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NVIDIA drivers - Amazon Linux 2027
About the NVIDIA repositoriesAL2027 Public Preview limitationsChoosing an NVIDIA driver versionInstalling NVIDIA driversInstalling CUDA ToolkitRemoving the NVIDIA repositories

NVIDIA drivers

AL2027 Preview

AL2027 is currently available for preview. It is intended for evaluation and testing only and is not recommended for production workloads.

Important

The AL2027 NVIDIA repositories do not yet support repository metadata signing. Do not set repo_gpgcheck=1 for the NVIDIA repositories. If you do, DNF can't load them and reports repomd.xml GPG signature verification error: Bad PGP signature. Packages in these repositories are still signed and verified by gpgcheck. Signing support is planned for an upcoming release. For more information, see Repository metadata signing in AL2027.

Amazon Linux 2027 provides NVIDIA GPU drivers and CUDA Toolkit packages through dedicated repositories. AWS maintains these repositories and provides security advisories through the Amazon Linux Security Center (ALAS).

About the NVIDIA repositories

For AL2027, we are moving from a single NVIDIA repository to a multi-repository structure:

  • One repository per NVIDIA GPU driver major version (amazonlinux-nvidia-driver-major). For example amazonlinux-nvidia-driver-580 (Long Term Support Branch) and amazonlinux-nvidia-driver-595 (Production Branch). Each repository follows the support timeline of the respective NVIDIA driver branch. You can enable repositories for different driver major versions at the same time.

  • A products repository (amazonlinux-nvidia-products) that provides everything except the GPU driver, such as CUDA Toolkit and related packages.

AWS qualifies this NVIDIA software with AL2027 release candidates before redistributing, and provides security advisories for the packages in these repositories.

New Feature Branch (NFB) drivers are skipped, because they do not receive long-term security support. For more information about NVIDIA driver branches, see NVIDIA driver lifecycle.

The repositories are available in all AWS Commercial Regions, as well as the AWS GovCloud (US) Regions and AWS China Regions.

The repositories provide NVIDIA Tesla (data center compute) and graphics drivers for the x86_64 architecture only. GRID drivers, used for virtual display and remote workstation capabilities, are not included. For GRID driver installation, see NVIDIA drivers for your Amazon EC2 instance in the Amazon EC2 User Guide.

AL2027 Public Preview limitations

The following limitations apply to NVIDIA support on AL2027 during Public Preview:

Important

NVIDIA Fabric Manager (nvidia-fabricmanager), which coordinates NVSwitch (the interconnect that links multiple GPUs on a single instance), is not yet available in the AL2027 NVIDIA repositories. GPU instances that require Fabric Manager (such as P4d, P5, and P6 instance types) are not yet supported on AL2027.

NVIDIA Container Toolkit and NVIDIA Data Center GPU Manager (DCGM) are planned but are not yet available in the AL2027 NVIDIA repositories.

Choosing an NVIDIA driver version

Each NVIDIA GPU driver major version is served from its own repository. You enroll a driver repository by installing an enrollment package. The enrollment package pulls in the nvidia-release package as a dependency, which adds the products repository (CUDA Toolkit and other NVIDIA products) and the NVIDIA GPG keys — so a single install gives you both the driver and products repositories. Choose the enrollment package that matches how you want to track driver versions:

Enrollment package Description
nvidia-release-driver-prod Tracks the latest NVIDIA Production Branch driver major version.
nvidia-release-driver-lts Tracks the latest NVIDIA Long Term Support Branch driver major version.
nvidia-release-driver-latest Enrolls all supported driver major versions. The corresponding repositories coexist at equal priority, so dnf installs the highest available driver version and rolls forward across major versions as new ones are added.
nvidia-release-driver-major Enrolls a specific driver major version only (for example, nvidia-release-driver-580). Use this to pin to a major version.

To see which driver major versions are currently available, list the enrollment packages. The numeric packages (nvidia-release-driver-major) correspond to the driver major versions that AL2027 provides: 

[ec2-user ~]$ dnf list available "nvidia-release-driver-*"

To keep the AL2023 behavior — a single enrollment that makes all driver major versions available, with dnf installing the latest and rolling forward as new major versions are added — install nvidia-release-driver-latest: 

[ec2-user ~]$ sudo dnf install nvidia-release-driver-latest -y

For example, to track the latest Production Branch driver: 

[ec2-user ~]$ sudo dnf install nvidia-release-driver-prod -y
Note

When more than one driver-major repository is enabled, they coexist at equal priority and dnf installs the highest available driver version (Epoch-Version-Release), rolling forward to a newer major version on the next dnf upgrade.

To pin a specific major version, enroll only that version (nvidia-release-driver-major) and do not enroll nvidia-release-driver-latest, -prod, or -lts.

Removing nvidia-release-driver-latest does not by itself pin your version. Because dnf distinguishes packages you install explicitly from packages pulled in as dependencies, the outcome depends on how each major version was enrolled:

  • A major version you installed explicitly stays enrolled after you remove nvidia-release-driver-latest. If more than one remains enabled, the highest version still wins.

  • A major version that was pulled in only as a dependency of nvidia-release-driver-latest is removed along with it. If the one enrollment left is the major version you want, you are effectively pinned to it.

Installing NVIDIA drivers

After enrolling a driver repository, you can install NVIDIA driver packages using dnf.

  1. Install the kernel headers and development packages for your running kernel:

    [ec2-user ~]$ sudo dnf install kernel-devel-$(uname -r) kernel-headers-$(uname -r) -y

  2. Install the NVIDIA driver:

    [ec2-user ~]$ sudo dnf install nvidia-driver-cuda -y

  3. Reboot the instance:

    [ec2-user ~]$ sudo reboot

  4. After rebooting, verify the driver is loaded:

    [ec2-user ~]$ nvidia-smi
Note

To enable NVIDIA persistence mode, enable the nvidia-persistenced service (provided by the driver repository): 

[ec2-user ~]$ sudo systemctl enable --now nvidia-persistenced

Installing CUDA Toolkit

CUDA Toolkit is served from the products repository. If you enrolled a driver repository as described in Choosing an NVIDIA driver version, the products repository is already present (nvidia-release was installed as a dependency), so you can install CUDA Toolkit directly: 

[ec2-user ~]$ sudo dnf install cuda-toolkit -y

To verify that the products repository is available, run dnf repolist. You should see the amazonlinux-nvidia-products repository in the list: 

repo id                      repo name                                            status
amazonlinux                  Amazon Linux 2027 repository                         enabled
amazonlinux-nvidia-products  NVIDIA Products repository for Amazon Linux 2027     enabled

Removing the NVIDIA repositories

All NVIDIA repository packages — the products repository and each driver repository enrollment packages — depend on nvidia-release. Removing nvidia-release therefore removes every NVIDIA repository configuration package in the same dnf transaction, whatever combination you enrolled: 

[ec2-user ~]$ sudo dnf remove nvidia-release -y

To remove only a single driver repository, remove that driver's enrollment package instead. dnf also removes any alias enrollment package (nvidia-release-driver-prod, -lts, or -latest) that depends on the major version you remove: 

[ec2-user ~]$ sudo dnf remove nvidia-release-driver-major -y
Important

Removing repository configuration does not remove NVIDIA packages that are already installed, such as the GPU driver or CUDA Toolkit. Remove those packages separately if you no longer need them.