Nvidia-smi : No Devices were found - Debian 12

Gaming and Visualization Technologies General Topics and Other SDKs Drivers - Linux, Windows, MacOS
1

Hello,

I tried to install the nvidia drivers on a recent installation, under debian 12, but when I run nvidia-smi I get the message: No devices were found.

However, when I look at the PCI attachments :

sudo lshw -C display
  *-display
       description: 3D controller
       product: GP107M [GeForce GTX 1050 Mobile]
       vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
       physical id: 10
       bus info: pci@0000:06:10.0
       version: a1
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm msi bus_master cap_list rom
       configuration: driver=nvidia latency=0
       resources: iomemory:38380-3837f iomemory:38380-3837f irq:21 memory:81000000-81ffffff memory:383800000000-38380fffffff memory:383810000000-383811ffffff ioport:7000(size=128) memory:82080000-820fffff

I installed the drivers following the instructions available on the debian site (cf. NvidiaGraphicsDrivers - Debian Wiki)

Here is some information that may be useful for debugging:

lsmod | grep nvidia
nvidia_drm             73728  0
nvidia_uvm           1380352  0
nvidia_modeset       1249280  1 nvidia_drm
drm_kms_helper        208896  5 bochs,drm_vram_helper,nvidia_drm
video                  65536  1 nvidia_modeset
nvidia              56410112  2 nvidia_uvm,nvidia_modeset
drm                   614400  8 drm_kms_helper,bochs,drm_vram_helper,nvidia,drm_ttm_helper,nvidia_drm,ttm

sudo dmesg | grep -i nvidia
[    8.371294] nvidia: loading out-of-tree module taints kernel.
[    8.373780] nvidia: module license 'NVIDIA' taints kernel.
[    8.417835] nvidia: module verification failed: signature and/or required key missing - tainting kernel
[    8.544325] nvidia-nvlink: Nvlink Core is being initialized, major device number 244
[    8.546612] NVRM: loading NVIDIA UNIX x86_64 Kernel Module  525.147.05  Wed Oct 25 20:27:35 UTC 2023
[   10.060957] nvidia-modeset: Loading NVIDIA Kernel Mode Setting Driver for UNIX platforms  525.147.05  Wed Oct 25 20:21:31 UTC 2023
[   10.406873] nvidia_uvm: module uses symbols nvUvmInterfaceDisableAccessCntr from proprietary module nvidia, inheriting taint.
[   10.453161] nvidia-uvm: Loaded the UVM driver, major device number 240.
[   10.803586] [drm] [nvidia-drm] [GPU ID 0x00000610] Loading driver
[   10.803591] [drm] Initialized nvidia-drm 0.0.0 20160202 for 0000:06:10.0 on minor 1
[   12.043395] audit: type=1400 audit(1717422553.472:3): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" profile="unconfined" name="nvidia_modprobe" pid=534 comm="apparmor_parser"
[   12.046154] audit: type=1400 audit(1717422553.472:4): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" profile="unconfined" name="nvidia_modprobe//kmod" pid=534 comm="apparmor_parser"

nvidia-bug-report.log.gz (65.7 KB)

2

Hello @zerka, welcome to the NVIDIA developer forums.

Please refer to the Linux driver readme:

Why does the VBIOS fail to load on my Optimus system?

On some notebooks with Optimus graphics, the NVIDIA driver may not be able to retrieve the Video BIOS due to interactions between the System BIOS and the Linux kernel’s ACPI subsystem. On affected notebooks, applications that require the GPU will fail, and messages like the following may appear in the system log:

NVRM: failed to copy vbios to system memory.
NVRM: RmInitAdapter failed! (0x30:0xffffffff:858)
NVRM: rm_init_adapter(0) failed

Such problems are typically beyond the control of the NVIDIA driver, which relies on proper cooperation of ACPI and the System BIOS to retrieve important information about the GPU, including the Video BIOS.

Sometimes updating to the latest BIOS can help, or making sure to have the correct kernel source headers in place and doin a clean re-install.

Thanks.