nvidia-modprobe(1) General Commands Manual nvidia-modprobe(1)
NAME
nvidia-modprobe - Load the NVIDIA kernel module and create NVIDIA char-
acter device files.
SYNOPSIS
nvidia-modprobe [options]
nvidia-modprobe [options] --create-nvidia-device-file=MINOR-NUMBER
nvidia-modprobe [options] --module-instance=MODULE-INSTANCE
DESCRIPTION
The nvidia-modprobe utility is used by user-space NVIDIA driver compo-
nents to make sure the NVIDIA kernel module is loaded, the NVIDIA char-
acter device files are present and configure certain runtime settings in
the kernel. These facilities are normally provided by Linux distribu-
tion configuration systems such as udev. When possible, it is recom-
mended 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 ker-
nel 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/⟩
OPTIONS
-v, --version
Print the utility version and exit.
-h, --help
Print usage information for the command line options and exit.
-c MINOR-NUMBER, --create-nvidia-device-file=MINOR-NUMBER
Create the NVIDIA device file with the given minor number; this
option can be specified multiple times to create multiple NVIDIA
device files.
ADVANCED OPTIONS
-u, --unified-memory
Load the NVIDIA Unified Memory kernel module or create device
files for it, instead of the NVIDIA kernel module.
-m, --modeset
Load the NVIDIA modeset kernel module and create its device file.
-s, --nvswitch
Load the NVIDIA kernel module and create the NVSwitch device
files for each minor number specified using the -c flag.
-l, --nvlink
Load the NVIDIA kernel module and create the NVLink control de-
vice file.
-f NVIDIA-CAPABILITY-DEVICE-FILE, --nvidia-capability-device-
file=NVIDIA-CAPABILITY-DEVICE-FILE
Create the NVIDIA capability device files with the given capabil-
ity /proc file path. This option can be specified multiple times
to create multiple NVIDIA capability device files.
-a, --auto-online-movable
Enable the online_movable auto onlining kernel setting for plat-
forms (like Grace Hopper) that add and online GPU memory to the
kernel
EXAMPLES
nvidia-modprobe
Run `/sbin/modprobe nvidia`
nvidia-modprobe -c 0 -c 1
Run `/sbin/modprobe nvidia` and create /dev/nvidia0 and
/dev/nvidia1
nvidia-modprobe -i 0
Run `/sbin/modprobe nvidia0`
AUTHOR
Andy Ritger
NVIDIA Corporation
COPYRIGHT
Copyright © 2013 NVIDIA Corporation.
nvidia-modprobe 615.71.09 2026-09-09 nvidia-modprobe(1)
Generated by dwww version 1.16 on Sat Oct 3 07:39:05 CEST 2026.