Installing/Updating NVIDIA Linux drivers (X.org)

Alright, so let’s say you want to install/update the latest NVIDIA drivers for your Linux machine, you downloaded the drivers from www.nvidia.com, ran the NVIDIA-Linux-(arch)-versionnb.run script but X still doesn’t want to boot, you probably missed few steps.

  1. Download the NVIDIA Linux drivers from www.nvidia.com
  2. chmod +x
  3. if its a fresh install skip to step: 5
  4. Unload module “nvidia” using rmmod or modconf (debian)
  5. Kill your X server, i usualy do a /etc/init.d/gdm stop
  6. Run the driver installation script and follow the instructions
  7. Depending on your distro, everything should work normaly, on Debian i had to create symlinks from /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/nvidia_drv* to /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/
  8. You might as well want to enable glx, for that create symlinks from /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/extensions/* to /usr/lib/xorg/modules/extention/
  9. Load the module “nvidia” using modprobe or modconf
  10. Change your /etc/X11/xorg.conf using “nvidia” in the Driver variable of the Section “Device”
  11. Restart X, i use /etc/init.d/gdm start
  12. Enjoy !!

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