Thinkpad P1 Gen 4 Ubuntu 18.04 not able to communicate with NVidia Driver

Hey there,

I am trying to run Ubuntu 18.04 on my Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 4. It’s working fine. However, I somehow cannot access the GPU. The Laptop has a RTX A2000 GPU. I have installed all the the drivers including nvidia-driver-470 and nvidia-driver-510. Additionally, I have updated the Linux Kernel 5.15.0 (was necessary in order to get the intel wifi adapter running). If I go to Settings → Details it only lists the intel graphics card (Mesa Intel® UHD Graphics (TGL GT1)) but not the one from NVidia.

Furthermore, if I run nvidia-smi, it returns:
NVIDIA-SMI has failed because it couldn’t communicate with the NVIDIA driver. Make sure that the latest NVIDIA driver is installed and running.

Disclaimer: I want to use Ubuntu 18.04 for greater interoperability with a Jetson device, as there’s no Jetpack for Ubuntu 20.4 yet. I have tried to remove and reinstall the drivers an abundance of times. Does anyone know what the problem could be? I am starting to doubt if Ubuntu 18.04 is at all suited for the ThinkPad P1 Gen 4. Below I copied the outputs of several commands including ubuntu-drivers devices, ubuntu-drivers list and sudo lshw -C display. Any help is greatly appreciated.

ubuntu-drivers devices:
WARNING:root:_pkg_get_support nvidia-driver-510: package has invalid Support PBheader, cannot determine support level
WARNING:root:_pkg_get_support nvidia-driver-510-server: package has invalid Support PBheader, cannot determine support level
== /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:01:00.0 ==
modalias : pci:v000010DEd000025B8sv000017AAsd000022E4bc03sc00i00
vendor : NVIDIA Corporation
driver : nvidia-driver-470 - distro non-free recommended
driver : nvidia-driver-510 - third-party non-free
driver : nvidia-driver-470-server - distro non-free
driver : nvidia-driver-510-server - distro non-free
driver : xserver-xorg-video-nouveau - distro free builtin

== /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1c.6/0000:09:00.0 ==
modalias : pci:v00008086d00002725sv00008086sd00000020bc02sc80i00
vendor : Intel Corporation
manual_install: True
driver : backport-iwlwifi-dkms - distro free

ubuntu-drivers list:
WARNING:root:_pkg_get_support nvidia-driver-510: package has invalid Support PBheader, cannot determine support level
WARNING:root:_pkg_get_support nvidia-driver-510-server: package has invalid Support PBheader, cannot determine support level
dpkg: warning: version ‘unsigned-5.15.0-051500’ has bad syntax: version number does not start with digit
nvidia-driver-510
dpkg: warning: version ‘unsigned-5.15.0-051500’ has bad syntax: version number does not start with digit
nvidia-driver-470
dpkg: warning: version ‘unsigned-5.15.0-051500’ has bad syntax: version number does not start with digit
nvidia-driver-470-server
dpkg: warning: version ‘unsigned-5.15.0-051500’ has bad syntax: version number does not start with digit
nvidia-driver-510-server
backport-iwlwifi-dkms, (kernel modules provided by backport-iwlwifi-dkms)

sudo lshw -C display:
*-display
description: VGA compatible controller
product: NVIDIA Corporation
vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0
logical name: /dev/fb0
version: a1
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress vga_controller cap_list fb
configuration: depth=32 latency=0 mode=3840x2400 visual=truecolor xres=3840 yres=2400
resources: iomemory:600-5ff iomemory:610-60f memory:9d000000-9dffffff memory:6000000000-60ffffffff memory:6100000000-6101ffffff ioport:3000(size=128) memory:9e080000-9e0fffff
*-display
description: VGA compatible controller
product: Intel Corporation
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 2
bus info: pci@0000:00:02.0
version: 01
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pciexpress msi pm vga_controller bus_master cap_list
configuration: driver=i915 latency=0
resources: iomemory:610-60f iomemory:400-3ff irq:199 memory:614c000000-614cffffff memory:4000000000-400fffffff ioport:4000(size=64) memory:c0000-dffff memory:4010000000-4016ffffff memory:4020000000-40ffffffff

Hello,

Looks like you posted in the wrong category. This area is for our networking products. I am going to move your topic to the Linux category for better visibility.

Best,
Tom K

You installed an incompatible kernel package so the nvidia driver doesn’t compile. Please use the liqourix ppa to upgrade the kernel, then install a newer firmware package:
https://packages.ubuntu.com/de/impish-updates/linux-firmware

Thanks a lot! I used liquorix to upgrade the kernel and nvidia-smi immediately worked. Now I’m wondering what is a firmware package and why could it be useful for me?

Devices like wifi, bluetooth, intel igpu need firmware, device software. 18.04 only includes older version so it’s better to install the newer firmware package manually.

Alright, I just rebooted my laptop and it cannot start up again. It issued some kind of firmware problem so I guess I’ll need to install newer firmware. I wiped by ubuntu and installed it clean again. I upgraded the kernel and now I am looking to upgrade the firmware. The link you posted is for impish and not bionic(18.04)… can I use those updates nonetheless? Also, how would you recommend me to install the new firmware? The website is suggesting to use a package-manager such as Aptitude or Synaptic. Sorry, I am very new to this so any insight into the process would be greatly appreciated!

Doubleclick?
Firmware packages have no dependencies so can be safely be used between distro versions.
On download, e.g. Firefox should already ask you if it should open it with a deb installer. Otherwise, download, open a terminal in the download location and run
sudo apt install ./<nameofpackage.deb>

This topic was automatically closed 14 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.