NVIDIA Driver and CUDA Installation on Ubuntu Linux¶

In this article

• System Preparation
• Installing Nvidia Drivers and CUDA
• Installing NVIDIA modules for Docker
• One-Click Installation of Drivers and CUDA

This instructional guide details the procedure for installing NVIDIA graphics card drivers and CUDA on the subsequent operating systems: Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 24.04.

System Preparation¶

1. Update the system:

   sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade -y
   

2. For RTX 4xxx, 5xxx series, A100, and H100 on Ubuntu 22.04, you need to update the kernel version. You can also update the kernel version for older graphics cards:

   sudo apt install linux-generic-hwe-22.04
   

Installing Nvidia Drivers and CUDA¶

1. Install the gcc compiler, necessary for compiling CUDA:

   sudo apt install gcc
   

2. Download and install drivers and CUDA. For Ubuntu 24.04, replace ubuntu2204 with ubuntu2404 in the path of wget:

   wget https://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/repos/ubuntu2404/x86_64/cuda-keyring_1.1-1_all.deb
   sudo dpkg -i cuda-keyring_1.1-1_all.deb
   sudo apt update
   sudo apt install cuda -y
   sudo apt install cuda-toolkit -y
   

   Attention

   For Pascal series graphics cards (1080 Ti and similar), you need to install proprietary drivers of version 535 instead of open-source ones, along with CUDA 12.2. Use the following commands for this:

   sudo apt install nvidia-driver-535 -y
   

3. Set environment variables for your frameworks and applications to detect CUDA in your .bashrc:

   echo 'export PATH="/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:${PATH}:/usr/local/cuda/bin"' >> ~/.bashrc
   echo 'export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/cuda/lib64\${LD_LIBRARY_PATH:+:\${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}}' >> ~/.bashrc
   source ~/.bashrc
   

   Attention

   You must run these commands for all users who need to use CUDA.

4. Check the installation of drivers on your video card:

   sudo nvidia-smi
   

   You should get output similar to this:

   user@48567:~$ nvidia-smi
   Fri May 10 15:58:17 2024
   +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
   | NVIDIA-SMI 580.54.15              Driver Version: 580.54.15      CUDA Version: 13.0     |
   |-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+
   | GPU  Name                 Persistence-M | Bus-Id          Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
   | Fan  Temp   Perf          Pwr:Usage/Cap |           Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
   |                                         |                        |               MIG M. |
   |=========================================+========================+======================|
   |   0  NVIDIA RTX A4000               Off |   00000000:07:00.0 Off |                  Off |
   | 41%   31C    P8             15W /  140W |       3MiB /  16376MiB |      0%      Default |
   |                                         |                        |                  N/A |
   +-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+
   
   +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
   | Processes:                                                                              |
   |  GPU   GI   CI        PID   Type   Process name                              GPU Memory |
   |        ID   ID                                                               Usage      |
   |=========================================================================================|
   |  No running processes found                                                             |
   +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
   

   Attention

   If you received a message like modprobe: ERROR: could not insert 'nvidia': Device or resource busy during installation, you need to remove the nouveau kernel module and enable the use of nvidia modules.

   sudo rmmod -f nouveau
   sudo nvidia-smi
   

   Note

   You can find the latest instructions for installing Nvidia GPU drivers on Ubuntu here.

5. Check the CUDA installation:

   nvcc -V
   

   After a successful installation, you should get output similar to this:

   user@48567:~$ nvcc -V
   nvcc: NVIDIA (R) Cuda compiler driver
   Copyright (c) 2005-2024 NVIDIA Corporation
   Built on Thu_Mar_28_02:18:24_PDT_2024
   Cuda compilation tools, release 12.4, V12.4.131
   Build cuda_12.4.r12.4/compiler.34097967_0
   

sudo rmmod -f nvidia-modeset
sudo rmmod nvidia_uvm
sudo rmmod nvidia_drm
sudo rmmod nvidia-peermem
sudo rmmod nvidia
sudo nvidia-smi 

Installing NVIDIA modules for Docker¶

If you're using Docker containers, don't forget to install the nvidia-docker2 package:

sudo apt install -y nvidia-docker2
sudo systemctl restart docker

One-Click Installation of Drivers and CUDA¶

You can use this script for automatic installation of drivers and CUDA:

#!/bin/bash

#Check Ubuntu 25.04 and exit
if lsb_release -a | grep -q "25.04"; then
echo "Detected Ubuntu 25.04. NVIDIA do not support official CUDA for non-LTS release. Use Ubuntu 24.04 or 22.04 instead!"
exit
fi

# Update and upgrade the system using apt
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade -y

#Check Ubuntu 22.04 and update kernel
lsb_release=$(lsb_release -a | grep "22.04")
if [[ -n "$lsb_release" ]]; then
    sudo apt install -y linux-generic-hwe-22.04
fi

# Install GCC compiler for CUDA install
sudo apt install gcc-12 g++-12

# Get the release version of Ubuntu
RELEASE_VERSION=$(lsb_release -rs | sed 's/\([0-9]\+\)\.\([0-9]\+\)/\1\2/')

# Download and install CUDA package for Ubuntu and Nvidia drivers
wget https://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/repos/ubuntu${RELEASE_VERSION}/x86_64/cuda-keyring_1.1-1_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i cuda-keyring_1.1-1_all.deb

# Update and upgrade the system again to ensure all packages are installed correctly
sudo apt update

if lspci -nn | grep -q '10de:1b06'; then
    echo "Find GTX 1080 Ti"
    sudo apt purge "nvidia-*" "libnvidia-*" "cuda-*" "nvidia-driver-*" "*cudnn*" "*nsight*" -y
    sudo apt remove --purge nvidia-cuda-toolkit nvidia-prime nvidia-settings -y
    sudo apt autoremove -y
    sudo apt --fix-broken install -y
    sudo apt clean -y
    sudo apt install nvidia-driver-535 -y
else
    sudo apt install cuda -y
    sudo apt install cuda-toolkit -y
fi

# Add PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variables for CUDA in .bashrc file
echo 'export PATH="/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:${PATH}:/usr/local/cuda/bin"' >> ~/.bashrc
echo 'export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/cuda/lib64\${LD_LIBRARY_PATH:+:\${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}}' >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

#Initialize kernel modules without reboot

sudo rmmod -f nouveau
sudo nvidia-smi

nvcc -V

#Installing Docker binding for Nvidia

if command -v docker &> /dev/null; then

    if lsb_release -a | grep -q "22.04"; then
    echo "Detected Ubuntu 22.04. Installing nvidia-docker2..."
    sudo apt install -y nvidia-docker2
    sudo systemctl restart docker
    fi

    if lsb_release -a | grep -q "24.04"; then
    echo "Detected Ubuntu 24.04. Installing nvidia-container-toolkit..."
    sudo apt install -y nvidia-container-toolkit
    sudo systemctl restart docker
    fi

else
  echo "Docker is not installed."
fi

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