NVIDIA"

About this Howto

This howto will help you install the correct nVidia driver for your graphics card as well as troubleshoot common driver problems.

The prerequisite is to have followed the Configuration page to have at least the RPM Fusion nonfree section available.

Determining your card model

nVidia has several driver series, each of which has different hardware support. To determine which driver you need to install, you'll first need to find your graphics card model.

If you don't know it, open a Terminal (Applications > System Tools > Terminal) and type:

/sbin/lspci | grep VGA

You can also check the nVidia download driver section and see which serie is recommanded for you card, then install the appropriate driver serie.

Installing the drivers

Please remember that once the driver is installed, it will configure your xorg.conf automatically only if it's not already present. You can also run nvidia-xconfig or nvidia-settings at anytime. Changes will take effect after a full reboot on the newest kernel.

Newer GeForce

yum install akmod-nvidia "kernel-devel-uname-r == $(uname -r)"
yum update -y

or kmod-nvidia/kmod-nvidia-PAE if using pre-built kmod for kernel/kernel-PAE

GeForce 8/9/200/300/405

yum install akmod-nvidia-340xx "kernel-devel-uname-r == $(uname -r)"
yum update -y

or kmod-nvidia/kmod-nvidia-PAE if using pre-built kmod for kernel/kernel-PAE

GeForce 6/7

yum install akmod-nvidia-304xx "kernel-devel-uname-r == $(uname -r)"
yum update -y

GeForce 5 (FX series)

Supported up to Fedora 20 - EOL, no more nvidia updates

yum install akmod-nvidia-173xx "kernel-devel-uname-r == $(uname -r)"
yum update -y

GeForce 2 through GeForce 4

Supported up to Fedora 14 - EOL, no more nvidia updates

yum install akmod-nvidia-96xx "kernel-devel-uname-r == $(uname -r)"
yum update -y

Special notes

Latest/Beta driver

You can install the latest drivers from Rawhide using the following command:

yum --enablerepo=rpmfusion-nonfree-rawhide install akmod-nvidia 
yum install "kernel-devel-uname-r == $(uname -r)"
yum update -y

Or if you want to grab it from the latest fedora stable release:

yum --releasever=20 install akmod-nvidia
yum install "kernel-devel-uname-r == $(uname -r)"
yum update -y

x86_64 (64bit) users

If you wish to have 3D acceleration in 32bit packages such as Wine, be sure to install the appropriate 32bit version of the xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs package for your driver variant. For example, if you installed kmod-nvidia then you will require xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs.i686, but if you install kmod-nvidia-96xx, you will need xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-96xx-libs.i686. If using Fedora 11 you will need to use xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs.i586, with Fedora 10 or older use xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs.i386.

PAE (Physical Address Extension) kernel users

If you are on a 32bit (i686) system and have the PAE kernel installed to access more RAM, please append -PAE to all the "kmod" packages above. For example, kmod-nvidia-PAE or kmod-nvidia-96xx-PAE. This will install the kernel module for the PAE kernel instead of the regular 32bit kernel. Please note that this step is not required for any 64bit (x64_64) users.

VDPAU/VAAPI

In order to enable video acceleration support for your player and if your nvidia card is recent enough (Geforce 8 and later is needed). You can install theses packages:

# yum install vdpauinfo libva-vdpau-driver libva-utils

With the native vdpau backend from a nvidia card, the output is similar to this:

$ vdpauinfo 
display: :0.0   screen: 0
API version: 1
Information string: NVIDIA VDPAU Driver Shared Library  280.13  Wed Jul 27 17:15:20 PDT 2011
...

Here is an example of an accurate output of vainfo, when the bridge to the VAAPI is correctly installed.

$ vainfo 
libva: libva version 0.32.0
Xlib:  extension "XFree86-DRI" missing on display ":0.0".
libva: va_getDriverName() returns 0
libva: Trying to open /usr/lib64/dri/nvidia_drv_video.so
libva: va_openDriver() returns 0
vainfo: VA API version: 0.32
vainfo: Driver version: Splitted-Desktop Systems VDPAU backend for VA-API - 0.7.3
vainfo: Supported profile and entrypoints
...

Akmods

An akmod is a type of package similar to dkms. As you start your computer, the akmod system will check if there are any missing kmods and if so, rebuild a new kmod for you. Akmods have more overhead than regular kmod packages as they require a few development tools such as gcc and automake in order to be able to build new kmods locally. If you think you'd like to try akmods, simply replace kmod with akmod in the instructions above and run them again. For example, kmod-nvidia-96xx becomes akmod-nvidia-96xx. Akmods are fully compatible with regular kmods, so you can switch between the two or even use both at once without any problems.

Nouveau compatibility

As nouveau is enabled by default starting with Fedora 11, you may experience problem which is caused by the nouveau kernel module being present in the initrd image. After the reboot, this command should not output anything:

lsmod |grep nouveau

Rawhide

Rawhide kernels are built with debug enabled GPL-only symbols which kernel is incompatible with the nvidia binary-only driver. You need to use the Rawhide nodebug repository.

Please remind that Xorg server version is also to take into consideration. As of today's Fedora 22 Rawhide, xorg-server is at 1.16 which is compatible with Nvidia current driver, 340xx and 304xx legacies series. (Nvidia 173xx legacy is not supported and been EOL by nvidia has been removed from the RPM Fusion repository by Fedora 21).

Uninstall the nvidia driver

yum remove xorg-x11-drv-nvidia\*

Bug Report

If you still cannot make the driver to work, you can either report a problem to nVidia or to rpmfusion packager team. Please read: How to report a problem about the nVidia proprietary driver

CategoryHowto