Configuring a NVIDIA graphics chip for CentOS and RHEL 6

Bill Giannikos

This guide will help you configure the proprietary nvidia module under CentOS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. For those that don't know, CentOS 6 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 are basically identical just with a different name so this guide applies to both. I will not be covering the open source nv module included with Xorg because its configuration is normally handled automatically by most Linux distributions.

NVIDIA provide their own license for their driver. You will need to read and accept this license before proceeding. You can read this license here.

You should run a full update of your installation to ensure you have all the latest packages installed. See the installation guide for CentOS on this site for details how.

The nvidia driver is not included with CentOS/RHEL 6 so we will need to use a 3rd party repository. Here we will be using the ELRepo.org repository.

1. Load up a terminal window if you are in the graphic interface.

2. Switch to the root user by entering the command “su -” (without the quotes) and typing in your root password.

3. Enter the following command to get the signing key for the repository we will be using:

rpm --import http://elrepo.org/RPM-GPG-KEY-elrepo.org

4. Now active the repository by entering the following commands:

rpm -Uvh http://elrepo.org/elrepo-release-6-4.el6.elrepo.noarch.rpm
yum -y install yum-plugin-fastestmirror

5. Now execute the following command:

yum -y install kmod-nvidia

Please note that this will install the latest version of the NVIDIA driver. If you have an older graphic chip and this newer driver doesn't support it you can replace kmod-nvidia with either kmod-nvidia-173xx or kmod-nvidia-96xx. The latest version of this driver support all current NVIDIA chips from the 6 series and up, version 173 supports the 5 series and version 96 supports the 4 series. Cards older than the 4 series are no longer supported.

6. Reboot your system and you will be using the nvidia driver.