nvidia\-installer

Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: 2005-09-01
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NAME

nvidia-installer - install, upgrade, or uninstall the NVIDIA Accelerated Graphics Driver Set

SYNOPSIS

nvidia-installer [ options ]

DESCRIPTION

nvidia-installer is a tool for installing, updating, and uninstalling the NVIDIA Linux Graphics Driver. When the driver is installed by running, for example:

sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-100.14.19-pkg1.run

The .run file unpacks itself and invokes the contained nvidia-installer utility. nvidia-installer then walks you through the installation process. As part of installation, nvidia-installer is installed on the system for later use, such as for uninstalling the currently installed driver or updating to newer drivers.

In the default 'install' mode of operation, nvidia-installer probes your system to determine which driver files should be installed and where. nvidia-installer then determines which files already present on your system will conflict with driver installation; those files are noted and will be later backed up. At this point, nothing will have been changed on the file system, though a "command list" will have been generated. If running in expert mode (requested with the --expert commandline option), this command list will be presented so that you can review all operations that nvidia-installer intends to perform. Finally, nvidia-installer executes the commandlist, backing up conflicting files already present on the file system, installing the new driver files on the file system, creating symlinks, and running system utilities like depmod(8) and ldconfig(8).

To later uninstall the NVIDIA Linux graphics driver, you can run nvidia-installer --uninstall. In the 'uninstall' mode of operation, all driver files that were installed on the system are deleted, and all files that were backed up during installation are restored to their original locations. The uninstall process should restore your filesystem to its state prior to installation. If you install one NVIDIA Linux graphics driver while another is already installed, this uninstall step is automatically performed on the old driver at the beginning of installation of the new driver.

You can also use nvidia-installer to automatically update to newer drivers.

You can query the latest driver available on NVIDIA's website with the --latest option, or request that the latest driver, if newer than your current driver, be automatically downloaded and installed by specifying the --update commandline option.

nvidia-installer's backend is separate from its user interface; the installer will use an ncurses-based user interface if it can find the correct ncurses library, otherwise, it will fall back to a simple commandline user interface. To disable use of the ncurses user interface, use the option --ui=none. Additional user interfaces, utilizing GTK+ or QT, for example, could be provided in the future.

The source code to nvidia-installer is released under the GPL and available here:

ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/nvidia-installer/ laURL: L ra

Patches are welcome.

OPTIONS

-a, --accept-license: Bypass the display and prompting for acceptance of the NVIDIA Software License Agreement. By passing this option to nvidia-installer, you indicate that you have read and accept the License Agreement contained in the file 'LICENSE' (in the top level directory of the driver package).
--update: Connect to the NVIDIA FTP server ' ftp://download.nvidia.com ' and determine the latest available driver version. If there is a more recent driver available, automatically download and install it. Any other options given on the commandline will be passed on to the downloaded driver package when installing it.
-v, --version: Print the nvidia-installer version and exit.
-h, --help: Print usage information for the common commandline options and exit.
-A, --advanced-options: Print usage information for the common commandline options as well as the advanced options, and then exit.

