Installing Nvidia GPU drivers on Ubuntu 20.04 for 1080 GPU

As a machine learning developer, you’l often find yourself installing programs and applications developed by others. Sometimes if you aren’t careful, they’re changes can overwrite files used by you. This leads to situations like the one I faced recently. A unamed program borked my desktop so bad that i needed to reinstall the drivers for my gpu without having ready access to the internet. So this guide is a way to have this information handy.

This is a guide to installing Nvidia GPU drivers on Ubuntu 20.04 for a 1080 GPU.

Installing NVIDIA Drivers for GTX 1080 on Ubuntu 20 (Offline)

Prerequisites

Download the required NVIDIA driver package from the official NVIDIA website on a system with internet access.
Transfer the downloaded driver package to your Ubuntu 20 machine using a USB drive or other offline transfer method.

Step 1: Update System Packages

Ensure your system is up-to-date (even offline) to avoid compatibility issues:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

(Optional) If you need additional system updates, you can download the necessary package files (.deb) on another machine and manually transfer them.

Step 2: Prepare for NVIDIA Driver Installation

a. Blacklist the Nouveau Driver

Create a configuration file to disable the Nouveau driver:
```
sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-nouveau.conf
```

Add the following lines:

blacklist nouveau
options nouveau modeset=0

Regenerate the kernel initramfs:
```
sudo update-initramfs -u
```
Reboot the machine:
```
sudo reboot
```

Step 3: Install Build Tools

NVIDIA drivers require some build tools to compile kernel modules. Install them using:

sudo apt install build-essential gcc make dkms -y

If offline, download the .deb packages for these dependencies from a system with internet access and install them using dpkg:

sudo dpkg -i /path/to/package.deb

Step 4: Install the NVIDIA Driver

Navigate to the directory where the driver file is stored:
```
cd /path/to/driver
```

Make the downloaded driver file executable:

chmod +x NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-<version>.run

Run the installer:
```
sudo ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-<version>.run  # Sub in your version! 
```
Replace <version> with the specific driver version you downloaded (e.g., NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-470.141.03.run).
Follow the on-screen instructions:
- Accept the license agreement.
- Choose the default options unless you have specific requirements.
Once the installation is complete, reboot the system:
```
sudo reboot
```

Step 5: Verify Installation

After rebooting, check if the NVIDIA driver is installed and functioning correctly:

nvidia-smi

This command should display information about your NVIDIA GPU, including the driver version.

Troubleshooting

Error: “Unable to load the NVIDIA kernel module”
- Ensure Secure Boot is disabled in your BIOS settings. ** this is something that I had to do.**
- Reboot and retry the driver installation.
Dependency Issues:
- Use dpkg -i to install missing dependencies manually.

Notes

This guide assumes basic familiarity with Ubuntu and the terminal.
If additional dependencies are needed, download them on another system and transfer them to the Ubuntu machine.