -e '.'
```
See @sec-troubleshooting for Mac-specific issues.
@@ -121,44 +152,21 @@ See @sec-troubleshooting for Mac-specific issues.
We recommend using WSL2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux) or Docker.
:::
## Migrating from pip to uv {#sec-migrating}
## Environment Managers {#sec-env-managers}
If you have an existing pip-based Axolotl installation, you can migrate to uv:
### Conda/Pip venv {#sec-conda}
```{.bash}
# Install uv
curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh
source $HOME/.local/bin/env
# Create a fresh venv (recommended for a clean start)
export UV_TORCH_BACKEND=cu128 # or cu130
uv venv --no-project --relocatable
source .venv/bin/activate
# Reinstall axolotl
uv pip install --no-build-isolation axolotl[flash-attn,deepspeed]
```
## Using pip (Alternative) {#sec-pip}
If you are unable to install uv, you can still use pip directly.
::: {.callout-important}
Please make sure to have PyTorch installed before installing Axolotl with pip.
Follow the instructions at: [https://pytorch.org/get-started/locally/](https://pytorch.org/get-started/locally/)
:::
```{.bash}
pip3 install -U packaging setuptools wheel ninja
pip3 install --no-build-isolation axolotl[flash-attn,deepspeed]
```
For editable/development installs:
```{.bash}
pip3 install -U packaging setuptools wheel ninja
pip3 install --no-build-isolation -e '.[flash-attn,deepspeed]'
```
1. Install Python ≥3.11
2. Install PyTorch: https://pytorch.org/get-started/locally/
3. Install Axolotl:
```{.bash}
pip3 install -U packaging setuptools wheel ninja
pip3 install --no-build-isolation -e '.[flash-attn,deepspeed]'
```
4. (Optional) Login to Hugging Face:
```{.bash}
hf auth login
```
## Troubleshooting {#sec-troubleshooting}

View File

@@ -8,20 +8,17 @@ format:
## Supported Models
- [Gemma-4](#sec-gemma-4) *(NEW)*
- [Mllama](#sec-mllama)
- [Llama4](#sec-llama4)
- [Pixtral](#sec-pixtral)
- [Llava-1.5](#sec-llava-15)
- [Mistral-Small-3.1](#sec-mistral-small-31)
- [Mistral-Small-4](#sec-mistral-small-4)
- [Magistral-Small-2509](#sec-magistral-small-2509)
- [Voxtral](#sec-voxtral)
- [Gemma-3](#sec-gemma-3)
- [Gemma-3n](#sec-gemma-3n)
- [Qwen2-VL](#sec-qwen2-vl)
- [Qwen2.5-VL](#sec-qwen25-vl)
- [Qwen3.5](#sec-qwen3-5)
- [GLM-4.6V](#sec-glm-4-6v)
- [SmolVLM2](#sec-smolvlm2)
- [LFM2-VL](#sec-lfm2-vl)
@@ -111,12 +108,6 @@ Please make sure to install vision lib via `pip install 'mistral-common[opencv]=
base_model: mistralai/Mistral-Small-3.1-24B-Instruct-2503
```
### Mistral-Small-4 {#sec-mistral-small-4}
```yaml
base_model: mistralai/Mistral-Small-4-119B-2603
```
### Magistral-Small-2509 {#sec-magistral-small-2509}
::: {.callout-tip}
@@ -139,40 +130,6 @@ base_model: mistralai/Voxtral-Mini-3B-2507
processor_type: VoxtralProcessor
```
### Gemma-4 {#sec-gemma-4}
All Gemma 4 variants (E2B, E4B, 26B-A4B, 31B) load as multimodal models even for text-only training.
```yaml
base_model: google/gemma-4-E2B-it # or E4B-it, 26B-A4B, 31B
chat_template: gemma4
freeze_mm_modules: true # freeze vision/audio encoders for text-only or vision LoRA
# For the 26B-A4B MoE model, enable ScatterMoE and expert LoRA:
plugins:
- axolotl.integrations.cut_cross_entropy.CutCrossEntropyPlugin
- axolotl.integrations.kernels.KernelsPlugin
use_kernels: true
use_scattermoe: true
experts_implementation: scattermoe
lora_target_modules: 'model.language_model.layers.[\d]+.(_checkpoint_wrapped_module.)?(mlp|self_attn).(up|down|gate|q|k|v|o)_proj'
# MoE expert LoRA (3D tensors, not nn.Linear) — only for 26B-A4B:
lora_target_parameters:
- experts.gate_up_proj
- experts.down_proj
```
::: {.callout-warning}
Gemma 4 VLM training starts with high loss (~8-15). This is expected — see the [training stability guide](training_stability.qmd) for details.
:::
::: {.callout-tip}
For DDP training, axolotl auto-detects Gemma4 and sets `use_reentrant=False` and `ddp_find_unused_parameters=True`. However, when `activation_offloading: true`, `ddp_find_unused_parameters` is skipped (checkpoint wrappers conflict with it); use `freeze_mm_modules: true` instead to handle unused vision/audio params. For FSDP2, use `fsdp_transformer_layer_cls_to_wrap: Gemma4TextDecoderLayer`.
:::
### Gemma-3 {#sec-gemma-3}
::: {.callout-tip}
@@ -227,14 +184,6 @@ base_model: Qwen/Qwen3-VL-4B-Instruct
chat_template: qwen2_vl # same as qwen2-vl
```
### Qwen3.5 {#sec-qwen3-5}
```yaml
base_model: Qwen/Qwen3.5-9B
chat_template: qwen3_5
```
### GLM-4.6V {#sec-glm-4-6v}
Both GLM-4.6V (106B MoE) and GLM-4.6V-Flash (9B) are supported.

View File

@@ -22,12 +22,12 @@ Improves GPU utilization by combining multiple short sequences into a single pac
Using an optimized attention implementation is critical for training speed.
- **[Flash Attention 2](https://github.com/Dao-AILab/flash-attention)**: `attn_implementation: flash_attention_2`. **(Recommended)** The industry standard for fast attention on modern GPUs. Requires Ampere or higher. For AMD, check [AMD Support](https://github.com/Dao-AILab/flash-attention?tab=readme-ov-file#amd-rocm-support).
- **[Flex Attention](https://pytorch.org/blog/flexattention/)**: `attn_implementation: flex_attention`.
- **[SDP Attention](https://docs.pytorch.org/docs/stable/generated/torch.nn.functional.scaled_dot_product_attention.html)**: `attn_implementation: sdpa`. PyTorch's native implementation.
- **[Xformers](https://github.com/facebookresearch/xformers)**: `attn_implementation: xformers`. Works with FP16.
- **[Flash Attention 2](https://github.com/Dao-AILab/flash-attention)**: `flash_attention: true`. **(Recommended)** The industry standard for fast attention on modern GPUs. Requires Ampere or higher. For AMD, check [AMD Support](https://github.com/Dao-AILab/flash-attention?tab=readme-ov-file#amd-rocm-support).
- **[Flex Attention](https://pytorch.org/blog/flexattention/)**: `flex_attention: true`.
- **[SDP Attention](https://docs.pytorch.org/docs/stable/generated/torch.nn.functional.scaled_dot_product_attention.html)**: `sdp_attention: true`. PyTorch's native implementation.
- **[Xformers](https://github.com/facebookresearch/xformers)**: `xformers_attention: true`. Works with FP16.
See [Attention](attention.qmd) for the full list of backends and the canonical values.
*Note: You should only enable one attention backend.*
### LoRA Optimizations
@@ -54,13 +54,6 @@ These techniques save VRAM by changing how activations are handled.
- Activation Offloading: moves activations to CPU RAM or disk, trading I/O overhead for VRAM.
- Learn more: [Gradient Checkpointing and Offloading Docs](gradient_checkpointing.qmd)
### Layer Offloading
Offloads frozen (non-trainable) decoder layer parameters to CPU and streams them back to GPU one layer at a time during forward/backward passes using CUDA stream prefetching. Especially effective for LoRA/QLoRA where most parameters are frozen.
- **Config:** `layer_offloading: true`
- **Learn more:** [Layer Offloading Docs](gradient_checkpointing.qmd#enabling-layer-offloading)
### Cut Cross Entropy (CCE)
Reduces VRAM usage by using an optimized cross-entropy loss calculation.
@@ -73,15 +66,6 @@ Provides efficient Triton kernels to improve training speed and reduce memory us
- **Learn more:** [Custom Integrations - Liger Kernels](custom_integrations.qmd#liger-kernels)
### Expert Kernels
Optimized kernel implementations for Mixture of Experts (MoE) model training.
- **ScatterMoE**: Triton-based MoE kernels with fused LoRA support.
- **SonicMoE**: CUTLASS-based MoE kernels for NVIDIA Hopper and Blackwell GPUs.
- **Learn more:** [Custom Integrations - Kernels Integration](custom_integrations.qmd#kernels-integration)
## Long Context Models
Techniques to train models on sequences longer than their original context window.
@@ -147,10 +131,3 @@ Simulates quantization effects during training, helping the model adapt and pote
Allows you to finetune LoRA adapters on top of a model that has already been quantized using the GPTQ method.
- **Example:** [GPTQ LoRA Example](https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/axolotl/blob/main/examples/llama-2/gptq-lora.yml)
### MoE Expert Quantization
Quantizes MoE expert weights on load to reduce VRAM when training MoE models with adapters. Required for Transformers v5+ MoE models where experts use fused `nn.Parameter` tensors.
- **Config:** `quantize_moe_experts: true`
- **Learn more:** [MoE Expert Quantization](expert_quantization.qmd)

