NVIDIA Driver Installation Quickstart

Guide

Installation Guide

RN-08625-v1.0 _vR550 | March 2024

 Table of Contents
Chapter 1. Introduction..........................................................................................................................1
1.1. Pre-Installation Requirements.............................................................................................................. 1
1.2. Installer Formats........................................................................................................................................ 1
Chapter 2. Runfile Installers................................................................................................................ 2
Chapter 3. Package Managers............................................................................................................3

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Chapter 1. Introduction

The purpose of this document is to provide some quick start notes for installing NVIDIA
drivers on Linux distributions for servers. For more comprehensive information on
installing CUDA Toolkit and drivers on various Linux distributions (for both workstation
and server variants), refer to the CUDA Installation Guide for Linux.

1.1. Pre-Installation Requirements

Before installing the NVIDIA driver on Linux, some pre-installation steps are
recommended to:
1. Verify the system has a CUDA-capable GPU
2. Verify the system is running a supported version of Linux
3. Verify the system has build tools such as make, gcc installed
4. Verify the system has correct Linux kernel headers
For more detailed steps on completing each of these pre-installation steps, refer to the
pre-installation actions in the CUDA Installation Guide for Linux.

Note: Mixing installation methods (e.g. .run installers and .deb/.rpm packages) may result
in driver conflicts and an unusable system. Refer to this section in the guide above for
other pre-install actions to handle conflicting installation methods.

1.2. Installer Formats

NVIDIA drivers are available in three formats for use with Linux distributions:

‣ Runfile installers
‣ Package managers
‣ Containerized drivers

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Chapter 2. Runfile Installers

NVIDIA drivers are available as .run installer packages for use with Linux distributions
from the NVIDIA driver downloads site. Select the .run package for your GPU product.
This page also includes links to all the current and previous driver releases: https://
www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/unix.
The .run can also be downloaded using wget or curl as shown in the example below:
$ BASE_URL=https://us.download.nvidia.com/tesla
$ DRIVER_VERSION=550.54.14
$ curl -fSsl -O $BASE_URL/$DRIVER_VERSION/NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-$DRIVER_VERSION.run

Once the .run installer has been downloaded, the NVIDIA driver can be installed:
$ sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-$DRIVER_VERSION.run

Follow the prompts on the screen during the installation. For more advanced options on
using the .run installer, see the --help option or refer to the README.

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Chapter 3. Package Managers

The Package Manager installation interfaces with your system's package management
system. When using RPM or Deb, the downloaded package is a repository package.
Such a package only informs the package manager where to find the actual installation
packages, but will not install them.
For installation instructions, refer to https://docs.nvidia.com/cuda/cuda-installation-
guide-linux/index.html.

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