CUDA Installation
CUDA is a proprietary framework developed by Nvidia. To use CUDA you must have a compatible GPU from Nvidia.
Verify your GPU supports CUDA
To check that you have an Nvidia GPU, run the following command:
lspci | grep -i nvidia
Check that
- there is at least one graphics card listed, and
- that your GPU model supports CUDA
Add Nvidia package sources
The easiest way to install CUDA is to add Nvidia's apt
sources to your configuration. Run the following
commands on the robot:
wget https://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/repos/ubuntu2404/x86_64/cuda-keyring_1.1-1_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i cuda-keyring_1.1-1_all.deb
sudo apt-get update
Install CUDA
If you have a realtime Linux kernel installed (PREEMPT_RT
) you may encounter errors when installing CUDA, as it
does not officially support realtime kernels. To work around these errors add IGNORE_PREEMPT_RT_PRESENCE=1
before any apt
or apt-get
commands, e.g.
sudo IGNORE_PREEMPT_RT_PRESENCE=1 apt-get install cuda-toolkit
To install CUDA, run the following command:
sudo apt-get install cuda-toolkit
Optionally you can also install all GDS packages:
sudo apt-get install nvidia-gds
Reboot the computer after installing the packages.
Configure environment
At the time of writing, CUDA 12.9
is the latest version. The instructions below assume this version is
being installed, but if you installed a different version you will need to modify the instructions
accordingly.
After rebooting, it is recommended to modify $HOME/.bashrc
to update your environment variables to
enable CUDA tools. Add the following to .bashrc
:
export PATH=/usr/local/cuda-12.9/bin${PATH:+:${PATH}}
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}:/usr/local/cuda-12.9/lib64
After modifying .bashrc
either close the terminal and re-open it or run source $HOME/.bashrc
to apply
the changes.
CUDA samples
You can optionally download and build the CUDA samples to verify your installation:
git clone https://github.com/NVIDIA/cuda-samples.git
cd cuda-samples
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make
Run the deviceQuery
sample from the build
directory to make sure CUDA can run correctly on your system:
./Samples/1_Utilities/deviceQuery/deviceQuery
You should see Result = PASS
at the bottom of the output, indicating a CUDA-capable GPU was is
detected and usable.
Refer the CUDA samples documentation for details on additional sample programs.