View File

@@ -16,12 +16,8 @@ feedback. Various methods include, but not limited to:
- [Identity Preference Optimization (IPO)](#ipo)
- [Kahneman-Tversky Optimization (KTO)](#kto)
- [Odds Ratio Preference Optimization (ORPO)](#orpo)
- [Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO)](#grpo) — see also the [GRPO deep dive](grpo.qmd) for async features, custom rewards, and scaling
- [Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO)](#grpo)
- [Group Reward-Decoupled Policy Optimization (GDPO)](#gdpo)
- [Energy-Based Fine-Tuning (EBFT)](#ebft) — see also the [EBFT guide](ebft.qmd) for detailed mode comparisons and configuration
- [NeMo Gym Integration](#nemo-gym-integration)
For help choosing between these methods, see [Choosing a Fine-Tuning Method](choosing_method.qmd).
## RLHF using Axolotl
@@ -320,10 +316,8 @@ The input format is a simple JSON input with customizable fields based on the ab
As IPO is just DPO with a different loss function, all supported dataset formats for [DPO](#dpo) are also supported for IPO.
```yaml
rl: dpo
dpo_loss_type: ["ipo"]
rl: ipo
```
*Note:* Passing `rl: ipo` directly is still supported, but will soon be deprecated.
### ORPO
@@ -519,7 +513,7 @@ The input format is a simple JSON input with customizable fields based on the ab
### GRPO
::: {.callout-tip}
Check out our [GRPO cookbook](https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/grpo_code). For a comprehensive guide covering async training, custom rewards, importance sampling, and scaling, see the [GRPO deep dive](grpo.qmd).
Check out our [GRPO cookbook](https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/grpo_code).
:::
In the latest GRPO implementation, `vLLM` is used to significantly speedup trajectory generation during training. In this example, we're using 4 GPUs - 2 for training, and 2 for vLLM:
@@ -727,213 +721,6 @@ trl:
For more information, see [GRPO docs](https://huggingface.co/docs/trl/v0.17.0/en/grpo_trainer#loss-types).
#### Async GRPO
Async GRPO overlaps vLLM generation with training by producing rollouts in a background thread. While the model trains on the current batch, the next batch is already being generated. This can significantly reduce wall-clock time per step.
```yaml
trl:
use_data_producer: true # Enable data producer protocol
use_vllm: true
async_prefetch: true # Generate rollouts in background thread
prefetch_depth: 1 # Number of rollouts to prefetch
vllm_sync_interval: 2 # Sync weights to vLLM every N steps
```
::: {.callout-note}
Because the background thread generates completions with slightly stale model weights, async GRPO uses importance sampling correction to account for the distribution shift. This is controlled by `vllm_importance_sampling_correction: true` (default when async is enabled).
:::
##### vLLM LoRA Sync
By default, weight sync to vLLM merges the LoRA adapter into the base model and broadcasts all parameters via NCCL. LoRA sync is a faster alternative that saves only the adapter weights to the filesystem and has vLLM load them natively using Punica kernels.
```yaml
adapter: lora
lora_r: 32
lora_alpha: 64
lora_target_linear: true
trl:
vllm_lora_sync: true # Enable native LoRA sync
```
When `vllm_lora_sync: true` is set, axolotl automatically selects the LoRA-aware vLLM serve module. Start vLLM as usual:
```bash
CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0 axolotl vllm-serve config.yaml
```
Then start training on a separate GPU:
```bash
CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=1 axolotl train config.yaml
```
::: {.callout-tip}
LoRA sync is especially beneficial with multi-GPU training (FSDP/DeepSpeed), where NCCL merge-sync can cause GPU contention with vLLM generation.
:::
##### Streaming Partial Batch
Instead of scoring the entire batch at once, streaming mode scores one prompt group at a time. This enables finer-grained zero-advantage skipping and reduces peak memory usage during scoring.
```yaml
trl:
streaming_partial_batch: true
```
##### Importance Sampling Correction
When using async prefetch, completions are generated from a slightly older version of the model. Importance sampling (IS) correction adjusts the policy gradient to account for this distribution shift.
```yaml
trl:
vllm_importance_sampling_correction: true # Enable IS correction
importance_sampling_level: token # 'token' or 'sequence'
off_policy_mask_threshold: 0.5 # Mask sequences with IS ratio below this
```
- `importance_sampling_level: token` applies per-token IS ratios (recommended with Liger kernel)
- `importance_sampling_level: sequence` applies per-sequence IS ratios
- `off_policy_mask_threshold` masks out sequences where the IS ratio indicates they are too far off-policy
##### Replay Buffer
The replay buffer caches rollout groups that had learning signal (non-zero reward variance) and uses them to replace zero-signal groups in later batches.
```yaml
trl:
replay_buffer_size: 100 # Max cached groups (0 = disabled)
replay_recompute_logps: true # Recompute log-probs for replayed data (recommended)
```
::: {.callout-note}
When `replay_recompute_logps: true` (default), old log-probabilities are recomputed using the current model weights. This fixes the IS mismatch that would otherwise occur when replaying stale data.
:::
##### Deferred Re-rolling
Failed prompts (where the model produces zero reward for all generations) are buffered and re-injected into later batches when the model may be better equipped to solve them.
```yaml
trl:
reroll_start_fraction: 0.5 # Start re-rolling after 50% of training
reroll_max_groups: 1 # Max groups to replace per batch
```
##### Zero-Advantage Batch Skipping
When all advantages in a micro-batch are zero (no learning signal), the forward/backward pass is skipped entirely. This is enabled by default and logged as `skipped_zero_adv_batches=1`.
```yaml
trl:
skip_zero_advantage_batches: true # default
```
##### Parallel Reward Workers
Reward functions that use `signal.alarm()` (e.g., `math_verify`) must run in the main thread. Parallel reward workers use subprocesses to work around this limitation while enabling concurrent reward computation.
```yaml
trl:
reward_num_workers: 4 # Number of subprocess workers (1 = no parallelism)
```
##### Full Async GRPO Example
```yaml
base_model: Qwen/Qwen2.5-1.5B-Instruct
vllm:
host: 0.0.0.0
port: 8000
gpu_memory_utilization: 0.35
dtype: auto
adapter: lora
lora_r: 32
lora_alpha: 64
lora_target_linear: true
rl: grpo
trl:
use_data_producer: true
use_vllm: true
async_prefetch: true
prefetch_depth: 1
vllm_sync_interval: 2
vllm_lora_sync: true
streaming_partial_batch: true
vllm_importance_sampling_correction: true
off_policy_mask_threshold: 0.5
importance_sampling_level: token
num_generations: 8
max_completion_length: 512
reward_funcs:
- rewards.accuracy_reward
reroll_start_fraction: 0.5
replay_buffer_size: 100
reward_num_workers: 4
skip_zero_advantage_batches: true
datasets:
- path: AI-MO/NuminaMath-TIR
type: rewards.prompt_transform
split: train
gradient_accumulation_steps: 4
micro_batch_size: 2
max_steps: 500
learning_rate: 1e-5
bf16: true
gradient_checkpointing: true
```
```bash
# Terminal 1: Start vLLM on GPU 0
CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0 axolotl vllm-serve config.yaml
# Terminal 2: Train on GPU 1
CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=1 axolotl train config.yaml
```
##### Multi-GPU Async GRPO
Async GRPO supports FSDP and DeepSpeed ZeRO-3 for multi-GPU training. vLLM runs on one GPU while training is distributed across the remaining GPUs.
**FSDP:**
```yaml
fsdp:
- full_shard
- auto_wrap
fsdp_config:
fsdp_transformer_layer_cls_to_wrap: Qwen2DecoderLayer
gradient_checkpointing_kwargs:
use_reentrant: false
```
**DeepSpeed ZeRO-3:**
```yaml
deepspeed: deepspeed_configs/zero3_bf16.json
gradient_checkpointing_kwargs:
use_reentrant: true # Required for ZeRO-3
```
```bash
# Terminal 1: Start vLLM on GPU 0
CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0 axolotl vllm-serve config.yaml
# Terminal 2: Train on GPUs 0,1
CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0,1 axolotl train config.yaml
```
::: {.callout-important}
With multi-GPU async prefetch, only rank 0 generates completions in the background thread. Results are broadcast to all ranks on the main thread. This avoids FSDP/DeepSpeed collective deadlocks from unsynchronized background threads.
:::
### GDPO
GDPO (Group Reward-Decoupled Policy Optimization) extends GRPO for multi-reward training. It addresses the **reward advantage collapse** problem by normalizing each reward function independently before combining them.
@@ -1043,305 +830,6 @@ simpo_gamma: 0.5 # default in CPOTrainer
This method uses the same dataset format as [DPO](#dpo).
### EBFT {#ebft}
::: {.callout-tip}
For a detailed guide on EBFT modes, feature extraction, and configuration, see the [EBFT guide](ebft.qmd).
:::
EBFT (Energy-Based Fine-Tuning) fine-tunes language models by optimizing a **feature-matching loss** rather than relying on external reward functions. A frozen copy of the model extracts embeddings from both generated and ground-truth completions, and the generator is updated via REINFORCE to match the ground-truth feature moments.
Paper: ["Matching Features, Not Tokens: Energy-Based Fine-Tuning of Language Models"](https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.12248) (Jelassi et al., 2026)
**Key advantages:**
- No reward model or verifier required — works on any (prompt, completion) data
- Applicable to non-verifiable tasks (code, translation, creative writing)
- Operates on model rollouts (not teacher forcing), reducing distribution shift
EBFT supports two modes:
- **Structured mode**: For QA/instruction data with prompt + completion pairs. Uses vLLM for generation (like GRPO).
- **Strided mode**: For unstructured text without prompt/completion splits. Uses strided block-parallel generation with flex_attention — no vLLM needed.
#### Structured Mode
```yaml
base_model: Qwen/Qwen3-4B
rl: ebft
ebft:
feature_layers: [0.25, 0.5, 0.75] # Extract features at 25%, 50%, 75% depth
embed_method: last_token
use_whitening: false
alignment_coef: 1.0 # Cosine similarity reward weight
diversity_coef: 1.0 # Pairwise dot product penalty
ce_coef: 0.0 # Cross-entropy on GT tokens (0 = off)
trl:
num_generations: 4
max_completion_length: 256
temperature: 0.7
use_vllm: true
vllm_server_host: 0.0.0.0
vllm_server_port: 8000
