Install the NVIDIA Display Driver

To install the NVIDIA display driver, you must disable the default NVIDIA driver, download the NVIDIA display drivers, and configure the PCI device on the virtual machine.

Prerequisites

For an NVIDIA GRID vGPU configuration, verify that you downloaded the vGPU software package from the NVIDIA download site, uncompressed the package, and have the Linux Display Driver (a package component) ready. See Install the VIB for the NVIDIA Graphics Card on the ESXi Host.
Also verify that a shared PCI device was added to the virtual machine. See Configure a Shared PCI Device for vGPU on the Linux Virtual Machine
For a vDGA configuration, verify that the PCI device was added to the RHEL 6.6 virtual machine. See Add a vDGA Pass-Through Device to a RHEL 6.6 Virtual Machine.

Procedure

Disable and blacklist the default NVIDIA Nouveau driver.

Edit the grub.conf file.

For RHEL 6.6, the file is /boot/grub/grub.conf. For RHEL 7.1, the file is /etc/default/grub.conf.

RHEL Version	Command
6.6	sudo vi /boot/grub/grub.conf
7.1	sudo vi /etc/default/grub.conf

Add the rdblacklist=nouveau line at the end of the kernel options.
Edit the blacklist.conf file.
```
sudo vi /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
```
Add the following line anywhere in the blacklist.conf file.
```
blacklist nouveau
```

Restart the virtual machine.

The display has a changed look and feel.
(Optional) Verify that the Nouveau driver is disabled.
```
/sbin/lsmod | grep nouveau
```
If the grep search does not return any results, the Nouveau driver is disabled.

Copy or download the NVIDIA display driver to the virtual machine.

For an NVIDIA GRID vGPU configuration, copy the NVIDIA Linux Display Driver to the virtual machine.

For a vDGA configuration, download the NVIDIA driver from the NVIDIA Driver Downloads site.

Select the appropriate driver version from the NVIDIA drop-down menus:

Option	Description
Product Type	GRID
Product Series	GRID Series
Product	Select the version (such as GRID K2) that is installed on the ESXi host.
Operating System	Linux 64-bit or Linux 32-bit

Open a remote terminal to the virtual machine, or switch to a text console by typing Ctrl-Alt-F2, log in as root, and run the init 3 command to disable X Windows.

Install additional components that are required for the NVIDIA driver.

sudo yum install gcc-c++
sudo yum install kernel-devel-$(uname -r) 
sudo yum install kernel-headers-$(uname -r)

Add an executable flag to the NVIDIA driver package.
The following example uses a driver package for NVIDIA GRID vGPU:
```
chmod +x NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-version-grid.run
```
The following example uses a driver package for vDGA:
```
chmod +x NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-version.run
```

Start the NVIDIA installer.

For NVIDIA GRID vGPU:

sudo ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-version-grid.run

For vDGA:

sudo ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-version.run

Accept the NVIDIA software license agreement and select Yes to automatically update the X configuration settings.

What to do next

Install View Agent on the Linux virtual machine. See Install View Agent on a Linux Virtual Machine.

Create a desktop pool that contains the configured Linux virtual machines. See Create a Desktop Pool That Contains Linux Virtual Machines.