How to Install NVIDIA Drivers on CentOS Stream 9/8

The following tutorial will teach you how to install the NVIDIA drivers on CentOS 9 or 8 Stream using the command line terminal using the Nvidia CUDA repository so you have the latest version of Nvidia Drivers installed on your system.

WARNING, X86_64 ARCHITECTURE IS ONLY SUPPORTED IN THIS METHOD FROM NVIDIA. Please also note ancient graphic cards will not benefit from installing the latest packages from Nvidia. Most often, using the default drivers on your system is best for stability and security.

Recommended Steps Before Installation

Before you begin, update your system to ensure all existing packages are up to date to avoid conflicts during the installation.

sudo dnf upgrade --refresh

Determine your Graphics Card

The first step for users with aging NVIDIA Graphics cards is to determine what it is and if it is supported, users with brand new cards can skip this part as there is no doubt they will be supported.

First, find your graphics card module.

lspci | grep -e VGA

Example output:

03:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation TU117 [GeForce GTX 1650] (rev a1)

If you are using an old card, I advise you to research it on the NVIDIA website; if the latest NVIDIA drivers still support it, you may need to install legacy drivers.

Import Nvidia Repository on CentOS Stream

First, import the repository for your system. Again as with EPEL, ensure you import the correct repository for your version of CentOS.

Import Nvidia Drivers Repository for CentOS 9 Stream

sudo dnf config-manager --add-repo http://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/repos/rhel9/$(uname -i)/cuda-rhel9.repo

Import Nvidia Drivers Repository for CentOS 8 Stream

sudo dnf config-manager --add-repo https://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/repos/rhel8/$(uname -i)/cuda-rhel8.repo

Install NVIDIA Drivers on CentOS Stream

The first method is to install the noncompiled nvidia drivers, this requires EPEL, DKMS, GCC, Kernel-DEVEL and Kernel-Headers dependencies to be installed. This is the most commonly used installation method, but users may find installing precompiled version would suite you better in the next section.

Install Dependencies

First, install required dependencies for safe measures.

sudo dnf install kernel-headers-$(uname -r) kernel-devel-$(uname -r) tar bzip2 make automake gcc gcc-c++ pciutils elfutils-libelf-devel libglvnd-opengl libglvnd-glx libglvnd-devel acpid pkgconfig dkms

Install EPEL/EPEL Next Repository (Required)

Now install EPEL repository, and the recommendation is to install both repositories. Ensure you installed the correct EPEL to the version of CentOS you are using.

Import EPEL for CentOS 9 Stream

First, enable the CRB repository.

sudo dnf config-manager --set-enabled crb

Next, install EPEL using the following (dnf) terminal command.

sudo dnf install \
    https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-9.noarch.rpm \
    https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-next-release-latest-9.noarch.rpm

Import EPEL for CentOS 8 Stream

Next, install EPEL using the following (dnf) terminal command.

sudo dnf install \
    https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-8.noarch.rpm \
    https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-next-release-latest-8.noarch.rpm

Enable the PowerTools repository.

sudo dnf config-manager --set-enabled powertools

Install Nvidia Drivers proprietary or opensource drivers

Now, install the latest NVIDIA drivers.

sudo dnf module install nvidia-driver:latest-dkms

Note you will be prompted to import GPG keys during the installation. This is safe to do so for newer users, type Y when prompted.

Alternatively, you can list the modules of Nvidia RPM using the following command.

sudo dnf module list nvidia-driver

For open-source users, you can install this module instead of the proprietary, and I suggest keeping the latest. However, as mentioned above, this is still new, so issues may be encountered possibly slightly more, but this should be rare. Any problems, install the non-open source.

Example:

sudo dnf module install nvidia-driver:open-dkms

Lastly, reboot your system once done.

reboot

Verify the installation by running NVIDIA-SMI as the manual installation steps showed beforehand.

nvidia-smi

Alternatively, you can open the NVIDIA settings GUI from your application icon menu or use the following command.

nvidia-settings

As mentioned above, at the time of the tutorial, NVIDIA 520 is the latest, which you can see is installed due to the fact we are installing directly from the NVIDIA repository; in the future, this version will change pretty quickly as the tutorial ages.

Troubleshoot

Slow Boot Times with Nvidia Drivers

A common complaint when installing Nvidia drivers is the slow boot time. This is mainly caused due to Nvidia, with the kernel searching for USB-C drivers that support VR devices.

Depending on your system setup, the following methods may work to fix it.

BIOS:

Blacklist the USB-C driver by opening the following “/etc/sysconfig/grub” location.

nano /etc/sysconfig/grub

Find the line with “GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=” and add the following as the last entry under it.

rd.driver.blacklist=i2c-nvidia-gpu

Refresh grub.

grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

Then reboot your system.

reboot

UEFI:

Blacklist the USB-C driver

sudo echo "blacklist i2c_nvidia_gpu" >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist_i2c-nvidia-gpu.conf

Refresh grub.

sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/efi/EFI/centos/grub.cfg

Then reboot your system.

reboot