How to update nvidia driver to lastest version on Centos 7.9 system

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

Hi everyone,

I am new to Linux system. Currently, I am struggling with the updating nvidia driver from version 470.63.01 to the 550.90.07. There are a few questions that I need to figure out before I start installing newer nvidia driver.

  1. Do I need to remove or uninstall the nvidia driver version 470.63.01 before I install the newer one? If so,
    how do I throughly to remove it using commands?

  2. Is it necessary to stop the the currently running display manager to avoid conflicts during the driver installation process？ If yes, what comand should I use?

  3. Are there any other considerations that I need to pay attention to? if there are, what are they?

Thank you very much in advance for any suggestions and guidances that you may have.

Best,
Junjie

2

Hi there @hanjunjie2014 and welcome to the NVIDIA developer forums.

We have another, dedicated Linux community here on the server in Linux - NVIDIA Developer Forums , but I can try to give some answers.

  1. Do I need to remove or uninstall the nvidia driver version 470.63.01 before I install the newer one? If so,
    how do I throughly to remove it using commands?

Yes, highly recommended. Search for “purging NVIDIA drivers on Linux” and you will get a lot of hits. Since it can depend on your Distro, kernel version, window manager, boot system, etc. I can’t give exact instructions here.

  1. Is it necessary to stop the the currently running display manager to avoid conflicts during the driver installation process？ If yes, what comand should I use?

Yes, it is. Again, that depends on your Distro and your window manager. In general it is safest to boot into console without even starting the window manager or the windowing subsystem. That way you can also be sure the NVIDIA kernel modules are not loaded.

  1. Are there any other considerations that I need to pay attention to? if there are, what are they?

That should be it. Installation should be done using the package installation of your Distro, if it supports it. For example Ubuntu has “Additional Drivers” in the “Software & Updates” tool. If there is a proprietary driver package provided, you should use that.
And most importantly, follow all instructions to the letter! For example if you have secure boot enabled, you MUST enroll an authentication key for the driver. If you miss that, you need to start from scratch unless you know how to use MOK utilities and similar.

I hope that helps.