Using Hashcat (with a Nvidia GPU) on a bootc system

2026-02-06

This is intended as a future reference, for myself and anyone else who runs into issues. I have a Nvidia 3060Ti in my desktop, and this is how I got hashcat working with it.

Symptom

hashcat installed via brew cannot use the Nvidia GPU. On further inspection, even clinfo cannot see the Nvidia GPU.

Solution

TL;DR: Use a container!

Step 1

Set up podman for Nvidia GPUs.

Step 2

Create a container which has Nvidia integration. The one I chose to use is dizcza/docker-hashcat, which includes hashcat and provides images for all the types of GPUs. The tag I'm interested in is cuda.

My strategy was to use distrobox to set up nice host integration. Use the following commands.

distrobox create --nvidia --image dizcza/docker-hashcat:cuda hashcat
distrobox enter hashcat
# Inside the container
distrobox-export /usr/local/bin/hashcat

Alternatively, use the below distrobox-assemble config.

[hashcat]
image=dizcza/docker-hashcat:cuda
nvidia=true
init=true
start_now=false
unshare_all=true
exported_bins="/usr/local/bin/hashcat"
additional_packages="systemd"

Step 3

Use hashcat as you normally would from your host system! distrobox should take care of exporting the binary such that it's available to your terminal.