Ubuntu 20.04 LTS - Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti - Not recognized

I cannot make my Nvidia card work on a fresh Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. I’m using a Dell XPS 15 9510.

I attach some command outputs:

$ nvidia-smi
NVIDIA-SMI has failed because it couldn't communicate with the NVIDIA driver. Make sure that the latest NVIDIA driver is installed and running.
$ uname -a
Linux XPS-15-9510 5.11.0-25-generic #27~20.04.1-Ubuntu SMP Tue Jul 13 17:41:23 UTC 2021 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
$ cat /etc/*release*
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=20.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=focal
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS"
NAME="Ubuntu"
VERSION="20.04.2 LTS (Focal Fossa)"
ID=ubuntu
ID_LIKE=debian
PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS"
VERSION_ID="20.04"
HOME_URL="https://www.ubuntu.com/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://help.ubuntu.com/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/"
PRIVACY_POLICY_URL="https://www.ubuntu.com/legal/terms-and-policies/privacy-policy"
VERSION_CODENAME=focal
UBUNTU_CODENAME=focal
$ apt list --installed *xorg*
Listing... Done
xorg-docs-core/focal,focal,now 1:1.7.1-1.1 all [installed,automatic]
xorg/focal,now 1:7.7+19ubuntu14 amd64 [installed,automatic]
xserver-xorg-core/focal-updates,now 2:1.20.11-1ubuntu1~20.04.2 amd64 [installed,automatic]
xserver-xorg-input-all/focal,now 1:7.7+19ubuntu14 amd64 [installed,automatic]
xserver-xorg-input-libinput/focal,now 0.29.0-1 amd64 [installed,automatic]
xserver-xorg-input-wacom/focal,now 1:0.39.0-0ubuntu1 amd64 [installed,automatic]
xserver-xorg-legacy/focal-updates,now 2:1.20.11-1ubuntu1~20.04.2 amd64 [installed,automatic]
xserver-xorg-video-all/focal,now 1:7.7+19ubuntu14 amd64 [installed,automatic]
xserver-xorg-video-amdgpu/focal,now 19.1.0-1 amd64 [installed,automatic]
xserver-xorg-video-ati/focal,now 1:19.1.0-1 amd64 [installed,automatic]
xserver-xorg-video-fbdev/focal,now 1:0.5.0-1ubuntu1 amd64 [installed,automatic]
xserver-xorg-video-intel/focal,now 2:2.99.917+git20200226-1 amd64 [installed,automatic]
xserver-xorg-video-nouveau/focal,now 1:1.0.16-1 amd64 [installed,automatic]
xserver-xorg-video-qxl/focal,now 0.1.5+git20200331-1 amd64 [installed,automatic]
xserver-xorg-video-radeon/focal,now 1:19.1.0-1 amd64 [installed,automatic]
xserver-xorg-video-vesa/focal,now 1:2.4.0-2 amd64 [installed,automatic]
xserver-xorg-video-vmware/focal,now 1:13.3.0-3 amd64 [installed,automatic]
xserver-xorg/focal,now 1:7.7+19ubuntu14 amd64 [installed,automatic]
$ lspci -k | grep -A 2 -i "VGA"
0000:00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Device 9a60 (rev 01)
	DeviceName: Onboard - Video
	Subsystem: Dell Device 0a61

I also attach the report: nvidia-bug-report.log.gz (101.8 KB)

Does anyone have any suggestion?

According to your bug report, you haven’t yet installed the nvidia driver: “/var/log/nvidia-installer.log does not exist”.

Also, according to your “lspci -nn”, the only “VGA compatible controller” is a “Intel Corporation Device [8086:9a60] (rev 01)”. The only NVidia device is the “0000:01:00.0 3D controller [0302]: NVIDIA Corporation Device [10de:25a0] (rev a1)”. Is there something in your configuration (bios?) blocking the NVidia VGA ?

1 Like

Hi @ghpille,

Thanks for the reply.

Your comment led me to run the following command:

$ sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall

Which installed a bunch of stuff and magically I got the following output:

$ nvidia-smi 
Tue Aug 10 20:56:56 2021       
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 470.57.02    Driver Version: 470.57.02    CUDA Version: 11.4     |
|-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
| GPU  Name        Persistence-M| Bus-Id        Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan  Temp  Perf  Pwr:Usage/Cap|         Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
|                               |                      |               MIG M. |
|===============================+======================+======================|
|   0  NVIDIA GeForce ...  Off  | 00000000:01:00.0 Off |                  N/A |
| N/A   45C    P8     6W /  N/A |      0MiB /  3913MiB |      0%      Default |
|                               |                      |                  N/A |
+-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
                                                                               
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes:                                                                  |
|  GPU   GI   CI        PID   Type   Process name                  GPU Memory |
|        ID   ID                                                   Usage      |
|=============================================================================|
|  No running processes found                                                 |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

I don’t understand because I’ve run this command multiple times but this is the first time I get an output from the nvidia-smi command.

I’ll post an update after a reboot and see if the configuration stays the same.

I’m glad to say that after a reboot the Nvidia graphics card is still recognized. I even see some processes using it:

$ sudo nvidia-smi
Tue Aug 10 21:03:09 2021       
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 470.57.02    Driver Version: 470.57.02    CUDA Version: 11.4     |
|-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
| GPU  Name        Persistence-M| Bus-Id        Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan  Temp  Perf  Pwr:Usage/Cap|         Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
|                               |                      |               MIG M. |
|===============================+======================+======================|
|   0  NVIDIA GeForce ...  Off  | 00000000:01:00.0 Off |                  N/A |
| N/A   46C    P0    10W /  N/A |      9MiB /  3913MiB |      0%      Default |
|                               |                      |                  N/A |
+-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
                                                                               
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes:                                                                  |
|  GPU   GI   CI        PID   Type   Process name                  GPU Memory |
|        ID   ID                                                   Usage      |
|=============================================================================|
|    0   N/A  N/A      1133      G   /usr/lib/xorg/Xorg                  4MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      2995      G   /usr/lib/xorg/Xorg                  4MiB |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

I still can’t explain why all of a sudden the drivers were recognized but I hope this post is useful to some people.

Thanks,

Alex

Did you set something special in BIOS? I have the same computer and installed nvidia-driver-460 but the laptop failed to boot then and I hade to boot to an earlier kernel and remove the driver.