vllm_lora_sync: true # LoRA adapter sync (recommended)
vllm_sync_interval: 3
use_data_producer: true
async_prefetch: true # Set false for sync mode
scale_rewards: true
loss_type: grpo
epsilon: 0.2
vllm:
gpu_memory_utilization: 0.5
max_model_len: 2048
datasets:
- path: nvidia/OpenCodeInstruct
type: ebft_opencode.transform
split: train[:500]
adapter: lora
lora_r: 16
lora_alpha: 32
lora_target_linear: true
```
```bash
# Terminal 1: Start vLLM
CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0 axolotl vllm-serve config.yaml
# Terminal 2: Train
CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=1 axolotl train config.yaml
```
#### Strided Mode
For unstructured text (raw code, prose). No vLLM needed — runs on a single GPU.
```yaml
base_model: meta-llama/Llama-3.2-1B
rl: ebft
ebft:
mode: strided
stride: 8
context_length: 8
generate_max_len: 8
n_samples_per_prompt: 4
temperature: 0.6
feature_layers: [0.25, 0.5, 0.75]
embed_method: last_token
use_whitening: true
alignment_coef: 1.0
diversity_coef: 1.0
rl_coef: 1.0
ce_coef: 0.03
advantage_estimator: rloo
datasets:
- path: nvidia/OpenCodeInstruct
type: ebft_strided_structured.transform
split: train[:1%]
attn_implementation: flex_attention # Strided mode uses flex_attention
gradient_checkpointing: true
gradient_checkpointing_kwargs:
use_reentrant: true # Required for flex_attention
```
```bash
CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0 axolotl train config.yaml
```
::: {.callout-tip}
See `examples/ebft/` for complete example configs covering Llama 1B/3B/8B and Qwen3 4B/8B models in both modes.
:::
#### EBFT Configuration Reference
| Parameter | Default | Description |
|-----------|---------|-------------|
| `ebft.feature_layers` | `[0.25, 0.5, 0.75]` | Layer depths for feature extraction (fractional) |
| `ebft.embed_method` | `last_token` | Feature pooling: `last_token`, `mean_pooling`, `concat` |
| `ebft.use_whitening` | `false` | SVD whitening of feature dimensions |
| `ebft.alignment_coef` | `1.0` | Cosine similarity reward weight |
| `ebft.diversity_coef` | `1.0` | Pairwise dot product penalty weight |
| `ebft.ce_coef` | `0.0` | Cross-entropy loss on ground-truth tokens |
| `ebft.mode` | `structured` | `structured` (vLLM) or `strided` (no vLLM) |
| `ebft.stride` | — | Tokens between anchor points (strided mode) |
| `ebft.context_length` | — | Context window per block (strided mode) |
| `ebft.generate_max_len` | — | Tokens to generate per block (strided mode) |
| `ebft.n_samples_per_prompt` | — | Rollouts per document (strided mode) |
| `ebft.advantage_estimator` | `grpo` | `grpo` or `rloo` (strided mode) |
### NeMo Gym Integration
[NeMo Gym](https://github.com/NVIDIA-NeMo/Gym) provides 50+ verified RL environments (math, coding, tool-use, reasoning) with deterministic reward signals. The axolotl integration supports both **single-turn** (call `/verify` after generation) and **multi-turn** (agent-based tool execution via `/run`).
#### Single-Turn (Simplest)
For environments that only need answer verification (math, coding challenges). No agent server needed — the reward function calls `/verify` directly on the resource server.
```yaml
base_model: Qwen/Qwen2.5-0.5B-Instruct
rl: grpo
chat_template: tokenizer_default
trl:
use_vllm: false # Colocate mode (single GPU)
num_generations: 4
max_completion_length: 128
temperature: 0.9
reward_funcs:
- axolotl.integrations.nemo_gym.rewards.reward_nemo_gym_verify
plugins:
- axolotl.integrations.nemo_gym.NemoGymPlugin
nemo_gym_enabled: true
nemo_gym_dir: ~/Gym
nemo_gym_auto_start: false
nemo_gym_head_port: 11000
nemo_gym_datasets:
- path: resources_servers/reasoning_gym/data/train_basic_arithmetic.jsonl
server_name: reasoning_gym
datasets:
- path: ~/Gym/resources_servers/reasoning_gym/data/train_basic_arithmetic.jsonl
type: chat_template
field_messages: responses_create_params.input
message_field_content: content
message_field_role: role
```
```bash
# Terminal 1: Start NeMo Gym resource server
cd ~/Gym && .venv/bin/ng_run \
"+config_paths=[resources_servers/reasoning_gym/configs/resources_only.yaml]" \
"+skip_venv_if_present=true"
# Terminal 2: Train
CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0 axolotl train config.yaml
```
::: {.callout-note}
`nemo_gym_datasets.path` is relative to `nemo_gym_dir`. Don't use absolute paths or they will be double-joined.
:::
#### Multi-Turn with Async GRPO (Recommended)
For environments with tool-use (weather, search, databases). An agent server orchestrates multi-turn interactions: generate → parse tool calls → execute tools → feed results back → repeat until done.
```yaml
base_model: Qwen/Qwen3-0.6B
rl: grpo
chat_template: tokenizer_default
adapter: lora
lora_r: 16
lora_alpha: 32
lora_target_modules: [q_proj, k_proj, v_proj, o_proj, gate_proj, up_proj, down_proj]
trl:
use_vllm: true
vllm_mode: server
vllm_server_host: localhost
vllm_server_port: 8000
vllm_lora_sync: true
vllm_sync_interval: 5
use_data_producer: true
async_prefetch: true # 3x speedup
num_generations: 4
max_completion_length: 512
temperature: 0.8
reward_funcs:
- axolotl.integrations.nemo_gym.rewards.reward_env
plugins:
- axolotl.integrations.nemo_gym.NemoGymPlugin
nemo_gym_enabled: true
nemo_gym_auto_start: false
nemo_gym_head_port: 11000
nemo_gym_multi_turn: true
nemo_gym_verify_timeout: 120
nemo_gym_datasets:
- path: resources_servers/example_single_tool_call/data/weather_tool_calling.jsonl
server_name: example_single_tool_call
datasets:
- path: ~/Gym/resources_servers/example_single_tool_call/data/weather_tool_calling.jsonl
type: chat_template
field_messages: responses_create_params.input
message_field_content: content
message_field_role: role
vllm:
gpu_memory_utilization: 0.85
max_model_len: 2048
```
Multi-turn requires three services running:
```bash
# Terminal 1: vLLM with LoRA + tool calling
VLLM_ALLOW_RUNTIME_LORA_UPDATING=1 CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0 \
python -m vllm.entrypoints.openai.api_server \
--model Qwen/Qwen3-0.6B --max-model-len 2048 \
--gpu-memory-utilization 0.85 \
--enable-lora --max-lora-rank 64 \
--enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser hermes
# Terminal 2: NeMo Gym servers (resource + model proxy + agent)
cd ~/Gym && .venv/bin/ng_run \
"+config_paths=[configs/axolotl_tool_calling.yaml]" \
"+skip_venv_if_present=true"
# Terminal 3: Training
CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=1 axolotl train config.yaml
```
::: {.callout-important}
Multi-turn requires a NeMo Gym agent config YAML that defines three components: a resource server (tools + `/verify`), a model server proxy (forwards to your vLLM), and an agent server (orchestrates `/run`). See the [NeMo Gym README](https://github.com/NVIDIA-NeMo/Gym) for agent config format.
:::
#### NeMo Gym Prerequisites
```bash
# Clone and set up NeMo Gym
git clone https://github.com/NVIDIA-NeMo/Gym.git ~/Gym
cd ~/Gym
uv venv --python 3.12 && source .venv/bin/activate && uv sync
# Fix pycosat build (GCC 13+)
CFLAGS="" uv pip install pycosat --python .venv/bin/python --no-build-isolation
```
#### NeMo Gym Configuration Reference
| Parameter | Type | Default | Description |
|-----------|------|---------|-------------|
| `nemo_gym_enabled` | bool | — | Enable the NeMo Gym integration |
| `nemo_gym_dir` | str | `~/Gym` | Path to NeMo Gym repo |
| `nemo_gym_auto_start` | bool | `true` | Auto-start resource servers |
| `nemo_gym_head_port` | int | `11000` | Head server port |
| `nemo_gym_multi_turn` | bool | `false` | Enable multi-turn via agent `/run` |
| `nemo_gym_verify_timeout` | int | `30` | Per-request timeout (seconds) |
| `nemo_gym_datasets` | list | required | Dataset configs with `path` and `server_name` |
#### Reward Functions
| Function | Mode | Description |
|----------|------|-------------|
| `axolotl.integrations.nemo_gym.rewards.reward_nemo_gym_verify` | Single-turn | Calls `/verify`, returns binary reward |
| `axolotl.integrations.nemo_gym.rewards.reward_env` | Multi-turn | Passthrough reward from agent `/run` |
### Using local dataset files
```yaml

View File

@@ -55,7 +55,7 @@ To use sequence parallelism, you need:
## Limitations
- Flash attention must be enabled for this to work (`attn_implementation: flash_attention_2` in config YAML)
- Flash attention must be enabled for this to work (`flash_attention: true` in config YAML)
- May have a small performance overhead due to communication between GPUs
## Example

View File

@@ -1,399 +0,0 @@
---
title: "Training Stability & Debugging"
order: 15
description: "Guide to monitoring, debugging, and stabilizing training runs in axolotl"
---
This guide covers practical techniques for monitoring training health, diagnosing instability, and resolving common failures in both supervised fine-tuning (SFT) and reinforcement learning (GRPO/EBFT) workflows.
## Monitoring Training
### Key Metrics for SFT
Every SFT run should be monitored through at least these four metrics:
| Metric | What It Tells You | Healthy Range |
|--------|-------------------|---------------|
| `train/loss` | How well the model fits training data | Decreasing; typically 0.5--2.0 for chat fine-tuning |
| `eval/loss` | Generalization performance | Tracks train loss with small gap; divergence signals overfitting |
| `grad_norm` | Gradient magnitude | 0.1--10.0; spikes above 100 indicate instability |
| `learning_rate` | Current LR from scheduler | Should follow expected schedule (warmup then decay) |
::: {.callout-tip}
## Set Up Logging Early
Enable W&B or TensorBoard from the start. Debugging a failed run without metrics is guesswork.
```yaml
wandb_project: my-project
wandb_run_id: # optional, for resuming
logging_steps: 1
```
:::
### Key Metrics for RL (GRPO)
GRPO training logs a richer set of metrics. These are the critical ones:
| Metric | Healthy Range | Red Flag |
|--------|---------------|----------|
| `rewards/<name>/mean` | > 0.15 within 20 steps | Stays at 0 -- reward function is broken or task is too hard |
| `reward_std` | > 0 on most steps | Always 0 -- no learning signal (all completions get the same reward) |
| `frac_reward_zero_std` | < 0.8 | 1.0 on every step -- zero-advantage skip fires constantly, no gradient updates |
| `grad_norm` | 0.001--1.0 | 0.0 is acceptable occasionally (zero-adv skip); > 10.0 is unstable |
| `entropy` | 0.05--0.5 | < 0.01 suggests mode collapse; > 1.0 suggests the model is not converging |
