Fedora 18 nVidia Drivers Install / Uninstall Guide
This is guide, howto install nVidia proprietary drivers on Fedora 18 “Spherical Cow” and disable Nouveau driver. This guide works with GeForce 8/9/200/300/400/500 series cards (and currently also with GeForce 6/7). Later you might need different version of nVidia drivers if you use GeForce 6/7 card.
Fedora 18 nVidia driver installation is not much different from previous Fedora versions. I have tested this guide with a couple computers, so let me know, if you have some problems.
1. Before nVidia drivers installation
1.1 Check is your nVidia card supported
lspci |grep -i VGA ## Example output ## 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GT218 [GeForce G210] (rev a2) |
List of Supported NVIDIA GPU Products, your card should found before 173.14.xx driver section. I upgrade this guide later when drivers are updated 313.xx version.
1.2 NVIDIA Optimus Technology
If your lspci |grep -i VGA output looks like following:
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 2n Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09) 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GF106 [GeForce GT 555M SDDR3] (rev a1) |
Or you know that your computer have NVIDIA Optimus Technology, and it is impossible to turn Intel Graphics / NVDIDIA Optimus off in the BIOS then this guide is not working on your system. Check If !1 0 forums user Viger guide instead Fedora 18 for NVIDIA Optimus users (with Bumblebee/Primus rpm).
2. Install nVidia proprietary drivers on Fedora 18 “Spherical Cow” and disable the nouveau driver
2.1 Change root user
su - ## OR ## sudo -i |
2.2 Make sure that you are running latest kernel and have latest SELinux policy packages
If not then update kernel and reboot
yum update kernel* selinux-policy* reboot |
2.3 Add RPMFusion Repositories (Free and Non-Free)
32-bit and 64-bit
yum localinstall --nogpgcheck http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-18.noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-18.noarch.rpm ## OR ## yum localinstall --nogpgcheck http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-18.noarch.rpm yum localinstall --nogpgcheck http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-18.noarch.rpm |
2.4 Install nVidia proprietary drivers for GeForce 8/9/200/300/400/500 (and currently GeForce 6/7) series cards
Select akmod, kmod or kmod-PAE from following.
akmod-nvidia
yum install akmod-nvidia xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs |
Extra package for kernel-PAE users
yum install kernel-PAE-devel |
or
kmod-nvidia
yum install kmod-nvidia xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs |
or
kmod-nvidia-PAE and kernel-PAE-devel
yum install kernel-PAE-devel kmod-nvidia-PAE |
akmod is good option and easy way avoid problems on kernel updates and is best and only option if you use:
- self-compiled kernel
- older Fedora kernel
- quickly changing kernels from updates-testing/rawhide
Full spec of kmod and akmod differences, check this.
2.5 All is done and then just reboot
reboot |
2.6 VDPAU/VAAPI support
To enable video acceleration support for your player (Note: you need Geforce 8 or later).
yum install vdpauinfo libva-vdpau-driver libva-utils |
3. Uninstall nVidia proprietary drivers on Fedora 18 “Spherical Cow” and enable the nouveau driver
I assume that you installed nVidia driver with this guide, then do following.
3.1 Change root user
su - ## OR ## sudo -i |
3.2 Uninstall nVidia Driver Packages
yum remove xorg-x11-drv-nvidia\* nvidia-settings nvidia-xconfig |
3.4 Then Reboot System
reboot |
I noticed that you didn’t do the
mv /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r)-nouveau.img
dracut /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img $(uname -r)
that you did with f17. Doesnt this keep the nouveau driver?
Hi Patrick,
Yes, nouveau driver is not removed, because based on my tests, this is “step” not needed anymore. RPMFusion nvidia drivers disable nouveau driver nicely. If you have some problems and you can’t get rid of nouveau (still loading on boot), then you can do:
I got the same issue but I searched and all the findings advice to do this command but I couldn’t find a way to do it.
How to run this ?
