NVIDIA-SMI has failed because it couldn't communicate with the NVIDIA driver

No matter which version of driver I install on my RHEL8 workstation, I keep getting the following error message when I run “nvidia-smi” command.

“NVIDIA-SMI has failed because it couldn’t communicate with the NVIDIA driver. Make sure that the latest NVIDIA driver is installed and running.”

I searched the web for reports of similar issue and noticed that in many cases, it is due to Secure Boot being enabled. Indeed, my attached log also contains the keyword “Secure Boot enabled”. Do you suspect that this is the root cause of the above failure? Your feedback would be appreciated.

P.S. Asking this first instead of just trying it out because I will need to make a formal request to IT admin to disable secure boot.

nvidia-bug-report.log (479.8 KB)