| `kl` | 0.0--0.5 | > 2.0 suggests policy has diverged too far from reference |
| `sampling/sampling_logp_difference/mean` | < 0.1 | > 1.0 means policy has diverged far from vLLM server weights |
| `sampling/importance_sampling_ratio/min` | > 0.1 | Near 0 indicates stale off-policy data; increase `vllm_sync_interval` |
| `clip_ratio/region_mean` | < 0.1 | > 0.3 means PPO clipping is too aggressive |
| `completions/mean_length` | Task-dependent | Monotonically increasing to max length suggests reward hacking |
| `completions/clipped_ratio` | < 0.3 | > 0.8 means most completions hit `max_completion_length` -- increase it |
::: {.callout-note}
## EBFT-Specific Metrics
For EBFT training, also monitor `ebft/alignment` (should trend upward, healthy 0.3--0.9), `ebft/diversity` (healthy 0.01--0.1; > 1.0 indicates mode collapse), and `ebft/cfm_loss` (should trend downward, < 10).
:::
## SFT Stability
### Loss Plateau
**Symptom**: Loss stops decreasing early in training, well above expected values.
**Causes and fixes**:
- **Learning rate too low**: Increase by 2--5x. Typical ranges: full fine-tune 1e-5 to 5e-5, LoRA 1e-4 to 3e-4.
- **Insufficient warmup**: Set `warmup_steps` to 5--10% of total steps. Too-aggressive learning at the start can push the model into a flat region.
- **Data quality**: Check that labels are correctly masked. Use `axolotl preprocess` and inspect tokenized samples to confirm only the target tokens are trainable.
- **Weight decay too high**: Default 0.01 is usually fine. Values above 0.1 can suppress learning in LoRA.
### Loss Spikes
**Symptom**: Loss suddenly jumps by 2--10x then (possibly) recovers.
**Causes and fixes**:
- **Bad data samples**: A single malformed or extremely long example can cause a spike. Enable `sample_packing: false` temporarily and check if spikes correlate with specific batches.
- **Learning rate too high**: Reduce by 2--5x, or increase warmup.
- **Gradient accumulation mismatch**: Effective batch size = `micro_batch_size * gradient_accumulation_steps * num_gpus`. Very large effective batch sizes amplify gradient noise.
- **Mixed precision issues**: With `bf16: true`, some operations can lose precision. If spikes are severe, try `fp32` for diagnosis.
### Overfitting
**Symptom**: Train loss keeps decreasing but eval loss starts increasing.
**Fixes**:
- Increase `val_set_size` (e.g., 0.05) and monitor `eval/loss`.
- Reduce `num_epochs` or `max_steps`.
- Increase `weight_decay` (try 0.01--0.1).
- Use a smaller LoRA rank (`lora_r`). Typical values: 8--32.
- Increase dropout: `lora_dropout: 0.05`.
## RL/GRPO Stability
### Reward Never Increases
If `rewards/*/mean` stays at 0 for more than 20 steps:
1. **Test reward function standalone**: Run it outside training with known inputs to verify it returns nonzero values.
```bash
cd experiments && python -c "import my_rewards; print(my_rewards.accuracy_reward(...))"
```
2. **Check dataset columns**: The reward function receives `**kwargs` containing dataset columns. Verify the columns it needs (e.g., `answer`) are not removed by the dataset transform.
3. **Check completion content**: Enable `log_completions: true` in the `trl:` config and inspect logged completions in W&B. If completions are empty or incoherent, the model may be too weak for the task.
4. **Verify vLLM is serving the right model**: Hit the vLLM health endpoint and confirm the model name matches your config.
### Entropy Collapse (Mode Collapse)
**Symptom**: `entropy` drops below 0.01; all completions become nearly identical.
**Fixes**:
- Increase `temperature` in generation kwargs (try 0.8--1.0).
- Reduce learning rate.
- Add a KL penalty term (`beta` parameter in GRPO config).
- Check that `num_generations` is sufficient (16+ gives better advantage estimates).
### IS Ratio Divergence
**Symptom**: `sampling/importance_sampling_ratio/min` drops near 0, or `sampling/sampling_logp_difference/mean` exceeds 1.0.
This means the policy has diverged significantly from the weights used by vLLM for generation. The importance sampling correction becomes unreliable.
**Fixes**:
- Decrease `vllm_sync_interval` (sync weights more often).
- Enable `off_policy_mask_threshold` (e.g., 0.5) to mask stale off-policy samples.
- Use `importance_sampling_level: token` for finer-grained correction.
### Gradient Norm Instability
**Symptom**: `grad_norm` oscillates wildly or exceeds 10.0 regularly.
**Fixes**:
- Enable gradient clipping: `max_grad_norm: 1.0` (default in most configs).
- Reduce learning rate.
- Increase `gradient_accumulation_steps` to smooth out noisy batches.
- Check for NaN issues (see next section).
## NaN and Inf Handling
### Common Causes
| Cause | Where It Manifests | Detection |
|-------|-------------------|-----------|
| FP8 zero-scale division | Forward pass logits | `grad_norm: nan`, loss becomes NaN immediately |
| Gradient explosion | Backward pass | `grad_norm` spikes to inf, then loss goes NaN |
| Bad data (empty sequences) | Logprob computation | NaN in specific batches only |
| Numerical overflow in log-softmax | Loss computation | Large negative logprobs cause exp() overflow |
### FP8-Specific NaN Issues
FP8 quantization (`fp8: true`) can produce NaN when the activation quantization kernel divides by `max(abs(x)) / 448`. If the input tensor is all zeros (e.g., padding positions), the scale becomes 0, causing division by zero.
**Fixes applied in axolotl**:
- The `act_quant_kernel` has a zero-guard: `s = tl.where(s == 0, 1.0, s)`.
- A safety net `nan_to_num(logits, nan=0.0)` is applied in `_get_per_token_logps_and_entropies`.
- Embedding padding is zero-padded for FP8 compatibility.
::: {.callout-important}
## After Modifying Triton Kernels
If you patch any Triton JIT kernel (e.g., the FP8 quantization kernels in transformers), you must clear the Triton cache for changes to take effect:
```bash
rm -rf ~/.triton/cache
```
:::
### General NaN Debugging Steps
1. **Enable anomaly detection** (slow, but pinpoints the source):
```python
torch.autograd.set_detect_anomaly(True)
```
2. **Check grad_norm**: If it goes to NaN, the backward pass is the problem. If loss is NaN but grad_norm was fine on the previous step, the forward pass is the problem.
3. **Reduce to single GPU, single batch**: Eliminate distributed training variables.
4. **Inspect data**: Print the batch that triggers NaN. Look for empty sequences, extreme token IDs, or unexpected padding patterns.
## OOM Debugging
Out-of-memory errors are the most common training failure. Use this systematic approach, from least to most disruptive:
### Step 1: Reduce Batch Size
The single highest-impact change. VRAM scales roughly linearly with batch size.
```yaml
micro_batch_size: 1 # Start here
gradient_accumulation_steps: 16 # Increase to maintain effective batch size
```
For GRPO specifically, the logits tensor for policy logprob computation can be very large. `batch_size * num_generations * seq_len * vocab_size` in bf16. For example, with `num_generations: 16` and `micro_batch_size: 8`, the logits tensor alone is:
```
8 * 16 * 2048 * 151936 * 2 bytes = ~75 GB (way too large)
```
Reduce `micro_batch_size` to 2--4 for GRPO.
### Step 2: Enable Gradient Checkpointing
Trades compute for memory by recomputing activations during the backward pass instead of storing them.
```yaml
gradient_checkpointing: true
gradient_checkpointing_kwargs:
use_reentrant: false # Recommended default
```
::: {.callout-warning}
## Reentrant Checkpointing Exceptions
Some configurations require `use_reentrant: true`:
- DeepSpeed ZeRO-3 (non-reentrant causes `CheckpointError`)
- EBFT strided mode with flex_attention
:::
### Step 3: Use Quantization
Load the base model in reduced precision:
```yaml
# 4-bit QLoRA
adapter: qlora
load_in_4bit: true
# 8-bit
load_in_8bit: true
# FP8 (saves ~50% model VRAM, same compute speed as bf16)
fp8: true
```
### Step 4: Reduce Sequence Length
```yaml
sequence_len: 1024 # Down from 2048 or 4096
```
For GRPO, also reduce `max_completion_length`. Memory scales quadratically with sequence length when using standard attention.
### Step 5: Use Flash Attention
Reduces attention memory from O(n^2) to O(n):
```yaml
attn_implementation: flash_attention_2
```
### Step 6: Offload with DeepSpeed
For extreme cases, offload optimizer states or parameters to CPU:
```yaml
deepspeed: deepspeed_configs/zero3_bf16.json
```
### Diagnosing the Specific Culprit
Use the `profiler_steps` config option to capture GPU memory snapshots:
```yaml
profiler_steps: [1, 2]
```
This generates PyTorch profiler traces you can inspect to see exactly which tensor allocation caused the OOM.
## Common Errors
| Error Message | Likely Cause | Fix |
|---------------|-------------|-----|
| `exitcode: -9` | System RAM exhaustion | Reduce dataset size, `dataset_num_proc`, or number of data workers |
| `exitcode: -7` (DeepSpeed) | DeepSpeed version issue | `pip install -U deepspeed` |
| `CUDA out of memory` | GPU VRAM exhaustion | Follow OOM debugging steps above |
| `RuntimeError: NCCL communicator was aborted` | GPU communication failure | See [NCCL docs](nccl.qmd); check `NCCL_DEBUG=INFO` output |
| `ValueError: Asking to pad but the tokenizer does not have a padding token` | Missing pad token | Add `special_tokens: { pad_token: "<\|endoftext\|>" }` to config |
| `'DummyOptim' object has no attribute 'step'` | DeepSpeed on single GPU | Remove `deepspeed:` section from config |
| `unable to load strategy X` then `None is not callable` | Reward module not importable | Run `cd experiments && python -c "import my_rewards"` to check |
| `generation_batch_size not divisible by num_generations` | micro_batch_size too small | Set `micro_batch_size >= num_generations` and make it divisible |
| `'weight' must be 2-D` | FSDP1 flattened parameters | Use `fsdp_version: 2` or skip `unwrap_model` when FSDP is enabled |
| `CheckpointError` (tensor count mismatch) | Non-reentrant checkpointing + ZeRO-3 or flex_attention | Set `use_reentrant: true` in `gradient_checkpointing_kwargs` |
| `BFloat16` TypeError during weight sync | NumPy does not support bf16 | Fixed in axolotl's `weight_serde.py` (auto bf16 to fp16 conversion) |
| `Content end boundary is before start boundary` | Chat template parsing issue | Check `eos_token` matches template; file a GitHub issue if persistent |
| `CAS service error` during data processing | HuggingFace XET issue | Set `export HF_HUB_DISABLE_XET=1` |
