*First of all, if you start from a brand new server, I suggest to install Ubuntu 16.04 WITHOUT NVIDIA graphics cards first. This will prevent Ubuntu from automatically installing open-source NVIDIA driver Nouveau. Nouveau may cause issues like black screen, lightdm crash, ..., to name a few. It's highly possible that you will see NOTHING at the inital boot if you install Ubuntu 16.04 directly with NVIDIA cards.
Once you can login the Ubuntu server, install CUDA following the 4 steps below:
1. Disable Nouveau
If you are running Desktop version, enter the terminal screen by typing
Ctrl+Alt+F1
Open or create "blacklist-nouveau.conf":
sudo vim /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-nouveau.confAdd following commands to the file:
blacklist nouveau blacklist lbm-nouveau options nouveau modeset=0 alias nouveau off alias lbm-nouveau off
Then build the new kernel:
sudo update-initramfs -u
2. Install NVIDIA driver
You can try install NVIDIA driver directly:
sudo apt-get install nvidia-375
*If apt-get cannot find nvidia driver
we need to add the ppa manually. The commands below are referred from here:
Although you can also install the drivers included in the CUDA toolkit. I suggest to install from Ubuntu ppa:
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo service lightdm stop sudo apt-get purge nvidia-* sudo apt-get install nvidia-375
Once the driver is installed, reboot your system, then test the driver by typing:
nvidia-smi
And you will see the NVIDIA cards installed in your system:
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 375.39 Driver Version: 375.39 |
|-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
| GPU Name Persistence-M| Bus-Id Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan Temp Perf Pwr:Usage/Cap| Memory-Usage | GPU-Util Compute M. |
|===============================+======================+======================|
| 0 GeForce GTX 1080 Off | 0000:02:00.0 On | N/A |
| 0% 43C P8 8W / 200W | 294MiB / 8107MiB | 0% Default |
+-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
| 1 GeForce GTX 1080 Off | 0000:82:00.0 Off | N/A |
| 0% 38C P8 8W / 200W | 1MiB / 8114MiB | 0% Default |
+-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes: GPU Memory |
| GPU PID Type Process name Usage |
|=============================================================================|
| 0 1430 G /usr/lib/xorg/Xorg 144MiB |
| 0 2549 G /usr/bin/compiz 148MiB |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+3. Install CUDA Toolkit
Download CUDA toolkit from NVIDIA official site:
https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-downloads
sudo ./cuda_8.0.61_375.26_linux.run --override
As we already installed NVIDIA driver, we choose "NOT" to install driver this time:
Install NVIDIA Accelerated Graphics Driver for Linux-x86_64 361.62?
(y)es/(n)o/(q)uit: n
Because Ubuntu 16.04 has latest gcc 6, which is not supported by CUDA. The --override flag force the installer to ignore unsupported gcc version.
Once installation is done, you may notice there is a warning:
***WARNING: Incomplete installation! This installation did not install
the CUDA Driver. A driver of version at least 361.00 is required for
CUDA 8.0 functionality to work.
To install the driver using this installer, run the following command, replacing with the name of this run file:
sudo .run -silent -driver Don't worry, we can ignore this message.
4. Downgrade gcc to 4.9
Finally, we need to downgrade the gcc/g++ version in Ubuntu to < 5.0. Somebody may suggest to remove check line in CUDA library's header file. Don't do this, it will cause compiler error. Downgrade the gcc with "update-alternatives":
sudo apt-get install g++-4.9 gcc-4.9 libgcc-4.9
sudo update-alternatives --remove-all gcc
sudo update-alternatives --remove-all g++
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gcc gcc /usr/bin/gcc-4.9 20
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/g++ g++ /usr/bin/g++-4.9 20
sudo update-alternatives --query gcc
sudo update-alternatives --query g++