Do I need drivers on my non-Nvidia GPU VM?

Gaming and Visualization Technologies General Topics and Other SDKs Drivers - Linux, Windows, MacOS
1

I am reading several Forum posts on drivers. My VM doesn’t have a Nvidia GPU. It’s just an Ubuntu 22.04 VM.

But I want to be able to develop Cuda Shared Memory applications in my VM and test it on the actual hardware. And run the Cuda Samples on my VM. I’m confused because the Nvidia drivers won’t install on my VM. How do I know which specific driver to install for my VM? Where can I find this information?

I tried to install the drivers by running the run file. But it throws this error inside of /var/log/nvidia-installer.sh:

` nvidia-installer log file ‘/var/log/nvidia-installer.log’
creation time: Mon Apr 7 12:09:50 2025
installer version: 570.124.06

PATH: /usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/snap/bin

nvidia-installer command line:
./nvidia-installer
–ui=none
–no-questions
–accept-license
–disable-nouveau
–no-cc-version-check
–install-libglvnd

Using built-in stream user interface
→ Detected 6 CPUs online; setting concurrency level to 6.
→ Scanning the initramfs with lsinitramfs…
→ Executing: /usr/bin/lsinitramfs -l /boot/initrd.img-6.8.0-57-generic
WARNING: You do not appear to have an NVIDIA GPU supported by the 570.124.06 NVIDIA Linux graphics driver installed in this system. For further details, please see the appendix SUPPORTED NVIDIA GRAPHICS CHIPS in the README available on the Linux driver download page at www.nvidia.com.
→ The file ‘/tmp/.X0-lock’ exists and appears to contain the process ID ‘1674’ of a running X server.
→ You appear to be running an X server. Installing the NVIDIA driver while X is running is not recommended, as doing so may prevent the installer from detecting some potential installation problems, and it may not be possible to start new graphics applications after a new driver is installed. If you choose to continue installation, it is highly recommended that you reboot your computer after installation to use the newly installed driver. (Answer: Abort installation)
ERROR: Installation has failed. Please see the file ‘/var/log/nvidia-installer.log’ for details. You may find suggestions on fixing installation problems in the README available on the Linux driver download page at www.nvidia.com. `

I’ve followed the instructions here:
CUDA Toolkit 12.8 Update 1 Downloads | NVIDIA Developer and installed the open source drivers…

2

Hi @Tav091,

I think Robert already answered your question on the CUDA thread.

Without an NVIDIA GPU it does not make sense to try and install NVIDIA drivers. They will simply not be loaded because the corresponding Hardware is missing. Even if it is a VM.