| Training hangs (multi-GPU) | FSDP + async prefetch deadlock | Set `async_prefetch: false` with FSDP |
## Profiling
### PyTorch Profiler
Axolotl supports PyTorch profiler integration via the config:
```yaml
profiler_steps: [1, 2, 3]
```
This captures profiler traces for the specified steps. View them in TensorBoard:
```bash
tensorboard --logdir output_dir/runs
```
Or open the `.json` trace file in `chrome://tracing`.
### CUDA Memory Snapshots
For detailed memory analysis, use PyTorch's memory snapshot API. Add this to your training script or use it interactively:
```python
import torch
# Enable memory history tracking
torch.cuda.memory._record_memory_history()
# ... run your training step ...
# Save snapshot
torch.cuda.memory._dump_snapshot("memory_snapshot.pickle")
```
Visualize with PyTorch's memory visualizer:
```bash
python -m torch.cuda.memory._viz memory_snapshot.pickle
```
### Quick GPU Memory Check
During training, monitor GPU utilization in a separate terminal:
```bash
watch -n 1 nvidia-smi
```
For programmatic access within axolotl, the logged metrics `memory/max_alloc` and `memory/max_reserved` come from `torch.cuda.max_memory_allocated()` and `torch.cuda.max_memory_reserved()`. Note these report PyTorch's view of memory, which may differ from `nvidia-smi` (see [FAQ](faq.qmd)).
## W&B and Logging
### Enabling Logging
```yaml
wandb_project: my-project
wandb_entity: my-team # optional
wandb_run_id: run-123 # optional, for resuming
wandb_name: experiment-name # optional
logging_steps: 1 # log every step (recommended for RL)
```
### Debug Logging
For detailed axolotl-internal debug output:
```bash
AXOLOTL_LOG_LEVEL=DEBUG axolotl train config.yaml 2>&1 | tee /tmp/training.log
```
::: {.callout-tip}
## Always Log to a File
Pipe training output to a log file so you can inspect it after the run:
```bash
axolotl train config.yaml 2>&1 | tee /tmp/my_run.log
```
:::
### What Axolotl Logs
**SFT metrics** (logged every `logging_steps`):
- `train/loss`, `eval/loss` -- training and validation loss
- `train/grad_norm` -- gradient L2 norm (before clipping)
- `train/learning_rate` -- current learning rate
- `memory/max_alloc`, `memory/max_reserved` -- peak GPU memory
**GRPO/RL metrics** (logged every step):
- `rewards/<name>/mean`, `rewards/<name>/std` -- per-reward-function statistics
- `reward`, `reward_std` -- aggregated reward across all reward functions
- `frac_reward_zero_std` -- fraction of prompt groups where all completions got the same reward
- `completions/mean_length`, `completions/min_length`, `completions/max_length` -- completion token lengths
- `completions/clipped_ratio` -- fraction of completions that hit the max length
- `completions/mean_terminated_length`, `completions/min_terminated_length`, `completions/max_terminated_length` -- lengths of naturally terminated completions
- `kl` -- KL divergence between policy and reference
- `entropy` -- policy entropy (measure of output diversity)
- `clip_ratio/region_mean`, `clip_ratio/low_mean`, `clip_ratio/high_mean` -- PPO clipping statistics
- `sampling/sampling_logp_difference/mean`, `sampling/sampling_logp_difference/max` -- log-probability difference between policy and sampling distribution
- `sampling/importance_sampling_ratio/min`, `sampling/importance_sampling_ratio/mean`, `sampling/importance_sampling_ratio/max` -- IS ratio statistics for off-policy correction
- `num_tokens` -- total tokens processed
### Reading W&B Charts
For a healthy GRPO run, expect to see:
1. **`reward/mean`**: Gradual upward trend. May start near 0 and reach 0.3--0.8 depending on task difficulty. Not monotonic -- fluctuations are normal.
2. **`entropy`**: Gradual decrease from initial values (often 0.3--0.6) as the model becomes more confident. Should not collapse to near-zero.
3. **`grad_norm`**: Mostly in the 0.001--1.0 range. Occasional 0.0 values are fine (zero-advantage skip). Persistent values above 10.0 need investigation.
4. **`kl`**: Starts near 0 and grows slowly. If it shoots up rapidly, the policy is diverging from the reference.
5. **`completions/mean_length`**: Should reflect the task's natural answer length. If it steadily increases to `max_completion_length`, the model may be reward-hacking by generating longer outputs.

53
docs/unsloth.qmd Normal file
View File

@@ -0,0 +1,53 @@
---
title: "Unsloth"
description: "Hyper-optimized QLoRA finetuning for single GPUs"
---
### Overview
Unsloth provides hand-written optimized kernels for LLM finetuning that slightly improve speed and VRAM over
standard industry baselines.
::: {.callout-important}
Due to breaking changes in transformers `v4.48.0`, users will need to downgrade to `<=v4.47.1` to use this patch.
This will later be deprecated in favor of [LoRA Optimizations](lora_optims.qmd).
:::
### Installation
The following will install the correct unsloth and extras from source.
```bash
python scripts/unsloth_install.py | sh
```
### Usage
Axolotl exposes a few configuration options to try out unsloth and get most of the performance gains.
Our unsloth integration is currently limited to the following model architectures:
- llama
These options are specific to LoRA finetuning and cannot be used for multi-GPU finetuning
```yaml
unsloth_lora_mlp: true
unsloth_lora_qkv: true
unsloth_lora_o: true
```
These options are composable and can be used with multi-gpu finetuning
```yaml
unsloth_cross_entropy_loss: true
unsloth_rms_norm: true
unsloth_rope: true
```
### Limitations
- Single GPU only; e.g. no multi-gpu support
- No deepspeed or FSDP support (requires multi-gpu)
- LoRA + QLoRA support only. No full fine tunes or fp8 support.
- Limited model architecture support. Llama, Phi, Gemma, Mistral only
- No MoE support.

View File

@@ -1,318 +0,0 @@
---
title: "vLLM Serving for GRPO Training"
description: "How to configure and run vLLM as a generation backend for GRPO reinforcement learning in Axolotl."
format:
html:
toc: true
toc-depth: 3
number-sections: true
execute:
enabled: false
---
## Overview {#sec-overview}
GRPO (Group Relative Policy Optimization) trains a language model by generating completions, scoring them with reward functions, and updating the policy to favor higher-reward outputs. The generation step is the bottleneck: producing thousands of tokens per training step with the policy model is slow using standard HuggingFace generation.
Axolotl uses [vLLM](https://github.com/vllm-project/vllm) as a high-throughput generation backend. vLLM runs as a separate process (either on a dedicated GPU or colocated on the training GPU) and serves completions via an HTTP API. The trainer sends prompts to vLLM, receives completions, scores them, and performs gradient updates.
```
┌──────────────────────┐ HTTP ┌──────────────────────┐
│ Trainer (GPU 1) │ ───────────────── │ vLLM Server (GPU 0)│
│ │ prompts/compls │ │
│ - Policy model │ ◄──────────────── │ - Same base model │
│ - Reward scoring │ │ - Fast generation │
│ - Gradient updates │ weight sync │ - LoRA adapter │
│ - LoRA adapter │ ─────────────────►│ (periodically │
│ │ (every N steps) │ updated) │
└──────────────────────┘ └──────────────────────┘
```
::: {.callout-important}
vLLM must serve the **same base model** specified in your training config. If the models do not match, weight synchronization will silently produce incorrect results.
:::
## Server Mode {#sec-server-mode}
Server mode runs vLLM as an external process on dedicated GPU(s). This is the recommended configuration for most setups.
### Starting the Server
Use the `axolotl vllm-serve` command with your training config:
```bash
# Terminal 1: Start vLLM on GPU 0
CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0 axolotl vllm-serve grpo_config.yaml
```
```bash
# Terminal 2: Start training on GPU 1
CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=1 axolotl train grpo_config.yaml
```
The server reads vLLM settings from the `vllm:` section of your config and starts an HTTP server (default: `http://0.0.0.0:8000`).
::: {.callout-tip}
Use `tmux` or `screen` to manage the vLLM server process. Typical startup time is 30-90 seconds depending on model size and whether CUDA graphs are captured.
:::
### Minimal Server Config
```yaml
base_model: Qwen/Qwen2.5-1.5B-Instruct
vllm:
host: 0.0.0.0
port: 8000
gpu_memory_utilization: 0.85
dtype: auto
max_model_len: 4096
rl: grpo
trl:
use_vllm: true
vllm_server_host: 0.0.0.0
vllm_server_port: 8000
vllm_server_timeout: 300
```
### Multi-GPU vLLM
For larger models, use tensor parallelism across multiple GPUs:
```yaml
vllm:
tensor_parallel_size: 2
gpu_memory_utilization: 0.85
```
```bash
# vLLM on GPUs 2,3; training on GPUs 0,1
CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=2,3 axolotl vllm-serve grpo_config.yaml
CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0,1 axolotl train grpo_config.yaml --num-processes 2
```
::: {.callout-note}
Due to how TRL maps vLLM device indices, the vLLM instance should use the **last** N GPUs (highest device indices), while training uses the first N.
:::
## Colocate Mode {#sec-colocate-mode}
Colocate mode runs vLLM on the same GPU as the trainer. This is useful when you only have a single GPU.
```yaml
trl:
use_vllm: true
vllm_mode: colocate
vllm_enable_sleep_mode: true
```
With `vllm_enable_sleep_mode: true`, vLLM offloads its VRAM allocation when not actively generating, freeing memory for training. When the trainer needs new completions, vLLM wakes up and reclaims VRAM.
::: {.callout-warning}
Colocate mode is significantly slower than server mode because generation and training cannot overlap. The GPU alternates between the two workloads. This mode is practical only for smaller models (up to ~3B on a 24 GB GPU).
:::
**When to use colocate mode:**
- You have exactly one GPU
- The model fits in memory with both vLLM and training active (with sleep mode), or is small enough to time-share
- You accept the performance tradeoff for simpler setup (no separate vLLM process to manage)
**When to use server mode:**
- You have two or more GPUs
- You want maximum throughput (generation overlaps with training via async prefetch)
- You are running larger models (7B+)
## LoRA Sync {#sec-lora-sync}
LoRA sync is the recommended weight synchronization method when training with LoRA adapters. Instead of merging adapter weights into the base model and broadcasting the full merged weights over NCCL, it saves only the LoRA adapter files to the filesystem and tells vLLM to load them natively.
