[ubuntu] 13.10, Lenovo T520 (NVIDIA NVS 4200M) video driver unrecognized

Hi all, I'm close to giving up after two days of research, trials, purges and re-installations. I thought that upgrading from Natty, long overdue, would be a snap. I was so wrong. My brain is bursting and I thought I'd ask for help before I collapse for a few hours.

Context: Because direct upgrade appeared no longer possible, I have decided to reformat the root and /boot directories while preserving /home, and thus move from 11.04 to 13.10. The only problem I got was with the graphics drivers. After messing up and reinstalling, I decided to make (relatively) careful notes, and here's the story with trials and purges edited out:

my graphics card is Optimus-enabled, and after a day I decided on using brute force, upgraded the bios, and in that bios, I reset the display to discreet and disabled OS-detection; (no bumblebee, no more tinkering, I thought - I really need to work again on this machine)
that has finally shown me a different string in the system settings (no more Intel): "VESA: GF119 Board - kn301057"
I had x-swat/x-updates enabled and finally I saw life in the "additional drivers" section of the Update Manager. I have decided on nvidia-319-updates [edit: followed by 331, with the same result]
I had no xorg.conf under X11/, and all that remained from my previous attempts is the following, in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf:

Code:

blacklist vga16fb blacklist rivafb blacklist rivatv blacklist nouveau blacklist lbm-nouveau blacklist nvidiafb blacklist nvidia-173 blacklist nvidia-96 blacklist nvidia-304

I rebooted, and saw 640x480 resolution, and the System Settings tell me that my driver is now... "Gallium 0.4 on llvmpipe (LLVM 3.3, 256 bits)" [what?!] That made me think of giving up.

Let me also add that, since the beginning, and also under the Intel driver ("Sandybridge Mobile"), most of the icons on my desktop don't display, similarly with some icons inside System Settings. Can't use term, because it's black on black (xterm works).

I attach the /var/log/dmesg from the last boot, and a fragment containing 'nvidia' is pasted below, in case someone cared to have a look and interpret it for me, please.

Code:

[ 10.080041] input: HDA NVidia HDMI/DP,pcm=8 as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:01:00.1/sound/card1/input12 [ 10.080128] input: HDA NVidia HDMI/DP,pcm=7 as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:01:00.1/sound/card1/input13 [ 10.080177] input: HDA NVidia HDMI/DP,pcm=3 as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:01:00.1/sound/card1/input14 [ 10.304159] nvidia: module license 'NVIDIA' taints kernel. [ 10.304169] Disabling lock debugging due to kernel taint [ 10.307577] nvidia: module verification failed: signature and/or required key missing - tainting kernel [ 10.310582] vgaarb: device changed decodes: PCI:0000:01:00.0,olddecodes=io+mem,decodes=none:owns=io+mem [ 10.310760] [drm] Initialized nvidia-drm 0.0.0 20130102 for 0000:01:00.0 on minor 0 [ 10.310764] NVRM: loading NVIDIA UNIX x86_64 Kernel Module 319.60 Wed Sep 25 14:28:26 PDT 2013

Let me add that my kernel is 3.11.0-15-generic and I have the headers for it installed (3.11.0-15.23).

I feel completely stupefied, my brain feels swollen, and I will be extremely grateful for some advice -- I'll act on it right after I've caught some sleep.

PS. I have rebooted twice since that first dmesg, and noticed that I'm getting a blank screen after I log in. It holds for maybe 20 seconds or so, and then gives me the desktop. And in the fresh boot-time dmesg I can now see, as the last line "[ 13.418105] init: nvidia-persistenced main process (945) terminated with status 1". So let me attach that newer dmesg as well, just in case. The difference is that I did "apt-get autoremove" in the meantime (but that shouldn't matter, should it.)

