I have never been able to successfully install Nvidia drivers on Ubuntu 18.04 kernel 5.3; it gives me a black screen on boot with nonblinking cursor. I’ve found that downgrading to kernel 4.15.0-88 can at least let me boot properly, so i’ve been living with the problem.
I recently purged all Nvidia packages to clean install CUDA, which resulted in me getting kernels 4.15.0-96 and 5.3.0-46 again.
4.15.0-96 does not respond to any input (keyboard/touchpad) at the login screen.
5.3.0-46 still gives me a black screen on boot with nonblinking cursor.
On 4.15.0-88, it is clear that the Nvidia modules are not loaded.
sudo modprobe nvidia
modprobe: FATAL: Module nvidia not found in directory /lib/modules/4.15.0-88-generic
nvidia-settings
ERROR: NVIDIA driver is not loaded
ERROR: Unable to load info from any available system
nvidia-smi
NVIDIA-SMI has failed because it couldn't communicate with the NVIDIA driver. Make sure that the latest NVIDIA driver is installed and running.
cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep nvidia
[ 6.332] (II) LoadModule: "nvidia"
[ 6.333] (WW) Warning, couldn't open module nvidia
[ 6.333] (EE) Failed to load module "nvidia" (module does not exist, 0)
On 4.15.0-88:
nvidia-bug-report.log (823.7 KB)
A full history of issues here: 18.04 - Random icon/text disppearing on Nouveau, Nvidia black screen on lightdm, gdm3 boot loop - Ask Ubuntu
Any help is appreciated!
4.15.0-96 bug report:
4-15-96-nvidia-bug-report.log (777.1 KB)
5.3.0-46 bug report:
5-13-nvidia-bug-report.log (1006.8 KB)
It’s an Optimus notebook, so you can’t use the .run installer.
Please follow this:
- remove the .run installer driver using the --uninstall option
- delete /etc/X11/xorg.conf
- remove the kernel parameter ‘nomodeset’ if existing
- install the driver from repo (sudo apt install nvidia-driver-440)
- make sure nvidia-prime is installed (sudo apt install nvidia-prime)
- switch to nvidia (sudo prime-select nvidia)
- remove stray blacklist files (sudo rm /lib/modprobe.d/blacklist-nvidia.conf /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-nvidia.conf)
- update the initrd (sudo update-initramfs -u)
- reboot to 5.3 kernel
Aterwards, install cuda:
- download the cuda 10.2 .deb
- add the repo to your system (first 6 steps from install instructions on download page)
-
don’t install cuda
- instead, run sudo apt install cuda-toolkit-10-2
It worked! Thanks! It was somewhat surprising, since i definitely installed nvidia-driver-440 and nvidia-prime before; maybe i had other conflicting packages.
-
remove the .run installer driver using the --uninstall option
No NVIDIA drivers are installed. Instead i did
sudo apt purge nvidia*
sudo apt autoremove
-
delete /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Moved to xorg.conf.nvidia
-
remove the kernel parameter ‘nomodeset’ if existing
No such kernel parameter
-
install the driver from repo (sudo apt install nvidia-driver-440)
Done
-
make sure nvidia-prime is installed (sudo apt install nvidia-prime)
nvidia-prime is already the newest version (0.8.8.2).
nvidia-prime set to manually installed.
-
switch to nvidia (sudo prime-select nvidia)
Info: the nvidia profile is already set
-
remove stray blacklist files (sudo rm /lib/modprobe.d/blacklist-nvidia.conf /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-nvidia.conf)
No blacklist files
-
update the initrd (sudo update-initramfs -u)
Done
-
download the cuda 10.2 .deb
-
add the repo to your system (first 6 steps from install instructions on download page)
-
don’t install cuda
-
instead, run sudo apt install cuda-toolkit-10-2
Done
You should rather remove xorg.conf.nvidia, some xserver versions load anything that contains “xorg.conf”.