ADVANCED OPTIONS

-i, --driver-info: Print information about the currently installed NVIDIA driver version.
--uninstall: Uninstall the currently installed NVIDIA driver.
--sanity: Perform basic sanity tests on an existing NVIDIA driver installation.
-e, --expert: Enable 'expert' installation mode; more detailed questions will be asked, and more verbose output will be printed; intended for expert users. The questions may be suppressed with the '--no-questions' commandline option.
-q, --no-questions: Do not ask any questions; the default (normally 'yes') is assumed for all yes/no questions, and the default string is assumed in any situation where the user is prompted for string input. The one question that is not bypassed by this option is license acceptance; the license may be accepted with the commandline option '--accept-license'.
-s, --silent: Run silently; no questions are asked and no output is printed, except for error messages to stderr. This option implies '--ui=none --no-questions --accept-license'.
--x-prefix=X-PREFIX: The prefix under which the X components of the NVIDIA driver will be installed; the default is '/usr/X11R6' unless nvidia-installer detects that X.Org >= 7.0 is installed, in which case the default is '/usr'. Only under rare circumstances should this option be used.
--xfree86-prefix=XFREE86-PREFIX: This is a deprecated synonym for --x-prefix.
--x-module-path=X-MODULE-PATH: The path under which the NVIDIA X server modules will be installed. If this option is not specified, nvidia-installer uses the following search order and selects the first valid directory it finds: 1) `X -showDefaultModulePath`, 2) `pkg-config --variable=moduledir xorg-server`, or 3) the X library path (see the '--x-library-path' option) plus either 'modules' (for X servers older than X.Org 7.0) or 'xorg/modules' (for X.Org 7.0 or later).
--x-library-path=X-LIBRARY-PATH: The path under which the NVIDIA X libraries will be installed. If this option is not specified, nvidia-installer uses the following search order and selects the first valid directory it finds: 1) `X -showDefaultLibPath`, 2) `pkg-config --variable=libdir xorg-server`, or 3) the X prefix (see the '--x-prefix' option) plus 'lib' on 32bit systems, and either 'lib64' or 'lib' on 64bit systems, depending on the installed Linux distribution.
--opengl-prefix=OPENGL-PREFIX: The prefix under which the OpenGL components of the NVIDIA driver will be installed; the default is: '/usr'. Only under rare circumstances should this option be used. The Linux OpenGL ABI (http://oss.sgi.com/projects/ogl-sample/ABI/) mandates this default value.
--opengl-libdir=OPENGL-LIBDIR: The path relative to the OpenGL library installation prefix under which the NVIDIA OpenGL components will be installed. The default is 'lib' on 32bit systems, and 'lib64' or 'lib' on 64bit systems, depending on the installed Linux distribution. Only under very rare circumstances should this option be used.
--installer-prefix=INSTALLER-PREFIX: The prefix under which the installer binary will be installed; the default is: '/usr'. Note: please use the '--utility-prefix' option instead.
--utility-prefix=UTILITY-PREFIX: The prefix under which the NVIDIA utilities (nvidia-installer, nvidia-settings, nvidia-xconfig, nvidia-bug-report.sh) and the NVIDIA utility libraries will be installed; the default is: '/usr'.
--utility-libdir=UTILITY-LIBDIR: The path relative to the utility installation prefix under which the NVIDIA utility libraries will be installed. The default is 'lib' on 32bit systems, and 'lib64' or 'lib' on 64bit systems, depending on the installed Linux distribution.
--documentation-prefix=DOCUMENTATION-PREFIX: The prefix under which the documentation files for the NVIDIA driver will be installed. The default is: '/usr'.
--kernel-include-path=KERNEL-INCLUDE-PATH: The directory containing the kernel include files that should be used when compiling the NVIDIA kernel module. This option is deprecated; please use '--kernel-source-path' instead.
--kernel-source-path=KERNEL-SOURCE-PATH: The directory containing the kernel source files that should be used when compiling the NVIDIA kernel module. When not specified, the installer will use '/lib/modules/`uname -r`/build', if that directory exists. Otherwise, it will use '/usr/src/linux'.
--kernel-output-path=KERNEL-OUTPUT-PATH: The directory containing any KBUILD output files if either one of the 'KBUILD_OUTPUT' or 'O' parameters were passed to KBUILD when building the kernel image/modules. When not specified, the installer will assume that no separate output directory was used.
--kernel-install-path=KERNEL-INSTALL-PATH: The directory in which the NVIDIA kernel module should be installed. The default value is either '/lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/video' (if '/lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel' exists) or '/lib/modules/`uname -r`/video'.
--proc-mount-point=PROC-MOUNT-POINT: The mount point for the proc file system; if not specified, then this value defaults to '/proc' (which is normally correct). The mount point of the proc filesystem is needed because the contents of '<proc filesystem>/version' is used when identifying if a precompiled kernel interface is available for the currently running kernel. This option should only be needed in very rare circumstances.
--log-file-name=LOG-FILE-NAME: File name of the installation log file (the default is: '/var/log/nvidia-installer.log').
--tmpdir=TMPDIR: Use the specified directory as a temporary directory when downloading files from the NVIDIA ftp site; if not given, then the following list will be searched, and the first one that exists will be used: $TMPDIR, /tmp, ., $HOME.
-m, --ftp-mirror=FTP-MIRROR: Use the specified FTP mirror rather than the default ' ftp://download.nvidia.com ' when downloading driver updates.
-l, --latest: Connect to the NVIDIA FTP server ' ftp://download.nvidia.com ' (or use the ftp mirror specified with the '--ftp-mirror' option) and query the most recent Linux-x86 driver version number.
-f, --force-update: Forces an update to proceed, even if the installer thinks the latest driver is already installed; this option implies '--update'.
--ui=UI: Specify what user interface to use, if available. Valid values for UI are 'ncurses' (the default) or 'none'. If the ncurses interface fails to initialize, or 'none' is specified, then a simple printf/scanf interface will be used.
-c, --no-ncurses-color: Disable use of color in the ncurses user interface.
--no-opengl-headers: Normally, installation will install NVIDIA's OpenGL header files. This option disables installation of the NVIDIA OpenGL header files.
--force-tls=FORCE-TLS: NVIDIA's OpenGL libraries are compiled with one of two different thread local storage (TLS) mechanisms: 'classic tls' which is used on systems with glibc 2.2 or older, and 'new tls' which is used on systems with tls-enabled glibc 2.3 or newer. nvidia-installer will select the OpenGL libraries appropriate for your system; however, you may use this option to force the installer to install one library type or another. Valid values for FORCE-TLS are 'new' and 'classic'.
-k, --kernel-name=KERNEL-NAME: Build and install the NVIDIA kernel module for the non-running kernel specified by KERNEL-NAME ( KERNEL-NAME should be the output of `uname -r` when the target kernel is actually running). This option implies '--no-precompiled-interface'. If the options '--kernel-install-path' and '--kernel-source-path' are not given, then they will be inferred from KERNEL-NAME ; eg: '/lib/modules/ KERNEL-NAME /kernel/drivers/video/' and '/lib/modules/ KERNEL-NAME /build/', respectively.
-n, --no-precompiled-interface: Disable use of precompiled kernel interfaces.
--no-runlevel-check: Normally, the installer checks the current runlevel and warns users if they are in runlevel 1: in runlevel 1, some services that are normally active are disabled (such as devfs), making it difficult for the installer to properly setup the kernel module configuration files. This option disables the runlevel check.
--no-abi-note: The NVIDIA OpenGL libraries contain an OS ABI note tag, which identifies the minimum kernel version needed to use the library. This option causes the installer to remove this note from the OpenGL libraries during installation.
--no-rpms: Normally, the installer will check for several rpms that conflict with the driver (specifically: NVIDIA_GLX and NVIDIA_kernel), and remove them if present. This option disables this check.
-b, --no-backup: During driver installation, conflicting files are backed up, so that they can be restored when the driver is uninstalled. This option causes the installer to simply delete conflicting files, rather than back them up.
-N, --no-network: This option instructs the installer to not attempt to connect to the NVIDIA ftp site (for updated precompiled kernel interfaces, for example).
--no-recursion: Normally, nvidia-installer will recursively search for potentially conflicting libraries under the default OpenGL and X server installation locations. With this option set, the installer will only search in the top-level directories.
-K, --kernel-module-only: Install a kernel module only, and do not uninstall the existing driver. This is intended to be used to install kernel modules for additional kernels (in cases where you might boot between several different kernels). To use this option, you must already have a driver installed, and the version of the installed driver must match the version of this kernel module.
--no-kernel-module: Install everything but the kernel module, and do not remove any existing, possibly conflicting kernel modules. This can be useful in some DEBUG environments. If you use this option, you must be careful to ensure that a NVIDIA kernel module matching this driver version is installed seperately.
--no-x-check: Do not abort the installation if nvidia-installer detects that an X server is running. Only under very rare circumstances should this option be used.
--precompiled-kernel-interfaces-path=PRECOMPILED-KERNEL-INTERFACES-PATH: Before searching for a precompiled kernel interface in the .run file, search in the specified directory.
-X, --run-nvidia-xconfig: nvidia-installer can optionally invoke the nvidia-xconfig utility. This will update the system X configuration file so that the NVIDIA X driver is used. The pre-existing X configuration file will be backed up. At the end of installation, nvidia-installer will ask the user if they wish to run nvidia-xconfig; the default response is 'no'. Use this option to make the default response 'yes'. This is useful with the '--no-questions' or '--silent' options, which assume the default values for all questions.
--force-selinux=FORCE-SELINUX: Linux installations using SELinux (Security-Enhanced Linux) require that the security type of all shared libraries be set to 'shlib_t' or 'textrel_shlib_t', depending on the distribution. nvidia-installer will detect when to set the security type, and set it using chcon(1) on the shared libraries it installs. Use this option to override nvidia-installer's detection of when to set the security type. Valid values for FORCE-SELINUX are 'yes' (force setting of the security type), 'no' (prevent setting of the security type), and 'default' (let nvidia-installer decide when to set the security type).
--selinux-chcon-type=SELINUX-CHCON-TYPE: When SELinux support is enabled, nvidia-installer will try to determine which chcon argument to use by first trying 'textrel_shlib_t', then 'texrel_shlib_t', then 'shlib_t'. Use this option to override this detection logic.
--no-sigwinch-workaround: Normally, nvidia-installer ignores the SIGWINCH signal before it forks to execute commands, e.g. to build the kernel module, and restores the SIGWINCH signal handler after the child process has terminated. This option disables this behavior.

EXAMPLES

nvidia-installer --latest: Connect to NVIDIA's FTP site, and report the latest driver version and the URL to the latest driver file.
nvidia-installer --update: Connect to NVIDIA's FTP site. If a newer version of the driver is available, download and install it. Use --force-update to install the most recent driver even if --nvidia-installer detects that it is installed already.
nvidia-installer --uninstall: Remove the NVIDIA driver and restore files that were overwritten during the install process.