I mean I can’t login into the terminal plus the fedora is not running at all !!
Hi Abdullah,
You can try to boot runlevel 3 and then run those commands.
i run an nvidia8400 with an acer aspire desktop, which utilizes nv-card hd output. if anyone has issues with the desktop refusing to display the actual monitor’s resolution, do ~#: nvidia-xconfig then edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf Display Sub-Section Modes “1360×768″ ##insert your values here(example). as usual,
You Rock, dude!
-O.
Hi dfowensby,
And thanks for this info! :)
Hi, I followed this guide but I can’t get a 1360×768 resolution (maybe the dfowensby’s comment is the solution, but I don’t understand it n_nU).
$ lspci | grep -i01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GT218 [GeForce 210] (rev a2)
Any ideas?
Hi Shiro,
Add inside Section “screen”:
Or just:
Heh, thanks! My fedora now looks better :D
Excellent! :D
Thanks for your help and your work ! It was a great help for me !
Marcel
I used this instructions for my ASUS K53SM, nVdia GeForce GT 630M. now the X Server is not loading.. :(. Please help. Is my card usng Optimus Technology, and is it whether i dint do for that particular Technlology?
Hi Sirajul,
Could you post output of following command:
Hi JR,
I followed your guide and nvidia driver works quite perfectly on MacBook Pro 5,5rev, although I don’t have LCD backlight control anymore. Once with nouveau BL control was working out of the box like it does on macosx (continuous dimmer and all). But after akmod-nvidia-1:304 not even a get my link to brightness settings on /sys/class/backlight. There is nothing there! Well my system settings are
# uname -r
3.7.8-202.fc18.x86_64
# lspci | grep -i vga
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation C79 [GeForce 9400M] (rev b1)
Hi GaboVaz,
Try to add Option “RegistryDwords” “EnableBrightnessControl=1″ to /etc/X11/xorg.conf:
I tryed that first time I installed the kmod package, and it didn’t changed much. I don’t if there is another step after changing xorg entries. So I uninstalled it completely cuz I’m trying to use nouveau again, but it keeps randomly freezing).
I was read to try again kmod-nvidia but fedora automatically installed latest kernel version this morning..
3.7.9-201.fc18.x86_64
Guessing I have to wait for compatible kmod-nvidia..or is it safe to install:
kmod-nvidia-3.7.8-202.fc18.x86_64-304.64-6.fc18.2.x86_64.rpm ??
Anyway, guess u noticed I’m really noob at fedora..
Thanks a lot anyway!!
Actually you can use akmod instead kmod and then you shouldn’t have problems when you update kernel and there is not matching kmod yet.
But if you tested this on xorg.conf, then it’s possible that this is not working on MacBook Pro.
Next you can try modify your kernel entry on Grub2 (when you boot) and add acpi_osi=Linux acpi_backlight=vendor on linux line, like following:
Then just boot and test is backlight control working then?
Hello what version of nvidia drivers it install with the lastest ? thx
Hi alazldl,
Latest packages from rpmfusion repos are:
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-304.64-5.fc18.x86_64.rpm
akmod-nvidia-304.64-6.fc18.x86_64.rpm
kmod-nvidia-3.7.8-202.fc18.x86_64-304.64-6.fc18.2.x86_64.rpm
I followed your guide (as I have for previous Fedora Releases) and all seemed to go well on reboot. However I get the graphical background, but no interface (still new to Linux and Fedora, sorry about the terminology). The mouse works, I get the little ripple if I move it to the top left, but no menus top or bottom or sides. It’s as if I am zoomed in on the middle of the screen and cannot get to the edges. I can get to a text terminal (cntr-alt-Fx) and the text looks perfect (with nouveau, it was scrambled video). Not sure how to fix this. It is on my laptop, HP dv6000 with an Nvidia Geforce/Nforce 7150m/630m. I feel like I am so close since the video seems to be working but I just don’t have the “interface” part of the gui. Thank you in advance. (Oh, and uninstalling works just fine but I am back to nouveau with so-so graphics, slow, and scrambled text video in terminals.
