Issue booting with nVidia proprietary driver

[adlerhn]

I have a Dell XPS 15 (2013) laptop with Optimus graphics (Intel 4600 + nVidia GeForce GT 750M).

I can use the Nouveau driver just fine. It just seems a bit more unstable when I plug and unplug my external HDMI screen.

So, I usually use the proprietary driver from nVidia. The problem is that, since a few versions of the driver (about v. 346) onward, some of the versions work fine, but most of them fail to start. Whenever I update the driver, if it doesn't start, I have to uninstall the proprietary driver and go back to Nouveau until there is a new version.

I am not sure if the issue is in my system (currently running kernel 4.6.0-040600-generic, GNOME 3.20, Cinnamon 2.8.6), or if it is an issue of the nVidia driver.

Since my system moved to SystemD I am not too sure how to debug startup issues (which files to look at et al.).

Could anyone help me investigate why is the system not booting with some versions of the driver? Thanks.

[SeijiSensei]

Did you run "sudo nvidia-xconfig" after installing the driver? Give that a try.

[adlerhn]

Thanks for the tip. Yeah, I just tried that; no change.

[ventrical]

I have a Dell XPS 15 (2013) laptop with Optimus graphics (Intel 4600 + nVidia GeForce GT 750M).

I can use the Nouveau driver just fine. It just seems a bit more unstable when I plug and unplug my external HDMI screen.

So, I usually use the proprietary driver from nVidia. The problem is that, since a few versions of the driver (about v. 346) onward, some of the versions work fine, but most of them fail to start. Whenever I update the driver, if it doesn't start, I have to uninstall the proprietary driver and go back to Nouveau until there is a new version.

I am not sure if the issue is in my system (currently running kernel 4.6.0-040600-generic, GNOME 3.20, Cinnamon 2.8.6), or if it is an issue of the nVidia driver.

I was just going to say that. Try scaling back to k 4.4.0-23 or what have you.

regards..

[adlerhn]

I was just going to say that. Try scaling back to k 4.4.0-23 or what have you.

Thanks for the suggestion. It works (so far) with 4.4.0-22.

Will keep an eye and if the issue comes back I will update this thread.

If you don't hear back from me, that is only good news (or lack of updated drivers).

[adlerhn]

Due to one program running really slow, yesterday I realised that I was not using the Nvidia card, but the Intel one.

So, switched the active graphics card, restarted, and the system does no longer boot correctly; it keeps retrying to initialise the graphics mode. Only after I uninstalled the proprietary driver did the system boot again (using the Nouveau driver, so faster than using the Intel card, but slower than in Windows).

Going back to kernel 4.4.0 may have only worked because I was actually not using the Nvidia card (which works perfectly in Windows).

I would love some assistance to be able to debug the issue.

[Bashing-om]

adlerhn; Hello;

I would love some assistance to be able to debug the issue.

Bunches I do not know about the graphic's interfacing; but we can at least look at the basics and see if we can determine what is not going on here.

Back to the basics at square one;

What is the hardware we are working with :

lspci -k | grep -EA2 'VGA|3D'

What does the system think for installed modules ( drivers) :

dpkg -l | grep -i nvidia
lsmod | grep nvidia
sudo find / -name "NVIDIA-Linux-*"

And /// what is the state of the GUI (X) :

cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log
cat /var/log/gpu-manager.log

With the idea of purging the present drivers, and installing the recommended driver.

we can do that

[adlerhn]

Thanks for your response.

With the Nvidia proprietary driver uninstalled:

$ lspci -k | grep -EA2 'VGA|3D'

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 06)
Subsystem: Dell 4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller
Kernel driver in use: i915
--
02:00.0 3D controller: NVIDIA Corporation GK107M [GeForce GT 750M] (rev a1)
Subsystem: Dell GK107M [GeForce GT 750M]
Kernel driver in use: nouveau

$ dpkg -l | grep -i nvidia

ii bbswitch-dkms 0.8-3ubuntu1 amd64 Interface for toggling the power on NVIDIA Optimus video cards
rc nvidia-367 367.27-0ubuntu0~gpu16.04.1 amd64 NVIDIA binary driver - version 367.27
rc nvidia-opencl-icd-367 367.27-0ubuntu0~gpu16.04.1 amd64 NVIDIA OpenCL ICD
ii nvidia-prime 0.8.2 amd64 Tools to enable NVIDIA's Prime
ii nvidia-settings 367.18-0ubuntu0~gpu16.04.1 amd64 Tool for configuring the NVIDIA graphics driver

I have uninstalled those packages, just in case, and now the command returns empty.

$ lsmod | grep nvidia
$ sudo find / -name "NVIDIA-Linux-*"

These two return empty as well.

Xorg.0.log and gpu-manager.log with the nouveau driver installed: <deleted>

In this state (minus the nvidia packages I just uninstalled), I have installed the nvidia-367 package. After a restart, I get a text-mode black screen asking me to log in. Logging in and manually running startx does not boot the system (startx gets hung).

Xorg.0.log and gpu-manager.log with the nvidia driver installed (black screen on boot): <deleted>

[Bashing-om]

adlerhn; Sorry;

I run a minimal install on this my work station, I have no ready means in this install to cope with a zip file.
Maybe paste them here directly or in a pastebin site ??

Running the terminal command 'startx' is only applicable in certain Desktop Environments, Possible now that the ownership rights in your own /home are changed .
What returns:

ls -al /home/adlerhn

in respect to the .Xauthority and .ICEauthority files ; do you still own them ? Otherwise, you do not have the authority to start a GUI.

Maybe yes ?

[adlerhn]

.ICEauthority is owned by my own user, but .Xauthority is owned by root. Should I change that? Right now I am logging in fine (using nouveau, though).

The pastebins:

With nouveau:
http://pastebin.com/FN7FXsFb
http://pastebin.com/iDuL5a8G

With the nvidia driver:
http://pastebin.com/KjcjsFA8
http://pastebin.com/HJ4miP47