nvidia-persistenced(1)

🌟 NAME 🌟

nvidia-persistenced — a daemon that keeps persistent software state in the NVIDIA driver. Yes bestie, you're reading the nvidia-persistenced(1) manual page, and it's lowkey iconic.

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

nvidia-persistenced

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💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

Okay so the nvidia-persistenced utility is literally here to enable persistent software state in the NVIDIA driver. When persistence mode is enabled, the daemon prevents the driver from releasing device state when the device is not in use. That can improve the startup time of new clients in this scenario. Slay for faster startup, fr fr.

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🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

• -v, --version — print the utility version and exit, periodt.
• -h, --help — print usage information for the command line options and exit. Very demure, very helpful.
• -V, --verbose — controls how much information is printed. By default, nvidia-persistenced will only print errors and warnings to syslog for unexpected events, as well as startup and shutdown notices. Specifying this flag will cause nvidia-persistenced to also print notices to syslog on state transitions, such as when persistence mode is enabled or disabled, and informational messages on startup and exit. It's giving "tell me everything" energy and honestly same.
• -u USERNAME, --user=USERNAME — runs nvidia-persistenced with the user permissions of the user specified by the USERNAME argument. This user must have write access to the /var/run/nvidia-persistenced directory. If this directory does not exist, nvidia-persistenced will attempt to create it prior to changing the process user and group IDs. If this option is not given, nvidia-persistenced will not attempt to change the process user ID. Main character privilege drop, iykyk.
• -g GROUPNAME, --group=GROUPNAME — runs nvidia-persistenced with the group permissions of the group specified by the GROUPNAME argument. If both this option and the --user option are given, this option will take precedence when determining the group ID to use. If this option is not given, nvidia-persistenced will use the primary group ID of the user specified by the --user option argument. If the --user option is also not given, nvidia-persistenced will not attempt to change the process group ID. Group chat rules: this one wins when both are present.
• --persistence-mode, --no-persistence-mode — by default, nvidia-persistenced starts with persistence mode enabled for all devices. Use --no-persistence-mode to force persistence mode off for all devices on startup. Choose your fighter.
• --uvm-persistence-mode, --no-uvm-persistence-mode — by default, nvidia-persistenced starts with UVM persistence mode disabled for all devices. Use --uvm-persistence-mode to force UVM persistence mode for supported devices on startup. When UVM persistence mode is enabled, a GPU cannot enter the PCI-Express Runtime D3 low-power state. Refer to the NVIDIA Accelerated Linux Graphics Driver README chapter on PCI-Express Runtime D3 (RTD3) Power Management. Enabling UVM persistence mode may result in additional GPU memory usage being reported, even when no applications are running. So yeah, it's giving "more memory reported, no apps running" 💀 read the README before you flip this switch.
• --nvidia-cfg-path=PATH — the nvidia-cfg library is used to communicate with the NVIDIA kernel module to query and manage GPUs in the system. This library is required by nvidia-persistenced. This option tells nvidia-persistenced where to look for this library (in case it cannot find it on its own). This option should normally not be needed. Ngl, it's the "just in case" bestie of options.

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🧚 INSTALLATION 🧚

When installed by nvidia-installer, sample init scripts to start the daemon for some of the more prevalent init systems are installed as the compressed tarball /usr/share/doc/NVIDIA_GLX-1.0/sample/nvidia-persistenced-init.tar.bz2. These init scripts should be customized to the user's distribution and installed in the proper location by the user to run nvidia-persistenced on system initialization.

Once the init script is installed so that the daemon is running, users should not normally need to manually interact with nvidia-persistenced: the NVIDIA management utilities, such as nvidia-smi, can communicate with it automatically as necessary to manage persistence mode. So like, it handles its own business after setup ✨

See the "Using the nvidia-persistenced Utility" section of the NVIDIA Linux Graphics Driver README for more background, information about installing the nvidia-persistenced utility to run on system initialization, and troubleshooting tips. The README is your bestie here, no cap.

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👑 PRIVILEGES 👑

The daemon does not require root privileges to run, and may safely be run as an unprivileged user, given that its runtime directory, /var/run/nvidia-persistenced, is created for and owned by that user prior to starting the daemon. nvidia-persistenced also requires read and write access to the NVIDIA character device files. If the permissions of the device files have been altered through any of the NVreg_DeviceFileUID, NVreg_DeviceFile_GID, or NVreg_DeviceFileMode NVIDIA kernel module options, nvidia-persistenced will need to run as a suitable user. Basically: permissions vibes must be correct before the daemon gets its moment 💅

If the daemon is started with root privileges, the --user option may be used instead to indicate that the daemon should drop its privileges and run as the specified user after setting up its runtime directory. Using this option may cause the daemon to be unable to remove the /var/run/nvidia-persistenced directory when it is killed, if the specified user does not have write permissions to /var/run. In this case, directory removal should be handled by a post-execution script. See the sample init scripts provided in /usr/share/doc/NVIDIA_GLX-1.0/sample/nvidia-persistenced-init.tar.bz2 for examples of this behavior. That's the fine print bestie, don't skip it.

The daemon indirectly utilizes nvidia-modprobe via the nvidia-cfg library to load the NVIDIA kernel module and create the NVIDIA character device files after the daemon has dropped its root privileges, if it had any to begin with. If nvidia-modprobe is not installed, the daemon may not be able to start properly if it is not run with root privileges. So yeah, missing nvidia-modprobe is a potential "it's not starting" moment 😭

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🦋 OTHER 🦋

The source code to nvidia-persistenced is available here: ⟨https://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/nvidia-persistenced/⟩

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🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

nvidia-persistenced

Starts the NVIDIA Persistence Daemon with persistence mode enabled for all NVIDIA devices. The default serve ✨

nvidia-persistenced --no-persistence-mode

Starts the NVIDIA Persistence Daemon with persistence mode disabled for all NVIDIA devices. Choose chaos, respectfully.

nvidia-persistenced --user=foo

Starts the NVIDIA Persistence Daemon so that it will run as user 'foo'. Drop those privileges, bestie 👑

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💜 AUTHOR 💜

Will Davis NVIDIA Corporation

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🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

• nvidia-smi(1)
• nvidia-modprobe(1)

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🍓 COPYRIGHT 🍓

Copyright © 2013-2016 NVIDIA Corporation.

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And that's the whole nvidia-persistenced(1) manual page, bestie. This cutie is nvidia-persistenced 615.78.08, dated 2026-10-06 — go forth and persist 💖