The nvidia init script blindly creates and sets permissions on the nvidia devices: /dev/nvidia{0123}, /dev/nvidiactl. There is an option to the nvidia module that does this automatically: NVreg_ModifyDeviceFiles. With this option set to 1, the device files get created with ownership set to root and read/writable by world. The difference in behavior by using the module option instead of the initscript is that applications needing access to these devices are able to do so. This is a trivial change to the nvidia package recipe - do not add nvidia.init and modify nvidia.opts.