I give my installation method below. Basically cannibalized from older posts on other drivers for older Ubuntu releases.
The purpose of this question is three fold:
- Learn the preferred way of installing the driver mentioned in the header of this post for the hardware in the header of this post.
- Learn pros/cons of my current approach
- Document my approach as there doesn't seem to be a clear post for my particular hardware/Ubuntu combination to aid others in a similar situation
Some context
I'm setting up a Deep Learning environment on my machine so am currently going through the pains of setting up the host machines driver and then will move on to installing nvidia-docker and so on.
My installation method:
- Download latest long lived release (367.44):
http://www.nvidia.com/Download/driverResults.aspx/106780/en-us
sudo apt install nvidia-modprobe
- Restart
- At login prompt:
ctrl-alt-F1
for tty - Login with credentials
sudo service lightdm stop
sudo init 3
cd ~/Downloads
chmod u+x [Nvidia installer here].run
sudo init 3
sudo ./[Nvidia installer here].run
Ignore errors about pre-install script failing and 32 lib target install location not found.
If there are errors saying that nouveau is still in use (after being blacklisted) then might be necessary to update the initramfs disk, so then do:
sudo update-initramfs -u reboot
A black screen will be present on reboot instead of normal Ubuntu splash screen.
Repeat steps 3 and on. Ignore step 9 (only necessary once).
Not sure if step 7 is needed again I had to do two iterations starting from step 3 and on since
sudo init 3
seemed to actually start the X server so I was getting an “X server is running” error during install of .run file. So on second iteration (and consequently second reboot) I left out step 7 and it seemed to work.sudo service lightdm start
sudo reboot
- Log in and check: System Settings -> Details -> Graphics Should read something like “GeForce ...” (assuming you have a GeForce series GPU) In my case: “GeForce GTX 970/PCIe/SSE2” NVIDIA X Server Settings -> NVIDIA Driver Version Should read “367.44”
Addendum:
I did see an Xorg error on startup/login: “Xorg crashed with SIGABRT in RRSetChanged()”. It seems that this is a known bug for Nvidia gpus and doesn’t seem to be critical.
Questions:
I see that it "may" be possible to accomplish this installation via
ppa:graphics-drivers
Reference: NVidia GeForce GTX970 problem ubuntu 16.04Would this have accomplished the very same thing as my installation method and how does it compare (pros/cons) to mine above?
- Even though my installation above seems to have been successful, I'd like to know what pros/cons exist due to my approach and what (if any) issues might arise from my approach as I continue to install my Deep Learning environment (e.g. nvidia-docker, theano, keras, etc)?