Dataman - Linux takes a long time to master and I have only scratched the surface in the last couple of years. Google is your best friend because the errors have usually happened to someone else and how to do stuff is well documented. Just finding the correctanswer for your version of Linux. I started using Centos but now use Debian on my three dedicated servers. Ubuntu is actually Debian with a few changes so answers to either usually work.
After you download the driver file do the following on the command line. Leave sudo off if you are logging in as root:
If you are running 64 bit Linux then you need the 64 bit drivers from here http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/375.20/NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-375.20.run // It is an older driver but 64 bit
1. chmod 777 driver file / this changes the file so it has read / write and is executable.
2. sudo sh ./driver file
3 sudo apt-get update
4 sudo apt-get upgrade
I do not have any GPU's on my dedicated servers so I am hoping that the above works.
Thanks. I figured it out. My trouble was I was not exiting the X terminal before running the install. Took a while to figure out what that meant and more time to figure out how to do it. I did finally get the latest driver to install. All I can say is that is a lot of #%^&%$ work to get a self-extracting file to run. I can see I will not be updating Linux drivers very often. :compbash:
I see there is a way to get the nVidia installer to automatically get updates and install them but it required editing the installer files and I am not that courageous yet.