NVIDIA drivers not working after 11.04 Update. Why can I only see terminal?

[Sixthlaw]

Hey guys.

Tonight I upgraded to 11.04. Once I had finished the upgrade, I restarted my computer as it told me too. When I got past the ubuntu 11.04 (purple background orange dots), it simply went to the terminal and asked me to log in. I tried to restart the X server with "sudo service gdm restart" but no display popped up. I happened to have a few NVIDIA drivers in my downloads file also so I gave these a try, but the "install script" failed.

After all this I booted Ubuntu in graphic failsafe mode. I then decided to see what would happen if I removed the proprietary driver. Upon doing this and rebooting my Ubuntu booted into graphical mode "yay!". So without the Nvidia drivers I can finally see something other than terminal, but, I need those NVIDIA drivers for my work. So what can I do? I have tried installing the new NVIDIA linux drivers from the NVIDIA website, and have tried Installing the recommended driver via "additional drivers", but both have resulted in my being stuck in terminal.

If you can help or give me some advice PLEASE DO! I am really in a very bad situation...

[patsimon12]

I think it's something to do with incompatibility with the kernal that comes with 11.04 and the nvidia driver. You can revert back to the non-nvidia drivers by doing the following.

cd /etc/X11
sudo mv xorg.conf xorg.conf_bu
sudo mv xorg.conf_failsafe xorg.conf

NOTE - the xorg.conf_failsafe file MAY be called something different on you PC.

Then you can restart X (Ctrl-Alt-Backspace) or simply reboot.

This will give you a window manager but NOT with the nvidia drivers.

[borner]

I'm having exactly the same issue, my system won't boot when the nvidia drivers are installed. Graphics card is a GT220. Can we expect a fix for this or is it better for me to reinstall 10.10?

[ebbr.bugs]

Your problem is that you have the nvidia driver installed as a deb package but not the driver itself, for which you need the kernel headers.
Install the package kernel-headers-blabla corresponding to your current kernel (see uname -a). Then do install --reinstall of the nvidia package or install --reinstall of the linux kernel - this will force the creation of the nvidia kernel module. Reboot.

Those commands:
sudo apt-get install --reinstall linux-headers-2.6.38-8-generic-pae
sudo apt-get install --reinstall linux-image-2.6.38-8-generic-pae

[dino99]

dkms package needed too (see synaptic)

[borner]

Your problem is that you have the nvidia driver installed as a deb package but not the driver itself, for which you need the kernel headers.
Install the package kernel-headers-blabla corresponding to your current kernel (see uname -a). Then do install --reinstall of the nvidia package or install --reinstall of the linux kernel - this will force the creation of the nvidia kernel module. Reboot.

Those commands:
sudo apt-get install --reinstall linux-headers-2.6.38-8-generic-pae
sudo apt-get install --reinstall linux-image-2.6.38-8-generic-pae

I used those two commands to update and my system will now not boot at all? Even to recovery mode? Why is all of this needed? It was fine in 10.10?

[lcnrj]

Try:
sudo gedit /etc/modules
and add a line containing "nvidia"

[pearlbear]

Your problem is that you have the nvidia driver installed as a deb package but not the driver itself, for which you need the kernel headers.
Install the package kernel-headers-blabla corresponding to your current kernel (see uname -a). Then do install --reinstall of the nvidia package or install --reinstall of the linux kernel - this will force the creation of the nvidia kernel module. Reboot.

Those commands:
sudo apt-get install --reinstall linux-headers-2.6.38-8-generic-pae
sudo apt-get install --reinstall linux-image-2.6.38-8-generic-pae

This worked great for me, with the addition of doing a reinstall of the nvidia-common package.

[artoonie]

Your problem is that you have the nvidia driver installed as a deb package but not the driver itself, for which you need the kernel headers.
Install the package kernel-headers-blabla corresponding to your current kernel (see uname -a). Then do install --reinstall of the nvidia package or install --reinstall of the linux kernel - this will force the creation of the nvidia kernel module. Reboot.

Those commands:
sudo apt-get install --reinstall linux-headers-2.6.38-8-generic-pae
sudo apt-get install --reinstall linux-image-2.6.38-8-generic-pae

Dearest Bug,
Thank you so much. I've spent so many hours trying to get this to work. I wish this thread would find its way to Google soon.

Crawl on, my little friend.

[beast2k]

Your problem is that you have the nvidia driver installed as a deb package but not the driver itself, for which you need the kernel headers.
Install the package kernel-headers-blabla corresponding to your current kernel (see uname -a). Then do install --reinstall of the nvidia package or install --reinstall of the linux kernel - this will force the creation of the nvidia kernel module. Reboot.

Those commands:
sudo apt-get install --reinstall linux-headers-2.6.38-8-generic-pae
sudo apt-get install --reinstall linux-image-2.6.38-8-generic-pae

Puting graphics drivers into Ubuntu was a no brainer last verson and has been real user friendly for a long time . What is going on all of a sudden. As if unity wasn't enough.