Run the installer as follows:

    # sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-256.38.03.run --extract-only

This will create the directory NVIDIA-Linux-x86-256.38.03, containing the uncompressed contents of the .run file.

The source files to the kernel interface layer are in the kernel directory of the extracted .run file. To get to these sources, run:

    # sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-256.38.03.run --extract-only
    # cd NVIDIA-Linux-x86-256.38.03/kernel/

Depending on the target system's configuration, the NVIDIA device files used to be created in one of three different ways:

With current NVIDIA driver releases, device files are created or modified by the X driver when the X server is started.

By default, the NVIDIA driver will attempt to create device files with the following attributes:

      UID:  0     - 'root'
      GID:  0     - 'root'
      Mode: 0666  - 'rw-rw-rw-'

Existing device files are changed if their attributes don't match these defaults. If you want the NVIDIA driver to create the device files with different attributes, you can specify them with the "NVreg_DeviceFileUID" (user), "NVreg_DeviceFileGID" (group) and "NVreg_DeviceFileMode" NVIDIA Linux kernel module parameters.

For example, the NVIDIA driver can be instructed to create device files with UID=0 (root), GID=44 (video) and Mode=0660 by passing the following module parameters to the NVIDIA Linux kernel module:

      NVreg_DeviceFileUID=0 
      NVreg_DeviceFileGID=44 
      NVreg_DeviceFileMode=0660

The "NVreg_ModifyDeviceFiles" NVIDIA kernel module parameter will disable dynamic device file management, if set to 0.

Not every Linux distribution uses RPM, and NVIDIA provides a single solution that works across all Linux distributions. NVIDIA encourages Linux distributions to repackage and redistribute the NVIDIA Linux driver in their native package management formats. These repackaged NVIDIA drivers are likely to inter-operate best with the Linux distribution's package management technology. For this reason, NVIDIA encourages users to use their distribution's repackaged NVIDIA driver, where available.

Yes, because the FTP support in nvidia-installer is based on snarf, it will honor the FTP_PROXY, SNARF_PROXY, and PROXY environment variables.

To distinguish between Linux-x86_64 driver package files that do or do not also contain 32-bit compatibility libraries, "-no-compat32" is be appended to the latter. NVIDIA-Linux-x86-256.38.03.run contains both 64-bit and 32-bit driver binaries; but NVIDIA-Linux-x86-256.38.03-no-compat32.run omits the 32-bit compatibility libraries.

Yes, the --add-this-kernel .run file option will unpack the .run file, build a precompiled kernel interface for the currently running kernel, and repackage the .run file, appending -custom to the filename. This may be useful, for example. if you administer multiple Linux computers, each running the same kernel.

The nvidia-installer utility is released under the GPL. The source code for the version of nvidia-installer built with driver 256.38.03 is in nvidia-installer-256.38.03.tar.bz2 available here: ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/nvidia-installer/

One of the most useful tools for diagnosing problems is the X log file in /var/log. Lines that begin with (II) are information, (WW) are warnings, and (EE) are errors. You should make sure that the correct config file (i.e. the config file you are editing) is being used; look for the line that begins with:

    (==) Using config file:

Also make sure that the NVIDIA driver is being used, rather than the “nv” or “vesa” driver. Search for

    (II) LoadModule: "nvidia"

Lines from the driver should begin with:

    (II) NVIDIA(0)

By default, the NVIDIA X driver prints relatively few messages to stderr and the X log file. If you need to troubleshoot, then it may be helpful to enable more verbose output by using the X command line options -verbose and -logverbose, which can be used to set the verbosity level for the stderr and log file messages, respectively. The NVIDIA X driver will output more messages when the verbosity level is at or above 5 (X defaults to verbosity level 1 for stderr and level 3 for the log file). So, to enable verbose messaging from the NVIDIA X driver to both the log file and stderr, you could start X with the verbosity level set to 5, by doing the following

    % startx -- -verbose 5 -logverbose 5

Most systems come with these header files preinstalled. However, NVIDIA provides its own gl.h and glx.h files, which get installed by default as part of driver installation. If you prefer that the NVIDIA-distributed OpenGL header files not be installed, you can pass the --no-opengl-headers option to the NVIDIA-Linux-x86-256.38.03.run file during installation.

NVIDIA does not officially support development series kernels. However, all the kernel module source code that interfaces with the Linux kernel is available in the kernel/ directory of the .run file. NVIDIA encourages members of the Linux community to develop patches to these source files to support development series kernels. A web search will most likely yield several community supported patches.

Plain tarballs are not available. The .run file is a tarball with a shell script prepended. You can execute the .run file with the --extract-only option to unpack the tarball.

