Blackscreen Linux kernel 5.15 and 6.8 (Mint 21.3) with driver 550 GTX 1060 3gb

Hi!

When I upgrade from NVIDIA driver 470 I get blackscreen after MOBO logo splash. I am able to SSH into my computer from my laptop. I have been running the 470 driver for months as upgrading to 535 or 545 also yields blackscreen after MOBO logo splash. Before that I ran the 525 driver but then it got removed from the repo :(

My system is encrypted using LUKS so I have to type in my password “blindly” (not that it is much more of a hassle) but I don’t think the encryption would affect it. I have tried a blank install of Linux Mint (without encryption) on a separate SSD in my system however it also blackscreens after installing the 550 driver. I haven’t SSH:ed into that system to debug.

The BIOS is the latest version (not including betas). I am running Mint 21.3.
I think I saw a brief flash of character-esque white on the screen once. The general behavior is that the logo splash happens and then the screen returns to black (when it should ask for a decryption key). It doesn’t go into sleep mode.

Generating nvidia-bug-report.log:

$ startx -- -logverbose 6

/usr/lib/xorg/Xorg.wrap: Only console users are allowed to run the X server
xinit: giving up
xinit: unable to connect to X server: Connection refused
xinit: server error
Couldn't get a file descriptor referring to the console.

Running nvidia-bug-report.sh works and I have attached the log.

nvidia-bug-report.log (157.6 KB)

Running nvidia-smi:

$ nvidia-smi
Sun Sep 15 12:39:13 2024       
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 550.107.02             Driver Version: 550.107.02     CUDA Version: 12.4     |
|-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+
| GPU  Name                 Persistence-M | Bus-Id          Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan  Temp   Perf          Pwr:Usage/Cap |           Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
|                                         |                        |               MIG M. |
|=========================================+========================+======================|
|   0  NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB    Off |   00000000:0A:00.0  On |                  N/A |
|  0%   28C    P8              6W /  120W |     141MiB /   3072MiB |      0%      Default |
|                                         |                        |                  N/A |
+-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+
                                                                                         
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes:                                                                              |
|  GPU   GI   CI        PID   Type   Process name                              GPU Memory |
|        ID   ID                                                               Usage      |
|=========================================================================================|
|    0   N/A  N/A      1339      G   /usr/lib/xorg/Xorg                            137MiB |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Running dkms status. Before I installed dkms for the 5.15 kernel I could boot using 5.15 however the driver (obviously) did not work.

$ dkms status
nvidia/550.107.02, 5.15.0-121-generic, x86_64: installed
nvidia/550.107.02, 6.8.0-40-generic, x86_64: installed

These are the packages containing NVIDIA:

$ dpkg -l | grep nvidia
ii  libnvidia-cfg1-550:amd64                                    550.107.02-0ubuntu0.22.04.1                    amd64        NVIDIA binary OpenGL/GLX configuration library
ii  libnvidia-common-550                                        550.107.02-0ubuntu0.22.04.1                    all          Shared files used by the NVIDIA libraries
ii  libnvidia-compute-550:amd64                                 550.107.02-0ubuntu0.22.04.1                    amd64        NVIDIA libcompute package
ii  libnvidia-compute-550:i386                                  550.107.02-0ubuntu0.22.04.1                    i386         NVIDIA libcompute package
ii  libnvidia-decode-550:amd64                                  550.107.02-0ubuntu0.22.04.1                    amd64        NVIDIA Video Decoding runtime libraries
ii  libnvidia-decode-550:i386                                   550.107.02-0ubuntu0.22.04.1                    i386         NVIDIA Video Decoding runtime libraries
ii  libnvidia-egl-wayland1:amd64                                1:1.1.9-1.1                                    amd64        Wayland EGL External Platform library -- shared library
ii  libnvidia-egl-wayland1:i386                                 1:1.1.9-1.1                                    i386         Wayland EGL External Platform library -- shared library
ii  libnvidia-encode-550:amd64                                  550.107.02-0ubuntu0.22.04.1                    amd64        NVENC Video Encoding runtime library
ii  libnvidia-encode-550:i386                                   550.107.02-0ubuntu0.22.04.1                    i386         NVENC Video Encoding runtime library
ii  libnvidia-extra-550:amd64                                   550.107.02-0ubuntu0.22.04.1                    amd64        Extra libraries for the NVIDIA driver
ii  libnvidia-fbc1-550:amd64                                    550.107.02-0ubuntu0.22.04.1                    amd64        NVIDIA OpenGL-based Framebuffer Capture runtime library
ii  libnvidia-fbc1-550:i386                                     550.107.02-0ubuntu0.22.04.1                    i386         NVIDIA OpenGL-based Framebuffer Capture runtime library
ii  libnvidia-gl-550:amd64                                      550.107.02-0ubuntu0.22.04.1                    amd64        NVIDIA OpenGL/GLX/EGL/GLES GLVND libraries and Vulkan ICD
ii  libnvidia-gl-550:i386                                       550.107.02-0ubuntu0.22.04.1                    i386         NVIDIA OpenGL/GLX/EGL/GLES GLVND libraries and Vulkan ICD
ii  nvidia-compute-utils-550                                    550.107.02-0ubuntu0.22.04.1                    amd64        NVIDIA compute utilities
ii  nvidia-dkms-550                                             550.107.02-0ubuntu0.22.04.1                    amd64        NVIDIA DKMS package
ii  nvidia-driver-550                                           550.107.02-0ubuntu0.22.04.1                    amd64        NVIDIA driver metapackage
ii  nvidia-firmware-550-550.107.02                              550.107.02-0ubuntu0.22.04.1                    amd64        Firmware files used by the kernel module
ii  nvidia-kernel-common-550                                    550.107.02-0ubuntu0.22.04.1                    amd64        Shared files used with the kernel module
ii  nvidia-kernel-source-550                                    550.107.02-0ubuntu0.22.04.1                    amd64        NVIDIA kernel source package
ii  nvidia-prime                                                0.8.17.1                                       all          Tools to enable NVIDIA's Prime
ii  nvidia-settings                                             510.47.03-0ubuntu1                             amd64        Tool for configuring the NVIDIA graphics driver
ii  nvidia-utils-550                                            550.107.02-0ubuntu0.22.04.1                    amd64        NVIDIA driver support binaries
ii  screen-resolution-extra                                     0.18.2                                         all          Extension for the nvidia-settings control panel
ii  xserver-xorg-video-nvidia-550                               550.107.02-0ubuntu0.22.04.1                    amd64        NVIDIA binary Xorg driver

One thing I notice is the version for nvidia-settings is 510, that sticks out to me however sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade doesn’t upgrade any package. Also the version number for nvidia-firmware, 550-550 looks a bit odd to me.

Anyway. One thing I’ll try later today is to use a HDMI cable instead of a displayport cable. I can always revert back to the 470 driver but it would be nice to get 550 working. Thanks!

nvidia-bug-report.log (157.6 KB)

Okay so. Status update: An HDMI cable solved the issue. I will try to get ahold of a second displayport cable to see if it was that specific DP cable that was the issue. Either way I consider this issue solved.