Preparing for the NVIDIA-r580 Installation
First enable XFree86 DRI and Nouveau support
in the kernel and recompile if necessary.
Device Drivers --->
Graphics support --->
<*/M> Direct Rendering Manager (XFree86 4.1.0 and higher DRI support) --->
... [DRM]
<M> Nouveau (NVIDIA) cards [DRM_NOUVEAU]
Frame buffer Devices --->
<M> nVidia Framebuffer Support [FB_NVIDIA]
< /M> Simple framebuffer support [FB_SIMPLE]
![[Important]](../images/important.png)
Important
Build these drivers as kernel modules so that they can properly
be blacklisted.
Extract the NVIDIA-r580 driver runfile and navigate to the
extracted directory:
sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-580.119.02.run -x &&
cd NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-580.119.02
Installation of the NVIDIA-r580 Kernel Modules
Now you will need to build the kernel modules for the driver. There
are two types: open and
proprietary. If you have
the NVIDIA Grace Hopper or NVIDIA Blackwell cards, you must compile
the open kernel modules.
If you have a Turing, Ampere, Ada Lovelace, or Hopper card, it is
recommended to build the open kernel modules. If you have a
Maxwell, Pascal, or Volta card, build the proprietary kernel modules. If you
are using both an older and newer card, but not the newest cards,
build the proprietary
kernel modules.
If you are going to build the open kernel modules, navigate to the
kernel-open directory:
cd kernel-open
If you are going to instead build the proprietary kernel modules, navigate
to the kernel directory:
cd kernel
![[Note]](../images/note.png)
Note
If the currently running kernel is a different version than you
are targeting, likely as a result of being in a chroot or haven't
rebooted after a kernel upgrade yet, building the kernel modules
will cause a build failure or will install modules for a kernel
that is not the target. The default variable that the kernel
build system uses to check for the kernel version will use
uname -r, in turn
reporting the kernel version of the currently running host kernel
and not the target. This can be worked around by specifying
KERNEL_UNAME=<x.x.x> which will
override the kernel version to build against and install to. The
target kernel version must have already been built for this to
work. If the kernel version doesn't have a third digit, like 6.16
instead of 6.16.1, append a .0 at the
end, like 6.16.0. It should match the
version found in /usr/lib/modules.
If the above case apply to you, whether you're in a chroot or
haven't yet rebooted after a kernel upgrade, specify the kernel
target by exporting the variable now ahead of time to prevent
needing to specify it for every command:
export KERNEL_UNAME=<x.x.x>
There will be 5 or 6 kernel modules that will be built. Depending
on your use case, you can skip building a module or two. The UVM
(Unified Virtual Memory) module is for use with CUDA.
If you won't use it, nor wish to use its capabilities, you can skip
building the UVM kernel module. There is also the PeerMem module
which is for datacenters. For gaming, it can safely be disabled.
For UVM, the module is named nvidia-uvm. For PeerMem, it will be named
nvidia-peermem. To skip these,
add the module names to the NV_EXCLUDE_KERNEL_MODULES for the make command. The variable should
be separated, as such: NV_EXCLUDE_KERNEL_MODULES="nvidia-uvm
nvidia-peermem". The make command will have the
variable set to nothing. Add to it as you see fit.
Now build the kernel modules by running the following command:
make NV_EXCLUDE_KERNEL_MODULES=
Note
The source code you built the kernel from must be in the same
location you built the kernel. For example, if you built the
kernel in /sources/linux-6.16.1,
the source code should stay there and must not be deleted until
the 3rd party modules have been built. Some Linux distributions
get around this by installing development files in /usr/src, but that is out of the scope of this
book.
Note
You may encounter various build failures. This usually happens
because the module code is incompatible with the current kernel
version. If this happens, in most cases it can be fixed by
downgrading the kernel. When a new driver release happens, the
driver will then most likely support the kernel version at the
time. At the top of this section, the recommended kernel series
to use with this driver is mentioned to give an idea of what is
the idea kernel version to build against.
Important
When you rebuild/upgrade the kernel, you will also need to
reinstall the NVIDIA kernel modules.
Kernel modules are installed in a versioned directory that, when
they are built against a different kernel version, will no longer
match the booted kernel version and cannot be used. Furthermore,
there is glue built, so any changes to the kernel can break that
glue. For kernel modules in the Linux source tree, known as
first-party modules, they get updated and rebuilt alongside the
kernel, so issues aren't ran into for first-party modules.
Third-party modules aren't, however, and need to be
updated/rebuilt.
When you rebuild/upgrade the kernel against the same NVIDIA
driver version, you will only need to reinstall the kernel
modules. You will have to reinstall the driver software as well
if you are upgrading from a previous driver version.
Now as the root user:
make modules_install &&
cd ..
If you set the KERNEL_UNAME variable,
unset it now:
unset KERNEL_UNAME
Install the firmware as the root
user:
rm -rvf /usr/lib/firmware/nvidia/[0-9]* &&
mkdir -pv /usr/lib/firmware/nvidia/580.119.02 &&
cp -v firmware/*.bin /usr/lib/firmware/nvidia/580.119.02
Installing the NVIDIA-r580 Driver Software
Install the install script and manifest file for the script as the
root user:
install -vdm755 /usr/share/nvidia &&
install -vDm755 ../install-NVIDIA-1 /usr/sbin/nvidia-install &&
install -vDm644 ../manifest-NVIDIA-1 /usr/share/nvidia/manifest
Now see what options there are and what you want to install by
running /sbin/nvidia-install
--help.