### How It Works
1. The trainer calls `model.save_pretrained()` to write the LoRA adapter weights to a temporary directory
2. The trainer sends an HTTP POST to `/set_lora_adapter/` on the vLLM server
3. vLLM loads the adapter using its native LoRA support (Punica kernels)
4. Generation uses the updated adapter on the next request
### Benefits
- **Smaller sync payload**: Transfers ~40 MB of LoRA weights instead of ~1.4 GB+ of merged model weights (for a typical 0.5-3B model)
- **No NCCL communicator**: Eliminates the need for a cross-GPU NCCL communication channel, removing GPU contention between vLLM generation and weight sync
- **Faster sync**: ~200 ms per sync vs. 350 ms to 5+ seconds for NCCL merge sync
- **Simpler multi-GPU**: No need to set up NCCL groups between trainer and vLLM processes
### Configuration
```yaml
adapter: lora
lora_r: 32
lora_alpha: 64
lora_target_linear: true
trl:
vllm_lora_sync: true # Enables LoRA sync mode
vllm_sync_interval: 5 # Sync every 5 training steps
```
Setting `vllm_lora_sync: true` automatically selects the LoRA-aware vLLM serve script (`axolotl.scripts.vllm_serve_lora`). You do not need to set `vllm.serve_module` manually.
::: {.callout-important}
LoRA sync requires that you are training with a LoRA adapter (`adapter: lora` or `adapter: qlora`). It is not applicable to full fine-tuning.
:::
## Weight Synchronization {#sec-weight-sync}
During GRPO training, the policy model on the trainer is continuously updated via gradient steps. The vLLM server, however, still holds the old weights. Periodically, the trainer must push updated weights to vLLM so that future generations reflect the improved policy.
### Sync Interval
The `vllm_sync_interval` parameter controls how often weights are synced:
```yaml
trl:
vllm_sync_interval: 5 # Sync every 5 optimizer steps
```
**Tradeoffs:**
- **Lower interval** (e.g., 1-3): Fresher generations, better on-policy data, but more sync overhead per step
- **Higher interval** (e.g., 5-10): Less overhead, but generations become increasingly off-policy between syncs
- **Recommended**: 3-5 for most setups. Axolotl includes importance sampling correction (`vllm_importance_sampling_correction: true`) to handle mild distribution mismatch from stale vLLM weights.
### Sync Methods
| Method | Config | Payload | Mechanism | Typical Time |
|--------|--------|---------|-----------|-------------|
| **LoRA sync** | `vllm_lora_sync: true` | LoRA adapter only (~40 MB) | Filesystem + HTTP | ~200 ms |
| **NCCL merge sync** | Default (no lora_sync) | Full merged weights (~1.4 GB+) | HTTP trigger + NCCL broadcast | 350 ms - 5 s |
::: {.callout-tip}
If you are training with LoRA (which is recommended for GRPO), always enable `vllm_lora_sync: true`. The performance difference is substantial, especially as training progresses and NCCL contention increases.
:::
### Importance Sampling Correction
When vLLM weights are stale (between syncs), the generated data is slightly off-policy. Axolotl can correct for this:
```yaml
trl:
vllm_importance_sampling_correction: true
importance_sampling_level: token # 'token' or 'sequence'
off_policy_mask_threshold: 0.5 # KL threshold for masking stale sequences
```
- **Token-level IS** is recommended when using Liger kernel (sequence-level has numerical issues with chunked computation)
- **Off-policy sequence masking (OPSM)** drops sequences that have diverged too far from the current policy, providing a safety net against stale data
## Restart Requirements {#sec-restart}
::: {.callout-warning}
**vLLM must be restarted between training runs.** Weight syncs from a previous run leave the server in a corrupted state. If you start a new training run against a stale vLLM server, the model may fail to learn.
:::
### When to Restart
- Before every new training experiment
- After a training run crashes or is interrupted
- If you change the base model in your config
### How to Restart
Killing vLLM reliably requires terminating both the main process and its background EngineCore subprocess:
```bash
# Kill all vLLM-related processes
pkill -9 -f "vllm|EngineCore"
# Verify GPU memory is freed
nvidia-smi
# Restart the server
CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0 axolotl vllm-serve grpo_config.yaml
```
::: {.callout-tip}
A single `kill` often does not fully stop vLLM. Always use `kill -9` and verify with `nvidia-smi` that GPU memory has been released before restarting.
:::
### Health Check
The vLLM server exposes a health endpoint. Wait for it to return 200 before starting training:
```bash
# For the LoRA serve script (trailing slash required)
curl http://localhost:8000/health/
# For the default TRL serve script
curl http://localhost:8000/health
```
## Configuration Reference {#sec-config-reference}
### vLLM Server Options (`vllm:` section)
These control the vLLM server process started by `axolotl vllm-serve`.
| Option | Type | Default | Description |
|--------|------|---------|-------------|
| `host` | str | `0.0.0.0` | Host address for the vLLM server |
| `port` | int | `8000` | Port for the vLLM server |
| `device` | str | `auto` | Device to use for vLLM |
| `tensor_parallel_size` | int | `None` | Number of GPUs for tensor parallelism |
| `data_parallel_size` | int | `None` | Number of data parallel replicas |
| `gpu_memory_utilization` | float | `0.9` | Fraction of GPU memory for vLLM (0.0-1.0) |
| `dtype` | str | `auto` | Data type (`auto`, `float16`, `bfloat16`) |
| `max_model_len` | int | `None` | Maximum model context length. Set explicitly if the default is too large for your GPU |
| `enable_prefix_caching` | bool | `None` | Enable prefix caching for repeated prompt prefixes |
| `enable_reasoning` | bool | `None` | Enable reasoning mode for models with thinking tokens |
| `reasoning_parser` | str | `None` | Parser for reasoning output |
| `enforce_eager` | bool | `None` | Disable CUDA graph capture (required for some architectures like Qwen3.5 hybrid attention) |
| `serve_module` | str | `None` | Python module for vLLM serve script. Auto-set when `vllm_lora_sync: true` |
| `worker_extension_cls` | str | `None` | vLLM worker extension class for weight sync |
### Trainer vLLM Options (`trl:` section)
These control how the trainer interacts with vLLM.
| Option | Type | Default | Description |
|--------|------|---------|-------------|
| `use_vllm` | bool | `false` | Enable vLLM for generation |
| `vllm_mode` | str | `None` | `server` (external process) or `colocate` (same GPU) |
| `vllm_server_host` | str | `0.0.0.0` | Host of the vLLM server to connect to |
| `vllm_server_port` | int | `8000` | Port of the vLLM server to connect to |
| `vllm_server_timeout` | int | `None` | Timeout in seconds for vLLM requests |
| `vllm_lora_sync` | bool | `false` | Sync LoRA adapters via filesystem instead of NCCL merge |
| `vllm_sync_interval` | int | `None` | Sync weights every N optimizer steps |
| `vllm_enable_sleep_mode` | bool | `None` | Offload vLLM VRAM when idle (colocate mode) |
| `vllm_guided_decoding_regex` | str | `None` | Regex constraint for guided decoding |
For async pipeline and off-policy correction options, see the [GRPO Configuration Reference](grpo.qmd#configuration-reference).
## Complete Example {#sec-complete-example}
For a full working GRPO config including vLLM, LoRA sync, async generation, rewards, and dataset setup, see the [GRPO Quick Start](grpo.qmd#quick-start). That config includes all the vLLM settings covered in this guide.
```bash
# Terminal 1: Start vLLM
CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0 axolotl vllm-serve grpo_config.yaml
# Wait for health check to pass
curl http://localhost:8000/health/
# Terminal 2: Start training
CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=1 axolotl train grpo_config.yaml
```
## Troubleshooting {#sec-troubleshooting}
| Problem | Likely Cause | Solution |
|---------|-------------|----------|
| Training hangs waiting for vLLM | Server not started or wrong port | Check `curl http://localhost:8000/health/` and verify `vllm_server_host`/`vllm_server_port` match |
| OOM on vLLM GPU | `gpu_memory_utilization` too high or `max_model_len` too large | Reduce `gpu_memory_utilization` to 0.7 or set `max_model_len` explicitly |
| OOM on training GPU | Batch too large for policy logprobs | Reduce `micro_batch_size` or `num_generations` |
| Accuracy stays at zero | Stale vLLM from previous run | Restart vLLM: `pkill -9 -f "vllm\|EngineCore"`, verify with `nvidia-smi`, restart |
| `ResponseValidationError` from vLLM | Missing logprobs in response | Ensure you are using the correct serve module (auto-selected with `vllm_lora_sync: true`) |
| Weight sync takes 5+ seconds | NCCL contention with vLLM generation | Switch to `vllm_lora_sync: true` to eliminate NCCL |
| `async_prefetch` deadlocks with FSDP | Background threads run unsynchronized FSDP collectives | Set `async_prefetch: false` when using FSDP or DeepSpeed multi-GPU |

View File

@@ -15,7 +15,8 @@ Thanks to the team at LiquidAI for giving us early access to prepare for these r
Here is an example of how to install from pip:
```bash
# Ensure you have a compatible version of Pytorch installed
uv pip install --no-build-isolation 'axolotl[flash-attn]>=0.12.0'
pip3 install packaging setuptools wheel ninja
pip3 install --no-build-isolation 'axolotl[flash-attn]>=0.12.0'
```
2. Run one of the finetuning examples below.
@@ -34,7 +35,7 @@ Thanks to the team at LiquidAI for giving us early access to prepare for these r
**LFM2-MoE**
```bash
uv pip install git+https://github.com/huggingface/transformers.git@0c9a72e4576fe4c84077f066e585129c97bfd4e6
pip install git+https://github.com/huggingface/transformers.git@0c9a72e4576fe4c84077f066e585129c97bfd4e6
# LoRA SFT (1x48GB @ 16.2GiB)
axolotl train examples/LiquidAI/lfm2-8b-a1b-lora.yaml
@@ -44,7 +45,7 @@ Thanks to the team at LiquidAI for giving us early access to prepare for these r
- **Installation Error**: If you encounter `ImportError: ... undefined symbol ...` or `ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'causal_conv1d_cuda'`, the `causal-conv1d` package may have been installed incorrectly. Try uninstalling it:
```bash
uv pip uninstall causal-conv1d
pip uninstall -y causal-conv1d
```
- **Dataset Loading**: Read more on how to load your own dataset in our [documentation](https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/dataset_loading.html).