If you are running on a distro that uses RPM (Red Hat, Mandriva, SuSE, etc), then you can use rpm to tell you. At a shell prompt, type:

    % rpm -qa | grep kernel

and look at the output. You should see a package that corresponds to your kernel (often named something like kernel-2.6.15-7) and a kernel source package with the same version (often named something like kernel-devel-2.6.15-7 or kernel-source-2.4.18-3). If none of the lines seem to correspond to a source package, then you will probably need to install it. If the versions listed mismatch (e.g., kernel-2.6.15-7 vs. kernel-devel-2.6.15-10), then you will need to update the kernel-devel package to match the installed kernel. If you have multiple kernels installed, you need to install the kernel-devel package that corresponds to your running kernel (or make sure your installed source package matches the running kernel). You can do this by looking at the output of uname -r and matching versions.

Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux) is a set of modifications applied to the Linux kernel and utilities that implement a security policy architecture. When in use it requires that the security type on all shared libraries be set to 'shlib_t'. The installer detects when to set the security type, and sets it on all shared libraries it installs. The option --force-selinux passed to the .run file overrides the detection of when to set the security type.

When measuring any application's memory usage, you must be careful to distinguish between physical system RAM used and virtual mappings of shared resources. For example, most shared libraries exist only once in physical memory but are mapped into multiple processes. This memory should only be counted once when computing total memory usage. In the same way, the video memory on a graphics card or register memory on any device can be mapped into multiple processes. These mappings do not consume normal system RAM.

This has been a frequently discussed topic on XFree86 mailing lists; see, for example:

http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=xfree-xpert&m=96835767116567&w=2

The pmap utility described in the above thread is available in the "procps" package shipped with most recent Linux distributions, and is a useful tool in distinguishing between types of memory mappings. For example, while top may indicate that X is using several hundred MB of memory, the last line of output from the output of pmap (note that pmap may need to be run as root):

    # pmap -d `pidof X` | tail -n 1
    mapped: 161404K    writeable/private: 7260K    shared: 118056K

reveals that X is really only using roughly 7MB of system RAM (the "writeable/private" value).

Note, also, that X must allocate resources on behalf of X clients (the window manager, your web browser, etc); the X server's memory usage will increase as more clients request resources such as pixmaps, and decrease as you close X applications.

The IndirectMemoryAccess X configuration option may cause additional virtual address space to be reserved.

The NVIDIA driver does not support the graphics component of the XFree86-DGA (Direct Graphics Access) extension. Applications can use the XDGASelectInput() function to acquire relative pointer motion, but graphics-related functions such as XDGASetMode() and XDGAOpenFramebuffer() will fail.

The graphics component of XFree86-DGA is not supported because it requires a CPU mapping of framebuffer memory. As graphics cards ship with increasing quantities of video memory, the NVIDIA X driver has had to switch to a more dynamic memory mapping scheme that is incompatible with DGA. Furthermore, DGA does not cooperate with other graphics rendering libraries such as Xlib and OpenGL because it accesses GPU resources directly.

NVIDIA recommends that applications use OpenGL or Xlib, rather than DGA, for graphics rendering. Using rendering libraries other than DGA will yield better performance and improve interoperability with other X applications.

"Xid" messages indicate that a general GPU error occurred, most often due to the driver misprogramming the GPU or to corruption of the commands sent to the GPU. These messages provide diagnostic information that can be used by NVIDIA to aid in debugging reported problems.

Clock frequency settings are not saved/restored automatically by default to avoid potential stability and other problems that may be encountered if the chosen frequency settings differ from the defaults qualified by the manufacturer. You can use the command line below in ~/.xinitrc to automatically apply custom clock frequency settings when the X server is started:

    # nvidia-settings -a GPUOverclockingState=1 -a GPU2DClockFreqs=<GPU>,<MEM> -a GPU3DClockFreqs=<GPU>,<MEM>

Here <GPU> and <MEM> are the desired GPU and video memory frequencies (in MHz), respectively.

The XRandR X extension is not presently aware of multiple display devices on a single X screen; it only sees the MetaMode bounding box, which may contain one or more actual modes. This means that if multiple MetaModes have the same bounding box, XRandR will not be able to distinguish between them.

In order to support DynamicTwinView, the NVIDIA X driver must make each MetaMode appear to be unique to XRandR. Presently, the NVIDIA X driver accomplishes this by using the refresh rate as a unique identifier.

You can use `nvidia-settings -q RefreshRate` to query the actual refresh rate on each display device.

This behavior can be disabled by setting the X configuration option "DynamicTwinView" to FALSE.

For details, see Chapter 13, Configuring TwinView.

If your X config file has a Module section that does not list the "extmod" module, some X server extensions may be missing, resulting in error messages of the form:

Xlib: extension "SHAPE" missing on display ":0.0"
Xlib: extension "XFree86-VidModeExtension" missing on display ":0.0"
Xlib: extension "XFree86-DGA" missing on display ":0.0"

You can solve this problem by adding the line below to your X config file's Module section:

    Load "extmod"

Please visit ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/