Table of Contents
This chapter provides instructions for installing the NVIDIA driver. Note that after installation, but prior to using the driver, you must complete the steps described in Chapter 6, Configuring X for the NVIDIA Driver. Additional details that may be helpful for the new Linux user are provided in Appendix I, Tips for New Linux Users.
Before you begin the installation, exit the X server and terminate all OpenGL applications (note that it is possible that some OpenGL applications persist even after the X server has stopped). You should also set the default run level on your system such that it will boot to a VGA console, and not directly to X. Doing so will make it easier to recover if there is a problem during the installation process. See Appendix I, Tips for New Linux Users for details.
After you have downloaded the file NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-256.38.03.run
, change to
the directory containing the downloaded file, and as the
root
user run the executable:
# cd yourdirectory # sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-256.38.03.run
The .run
file is a self-extracting
archive. When executed, it extracts the contents of the archive and
runs the contained nvidia-installer
utility, which provides an interactive interface to walk you
through the installation.
nvidia-installer
will also install
itself to /usr/bin/nvidia-installer
,
which may be used at some later time to uninstall drivers,
auto-download updated drivers, etc. The use of this utility is
detailed later in this chapter.
You may also supply command line options to the .run
file. Some of the more common options are
listed below.
Common .run
Options
--info
Print embedded info about the .run
file and exit.
--check
Check integrity of the archive and exit.
--extract-only
Extract the contents of ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-256.38.03.run
, but do
not run nvidia-installer
.
--help
Print usage information for the common commandline options and exit.
--advanced-options
Print usage information for common command line options as well as the advanced options, and then exit.
The NVIDIA kernel module has a kernel interface layer that must be compiled specifically for each kernel. NVIDIA distributes the source code to this kernel interface layer.
When the installer is run, it will check your system for the required kernel sources and compile the kernel interface. You must have the source code for your kernel installed for compilation to work. On most systems, this means that you will need to locate and install the correct kernel-source, kernel-headers, or kernel-devel package; on some distributions, no additional packages are required.
After the correct kernel interface has been compiled, the kernel
interface will be linked with the closed-source portion of the
NVIDIA kernel module. This requires that you have a linker
installed on your system. The linker, usually /usr/bin/ld
, is part of the binutils package. You
must have a linker installed prior to installing the NVIDIA
driver.
Without options, the .run
file
executes the installer after unpacking it. The installer can be run
as a separate step in the process, or can be run at a later time to
get updates, etc. Some of the more important commandline options of
nvidia-installer
are:
nvidia-installer
options
--uninstall
During installation, the installer will make backups of any conflicting files and record the installation of new files. The uninstall option undoes an install, restoring the system to its pre-install state.
--latest
Connect to NVIDIA's FTP site, and report the latest driver version and the url to the latest driver file.
--update
Connect to NVIDIA's FTP site, download the most recent driver file, and install it.
--ui=none
The installer uses an ncurses-based user interface if it is able to locate the correct ncurses library. Otherwise, it will fall back to a simple commandline user interface. This option disables the use of the ncurses library.