External monitor not working on Ubuntu 20.04 with rtx 3060

[kuba.pilch2001]

Hi,

I am using Ubuntu 20.04.06

I am trying to use external monitor with my laptop running rtx 3060.

I have a lot of problems with the default installation, with first nothing working. The external monitor was not detected at all in settings and the Nvidia Server Settings software was not installed as well as the log generating script.

I have followed these steps:

Linux Mint Nvidia Driver loads with startx but not on initial startup

I am having some challenges getting the Nvidia driver to load in Linux Mint 20.1. If I open a console Ctrl-Alt-F1 at startup the Nvidia driver loads successfully and performance is great. If I login at the startup screen, then the NVIDIA driver appears not to load and I receive a notification to check my video drivers. Please see attached for troubleshooting information. I have multiple installs and reinstalls and different versions without success. Installations of every driver version has see…

and installed the drivers from the the terminal sudo apt install nvidia-driver-525 nvidia-dkms-525

After that I was able to run the Nvidia Server Settings and the log script was there.

When I use most of the drivers in this menu

I am able to see my monitor in the Nvidia Server Settings and also in ubuntu displays settings but as soon as I try to switch to use the external monitor the settings instantly revert to using only the built in one.

The farthest I got to the external monitor working was using this driver:
X.Org X server - Nouveau display driver from xserver-xorg-video-nouveau (open source)

When booting, the monitor shows the Ubuntu logo and the loading bar but as soon as the system finishes booting it shows artifacts on the whole screen, although the mouse is perfectly displayed. When using this driver I also cannot use the Nvidia Server Settings.

Logs generated using the 470 driver.
nvidia-bug-report.log.gz (427.7 KB)

[MarkusHoHo]

Hello @kuba.pilch2001 and welcome to the NVIDIA developer forums.

Looking at the log it seems you have an AMD integrated GPU. That can easily conflict with the NVIDIA GPU unless prime-select is used properly or the integrated GPU is disabled in your BIOS.

Then another thing in your log:

Sep 11 23:29:46 jakub-Nitro-AN515-45 kernel: [    1.384219] NVRM: loading NVIDIA UNIX x86_64 Kernel Module  525.125.06  Tue May 30 05:11:37 UTC 2023
Sep 11 23:29:46 jakub-Nitro-AN515-45 kernel: [    1.398620] nvidia-modeset: Loading NVIDIA Kernel Mode Setting Driver for UNIX platforms  525.125.06  Tue May 30 04:58:48 UTC 2023
[...]
Sep 11 23:37:30 jakub-Nitro-AN515-45 kernel: [    1.294527] NVRM: loading NVIDIA UNIX x86_64 Kernel Module  470.199.02  Thu May 11 11:46:56 UTC 2023
Sep 11 23:37:30 jakub-Nitro-AN515-45 kernel: [    1.306740] nvidia-modeset: Loading NVIDIA Kernel Mode Setting Driver for UNIX platforms  470.199.02  Thu May 11 11:46:10 UTC 2023

By now you have conflicting driver versions installed. Ubuntu is not forgiving when you do not completely clean up third party drivers before trying out new ones.

Also you should not combine the dkms packages with the normal apt installation, since the kernel modules will be built as part of the installation.

Right now I recommend the following:

• Uninstall and purge ALL NVIDIA drivers. For that to work correctly boot into console mode (disable X11 and the window manager and/or start up in runlevel 3). Make sure no nvidia kernel modules are loaded.
• Reboot!
• Go into Software Center (see your screenshot) and install nvidia-driver-535 (proprietary) and follow the on-screen instructions exactly.
• Reboot!
• Go into nvdia-settings, look for “PRIME profiles” and select “NVIDIA (performance mode)”
• Reboot!

Now the external display should be visible in settings and you should be able to chose it as an output.

I hope that helps.

[kuba.pilch2001]

@MarkusHoHo Thank you for the answer!

I have no idea why, but when I started my laptop today, it magically started working. I can normally use my external monitor.

Do you recommend I still go through the steps to use the latest driver and clean up the mess, or stick with what is working for now?

[MarkusHoHo]

Sorry I didn’t get back to you earlier, I was out for some time.

For now I would go with it, sometimes in all of the driver setup process a reboot is all that is needed to get the correct kernel modules loaded.

But the next time you need to update the graphics driver you should do a clean installation and remove old driver left-overs.

Thanks!

[kuba.pilch2001]

Okay, thank you very much