How to enable CUDA rendering without running as root? I am using Linux Mint 17, and I am very happy that I was finally able to get my GPU to render on it. My problem was that I needed to properly run Blender as root.  However, when rebooting my computer, I need to run Blender in root again to make the GPU rendering work.  This would be fine, except for the fact that everything written to the hard drive by Blender is owned by root, and cannot be edited unless running everything in root. 

I've heard that installing nvidia modprobe will allow programs that use CUDA processing without running the program as root.  I have tried to install this in a number of ways, and it doesn't appear to be working. 

Does anybody have any suggestions?  (It's possible that I'm not properly installing modprobe, but I've tried both suggestions on this answer: CUDA rendering on Linux Mint or Ubuntu variants)
Unfortunately I don't have nvidia/cuda on my system, but I happened to notice information that most likely will solve your problem. 
See this link first about information how to install nvidia drivers and enable cuda just to check that you're setup is fine.
And then have a look this forum post where 
Nusaman is using blender with out root (forum post #12). 

To recap:


make sure that you have latest drivers installed. (Nusaman used: cuda-5.5.22-1 and nvidia-334.21-2, but he's using archlinux)
Start blender or some other cuda program (like cudaminer) as root. 
Then close that program (could be that firts render something with blender+cude as root)
Start blender as normal user


What I gathered from multiple sources is that nvidia cuda drivers need to be loaded and for some reason initialison of cuda needs root, but will work with normal user after that.

Please note that you might need extra dkms and dev packages also, to get this working.