nvidia-modprobe(1) General Commands Manual nvidia-modprobe(1)

nvidia-modprobe - Load the NVIDIA kernel module and create NVIDIA character device files.

nvidia-modprobe [options]
nvidia-modprobe [options] --create-nvidia-device-file=MINOR-NUMBER
nvidia-modprobe [options] --module-instance=MODULE-INSTANCE

The nvidia-modprobe utility is used by user-space NVIDIA driver components to make sure the NVIDIA kernel module is loaded, the NVIDIA character device files are present and configure certain runtime settings in the kernel. These facilities are normally provided by Linux distribution configuration systems such as udev. When possible, it is recommended to use your Linux distribution's native mechanisms for managing kernel module loading, device file creation and kernel runtime config settings. This utility is provided as a fallback to work out-of-the-box in a distribution-independent way.

When installed by nvidia-installer , nvidia-modprobe is installed setuid root.

Users should not normally need to run nvidia-modprobe by hand: the NVIDIA user-space driver components will fork(2)/exec(3) it when needed.

When run without any options, nvidia-modprobe will load the NVIDIA kernel module and then exit. When the --module-instance option is specified on systems with multiple NVIDIA kernel modules, nvidia-modprobe will load the corresponding NVIDIA kernel module and then exit. When the --create-nvidia-device-file option is specified, nvidia-modprobe will also create the requested device file.

The source code to nvidia-modprobe is available here:
⟨ https://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/nvidia-modprobe/ ⟩

Print the utility version and exit.
Print usage information for the command line options and exit.
Create the NVIDIA device file with the given minor number; this option can be specified multiple times to create multiple NVIDIA device files.

Load the NVIDIA Unified Memory kernel module or create device files for it, instead of the NVIDIA kernel module.
Load the NVIDIA modeset kernel module and create its device file.
Load the NVIDIA kernel module and create the NVSwitch device files for each minor number specified using the -c flag.
Load the NVIDIA kernel module and create the NVLink control device file.
Create the NVIDIA capability device files with the given capability /proc file path. This option can be specified multiple times to create multiple NVIDIA capability device files.
Create the NVIDIA IMEX channel device files for the given minor number range format <start:number of minors>
Enable the online_movable auto onlining kernel setting for platforms (like Grace Hopper) that add and online GPU memory to the kernel

Run `/sbin/modprobe nvidia`
Run `/sbin/modprobe nvidia` and create /dev/nvidia0 and /dev/nvidia1
Run `/sbin/modprobe nvidia0`

Andy Ritger
NVIDIA Corporation

Copyright © 2013 NVIDIA Corporation.

2024-10-10 nvidia-modprobe 565.57.01