PPS. nvidia-331 gives me exactly the same result (I quietly hoped that I wouldn't have to post this thanks to some miracle)

PPS. I discovered nvidia-settings, ran it, got the message about running nvidia-xconfig as root, tried, failed (command not found), and failed to find a solution by searching (though that search made me add "nomodeset" to the grub commandline). I have also ran "aptitude search nvidia":

Code:

p boinc-nvidia-cuda - metapackage for CUDA-savvy BOINC client an p boinc-nvidia-cuda:i386 - metapackage for CUDA-savvy BOINC client an p bumblebee-nvidia - NVIDIA Optimus support using the proprieta p bumblebee-nvidia:i386 - NVIDIA Optimus support using the proprieta p nvidia-173 - NVIDIA binary Xorg driver, kernel module a p nvidia-173:i386 - NVIDIA binary Xorg driver, kernel module a p nvidia-173-dev - NVIDIA binary Xorg driver development file p nvidia-173-dev:i386 - NVIDIA binary Xorg driver development file p nvidia-304 - NVIDIA binary Xorg driver, kernel module a p nvidia-304:i386 - NVIDIA binary Xorg driver, kernel module a p nvidia-304-dev - NVIDIA binary Xorg driver development file p nvidia-304-dev:i386 - NVIDIA binary Xorg driver development file p nvidia-304-updates - NVIDIA binary Xorg driver, kernel module a p nvidia-304-updates:i386 - NVIDIA binary Xorg driver, kernel module a p nvidia-304-updates-dev - NVIDIA binary Xorg driver development file p nvidia-304-updates-dev:i386 - NVIDIA binary Xorg driver development file p nvidia-310 - Transitional package for nvidia-310 p nvidia-310:i386 - Transitional package for nvidia-310 p nvidia-310-dev - Transitional package for nvidia-310-dev p nvidia-310-dev:i386 - Transitional package for nvidia-310-dev p nvidia-310-updates - Transitional package for nvidia-310-update p nvidia-310-updates:i386 - Transitional package for nvidia-310-update p nvidia-310-updates-dev - Transitional package for nvidia-310-update p nvidia-310-updates-dev:i386 - Transitional package for nvidia-310-update p nvidia-313-updates - Transitional package for nvidia-313-update p nvidia-313-updates:i386 - Transitional package for nvidia-313-update p nvidia-313-updates-dev - Transitional package for nvidia-313-update p nvidia-313-updates-dev:i386 - Transitional package for nvidia-313-update p nvidia-319 - Transitional package for nvidia-319 p nvidia-319:i386 - Transitional package for nvidia-319 p nvidia-319-dev - Transitional package for nvidia-319-dev p nvidia-319-dev:i386 - Transitional package for nvidia-319-dev c nvidia-319-updates - NVIDIA binary Xorg driver, kernel module a p nvidia-319-updates:i386 - NVIDIA binary Xorg driver, kernel module a p nvidia-319-updates-dev - NVIDIA binary Xorg driver development file p nvidia-319-updates-dev:i386 - NVIDIA binary Xorg driver development file i nvidia-331 - NVIDIA binary Xorg driver, kernel module a p nvidia-331:i386 - NVIDIA binary Xorg driver, kernel module a p nvidia-331-dev - NVIDIA binary Xorg driver development file p nvidia-331-dev:i386 - NVIDIA binary Xorg driver development file p nvidia-cg-dev - Cg Toolkit - GPU Shader Authoring Language p nvidia-cg-dev:i386 - Cg Toolkit - GPU Shader Authoring Language p nvidia-cg-doc - Cg Toolkit - GPU Shader Authoring Language p nvidia-cg-toolkit - Cg Toolkit - GPU Shader Authoring Language p nvidia-cg-toolkit:i386 - Cg Toolkit - GPU Shader Authoring Language p nvidia-common - transitional package for ubuntu-drivers-co p nvidia-common:i386 - transitional package for ubuntu-drivers-co p nvidia-cuda-dev - NVIDIA CUDA development files p nvidia-cuda-dev:i386 - NVIDIA CUDA development files p nvidia-cuda-doc - NVIDIA CUDA and OpenCL documentation p nvidia-cuda-gdb - NVIDIA CUDA GDB p nvidia-cuda-gdb:i386 - NVIDIA CUDA GDB p nvidia-cuda-toolkit - NVIDIA