Can't install nvidia drivers on ubuntu 22.04

Question

I'm using a VM with Ubuntu 22.04 and trying to do GPU pass-through.

Nvidia graphic card is being detected on my VM

    Kernel driver in use: nvidia
    Kernel modules: nvidiafb, nouveau, nvidia_drm, nvidia

I did install the recommended nvidia drivers given by

ubuntu-drivers devices

Which is nvidia-drivers-390

However, when I run nvidia-smi it gives me

Failed to initialize NVML: Driver/library version mismatch

Further exploring the root cause I actually found

               NVRM: API mismatch: the client has version 530.30.02, but
               NVRM: this kernel module has version 390.157.  Please
               NVRM: make sure that this kernel module and all NVIDIA driver
               NVRM: components have the same version.

However, my graphic card only supports up to nvidia-drivers-470 since it's a GT 740M graphic card. How can I remove the client API 530 version since it is not on the list of drivers installed?

dpkg --get-selections | grep nvidia
libnvidia-cfg1-390:amd64            install
libnvidia-common-390                install
libnvidia-compute-390:amd64         install
libnvidia-compute-418-server:amd64      deinstall
libnvidia-decode-390:amd64          install
libnvidia-encode-390:amd64          install
libnvidia-fbc1-390:amd64            install
libnvidia-gl-390:amd64              install
libnvidia-ifr1-390:amd64            install
nvidia-compute-utils-390            install
nvidia-dkms-390                 install
nvidia-driver-390               install
nvidia-kernel-common-390            install
nvidia-kernel-source-390            install
nvidia-prime                    install
nvidia-settings                 install
nvidia-utils-390                install
xserver-xorg-video-nvidia-390           install

UPDATE:

I did find some folders using the following command

sudo find /usr/lib -iname "*nvidia*530*" 

I removed and then followed the answer of @Saxtheowl and now there are Nvidia-520 files. Some witch craft for sure :/

Answer 1

You can try to remove completely the existing Nvidia Drivers and reinstall a proper version

first purge the Nvidia drivers

sudo apt-get purge '^nvidia.*'
sudo rm -rf /etc/X11/xorg.conf
sudo rm -rf /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia*
sudo rm -rf /usr/local/nvidia*
sudo rm -rf /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/nvidia*

then add the proper directories

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
sudo apt-get update

then install the good drivers sudo apt-get install nvidia-driver-470 then disable the nouveau drivers

sudo bash -c "echo 'blacklist nouveau' > /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-nouveau.conf"
sudo bash -c "echo 'options nouveau modeset=0' >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-nouveau.conf"

then update the initial ramdisk sudo update-initramfs -u

then reboot

if there is still error check sudo apt-get install nvidia-settings to be sure that all Component are upgraded correctly