What's 👏 with 👏 NVIDIA 👏 "Production Branch" 👏 drivers 👏 and 👏 Linux?

Graphics / Linux Linux
1

I have Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS with 5.11.0-37-generic kernel and GeForce 940MX and I installed the recommended PRODUCTION driver which was 470, and I got a black screen of death. Totally locked out. Can’t log back in.

After a lot of hours spent, I was able to get back to the Nouveau driver and log back into my computer.

Why was this not tested in QA? Why are NVIDIA drivers unreliable? Which driver version should I use now with my kernel and distro now that I can’t trust NVIDIA’S very own website?

Or is it time to switch to some other Hardware accelerator to experiment with deep learning stuff?

P.S. The Wayland stuff mentioned in some other topic did not work for me.

2

What finally worked was removing nomodeset from grub kernel parameters. I had it because my laptop would shut down randomly without it, because my nvidia driver install was messy.

Started with a fresh install of Ubuntu 20.04, booted in with nomodeset. apt installed nvidia-utils-470. Rebooted into root shell from recovery. Verified driver installation with nvidia-smi. Removed nomodeset from grub. Rebooted.

Everything worked fine after this.

3

Sorry you experienced the initial problem - but thanks so much for sharing the solution you found.
I’m going to press the solved button on your behalf.
Thanks and good luck with your AI training.