Nvidia-xconfig update booting to blank screen new install 20.04

[webheadjunky2]

Hi

Returned to Ubuntu after a number of years and installed the Deepin 20.04 LTS flavour yesterday

Loved it but only issue was not being able to get linked monitor working

Previously had Mint Mate 18.04 where it worked

I have an HP Omen gaming laptop with dual intel and nvidia drivers

It is connected to a Dell monitor via an HDMI connection to a Toshiba Dynandock 3.0 docking Station

I tried to do the recommended thing by trying existing forum solution first and followed steps like installing
latest nVidia drivers (I think it was 460)

Nothing worked

The last post I read was to run: "sudo nvidia-xconfig" whixh I did. I noticed a response around creating a new /etc/xconf file or something similar

However, reboot now fails to load properly and freezes at a black screen with a login prompt

Hope this is something you can help me with and grateful for your advice

Thanks in advance

R

[simon-webb]

Hi. If you created any custom configurations under /etc/X11 just shift them back out of there (move them to your home folder or wherever) and things should work again. One of the reasons Xorg configures hardware automatically these days is that getting the manual configuration right can be quite fiddly (in the sense that small mistakes can stop the hardware from working)...but fortunately, just getting rid of the manual configuration files should get it auto-detecting stuff again.

[Edit]: That should get you back to a working display, but not necessarily the two that you want. I wonder...do you know for sure that you were using the NVIDIA drivers on Mint MATE? If you have both Intel and NVIDIA cards, you actually have about five (!) possible setups, namely (1) you run everything off the low-power Intel chipset, (2) you run everything of the faster but more power-hungry NVIDIA chipset, or (3) you set things up so you can alternate between them, running the Intel by default but engaging the NVIDIA when you need it. I say five rather than three possibilities because an added complication is that you have a choice of two very different drivers for the NVIDIA display...the free in-kernel nouveau driver and the official proprietary closed-source NVIDIA driver (so each of the options that use the NVIDIA hardware can actually do it in two different ways). All of this means that there are lots of possibilities for what you were seeing on Mint MATE: for example, it might have been the Intel hardware driving both displays, with no involvement from the NVIDIA card at all.

As far as I know it should be possible to get the two displays working properly on any of the options for how you want to use your hardware...so it might be best to decide that first and then research the way to achieve the dual displays with that particular setup. On the other hand if you don't really care about the graphics hardware, maybe forget about NVIDIA and just use the Intel driver, because that will give you longer battery life and might just work "out of the box" for dual displays (i.e. the GUI display configuration tools should work without any additional fiddling). On the other hand if you're wanting to use your gaming laptop for gaming on Linux, the proprietary Linux driver is probably the way to go: the in-kernel nouveau and Intel drivers are safer but nowhere near as fast.

[webheadjunky2]

Many thanks Simon for quick response

To be honest. I don't know what setup I had in Mint - it just recognised both displays and I
was happy with that

Here I could see the default was intel and my second display was blank so something not right

Do I boot to command prompt

Grateful if you could advise re command /filepath please

Regards
R

[CelticWarrior]

How did you install the NVIDIA drivers? In any current release it can be done automatically just by enabling the "install third-party drivers, codecs, etc." option during the Ubuntu installation.
Please also post your NVIDIA card model.
Note: The latest driver version may not be the recommended one.

[webheadjunky2]

Hi I went into an nvidia settings tool and selected the recommended driver
from there

From windows device manager I have:
Intel HD Graphics 630 and Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti

Cheers
R


1

[CelticWarrior]

I'm not familiar with the "nvidia settings tool", maybe a feature of your distro?
Anyway, the driver version is correct for a GTX 1010ti

[webheadjunky2]

If it helps to resolve, whilst I can no longer boot into 5.4.0.64, I can boot into 5.4.0.42

Cheers
R

[webheadjunky2]

Ok I purged the newer kernel so I can boot into older kernel without selecting advanced options

I thought I might then reinstate the newer kernel via a "dist-upgrade" but that did nothing

Have I therefore done a bad thing and compromised my system?

Also, shall I continue this thread re inactive monitor or post a new one?

Grateful if you could let me know

When I run the "nvidia-settings" command, a little pop-up advises I am in Nvidia performance mode

Typing this on phone so will post screen shot seperatelu

Cheers

R

[webheadjunky2]

screen dump attached

[CelticWarrior]

Have you disabled Secure Boot in UEFI settings? You should otherwise unsigned drivers like the Nvidia ones won't load. Unsure why it worked with Mint before but worth to check anyway.