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How to Locate CUDA Installation on Linux

As a data scientist or software engineer working with NVIDIA GPUs on Linux, you may need to locate your CUDA installation to ensure that you have the correct version and path for your development needs. In this article, we will explore how to locate the CUDA installation on Linux.
By Saturn Cloud | | Miscellaneous | Updated:

As a data scientist or software engineer working with NVIDIA GPUs on Linux, you may need to locate your CUDA installation to ensure that you have the correct version and path for your development needs. In this article, we will explore how to locate the CUDA installation on Linux.

Table of Contents

  1. What is CUDA?
  2. Locating CUDA Installation on Linux
  3. Common Errors and Solutions
  4. Conclusion

What is CUDA?

CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture) is a parallel computing platform and application programming interface (API) developed by NVIDIA for general-purpose computing on GPUs (graphics processing units). CUDA allows data scientists and software engineers to harness the power of NVIDIA GPUs for parallel processing and accelerated computing tasks.

Locating CUDA Installation on Linux

To locate your CUDA installation on Linux, follow the steps below:

Step 1: Check if CUDA is Installed

The first step is to check if CUDA is already installed on your system. You can do this by running the following command in the terminal:

$ nvcc --version

If CUDA is installed, you should see the version information for the NVIDIA CUDA Compiler (nvcc) and the CUDA Toolkit.

Step 2: Find the CUDA Toolkit Directory

If CUDA is installed, the next step is to find the directory where the CUDA Toolkit is installed. The default installation directory for CUDA Toolkit on Linux is /usr/local/cuda or /usr/lib/cuda

To check if the CUDA Toolkit directory exists, run the following command in the terminal:

$ ls /usr/local/cuda

If the directory exists, you should see a list of subdirectories and files related to the CUDA Toolkit.

Output:

bin  include  lib64  nvvm  version.txt

Step 3: Check the CUDA Version

To check the CUDA version, navigate to the CUDA Toolkit directory and open the version.txt file:

$ cd /usr/local/cuda
$ cat version.txt

This will display the version information for the CUDA Toolkit installed on your system.

Output:

CUDA Version 10.1.243

Step 4: Verify the Library Path

Finally, you should verify that the library path for CUDA is correctly set. The library path is the directory where the CUDA libraries are installed. This is required for the CUDA runtime to locate and load the necessary libraries.

To check the library path for CUDA, run the following command in the terminal:

$ echo $LD_LIBRARY_PATH

This should display the library path for CUDA. By default, the library path for CUDA is set to /usr/local/cuda/lib64.

Common Errors and Solutions

Error: “nvcc: command not found”

  • Solution: Install CUDA Toolkit.
sudo apt-get install nvidia-cuda-toolkit   # for Debian/Ubuntu based systems
sudo yum install nvidia-cuda-toolkit       # for Red Hat/Fedora based systems

Error: “CUDA_HOME not set”

  • Solution: Set the CUDA_HOME environment variable.
export CUDA_HOME=/usr/local/cuda   # Adjust path accordingly

Error: “libcudart.so.X: cannot open shared object file”

  • Solution: Update the library path.
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/usr/local/cuda/lib64   # Adjust path accordingly

Conclusion

Locating the CUDA installation on Linux is an essential task for data scientists and software engineers working with NVIDIA GPUs. By following the steps outlined in this article, you can easily locate your CUDA installation and ensure that you have the correct version and path for your development needs.

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