CUDA toolkit p nvidia-cuda-toolkit:i386 - NVIDIA CUDA toolkit p nvidia-current - Transitional package for nvidia-current p nvidia-current:i386 - Transitional package for nvidia-current p nvidia-current-dev - Transitional package for nvidia-current-de p nvidia-current-dev:i386 - Transitional package for nvidia-current-de p nvidia-current-updates - Transitional package for nvidia-current-up p nvidia-current-updates:i386 - Transitional package for nvidia-current-up p nvidia-current-updates-dev - Transitional package for nvidia-current-up p nvidia-current-updates-dev:i386 - Transitional package for nvidia-current-up v nvidia-driver-binary - v nvidia-driver-binary:i386 - p nvidia-experimental-304 - Transitional package for nvidia-experiment p nvidia-experimental-304:i386 - Transitional package for nvidia-experiment p nvidia-experimental-304-dev - Transitional package for nvidia-experiment p nvidia-experimental-304-dev:i38 - Transitional package for nvidia-experiment p nvidia-experimental-310 - Transitional package for nvidia-experiment p nvidia-experimental-310:i386 - Transitional package for nvidia-experiment p nvidia-experimental-310-dev - Transitional package for nvidia-experiment p nvidia-experimental-310-dev:i38 - Transitional package for nvidia-experiment p nvidia-nsight - NVIDIA Nsight Eclipse Edition p nvidia-nsight:i386 - NVIDIA Nsight Eclipse Edition p nvidia-opencl-dev - NVIDIA OpenCL development files p nvidia-opencl-dev:i386 - NVIDIA OpenCL development files i A nvidia-persistenced - Load the NVIDIA kernel driver and create d p nvidia-persistenced:i386 - Load the NVIDIA kernel driver and create d p nvidia-prime - Tools to enable NVIDIA's Prime p nvidia-profiler - NVIDIA Profiler for CUDA and OpenCL p nvidia-profiler:i386 - NVIDIA Profiler for CUDA and OpenCL p nvidia-settings - Transitional package for nvidia-settings p nvidia-settings:i386 - Transitional package for nvidia-settings p nvidia-settings-304 - Tool for configuring the NVIDIA graphics d p nvidia-settings-304:i386 - Tool for configuring the NVIDIA graphics d p nvidia-settings-304-updates - Tool for configuring the NVIDIA graphics d p nvidia-settings-304-updates:i38 - Tool for configuring the NVIDIA graphics d p nvidia-settings-310 - Transitional package for nvidia-settings-3 p nvidia-settings-310:i386 - Transitional package for nvidia-settings-3 p nvidia-settings-310-updates - Transitional package for nvidia-settings-3 p nvidia-settings-310-updates:i38 - Transitional package for nvidia-settings-3 p nvidia-settings-313-updates - Transitional package for nvidia-settings-3 p nvidia-settings-313-updates:i38 - Transitional package for nvidia-settings-3 p nvidia-settings-319 - Transitional package for nvidia-settings-3 p nvidia-settings-319:i386 - Transitional package for nvidia-settings-3 c nvidia-settings-319-updates - Tool for configuring the NVIDIA graphics d p nvidia-settings-319-updates:i38 - Tool for configuring the NVIDIA graphics d i A nvidia-settings-331 - Tool for configuring the NVIDIA graphics d p nvidia-settings-331:i386 - Tool for configuring the NVIDIA graphics d v nvidia-settings-binary - v nvidia-settings-binary:i386 - p nvidia-settings-experimental-30 - Transitional package for nvidia-settings-e p nvidia-settings-experimental-30 - Transitional package for nvidia-settings-e p nvidia-settings-updates - Transitional package for nvidia-settings-u p nvidia-settings-updates:i386 - Transitional package for nvidia-settings-u v nvidia-texture-tools - v nvidia-texture-tools:i386 - v nvidia-va-driver - v nvidia-va-driver:i386 - p nvidia-visual-profiler - NVIDIA Visual Profiler p nvidia-visual-profiler:i386 - NVIDIA Visual Profiler

And this is as far as I got. I'll be grateful for any hints on how to move on.