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

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.

GeForce 8 and newer

yum install akmod-nvidia (or kmod-nvidia/kmod-nvidia-PAE if using pre-built kmod for kernel/kernel-PAE)

You can install the latest drivers from the rawhide using the following command:  yum --enablerepo=rpmfusion-nonfree-rawhide install akmod-nvidia

GeForce 6/7

yum install akmod-nvidia-304xx (not yet available - Work in progress)

GeForce 5 (FX series)

yum install akmod-nvidia-173xx

GeForce 2 through GeForce 4

yum install akmod-nvidia-96xx

Older

For Fedora 9 and older, you can do:

yum install kmod-nvidia-legacy

Special notes

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

Having both Nouveau and Nvidia drivers installed - experts only

If you want to keep both your drivers installed and having Nvidia drivers installed causes no 3D ( errors in /vat/log/Xorg.*.log about glx missing) you may hack it and move /usr/lib64/nvidia directory out of /usr/lib64 if nouveau driver is detected like this:

LNO=/usr/lib64_nvidia/nvidia
LNV=/usr/lib64/nvidia

if /bin/grep nouveau /proc/modules 1>/dev/null
then test -x $LNV && mv $LNV $LNO ;
else test -x $LNO && mv $LNO $LNV ;
fi

You may have two different grub menu options - one loading nouvea and the other not:

menuentry 'Nouveau'
    linux ...

menuentry 'Nvidia'
    insmod video_fb  # These are needed for NV50+ cards - if you need fb to see anything at boot
    insmod video   
    insmod videoinfo
    # below nouveau is blacklisted in both rd and later for modprobe
    linux ...  rdblacklist=nouveau modprobe.blacklist=nouveau,udlfb,cfg80211 nouveau.modeset=0 rd.driver.blacklist=nouveau video=vesa:off vga=normal 

Troubleshooting

If you're experiencing problems with the drivers (in particular, lack of 3D after using nvidia-xconfig or nvidia-settings), try executing these commands:

nvidia-config-display disable
nvidia-config-display enable

This will re-configure xorg.conf for use with the RPM Fusion drivers.
NOTE: Replace nvidia-config-display with nvidia-96xx-config-display OR nvidia-173xx-config-display as needed.

Disable or uninstall the nvidia driver

It is possible to disable the driver without uninstalling the nvidia package.

nvidia-config-display disable
rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf

NOTE: Replace nvidia-config-display with nvidia-96xx-config-display OR nvidia-173xx-config-display as needed.

Or you can switch the Driver field from nvidia to nouveau in /etc/X11/xorg.conf You also need to verify that /boot/grub/grub.conf doesn't contain nomodeset or rdblacklist=nouveau anymore.

Then you will need to reboot. (or switch to init3 and manually unloading/loading modules.).

Once done, if you really want to uninstall the driver:

yum remove xorg-x11-drv-nvidia\* nvidia-settings nvidia-xconfig

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

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