Nvidia-settings / X server communication issue

Graphics / Linux Linux
1

Hi there.

According the documentation

Blockquote When nvidia-settings starts, it reads the current settings from its configuration file and sends those settings to the X server. Then, it displays a graphical user interface (GUI) for configuring the current settings. When nvidia-settings exits, it queries the current settings from the X server and saves them to the configuration file.

My problem is that

  1. whatever settings I have in ~/.nvidia-config-rc file, they do not read and do not show in graphical interface. Which means the parameters are not passed to X server
  2. whatever settings I made while inteacting with nvidia-settings, they are not written back to the fconfig file on exite. The same issue - no communication with X Server.

I have “Coolbits” “12” option active in /etc/X11/xorg.conf and Debian 11 with latest Nvidia drivers for RTX 3060 Ti.

Can anyone give advise what the solution is?

P.S. I can freely set power limits/lock frequences with nvidia-smi utility, or control fan speed with commands like nvidia-settings -a "[gpu:0]/GPUFanControlState=1" -a "[fan:0]/GPUTargetFanSpeed=30".

But if I set offset with nvidia-settings -a '[gpu:0]/GPUMemoryTransferRateOffset[3]=1000' and then query it back with nvidia-settings -q '[gpu:0]/GPUMemoryTransferRateOffset[3]' I still have value 0

2

Did you check whether your .nvidia-settings-rc file is corrupted, e.g… delete/rename it, see if it gets recreated.
You’re using a pre-Pascal syntax, see:
https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/solved-nvidia-settings-a-gpu-1-gpumemorytransferrateoffset-3-2000-doesnt-take-effect/178021/2?u=generix

3

Thanks for quick reply.

The command nvidia-settings -a [gpu:0]/GPUMemoryTransferRateOffsetAllPerformanceLevels=1200 works just fine, thanks for advise.

So the communication with X-Server is seemingly ok. Nebertheless GUI utility doesn’t work as expected. After I set the MemClock offset via command line, GUI utility reads this offset (queries X server), but when I close GUI window. nothing related to clock offset appears in .nvidia-settings-rc file. The file is not currapted and it is updated at the moment of closure of GUI window.

I run nvidia-utility as a user (not a root)

4

P.S. Could you please kindly share a link to official documentation where I can find more examples/right format of terminal command for nvidia-settings utility?

man nvidia-settings highlights several examples, but seemingly not all. I believe more commands are described somewhere in NVIDIA documentation.

5

IIRC, nvidia-settings had a checkbox in the config pane “save on exit” which is gone now. So I really don’t know whether auto-save is always on and doesn’t work or it’s disabled and you’ll have to manually save your settings now. Does that work?
nvidia-settings isn’t well documented, “the source is the doc”.
https://github.com/NVIDIA/nvidia-settings
You can also open an issue there regarding save/load behaviour.