NVIDIA Driver and CUDA Installation on Ubuntu Linux¶

In this article

Installing NVIDIA Drivers

Installing CUDA

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.

Installing NVIDIA Drivers¶

Update the system:

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

For RTX4xxx series, A100, and H100, 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
```

Install the ubuntu-drivers-common package and determine the recommended driver to install:

sudo apt install ubuntu-drivers-common
ubuntu-drivers devices

You should get an output similar to this:

user@48567:~$ ubuntu-drivers devices
== /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:02.5/0000:07:00.0 == 
modalias  : pci:v000010DEd000024B0sv000010DEsd000014ADbc03sc00i00
vendor    : NVIDIA Corporation
model     : GA104GL [RTX A4000]
driver    : nvidia-driver-550 - third-party non-free recommended
driver    : nvidia-driver-550-open - third-party non-free
driver    : nvidia-driver-470-server - distro non-free
driver    : nvidia-driver-535-server - distro non-free
driver    : nvidia-driver-470 - distro non-free
driver    : nvidia-driver-545-open - distro non-free
driver    : nvidia-driver-550 - third-party non-free recommended

Install the recommended driver:
```
sudo apt install nvidia-driver-550
```
Reboot the system.

Verification of driver installation on graphics card:

nvidia-smi

Output similar to that expected:

user@48567:~$ nvidia-smi
Fri May 10 15:58:17 2024
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 550.54.15              Driver Version: 550.54.15      CUDA Version: 12.4     |
|-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+
| 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                                                             |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Note

The most current guide for installing NVIDIA drivers under Ubuntu can be found at this link.

Installing CUDA¶

Install the compiler gcc, which is necessary for building CUDA:
```
sudo apt install gcc
```

Download and install CUDA:

wget https://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/repos/ubuntu2204/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 nvidia-cuda-toolkit -y

Set environment variables for CUDA in your ~/.bashrc file:

export PATH=/usr/local/cuda/bin${PATH:+:${PATH}}
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/cuda-12.2/lib64${LD_LIBRARY_PATH:+:${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}}

Attention

You must execute these commands for all users who need to utilize CUDA.

Verify the installation:

nvcc -V

Upon proper installation, you should receive an output similar to this:

user@48567:~$ nvcc -V
nvcc: NVIDIA (R) CUDA compiler driver
Copyright 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/compilier.34097967_0

One-Click Installation of Drivers and CUDA¶

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

```bash
#!/bin/bash

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

# Check if there's a video card with H100 model (2330 GH100 [H100 SXM5 80GB]
if lspci -nnk | grep -q "[10de:2330]"; then
# If yes, install the necessary kernel package
sudo apt install -y linux-generic-hwe-22.04
fi

# Install Ubuntu drivers common package
sudo apt install ubuntu-drivers-common -y

recommended_driver=$(ubuntu-drivers devices | grep 'nvidia' | cut -d ',' -f 1 | grep 'recommended')
package_name=$(echo $recommended_driver | awk '{print $3}')
sudo apt install $package_name -y

# Install GCC compiler for CUDA install
sudo apt install gcc -y

# 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
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
sudo apt install cuda -y
sudo apt install nvidia-cuda-toolkit -y

# Add PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variables for CUDA in .bashrc file
echo 'export PATH=/usr/local/cuda/bin\${PATH:+:\${PATH}}' >> ~/.bashrc
echo 'export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/cuda-12.2/lib64\${LD_LIBRARY_PATH:+:\${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}}' >> ~/.bashrc
```