Cash
Hi Cash,
Could you tell little bit more what desktop you are using? Did it work with nouveau drivers, were you able to log in?
Yes, the desktop is GNOME, Fedora 18 fresh install. No customizations except trying to load the nvidia driver (where I start since it is the most tricky for me). The desktop works fine (icons, top and side menus, shortcuts etc) with nouveau but it is lower resolution, brightness, and slower than what I expect from the nvidia drivers. I have a desktop running Fedora 16 with the nvidia drivers and it was a huge performance difference on that machine. This is a laptop (HP DV6000) with AMD/Nvidia 7150m/630m chipset. Like I said the nvidia driver loads, it boots, no errors noticed except I just have a full screen with the background (blue with bubbles I think) which looks great, but I can’t get to anything as there are no dropdown menus, side quicklaunch bar, or anything. I don’t know any keyboard shortcuts to get to a windowed command prompt or anything to try and run something from within the gui to try to change resolution or test anything. I can use cntrl-alt-Fx) to get to a full screen text terminal and everything seems great there (the text looks perfect, where on nouveau it was scrambled). At a loss here as to what is going wrong. Thank you for all that you do and help here for us nubes.
Cash
This sounds some kind of bug, one thing what you could try first, is update your system and try again. First change another virtual console and log in as root, then:
yum update rebootSelect newest kernel and see what happens then?
Unfortunately there was no difference. Updated everything and still get the background with no GUI interface. I’m stumped on this. May try going through the hassle of installing the Nvidia proprietary drivers and see if they work. But not really looking forward to that in the long run.
Thanks!
I have been running fc17 and a recent s/w update has disabled my login. See following for details:
http://www.forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?p=1636165&posted=1#post1636165
Unfortunately they are now calling this a BUG with fc17.
My question is; should I just go ahead and install Fedora 18 ?
-Val
Hi JValeck,
I checked that thread and looks like you got this partially resolved, but Fedora 18 is of course nice option.
Just installed fc18 and followed the instructions on this page for installing the nvidia drivers.
All looks great ! :-)
I copied all the terminal commands and system responses to a text file if anyone should require that kind of detail.
jdotvaleckatgmaildotcom
On Fedora 18, I use GTS 450. Il follow your process three days ago, and everything was right. There was this morning a new update of kmod-nvidia-3.7.9-201 for 304.64 driver and I made the upgrade, since the sound disappears. In sound settings I have only fake/dummy ouput (‘sortie factice’ in french language). After several hours of turn aroound, I give up, some help please
Thanks
Marcel
Hi Marcel,
Did you updated any other packages, than kmod-nvidia?
Is it working if you boot with older kernel?
Hello JR,
I come back with good news …
Of course I try with old built kernel. the Current one is 3.7.9
I tried with 3.7.8 no differences it didn’t work
With 3.7.7 it hangs and didn’t start
After this failure I restart with 3.7.9 I have sound and CUDA GTS 450 was Ok! but a systematic conflict appears with udisks2-2.0.1
So I authorize access to Fedora rawhide and I install fedora 19 / udisks2-2.0.91 . I restart twice eveything seems OK! Chopin and the old swedish Abba group are back
But once more thank for your help for Nvidia Install
Thank for your interest and your time … I will make a follow-up!
Marcel
Hello Marcel,
You are welcome! Excellent to hear that you got it working and thanks for sharing this info, what happened.
Much appreciated JR, as always. Is there a possibility to reactivate the graphical boot-loader?
And another question a little off topic here. I can’t get the audio via HDMI to work. I am running F18 KDE and set the master audio channel to HDA NVidia HDMI, but it doesn’t work.
Thanks in advance.
Hi milo,
Try following to restore graphical boot-loader,
open /etc/default/grub add splash to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX row.
Then run:
Reboot.
Audio via HDMI might be more complicated.
