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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.

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

Fedora version notes

Fedora 12 / 13

In order to keep compatibility with nouveau, you either need to recreate the initrd manually after the driver has been installed, or add a command line option to the kernel. To recreate the initrd:

su - 
mv /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r)-nouveau.img
dracut /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img $(uname -r)

To use the default initrd, but disable the nouveau driver, edit /etc/grub.conf and add the following to the end of the line(s) starting with 'kernel':

  rdblacklist=nouveau nomodeset

Before using the driver, you need to lower your system protection so SElinux doesn't prevent the driver to load.

setsebool -P allow_execstack on

Note: With lastest packages this options is set automatically.
Note: kmod-nvidia-96xx is not currently available for Fedora 13 (1)

Fedora 11

In order to keep compatibility with nouveau, you need to recreate the initrd manually after the driver has been installed.

su - 
mv /boot/initrd-$(uname -r).img /boot/initrd-$(uname -r)-nouveau.img
mkinitrd /boot/initrd-$(uname -r).img $(uname -r)
reboot

Fedora 10

Unfortunately, nVidia has not released a driver for card older than Geforce 2 that is compatible with Fedora 10 and beyond.

Installing the drivers

Please remember that once the driver is installed, it will configure your xorg.conf automatically and changes will take effect after a full reboot on the newest kernel. Using nvidia-xconfig or nvidia-settings before the reboot will garanty you problems.

GeForce 6 and newer

yum install kmod-nvidia-PAE (or kmod-nvidia if not using kernel-PAE)

GeForce 5 (FX series)

yum install kmod-nvidia-173xx

GeForce 2 through GeForce 4

yum install kmod-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 xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs.i386 package for your driver variant. For example, if you installed kmod-nvidia then you will require xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs.i386, but if you install kmod-nvidia-96xx, you will need xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-96xx-libs.i386. If using Fedora 11 you will need to use xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs.i586, with Fedora 12 use xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs.i686.

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" pacakges 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.

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. To avoid such problem, after you have installed the right series of the nvidia driver for your hardware and execute the commands specifics for a given Fedora version:

After the reboot, this command should not output anything:

lsmod |grep nouveau

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 (or for 96xx: nvidia-96xx-config-display disable) (or for 173xx: nvidia-173xx-config-display disable)
nvidia-config-display enable

This will re-configure xorg.conf for use with the RPM Fusion drivers.

Disable or uninstall the nvidia driver

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

nvidia-config-display disable (or for 96xx: nvidia-96xx-config-display disable) (or for 173xx: nvidia-173xx-config-display disable)
rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf

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\* livna-config-display

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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