View File

@@ -39,7 +39,7 @@ tf32: true
gradient_checkpointing: false
resume_from_checkpoint:
logging_steps: 1
attn_implementation: flash_attention_2
flash_attention: true
warmup_ratio: 0.1
evals_per_epoch: 2

View File

@@ -48,7 +48,7 @@ tf32: true
gradient_checkpointing: true
resume_from_checkpoint:
logging_steps: 1
attn_implementation: flash_attention_2
flash_attention: true
warmup_ratio: 0.1
evals_per_epoch: 2

View File

@@ -50,7 +50,8 @@ tf32: true
gradient_checkpointing: true
logging_steps: 1
attn_implementation: flash_attention_2
flash_attention: true
eager_attention:
warmup_ratio: 0.1
evals_per_epoch: 1

View File

@@ -39,7 +39,7 @@ activation_offloading: legacy
resume_from_checkpoint:
logging_steps: 1
attn_implementation: flash_attention_2
flash_attention: true
warmup_steps: 100
saves_per_epoch: 1

View File

@@ -39,7 +39,7 @@ activation_offloading: legacy
resume_from_checkpoint:
logging_steps: 1
attn_implementation: flash_attention_2
flash_attention: true
warmup_steps: 100
saves_per_epoch: 1

View File

@@ -15,7 +15,8 @@ This guide shows how to fine-tune it with Axolotl with multi-turn conversations
git clone https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/axolotl.git
cd axolotl
uv pip install --no-build-isolation -e '.[flash-attn]'
pip3 install packaging==26.0 setuptools==75.8.0 wheel ninja
pip3 install --no-build-isolation -e '.[flash-attn]'
# Install CCE https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/custom_integrations.html#cut-cross-entropy
python scripts/cutcrossentropy_install.py | sh
@@ -30,7 +31,7 @@ python scripts/cutcrossentropy_install.py | sh
# For those using our Docker image, use the below path.
export CUDA_HOME=/usr/local/cuda
uv pip install git+https://github.com/nickjbrowning/XIELU@59d6031 --no-build-isolation --no-deps
pip3 install git+https://github.com/nickjbrowning/XIELU@59d6031 --no-build-isolation --no-deps
```
For any installation errors, see [XIELU Installation Issues](#xielu-installation-issues)
@@ -66,7 +67,7 @@ If those didn't help, please try the below solutions:
1. Pass env for CMAKE and try install again:
```bash
Python_EXECUTABLE=$(which python) uv pip install git+https://github.com/nickjbrowning/XIELU@59d6031 --no-build-isolation --no-deps
Python_EXECUTABLE=$(which python) pip3 install git+https://github.com/nickjbrowning/XIELU@59d6031 --no-build-isolation --no-deps
```
2. Git clone the repo and manually hardcode python path:
@@ -91,7 +92,7 @@ If those didn't help, please try the below solutions:
```
```bash
uv pip install . --no-build-isolation --no-deps
pip3 install . --no-build-isolation --no-deps
```
## Optimization Guides

