Hello,
I’ve never worked with graphics on Linux before, I don’t know what I’m doing and I’m now stuck getting drivers to install and function properly with an RTX 3080 on an HP Z4 G4 workstation. I was trying to run it headless and install drivers over SSH, on the third uninstall and reinstall of drivers to try to get nvidia-smi to see the card I ran into a problem.
nvidia-bug-report.log.gz (65.0 KB)
Here are the errors it’s now throwing when I try to reinstall drivers:
“apt install nvidia-driver” throws:
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
nvidia-driver : Depends: xserver-xorg-video-nvidia (= 470.182.03-1) but it is not going to be installed
E: Unmet dependencies. Try ‘apt --fix-broken install’ with no packages (or specify a solution).
“apt --fix-broken install” throws:
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of nvidia-driver:
nvidia-driver depends on xserver-xorg-video-nvidia (= 470.182.03-1); however:
Package xserver-xorg-video-nvidia is not installed.
dpkg: error processing package nvidia-driver (–configure):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Errors were encountered while processing:
nvidia-driver
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
“apt install xserver-xorg-video-nvidia” throws:
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of nvidia-driver:
nvidia-driver depends on xserver-xorg-video-nvidia (= 470.182.03-1); however:
Package xserver-xorg-video-nvidia is not installed.
dpkg: error processing package nvidia-driver (–configure):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Errors were encountered while processing:
nvidia-driver
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
Background: I’m on headless Debian 11.7 on an HP Z4 G4. Secure boot is disabled and legacy support is enabled in the BIOS. I was attempting to install an RTX 3080 in a headless configuration. I have no idea how to do this and have never done any work with graphics cards on Linux before. Here is what I did, in order, to the best of my memory:
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Followed these instructions: NvidiaGraphicsDrivers - Debian Wiki and rebooted
which didn’t throw errors but nvidia-smi failed to find the card. -
Realized I had an onboard intel intel graphics chip according to nvidia-detect and so should have been using the optimus instructions. Uninstalled everything and followed these instructions: NVIDIA Optimus - Debian Wiki and rebooted, no errors but nvidia-smi still didn’t detect the card.
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After that didn’t work I thought the problem might be that I was trying to run headless and couldn’t figure out how to manually start the driver outside of the X loading process. So connected a monitor, installed X and Gnome, wiped the drivers and attempted to reinstall again per Optimus instructions in #2 above, which brought me to the current error.
Any advice or anything you think I should read, to better understand how the nvidia drivers are supposed to work under Linux?
Thank you.