Could you tell more specific which nVidia card you have?
Example output of:
Thanks, that certainly gave me back graphical boot … BUT :D at the end of boot I get this plymouth error, which says:
“Failed to start Wait for Plymouth Boot Screen to Quit”
And it stays there indefinitely. No chance of doing anything. With CTRL+ALT+F2 I can login as root, but I haven’t found a solution to this problem… should have just accepted the ugly boot… :D
Look the other posts made by me. splash didnt work for me too but other methods worked.
is possible to use the nice fedora bootsplash with nvidia driver on fedora 18 too?
Hi Rafael,
Try following,
open /etc/default/grub add splash to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX row.
Then run:
Reboot.
I made some modifications on GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX to add “acpi_osi=Linux”, so my brighness control works. And I couldnt boot anymore. I needed to uninstall nvidia driver and install again to work. Is safe to just add splash?
Could you tell more specific what happened when you try to boot your system with acpi_osi=Linux?
You can always test/modify these parameters directly from Grub2. Here is guide howto modify Grub2 entry, change runlevel to splash.
linux loaded up, but X doesnt start. I could unsintall nvidia driver changing to other console (ctrl+alt+numberOfTerminal), so system isnt freezed.
I add splash editing grub on bootup (pressing e) and but it doesnt work. It always complain about gfxpayload should be set as
gfxpayload=vga=normal
if you need more details or my explanations were confusing, I would be happy to help.
Check Arch wiki for more information, howto set framebuffer resolution (gfxpayload).
You can also set this modifying Grub2 entry, if you want just test it.
Thanks.
I could use a nice bootsplash adding to /etc/default/grub
GRUB_GFXMODE=1360x768x32
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=keep
then run
grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
to choose proper resolution, on grub cmd run vbeinfo and grab the closest to your monitor native resolution.
Hi Rafael,
Nice to hear that you got it working with setting gfxmode and gfxpayload.
If anyone cant adjust screen brightness. I could fix it doing this steps BEFORE installing nvidia driver. Doing it after doesnt work.
in /etc/default/grub add to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX
"acpi_osi=Linux"and later do
than reboot.
After that you can see that nouveau brightness control is working fine.
So install nvidia driver and after that add to /etc/X11/xorg.conf
and reboot.
Thanks a lot… This solved my issue with gnome-shell taking up to 200% cpu.
Laptop: Dell Precision M6700
Graphics card: NVIDIA Corporation GK104 [Quadro K4000M]
Kernel: 3.7.9-205.fc18.i686
Thanks Jette,
You are welcome! It’s always nice to hear computer and graphics card model, when you get drivers installed and working. :)
Hey, thanks for this guide.
I have followed these instructions and once I reboot I just get a blank screen. It works again after I remove the nvidia drivers and revert back to nouveau drivers.
lspci |grep -i VGAOutputs :
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GF110 [GeForce GTX 570 HD] (rev a1)Using akmod driver, with no PAE kernel.
Kernel : 3.8.2-206.fc18.x86_64
Hope you can help :)
Hi Andrei,
Could you post output of following command when you have booted using nVidia drivers:
Have a problem with latest kernel 3.8.3-203. When starting X (startx) screen goes blank and system freezes. Have not done any in-depth analysis on it. Just rebooted and started with previous kernel 3.8.3-201 which works fine. Eviro is:
HP Pavilion d4890y w/ RAID1
kernel-PAE-3.8.3-201.fc18.i686
kmod-nvidia-3.8.3-201.fc18.i686.PAE-304.64-7.fc18.2.i686
akmod-nvidia-304.64-7.fc18.i686
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs-304.64-5.fc18.i686
NVIDIA Corporation G80 [GeForce 8800 GTS] (rev a2)
Hi patrick,
Could you try is it working with latest 3.8.4-202 kernel?
I’d try if I could but I don’t have it available… I’m just waiting on the next kernel release and hoping that it will magically fix.