View File

@@ -55,7 +55,7 @@ tf32: false
gradient_checkpointing: true
resume_from_checkpoint:
logging_steps: 1
attn_implementation: flash_attention_2
flash_attention: true
warmup_ratio: 0.1
evals_per_epoch: 1

View File

@@ -17,7 +17,8 @@ Thanks to the team at Arcee.ai for using Axolotl in supervised fine-tuning the A
git clone https://github.com/axolotl-ai-cloud/axolotl.git
cd axolotl
uv pip install --no-build-isolation -e '.[flash-attn]'
pip3 install packaging==26.0 setuptools==75.8.0 wheel ninja
pip3 install --no-build-isolation -e '.[flash-attn]'
# Install CCE https://docs.axolotl.ai/docs/custom_integrations.html#cut-cross-entropy
python scripts/cutcrossentropy_install.py | sh

View File

@@ -55,7 +55,7 @@ tf32: false
gradient_checkpointing: true
resume_from_checkpoint:
logging_steps: 1
attn_implementation: flash_attention_2
flash_attention: true
warmup_ratio: 0.1
evals_per_epoch: 1

View File

@@ -59,7 +59,8 @@ gradient_checkpointing: false
resume_from_checkpoint:
logging_steps: 1
attn_implementation: flash_attention_2
flash_attention: true
sdp_attention:
flash_optimum:
gptq_groupsize:

View File

@@ -39,7 +39,8 @@ tf32: true
gradient_checkpointing: true
resume_from_checkpoint:
logging_steps: 1
attn_implementation: xformers
xformers_attention: true
flash_attention:
gptq_groupsize:
gptq_model_v1:
warmup_ratio: 0.1

View File

@@ -45,7 +45,7 @@ tf32: false
gradient_checkpointing: true
resume_from_checkpoint:
logging_steps: 1
attn_implementation: flash_attention_2
flash_attention: true
warmup_ratio: 0.1
evals_per_epoch: 4

View File

@@ -46,7 +46,7 @@ tf32: false
gradient_checkpointing: true
resume_from_checkpoint:
logging_steps: 1
attn_implementation: flash_attention_2
flash_attention: true
warmup_ratio: 0.1
evals_per_epoch: 4

View File

@@ -45,7 +45,7 @@ tf32: false
gradient_checkpointing: true
resume_from_checkpoint:
logging_steps: 1
attn_implementation: flash_attention_2
flash_attention: true
warmup_ratio: 0.1
evals_per_epoch: 4

View File

@@ -46,7 +46,7 @@ tf32: false
gradient_checkpointing: true
resume_from_checkpoint:
logging_steps: 1
attn_implementation: flash_attention_2
flash_attention: true
warmup_ratio: 0.1
evals_per_epoch: 4

View File

@@ -45,7 +45,7 @@ tf32: false
gradient_checkpointing: true
resume_from_checkpoint:
logging_steps: 1
attn_implementation: flash_attention_2
flash_attention: true
warmup_ratio: 0.1
evals_per_epoch: 4

View File

@@ -46,7 +46,7 @@ tf32: false
gradient_checkpointing: true
resume_from_checkpoint:
logging_steps: 1
attn_implementation: flash_attention_2
flash_attention: true
warmup_ratio: 0.1
evals_per_epoch: 4

View File

@@ -52,7 +52,7 @@ gradient_checkpointing_kwargs:
use_reentrant: false
resume_from_checkpoint:
logging_steps: 1
attn_implementation: flash_attention_2
flash_attention: true
warmup_ratio: 0.1
evals_per_epoch:

View File

@@ -55,7 +55,7 @@ gradient_checkpointing_kwargs:
use_reentrant: false
resume_from_checkpoint:
logging_steps: 1
attn_implementation: flash_attention_2
flash_attention: true
warmup_ratio: 0.1
evals_per_epoch:

View File

@@ -39,7 +39,7 @@ gradient_checkpointing_kwargs:
use_reentrant: false
resume_from_checkpoint:
logging_steps: 1
attn_implementation: flash_attention_2
flash_attention: true
warmup_ratio: 0.1
evals_per_epoch:

View File

@@ -45,7 +45,7 @@ tf32: true
gradient_checkpointing: true
resume_from_checkpoint:
logging_steps: 1
attn_implementation: flash_attention_2
flash_attention: true
warmup_ratio: 0.1
evals_per_epoch: 1

View File

@@ -43,7 +43,8 @@ tf32: true
gradient_checkpointing: true
resume_from_checkpoint:
logging_steps: 1
attn_implementation: xformers
xformers_attention: true
flash_attention:
gptq_groupsize:
gptq_model_v1:
warmup_ratio: 0.1

View File

@@ -73,7 +73,8 @@ early_stopping_patience: 3
resume_from_checkpoint:
auto_resume_from_checkpoints: true
logging_steps: 1
attn_implementation: xformers
xformers_attention: true
flash_attention:
gptq_groupsize:
gptq_model_v1:
warmup_ratio: 0.1

View File

@@ -40,7 +40,8 @@ tf32: true
gradient_checkpointing: true
resume_from_checkpoint:
logging_steps: 1
attn_implementation: xformers
xformers_attention: true
flash_attention:
gptq_groupsize:
gptq_model_v1:
warmup_ratio: 0.1

View File

@@ -47,7 +47,7 @@ tf32: false
gradient_checkpointing: true
resume_from_checkpoint:
logging_steps: 1
attn_implementation: flash_attention_2
flash_attention: true
warmup_ratio: 0.1
evals_per_epoch: 4

View File

@@ -36,7 +36,8 @@ tf32: true
gradient_checkpointing: true
resume_from_checkpoint:
logging_steps: 1
attn_implementation: xformers
xformers_attention: true
flash_attention:
gptq_groupsize:
gptq_model_v1:
warmup_ratio: 0.1

View File

@@ -37,7 +37,8 @@ bf16: auto
tf32: true
resume_from_checkpoint:
logging_steps: 5
attn_implementation: xformers
xformers_attention: true
flash_attention:
gptq_groupsize:
gptq_model_v1:
warmup_ratio: 0.1

View File

@@ -39,6 +39,7 @@ bf16: auto
tf32: true
resume_from_checkpoint:
logging_steps: 5
flash_attention:
gptq_groupsize:
gptq_model_v1:
warmup_ratio: 0.1

View File

@@ -39,7 +39,7 @@ tf32: false
gradient_checkpointing: true
resume_from_checkpoint:
logging_steps: 1
attn_implementation: flash_attention_2
flash_attention: true
gptq_groupsize:
gptq_model_v1:
warmup_ratio: 0.1

View File

@@ -47,7 +47,7 @@ tf32: false
gradient_checkpointing: true
resume_from_checkpoint:
logging_steps: 1
attn_implementation: flash_attention_2
flash_attention: true
gptq_groupsize:
gptq_model_v1:
warmup_ratio: 0.1

View File

@@ -40,7 +40,7 @@ tf32: false
gradient_checkpointing: true
resume_from_checkpoint:
logging_steps: 1
attn_implementation: flash_attention_2
flash_attention: true
gptq_groupsize:
gptq_model_v1:
warmup_ratio: 0.1

View File

@@ -47,6 +47,7 @@ tf32: false
gradient_checkpointing: false
resume_from_checkpoint:
logging_steps: 1
flash_attention:
warmup_ratio: 0.1
evals_per_epoch: 4

View File

@@ -47,6 +47,7 @@ tf32: false
gradient_checkpointing: false
resume_from_checkpoint:
logging_steps: 1
flash_attention:
warmup_ratio: 0.1
evals_per_epoch: 4

View File

@@ -43,7 +43,7 @@ gradient_checkpointing_kwargs:
use_reentrant: false
resume_from_checkpoint:
logging_steps: 1
attn_implementation: flash_attention_2
flash_attention: true
warmup_ratio: 0.1
evals_per_epoch: 4

View File

@@ -46,7 +46,7 @@ gradient_checkpointing_kwargs:
use_reentrant: false
resume_from_checkpoint:
logging_steps: 1
attn_implementation: flash_attention_2
flash_attention: true
warmup_ratio: 0.1
evals_per_epoch: 4

View File

@@ -40,6 +40,7 @@ bf16: auto
tf32: true
resume_from_checkpoint:
logging_steps: 5
flash_attention:
gptq_groupsize:
gptq_model_v1:
warmup_ratio: 0.1

View File

@@ -38,6 +38,7 @@ tf32: true
gradient_checkpointing:
resume_from_checkpoint:
logging_steps: 1
flash_attention:
gptq_groupsize:
gptq_model_v1:
warmup_ratio: 0.1

View File

@@ -44,7 +44,7 @@ tf32: false
gradient_checkpointing: true
resume_from_checkpoint:
logging_steps: 1
attn_implementation: flash_attention_2
flash_attention: true
flash_attn_cross_entropy: false
flash_attn_rms_norm: true
flash_attn_fuse_mlp: true

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