If you want to do the default installation, you can just run the
following command as the root user:
/sbin/nvidia-install
Important
If you are booted into the system you are running the commands
for, doing so for the above command in a graphical environment
may crash that environment and drop you back to a TTY. Don't do
that, just run it from a TTY or in a chroot where the display
doesn't rely on the libraries provided from this driver. As for
the TTY, it is actually driven by the kernel or its modules, not
the libraries. That is why running the above command in a TTY is
safe—it doesn't overwrite the kernel modules.
Configuring NVIDIA-r580
Config
Files
/usr/lib/modprobe.d/nouveau.conf
/usr/lib/modprobe.d/nvidia_drm.conf
List of Packages With Issues
Using this driver can come with compromises. So far, these issues
seem to be limited to Wayland and window managers. The list below
documents the known packages that have issues with this driver.
-
Mutter: Compile this package with -D wayland_eglstream=true and
-D egl_device=true
to enable launching with Wayland. Ensure the NVIDIA EGL Libraries are
installed.
-
Xorg-Server-21.1.20: While this
package works just fine, the TearFree patch and
configuration file will be useless as the Xorg driver
(nvidia_drv) will be used
instead of the modesetting driver. The TearFree patch and
configuration file is modesetting-specific. Thus, you must
find another way to get rid of screen tearing if that is
your wish. Such fixes may bog down performance drastically
such that 144 FPS may drop to 60 FPS.
Configuration Information
In order for the drivers to work properly, device nodes must be
created beforehand. Under certain conditions or configurations,
these aren't created automatically when starting a display
server. As the root user, create
a udev rule to always create these nodes at boot time:
mkdir -pv /usr/lib/udev/rules.d &&
cat > /usr/lib/udev/rules.d/60-nvidia.rules << "EOF"
# Always create NVIDIA device nodes at boot time.
ACTION=="add|bind", \
ATTR{vendor}=="0x10de", \
ATTR{class}=="0x03[0-9]*", \
DRIVER=="nvidia", \
TEST!="/dev/nvidiactl", \
RUN+="/usr/bin/nvidia-modprobe", \
RUN+="/usr/bin/nvidia-modprobe -c0 -u"
EOF
Nouveau and NVIDIAFB support was compiled into the kernel to make
the NVIDIA kernel modules build successfully. However, Nouveau
and NVIDIAFB conflict with the NVIDIA kernel modules, so they
should be blacklisted. Furthermore, other modules may have been
built that can conflict, and should likewise be disabled. As the
root user, create the file
/usr/lib/modprobe.d/nouveau.conf to
blacklist Nouveau and NVIDIAFB, as well as other conflicting
modules:
mkdir -pv /usr/lib/modprobe.d &&
cat > /usr/lib/modprobe.d/nouveau.conf << "EOF"
# Begin /usr/lib/modprobe.d/nouveau.conf
blacklist nouveau
blacklist nvidiafb
blacklist nova_core
blacklist nova_drm
# End /usr/lib/modprobe.d/nouveau.conf
EOF
The DRM kernel module does not use modesetting by default which
is needed by Wayland compositors. Make it use modesetting as the
root user:
cat > /usr/lib/modprobe.d/nvidia_drm.conf << "EOF"
# Begin /usr/lib/modprobe.d/nvidia_drm.conf
options nvidia_drm modeset=1
# End /usr/lib/modprobe.d/nvidia_drm.conf
EOF
This driver does not install DRI
drivers or driver stubs. Likewise, it does not install a pkgconf
file saying where to find the associated files. The files aren't
needed with this driver. However, some applications expect the
pkg-config file to exist, namely Xorg-Server-21.1.20. Create one now as
the root user:
cat > /usr/lib/pkgconfig/dri.pc << "EOF"
prefix=/usr
includedir=${prefix}/include
dridriverdir=/usr/lib/dri
Name: dri
Description: Direct Rendering Infrastructure
Version: 580.119.02
Requires.private: libdrm >= 2.4.109
Cflags: -I${includedir}
EOF
Applications that do require this file typically will not link
against any library in /usr/lib/dri. If you are worried that an
application will try to link against non-existent libraries, you
can compile Mesa-25.3.1 to get these libraries and a real
pkg-config file. Note that those libraries will not be used when
this driver is in use.
Like with the situation regarding DRI, there are a few header
files only installed by Mesa-25.3.1 but can be dropped in without an
issue. One is for declaring the DRI interface, one for declaring
Mesa's EGL EXT system that is used by some software like GNOME's
mutter, and another for declaring the EGL EXT system for ANGLE,
with modifications geared for it. Using Wget-1.25.0, download and
install them as the root user:
install -vdm755 /usr/include/GL/internal /usr/include/EGL &&
wget https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/raw/25.3/include/GL/internal/dri_interface.h \
-O /usr/include/GL/internal/dri_interface.h &&
wget https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/raw/25.3/include/EGL/eglmesaext.h \
-O /usr/include/EGL/eglmesaext.h &&
wget https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/raw/25.3/include/EGL/eglext_angle.h \
-O /usr/include/EGL/eglext_angle.h
Proceeding
If you put all the files in place in the configuration section, you
should not need Mesa for any packages in the book or in BLFS. The
OpenGL, DRI, and EGL files provided here should be suitable enough.
GNOME and KDE are known to work with this configuration.
With this pure NVIDIA-only setup, you can skip to Chapter 12,
X11 and expect smooth sailing. If you want to however, you can
also install CUDA in this subsection, which up to you.