CUDA 13.2 and Driver Fix Guide | Generated by AI

Home 2026.03

✅ Done! Created backup at ~/.bashrc.backup and added CUDA 13.2 to PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH.

📋 Fix Summary: NVIDIA Driver & CUDA 13.2 Installation

Problem: nvidia-smi failed with “NVIDIA-SMI has failed because it couldn’t communicate with the NVIDIA driver”

Root Cause: Broken/mixed NVIDIA driver packages (590 series + 595 series) in half-installed state

Solution Steps:

  1. Cleaned up broken packages:
    • Killed stuck dpkg/apt processes holding locks
    • Removed /var/lib/dpkg/lock* files
    • Purged conflicting NVIDIA packages (nvidia-*, libnvidia-*)
    • Fixed corrupted dpkg updates files
  2. Removed version conflicts:
    • libnvidia-cfg1 (595) vs libnvidia-cfg1-535 conflict
    • libnvidia-egl-gbm1 vs NVIDIA 535 driver conflict
  3. Installed correct versions:
    • CUDA Toolkit 13.2 from NVIDIA repo
    • NVIDIA Driver 535.288.01 (Ubuntu repo) - compatible with CUDA 13.2
  4. Verified installation:
    • nvidia-smi shows RTX 4070 active
    • Driver: 535.288.01
    • CUDA path: /usr/local/cuda-13.2
    • Compiled and ran test CUDA program successfully

Key Commands Used:

# Fix dpkg locks and kill stuck processes
sudo kill -9 $(ps aux | grep dpkg | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}')
sudo rm -f /var/lib/dpkg/lock*

# Remove broken packages
sudo dpkg --remove --force-remove-reinstreq cuda-drivers libnvidia-compute libnvidia-decode libnvidia-encode libnvidia-gl nvidia-driver xserver-xorg-video-nvidia

# Install CUDA 13.2 and driver
sudo apt-get install -y cuda-13-2
sudo apt-get install -y nvidia-driver-535

# Load driver and test
sudo modprobe nvidia
nvidia-smi

Current Status: ✅ FIXED - CUDA 13.2 + NVIDIA Driver 535 working with RTX 4070

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