OK I had a chance to do a little testing and confirm. Here’s the results:
kernel-3.8.4-202 -> works
kernel-3.8.3-203 -> does not work as described above
kernel-3.8.4-201 -> works
Thanks for testing. This is strange and interesting, but best news is that the it works with kernel-3.8.4-202. :)
Brilliant instructions, just works fine.
My experience so far…(in case if it is going to be useful for someone)
HP xw6200 Workstation
Nvidia Quadro 450
3 monitors
Linux kernel : 3.8.3-203.fc18.x86_64
Went for akmod option
Had issues with Gnome desktop. Hence, switched to KDE Spin that is just fine.
While configuring 3 monitors:
1. Configured the first 2 monitors with ‘TwinView’ with monitor-1 being primary, absolute and monitor-2 positioned ‘right of’ monitor-1.
2. Configured monitor-3 as ‘Separate X screen’
3. Enabled ‘Xinerama’
4. Resolution left to ‘Auto’
Not sure, if the above is the best way of configuring 3 monitors. But it works just fine except that the first 2 monitors are treated as a ‘display’ seeamlessly. (i.e., if I maximize any window, it spreads across both monitors)
Hi Murali,
Thanks for posting your experience and this 3 monitors configuration. For me it’s looks very nice way to configure it. I normally use only 2 monitors. :)
Without a doubt Fedora is the best Linux distro I’ve ever experienced. The instructions for installing the nvidia driver worked like a charm!
I seem to be struggling to get my Asus G75VW-AH71 laptop to use the nvidia driver.
I have followed the above instructions and it boots to a certain point and then stops.
If I hit escape to watch the boot process the last thing I see is:
OK – Started GNOME Display Manager
OK – Started Builds and install new kmods from akmod packages
Nothing shows after that. I can ctrl/alt f2 to get to a terminal screen and login as root
The Asus has a Nvidia GTX 660M. Doesn’t appear to be using any optimus.
lspci shows:
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation Device 0fd4 (rev a1)
Kernel/nvidia info:
Linux localhost.localdomain 3.8.4-202.fc18.x86_64 #1 SMP Thu Mar 21 17:02:20 UTC 2013 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
akmod-nvidia-304.64-7.fc18.x86_64
kmod-nvidia-3.8.4-202.fc18.x86_64-304.64-7.fc18.x86_64
nvidia-settings-1.0-26.fc18.x86_64
nvidia-xconfig-1.0-25.fc18.x86_64
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-304.64-5.fc18.x86_64
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs-304.64-5.fc18.x86_64
lsmod | grep -e nouv -e nvidia returns nothing so I’m guessing the nvidia is not loaded.
What can I try next?
Hi Mark,
Everything looks good, but yes nvidia driver is not loaded, you can try following on command line (as root):
Do you get some error? If not then check following output again:
JR, figured it out. I had left secure boot mode enabled in bios/uefi on my Asus. Turned it off and nvidia loaded.
Only other odd thing I have seen is when I make any changes to grub2 via grub2-mkconfig it breaks nvidia. I then have to:
yum remove xorg-x11-drv-nvidia\* nvidia-settings nvidia-xconfig
reboot
yum install akmod-nvidia xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs
to get it working again. Luckily I don’t make changes to grub2 often.
Thank you for your help in this forum.
Mark
Hi Mark,
You are welcome and nice to hear that you got it working.
If you want me to check that grub2-mkconfig problem, then I need more information what changes you do/did? And maybe grub2 config before and after grub2-mkconfig command. :)
De lo más útil este sitio. Muchisimas gracias. :D
This totally screwd up my laptop.i follow the tutorial to the letter.
I have acer aspire with nvidia GT480 .
The error from the xorg log was :
fatal error cannot find device.
And cannot find monitor .
I tried with the kmod and akmod .
I updated the whole system with the kernel .
Any ideas ?
Sorry i meant GT540 in this laptop.
Hi odysiuss,
Could you post output of following commands: