Stream and NVidia driver

Issues related to hardware problems
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scottro
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Stream and NVidia driver

Post by scottro » 2020/12/20 00:00:37

On a machine with an NVidia card, I migrated to Stream, following the FAQ, and it kept working. However, I then did a fresh Stream install and neither Elrepo's nor rpmfusion's versions of NVidia drivers worked. (For this particular machine, Nouveau wasn't satisfactory--I don't game on it, but it just gave bad resolution.)

I've communicated with Elrepo, and they are aware of it, I suspect rpmfusion is as well. Right now, CentOS Nvidia drivers are looking for older kernels than are used by Stream.

I didn't work very hard on a solution, just downloaded the drivers from NVidia's site. The errors made it obvious which dependencies I had to install, so I did so, and then it built. In hindsight, I should have installed dkms first, which I believe would make it unnecessary to rebuild NVidia when the kernel updates, but I only installed it after the fact.

Anyway, for those who have NVidia cards and use Stream, or do a fresh install of Stream, the drivers from NVidia's site are working.
New users should check the FAQ and Read Me First pages

lightman47
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Re: Stream and NVidia driver

Post by lightman47 » 2020/12/20 14:14:27

Drats - I'd long forgotten about all the fun trying to keep things working after updates! I just changed two of my machines to Stream but fortunately they aren't ones I use daily. I have also installed a Ubuntu Desktop VM with which to experiment; looks like I'd better start learning.

As far as Nvidia - I've been removing it from my computers anyway. The performance increase was noticeable.

Thanks for the heads-up, though.

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jlehtone
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Re: Stream and NVidia driver

Post by jlehtone » 2020/12/20 21:28:53

scottro wrote:
2020/12/20 00:00:37
I didn't work very hard on a solution, just downloaded the drivers from NVidia's site.
RPM's from their Yum-repo or the binary .run?

scottro
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Re: Stream and NVidia driver

Post by scottro » 2020/12/20 22:23:37

Sorry, I should have been clearer. I went to NVidia's site and downloaded from there.
New users should check the FAQ and Read Me First pages

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jlehtone
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Re: Stream and NVidia driver

Post by jlehtone » 2020/12/20 22:55:57

By "repo" I did mean the http://developer.download.nvidia.com/co ... l8/x86_64/ that has CUDA (and driver).
NVidia's instructions are in https://docs.nvidia.com/datacenter/tesl ... kstart.pdf (also for CentOS Linux 8)
(No, I have not installed from there, not even for CentOS Linux, except the CUDA for CentOS 7.)

scottro
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Re: Stream and NVidia driver

Post by scottro » 2020/12/20 23:40:15

I went to their site where one goes to download drivers, https://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx and got a driver for my GT710 card, choosing long lived. This downloads a script that runs the install. I didn't pay that much attention to it, to be honest, just watched for errors.
New users should check the FAQ and Read Me First pages

mprater
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Re: Stream and NVidia driver

Post by mprater » 2021/01/13 13:18:00

I'm using a kmod-nvidia from elrepo-testing on a CentOS 8 Linux machine: https://elrepo.org/bugs/view.php?id=1061

It contains the 455.45.01 nvidia driver. Works perfectly!

My question now is, how does/will this kmod work with CentOS 8 Stream?

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TrevorH
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Re: Stream and NVidia driver

Post by TrevorH » 2021/01/13 14:15:41

It doesn't. Stream uses an unreleased upstream RHEL kernel and the KABI is not stable. ELRepo kmods will not work with it (or only in the brief period where the Stream kernel matches the current RHEL point release one).
The future appears to be RHEL or Debian. I think I'm going Debian.
Info for USB installs on http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/InstallFromUSBkey
CentOS 5 and 6 are deadest, do not use them.
Use the FAQ Luke

mprater
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Re: Stream and NVidia driver

Post by mprater » 2021/01/13 15:20:31

Right, thanks Trevor. That's what I suspected, but wanted confirmation.

These sorts of issues seem to be intentionally 'overlooked' by the proponents of CentOS Stream.

gjakob
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Stream and NVidia driver

Post by gjakob » 2021/10/17 10:26:37

I recommend using the NVIDIA drivers from developer.nvidia.com. Install the repository as root in the folliwng way:

dnf config-manager --add-repo https://developer.download.nvidia.com/c ... rhel8.repo
dnf clean all

You have the choice of various different modules, which you can list with
dnf module list nvidia-driver

In case of CentOS stream you have to select any of the dkms branches.
dnf -y module install nvidia-driver
is equivalent to the default stream:
dnf -y module install nvidia-driver:latest-dkms

Optionally you can also install the latest Cuda Toolkit with:
dnf -y install cuda

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