Not so Quick Start

DGX Spark has been a thoroughly annoying experience thus far. I unboxed it and did a headless setup, starting on the Wi-Fi network it stands up. It detected the Ethernet cable that was plugged into it, did a software update, and sat unresponsive for an hour. Mind you – the download only took about 5 minutes. The Spark just did not want to say hello on the network. I let it do its thing (no fussing with the power button or ethernet cable) while I went about my workday.

Several hours later I came back to it, hoping to install Tailscale, only to find complaints of a failed dpkg operation and the device begging to be reconfigured, mostly for CUPS related nonsense. Who even prints on paper these days?

E: dpkg was interrupted, you must manually run 'sudo dpkg --configure -a' to correct the problem. 
...
The following packages have unmet dependencies:                                                
 cups-bsd : Depends: libcups2t64 (= 2.4.7-1.2ubuntu7.4) but 2.4.7-1.2ubuntu7.3 is to be installed                                                                                             
 cups-client : Depends: libcups2t64 (= 2.4.7-1.2ubuntu7.4) but 2.4.7-1.2ubuntu7.3 is to be installed                                                                                          
 cups-core-drivers : Depends: cups-daemon (>= 2.4.7-1.2ubuntu7.4) but 2.4.7-1.2ubuntu7.3 is to be installed
                     Depends: libcups2t64 (= 2.4.7-1.2ubuntu7.4) but 2.4.7-1.2ubuntu7.3 is to be installed
 cups-ipp-utils : Depends: libcups2t64 (= 2.4.7-1.2ubuntu7.4) but 2.4.7-1.2ubuntu7.3 is to be installed
 libcupsimage2t64 : Depends: libcups2t64 (= 2.4.7-1.2ubuntu7.4) but 2.4.7-1.2ubuntu7.3 is to be installed
 libgs10 : Depends: libgs10-common (= 10.02.1~dfsg1-0ubuntu7.8) but 10.02.1~dfsg1-0ubuntu7.7 is to be installed

After a reconfigure, I hit it with a reboot, because why not, and then subsequently could not connect to the device. Looking at my router, the device was absolutely silent. 30 minutes of troubleshooting later after lugging it across the house to an HDMI port and finding a USB-C dongle for a keyboard, I discovered the problem was related to no Wi-Fi nor no 10Gbe interface detected.

After a little bit of internet sleuthing, I downloaded linux-modules-extra-6.11.0-1016-nvidia to a flash drive, sneaker netted it over to the Spark, and after a manual install and a reboot, the box is back. I hope the rest of my experience with this onery gold box is better. What a hassle.

Side note, it is so frustrating that there is not a single LED on the thing. Who greenlighted no green lights?