Creating Nvidia Driver SFS

This article provides step-by-step instruction install and create Nvidia driver SFS from source (source = Nvidia tarball).

This article assumes you're running Fatdog64, but it would also work (with some changes) for 64-bit Puppy Linux too. The variations are also given.

Pre-requisites

  1. You must have devx.sfs and kernel-source.sfs loaded.

  2. Find the version of Nvidia card installed in your system

    You can do this by opening terminal and running lspci, or you can launch "System Information" from Control Panel (or just launch hardinfo) and then viewing Devices / PCI Devices section.

  3. Once you find out your Nvidia card type, visit this website http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx to download the correct driver for it.

    For the rest of this example I'm going to use Nvidia driver 340.104 as an example. It's actual filename is NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-340.104.run, and I will refer to this as the Nvidia tarball for the rest of the steps.

    Please understand to replace references to this with your own tarball name.

  4. Some drivers and some kernel versions require patches. Usually older kernels don't need it because the driver already has the support; but if you're running the latest and greatest kernel, Nvidia may not have caught up.

    For example, at the time of writing, kernel 4.14 is the "bleeding edge". Nvidia driver 340.104 don't support anything newer than 4.12 yet.

    If you want to run it on 4.13 or 4.14 kernels, you need patches, for example, from here: https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/1025051/fully-working-patches-2-of-them-for-nvidia-driver-340-104-compiler-installer-file-and-linux-kernels-4-13-amp-4-14/?offset=1

  5. The steps assumes that you have at least 2GB in your /tmp. If you have anything less, the installation still work but you need to use either rw-sandbox.sh or do it in another Linux filesystem that has enough free space.

Note 1: The following steps will work for either creating the SFS or direct installation. If you are doing direct installation, just skip the parts that mention "sandbox".

Note 2: The steps below is for Fatdog64 700 onwards.

If you're on Puppy Linux, please note the additional steps meant for Puppy. For Fatdog, you can do this while running in RAM (first boot) but for Puppy, you need to create a savefile first because sandbox does not work when Puppy doesn't have a savefile.

For older Fatdogs, use the Puppy Linux instructions (except the part about deleting /tmp).

Steps

  1. Open terminal (call this as terminal #1), and from this terminal, launch sandbox by running
    sandbox.sh
    
    inside it.

  2. (Puppy Linux only) Because of a bug, you need to delete /tmp and re-create it. Run the command
    rm -f /tmp; mkdir /tmp
    

  3. Create the blacklist file to stop nouveau from being loaded:

    echo "blacklist nouveau" > /etc/modprobe.d/nouveau.conf
    

  4. (Puppy Linux only) In Puppy Linux you need to install the 32-bit library in /usr/lib32 because /usr/lib is a symlink to /usr/lib64.

    So, if you plan to install 32-bit library (most probably yes if you plan to use Wine to run 3D games), you need to install it to /usr/lib32 and also include /usr/lib32 to the system library search path.

    echo /usr/lib32 >> /etc/ld.so.conf
    

  5. Copy the Nvidia driver tarball (and any patches) to the sandbox:
    cp /path/to/NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-340.104.run /mnt/sb/fakeroot/tmp
    
    If you are not using sandbox (direct installation) copy this to /tmp.

  6. Then extract the driver:
    cd /tmp
    sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-340.104.run -x
    

  7. Then install the OpenGL library.
    cd NVIDIA*
    ./nvidia-installer -a -ui=none --no-nouveau-check --no-x-check --no-kernel-module
    

    For Puppy Linux, run the following instead of the above:

    cd NVIDIA*
    ./nvidia-installer -a -ui=none --no-nouveau-check --no-x-check --no-kernel-module --compat32-libdir=lib32
    

    Note the addition of compat32-libdir parameter to tell the installer to install 32-bit libraries to /usr/lib32 instead of the default /usr/lib.

  8. You will be asked two questions during the process above.

    Do you want to install 32-bit compatibility library?

    Answer: As needed (either yes or no). Most probably yes if you want to use the driver with Wine to play games.

    Do you want to run nvidia-xconfig?

    Answer: NO. If you answer yes, it will create configuration not compatible with modern Xorg.

  9. Patch the kernel if necessary. The actual instruction variess with the patch, but usually it looks like something like this:

    patch -Np1 -i /tmp/patch-filename.patch
    

  10. Once you've patch the kernel, build and install it.

    Note: If your model have the support for video acceleration, you will have the uvm module. If not, then skip that part.

    cd kernel
    make module
    make module-install
    
    cd uvm
    make module
    make module-install
    

  11. (Fatdog only) Depending on your video driver, you may need to force Xorg to use nvidia driver. Some machines need it, some don't, so it's just best to do it.

    For Puppy Linux, you will need to set this one up manually later after you boot (actual step not included because I'm not sure where the Xorg config file is stored for Puppy Linux).

    cat > /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-gpudriver.conf << EOF
    Section "Device"
        Identifier             "Device0"
        Driver                 "nvidia" #Choose the driver used for this monitor
    EndSection
    EOF
    

  12. (Fatdog only - optional) You may want to include nvidia-settings in Control Panel for easy access. If you don't do this you can still run nvidia-settings manually later on.

    cat > /etc/control-panel-applets.dir/nvidia << "EOF"
    # insert nvidia control to desktop
    front=${TAB2_DESKTOP%%|*}
    back=${TAB2_DESKTOP#*|}
    TAB2_DESKTOP="${front}|nvidia-settings ${back}"
    EOF
    

  13. You're done. If you don't use sandbox, you just need to do this:
    depmod -a
    
    And then reboot.

    If you use sandbox, don't do this, and read on.

  14. Open another terminal (terminal #2). If you're doing this in the Linux console, then switch to another virtual terminal.

  15. In this terminal #2, type
    cd /tmp
    sb2dir.sh nvidia
    rox nvidia
    

    This will copy the contents of your sandbox to /tmp/nvidia, and ROX-Filer will open it. From here, you can delete some unnecessary files.

    Here are the files you can delete:

    • etc/ld.so.cache
    • var
    • root
    • tmp (Puppy Linux only)

    When done, close ROX-Filer window. Note: If you're running this from Linux console, obviously you can't use Rox. Do the equivalent thing to clean up the files.

  16. Make an SFS out of that cleaned-up directory.
    dir2sfs nvidia
    

    Older Fatdogs may not have dir2sfs, use mksquashfs directly:

    mksquashfs nvidia nvidia.sfs
    

    For Puppy Linux with dir2sfs support, use dir2sfs as above. Otherwise use dir2pet, and follow the usual prompts when creating a PET package.

    dir2pet nvidia
    

  17. Copy the resulting SFS or PET package to somewhere safe.

    Then exit and close terminal #2.

    Then exit and close terminal #1.

  18. To use the SFS, load it and configure it so that it is loaded automatically at boot (using System SFS Loader for Fatdog, and similar tool on Puppy).

    After the SFS is loaded, run

    depmod -a
    

    Then reboot.