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Installing NVIDIA software

The steps below will install NVIDIA software components, specifically:

  • NVIDIA GPU driver
  • NVIDIA docker runtime

1. Add the NVIDIA package repository

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
sudo apt update

2. Install the NVIDIA driver

sudo apt install -y nvidia-driver-550

3. Reboot the system to load the new driver

sudo reboot

4. Verify the driver installation

nvidia-smi
Example Output
Sun May 26 11:11:33 2024       
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 550.54.15              Driver Version: 550.54.15      CUDA Version: 12.4     |
|-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+
| GPU  Name                 Persistence-M | Bus-Id          Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan  Temp   Perf          Pwr:Usage/Cap |           Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
|                                         |                        |               MIG M. |
|=========================================+========================+======================|
|   0  NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 ...    Off |   00000000:01:00.0 Off |                  N/A |
| N/A   49C    P0             N/A /   80W |       8MiB /   8192MiB |      0%      Default |
|                                         |                        |                  N/A |
+-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes:                                                                              |
|  GPU   GI   CI        PID   Type   Process name                              GPU Memory |
|        ID   ID                                                               Usage      |
|=========================================================================================|
|    0   N/A  N/A      1595      G   /usr/lib/xorg/Xorg                              4MiB |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

5. Add the NVIDIA Docker repository GPG key and repository

distribution=$(. /etc/os-release; echo $ID$VERSION_ID)
curl -fsSL https://nvidia.github.io/nvidia-docker/gpgkey | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/nvidia-docker-keyring.gpg

6. Add the NVIDIA repositories

echo "deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/nvidia-docker-keyring.gpg] https://nvidia.github.io/libnvidia-container/stable/ubuntu18.04/amd64 /" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nvidia-container-toolkit.list
echo "deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/nvidia-docker-keyring.gpg] https://nvidia.github.io/nvidia-container-runtime/stable/ubuntu18.04/amd64 /" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nvidia-container-toolkit.list
echo "deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/nvidia-docker-keyring.gpg] https://nvidia.github.io/nvidia-docker/ubuntu18.04/amd64 /" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nvidia-container-toolkit.list
sudo apt update

7. Install the NVIDIA Docker runtime

sudo apt install -y nvidia-docker2
sudo systemctl restart docker

8. Test the installation

Run the following command to test the NVIDIA installation. Note that it may take some time to download the docker image.

docker run --rm --runtime=nvidia --gpus all nvidia/cuda:11.6.2-base-ubuntu20.04 nvidia-smi
Example Output
Mon Jun 24 12:57:08 2024
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 535.86.10              Driver Version: 535.86.10    CUDA Version: 12.2     |
|-----------------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
| GPU  Name                 Persistence-M | Bus-Id        Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan  Temp   Perf          Pwr:Usage/Cap |         Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
|                                         |                      |               MIG M. |
|=========================================+======================+======================|
|   0  NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 ...    On  | 00000000:01:00.0 Off |                  N/A |
| N/A   50C    P0              24W /  80W |     10MiB /  8192MiB |      0%      Default |
|                                         |                      |                  N/A |
+-----------------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+

+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes:                                                                            |
|  GPU   GI   CI        PID   Type   Process name                            GPU Memory |
|        ID   ID                                                             Usage      |
|=======================================================================================|
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+