Can't install NVidia 550 driver on Rocky Linux 9.5

microlinux · December 18, 2024, 7:45pm

Hi,

I have a new HP Z440 workstation with an NVidia card:

# lspci | grep -i vga
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation TU116 [GeForce GTX 1650] (rev a1)

I tried to install the akmod-nvidia driver from RPM Fusion and… rebooted to a blank screen. Uninstalled it and gave the nvidia-x11-drv driver from ELRepo a spin, but with the same result.

This machine had a Void Linux installation with a 6.6 kernel on it before that, and the proprietary driver worked perfectly.

Any suggestions? Did anybody here manage to make that driver work on a recent Rocky Linux installation?

iwalker · December 18, 2024, 8:37pm

This may well be because the akmod-nvidia is the 510+ one, and you may need to try one of the alternatives instead:

akmod-nvidia
akmod-nvidia-390xx
akmod-nvidia-470xx

chances are your card is not supported by the 510+ driver, so try 470xx and if that doesn’t work try the 390xx. I have to do the same with an ASUS Gaming Laptop that is running an older GEForce GTX 1050 card.

microlinux · December 18, 2024, 8:55pm

The akmod-nvidia driver is not the 510, but the 550:

# dnf info akmod-nvidia | head
Last metadata expiration check: 0:04:41 ago on Wed 18 Dec 2024 09:49:12 PM CET.
Available Packages
Name         : akmod-nvidia
Epoch        : 3
Version      : 550.127.05
Release      : 1.el9
Architecture : x86_64
Size         : 27 k
Source       : nvidia-kmod-550.127.05-1.el9.src.rpm
Repository   : rpmfusion-nonfree

So it should work with my card (as it does on a different distribution) but it doesn’t.

Trying out older drivers makes no sense here.

iwalker · December 18, 2024, 9:09pm

If you note my post it says 510+ (note the + sign = 510 and greater) - the same as the rpmfusion website which means that drivers is for cards of 510 and higher. Assuming the driver was 550 on another distribution, then it could be some other things - sometimes was needed to add certain things to grub to fix that kind of thing like nomodeset. I’ve googled that scenario a few times.

jlehtone · December 18, 2024, 9:38pm

I.e. something like:

dnf install elrepo-release
dnf install kmod-nvidia
reboot

(Current version: kmod-nvidia-550.135-1.el9_5.elrepo)
The kmod-nvidia pulls in the nvidia-x11-drv, which in turn pulls nvidia-x11-drv-libs (and xorg-x11-server-Xorg).

You could add -nn to the lspci command to include the device ID in the output. One usually looks drivers with device ID.

microlinux · December 18, 2024, 10:01pm

OK I started again from a pristine vanilla Rocky Linux 9 workstation install.

Configured the EPEL & RPM Fusion repos.
Installed akmod-nvidia.
Rebooted.

And now it works perfectly.

I guess I must have broken something under the hood on one of my previous attempts.

I’ll get a good night’s sleep and then document all this, because I have a mix of 8.x and 9.x desktop clients out there, with various recent and less recent NVidia cards.