NVIDIA drivers version

[Andreas Beckmann]

Hi Emilio,

your questions are better asked on this list:
Debian NVIDIA Maintainers <pkg-nvidia-devel at lists.alioth.debian.org>
(these are the people maintaining the non-free bits).

Andreas

On 2019-05-23 20:06, Emilio J. Padrón González wrote:
> Hi everyone!
> 
> I've just subscribed to this mailing list (looong time since the last time
> I was subscribed to any Debian ml) to ask about NVIDIA version policies
> and Debian and Ubuntu packages. Sorry if this is not the best place to
> ask about such a thing :-?
> 
> Ok, I'll run the risk! 
> 
> The point is: I'm using CUDA and some NVIDIA deep learning stuff on top
> of it, all of it in a docker instance. The docker image is based on 
> CoCalc [1][2], project built using Ubuntu 18.04 as base distro. The host
> machine is a Debian Buster/Sid/Experimental system.
> 
> So far, I managed to keep the same NVIDIA Driver on both the host and
> the docker image, something apparently necessary to have all the stuff
> running properly in the nvidia-docker envinronment. Specifically, the
> version I'm using is 410.104.
> 
> This version (410.104) could be easily installed in both the host
> (Debian) and the guest (Ubuntu) using deb packages in the official
> repos. And NVIDIA also provides all the stuff I need for this version in
> convenient deb packages (CUDA 10.0, NCCL, CUDNN, nvinfer, etc.) here:
> [3][4]
> 
> So far, so good :-)
> 
> Now, I want to update part of the software stack and also the NVIDIA
> driver, to use the version that will be the definitive in Buster
> (418.74, I guess). Unfortunatelly, the 418.x drivers in the NVIDIA repos
> I need for some of the stuff (the mentioned [3] and [4]) are not 418.74,
> neither any of the versions I can found packaged in Debian/Ubuntu.
> Specifically, in those repos I can get stuff for 418.39, 418.40 and
> 418.67 :-?
> 
> Isn't that weird? :-? Why are they using those versions and
> Debian/Ubuntu are packaging others? (after reading some stuff in Debian I
> assume the versions being packaged are a kind of long-support versions,
> but...)
> 
> Can you think in an alternative that allows me to stick with the deb
> packages setup (yeah, I know I can solve the problem if I avoid the deb
> packages and use other installation methods, but I will like to keep it
> that way if possible).
> 
> Thanks!
> E
> 
> [1] https://github.com/sagemathinc/cocalc
> [2] https://github.com/emilioj/CuCalc
> [3] https://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/repos/ubuntu1804/x86_64
> [4] http://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/machine-learning/repos/ubuntu1804/x86_64
>