GPU rendering via CLI not working in 2.81 Blender 2.81 seems to have broken CLI headless rendering with CUDA GPU. 

Here's the Py script people often use: Rendering on command-line with GPU?


blender -b *.blend -a -E CYCLES -P script.py
Blend file has CUDA enabled on another machine
Shows line that says Activating GTX 1080 Ti 
nvidia-smi shows 0% usage, CPUs are 100%


Any ideas on a fix?
Blender's command line interface executes the argument in the order they are given, as documented in the manual. Therefore your command renders the animation (-a, --render-anim) before executing the Python script (-P, --python). Hence the GPU is enabled after the rendering is already done. 

If you put the -a argument last, it should properly render the animation on the GPU.