The objective of this tutorial is to show how to check the NVIDIA driver version installed on your Linux system. There are few places you may have a look to check what NVIDIA driver you have installed on your Linux system. This will allow you to check that you have the latest version installed and optionally upgrade to a new NVIDIA driver for better support and features.
In this tutorial you will learn:
- How to check NVIDIA driver version on Linux
| Category | Requirements, Conventions or Software Version Used |
|---|---|
| System | Any Linux distro |
| Software | NVIDIA driver |
| Other | Privileged access to your Linux system as root or via the sudo command. |
| Conventions | # – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of sudo command$ – requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user |
NVIDIA X server settings
Let’s start with the most obvious attempt to find out NVIDIA driver version by running
NVIDIA X server settings application from your GUI menu.
System Management Interface
Use command line and consult nvidia-smi utility to reveal NVIDIA driver version:
# nvidia-smi Fri Dec 25 16:49:12 2015 +------------------------------------------------------+ | NVIDIA-SMI 352.63 Driver Version: 352.63 | |-------------------------------+----------------------+
Please note that both above solutions will work only if the actual NVIDIA module is loaded.
Check Xorg X server logs
Another place where to find NVIDIA driver version is to consult Xorg X server log files:
# grep "X Driver" /var/log/Xorg.0.log [ 10.295] (II) NVIDIA dlloader X Driver 352.63 Sat Nov 7 20:29:25 PST 2015
Retrieve module version
If all above commands fail because you are unable to load NVIDIA module you can always see NVIDIA version number by directly retrieving nvidia.ko module version using modinfo command. The below command will check for NVIDIA driver version under your currently running kernel:
# modinfo /usr/lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/drivers/video/nvidia.ko | grep ^version version: 352.63
The above will work even if NVIDIA module is not loaded. Run the below command to locate your nvidia.ko module file:
# find /usr/lib/modules -name nvidia.ko
Alternatively, run modinfo command on all results returned from find command:
# find /usr/lib/modules -name nvidia.ko -exec modinfo {} \;
filename: /usr/lib/modules/3.10.0-229.20.1.el7.x86_64/kernel/drivers/video/nvidia.ko
alias: char-major-195-*
version: 352.63
supported: external
license: NVIDIA
rhelversion: 7.1
alias: pci:v000010DEd00000E00sv*sd*bc04sc80i00*
alias: pci:v000010DEd*sv*sd*bc03sc02i00*
alias: pci:v000010DEd*sv*sd*bc03sc00i00*
depends: drm,i2c-core
vermagic: 3.10.0-229.20.1.el7.x86_64 SMP mod_unload modversions
parm: NVreg_Mobile:int
parm: NVreg_ResmanDebugLevel:int
parm: NVreg_RmLogonRC:int
parm: NVreg_ModifyDeviceFiles:int
parm: NVreg_DeviceFileUID:int
parm: NVreg_DeviceFileGID:int
parm: NVreg_DeviceFileMode:int
parm: NVreg_UpdateMemoryTypes:int
parm: NVreg_InitializeSystemMemoryAllocations:int
parm: NVreg_UsePageAttributeTable:int
parm: NVreg_MapRegistersEarly:int
parm: NVreg_RegisterForACPIEvents:int
parm: NVreg_CheckPCIConfigSpace:int
parm: NVreg_EnablePCIeGen3:int
parm: NVreg_EnableMSI:int
parm: NVreg_MemoryPoolSize:int
parm: NVreg_RegistryDwords:charp
parm: NVreg_RmMsg:charp
parm: NVreg_AssignGpus:charp
Closing Thoughts
In this tutorial, we learned how to check the installed version of the Nvidia driver on a Linux system. This included checking the Nvidia X server settings, system management interface, Xorg X server logs, and the module version.
