Issues with Nvidia drivers on Dell Inspiron 7567

Graphics / Linux Linux
1

Hey, so I’ve been trying to make my Nvidia drivers run on my linux machine for some deep learning capabilities. Problem is that laptops and especially dell Inspirons have isssues with drivers on unix systems. I’ve looked up a bunch of solutions and nothing worked.

Currently I am running the 410.48 drivers (I’ll get to this later) but the problem is that Nvidia X Server doesnt work at all.

Here’s what it says when I do try to run nvidia-settings:

ERROR: Unable to load info from any available system

This happens regardless if I am running on intell or Nvidia GPU, it seems its unable to pick up anything from the system.

Now interestingly enough it seems that the Nvidia SMI works:

Thu Oct  4 20:19:25 2018       
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 410.48                 Driver Version: 410.48                    |
|-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
| GPU  Name        Persistence-M| Bus-Id        Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan  Temp  Perf  Pwr:Usage/Cap|         Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
|===============================+======================+======================|
|   0  GeForce GTX 1050    Off  | 00000000:01:00.0 Off |                  N/A |
| N/A   47C    P8    N/A /  N/A |      0MiB /  4040MiB |      0%      Default |
+-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
                                                                               
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes:                                                       GPU Memory |
|  GPU       PID   Type   Process name                             Usage      |
|=============================================================================|
|  No running processes found                                                 |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

The interesting this is that the Nvidia driver running is 410.48 yet I had no clue such driver existed. Regardless the Nvidia X Server issue remain regardless of driver version.
I’ve already tried 390 | 396 | 340 etc.
Problem with anything older than 390 is this violent screen flicker and being unable to boot into GUI until I purge the Nvidia drivers and boot into nouvau drivers.

Its been a week now and I am honestly at the end of my wits here. I’ve searched everywhere and nothing. This thread is my last attempt.
nvidia-bug-report.log.gz (1.04 MB)
xorg.log (76.5 KB)

2

Please run nvidia-bug-report.sh as root and attach the resulting .gz file to your post. Hovering the mouse over an existing post will reveal a paperclip icon.

3

Added

4

Please remove the kernel parameters
nomodeset i915_bpo.nomodeset=1
and create a new bug-report.log.
What kind of switching mechanism is provided by solus? In your logs, mesa was used for glx.

5

I can’t seem to be able to find the parameters you mentioned.
In the grub file there’s only:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash nouveau.blacklist=1 nouveau.runpm=0"

Also by switching mechanism I’m guessing you mean between the GPUs? I’m using bumblebee if I’m not mistaken?
I just use

sudo prime-select nvidia | intell

EDIT: Alright, I just found why you were refering to “nomodeset”
Still I cannot find where to edit though. Grub doesnt mention it.

6

Also this might help, I tried following this guide Dell Inspiron 7559 Ubuntu Linux Guide in installing it. I followed almost all the steps except the “nomodeset i915_bpo.nomodeset=1” interestingly enough.

7

You can forget about the parameters, they’re from an old log, your current kernel is running without it.
Means that no current xorg log is included. Please run
sudo journalctl -b0 --no-pager _COMM=gdm-x-session >xorg.log
and attach that.

8

Added!

9

Everything tells that graphics is switched to intel, the nvidia gpu being off.
Please post the output of
sudo prime-select nvidia

You’re currently using PRIME, at least I hope so. Bumblebee is a different approach and they’re mutual exclusives.

10

Yeah I just ran sudo prime-select query and it said its running nvidia.
So naturally when I ran ‘sudo prime-select nvidia’ it said:

Info: the nvidia profile is already set

So I switched to intell using ‘sudo prime-select intel’ and got:

Info: selecting the intel profile
Generating grub configuration file ...
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-4.15.0-34-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-4.15.0-34-generic
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-4.13.0-46-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-4.13.0-46-generic
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-4.13.0-19-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-4.13.0-19-generic
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-4.13.0-17-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-4.13.0-17-generic
Found Windows Boot Manager on /dev/sda2@/EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi
Adding boot menu entry for EFI firmware configuration
done
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-4.15.0-34-generic
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-4.15.0-34-generic
Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/display-manager.service.wants/nvidia-prime-boot.service → /lib/systemd/system/nvidia-prime-boot.service.

After that I ran ‘sudo prime-select nvidia’ and got:

Info: selecting the nvidia profile
Generating grub configuration file ...
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-4.15.0-34-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-4.15.0-34-generic
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-4.13.0-46-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-4.13.0-46-generic
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-4.13.0-19-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-4.13.0-19-generic
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-4.13.0-17-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-4.13.0-17-generic
Found Windows Boot Manager on /dev/sda2@/EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi
Adding boot menu entry for EFI firmware configuration
done
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-4.15.0-34-generic
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-4.15.0-34-generic
Removed /etc/systemd/system/display-manager.service.wants/nvidia-prime-boot.service.

I do also have bumblebee installed though I am not sure if its “running”.

11

Ok, that’s the culprit. Like said PRIME and bumblebee are mutual exclusives, you’ll either have to uninstall bumblebee to get PRIME working so you can switch using prime-select or you have to use bumblebee starting the nvidia gpu on demand using optirun or primusrun

12

That’s exactly what was the problem! Thank you so much!