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 J, Tips for New Linux Users for details.

If you're installing on a system that is set up to use the Nouveau driver, then you should first disable it before attempting to install the NVIDIA driver. See Q & A 8.1, “Interaction with the Nouveau Driver” for details.

After you have downloaded the file NVIDIA-Linux-x86-304.121.run, change to the directory containing the downloaded file, and as the root user run the executable:

    # cd yourdirectory
    # sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-304.121.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.

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.

The installer will check for the presence of DKMS on your system. If DKMS is found, you will be given the option of registering the kernel module with DKMS, and using the DKMS infrastructure to build and install the kernel module. On most systems with DKMS, DKMS will take care of automatically rebuilding registered kernel modules when installing a different Linux kernel.

Not all kernel configurations are supported by DKMS: for example, DKMS does not support kernels built with separate KBUILD source and output directories. If nvidia-installer is unable to install the kernel module through DKMS, the installation will be aborted and no kernel module will be installed. If this happens, installation should be attempted again, without the DKMS option.

Note that versions of nvidia-installer shipped with drivers before release 304 do not interact with DKMS. If you choose to register the NVIDIA kernel module with DKMS, please ensure that the module is removed from the DKMS database before using a non-DKMS aware version of nvidia-installer to install an older driver; otherwise, module source files may be deleted without first unregistering the module, potentially leaving the DKMS database in an inconsistent state. Running nvidia-uninstall before installing a driver using an older installer will invoke the correct dkms remove command to clean up the installation.

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: