Cannot login after upgrading with NVIDIA driver enabled

[coastalroad]

A few hours ago, I upgraded to Kubuntu Natty on my desktop after having upgraded on my laptop. The laptop uses an ATI card and the upgrade went just fine - no problems.

But on the desktop, which has an NVIDIA card, I found myself unable to login. I got as far as the loading screen, but it froze there, with the "K" never coming in to focus.

Nothing I did made the problem go away until I set the xorg.conf file to use the nv driver instead of the proprietary NVIDIA one. I had to edit xorg.conf from the command line to break NVIDIA's grip on my system.

Incidentally, this isn't the first time NVIDIA's proprietary driver has caused problems for me. It's refused to work before when I've upgraded to a new kernel, but I've always been able to solve that problem by updating the headers. This problem is different.

Once I got into the GUI, I tried removing + purging the NVIDIA driver and reinstalling it. But the problem persists. At this point, only nv is working.

I can probably live without proprietary drivers, if need be. But I'm wondering if this problem is unique to my system or if others are experiencing it. A less experienced user may have no clue how to switch display drivers using the command line and restore their system.

UPDATE: Okay, finally got the proprietary driver to work. If anyone finds this post and has the same problem, what you do is run "sudo nvidia-xconfig" from Konsole or the terminal. That will rebuild xorg.conf with the correct settings for NVIDIA's stupid proprietary driver. Reboot your machine and it *should* work.

[Spadge]

Re: Cannot login after upgrading with NVIDIA driver enabled

UPDATE: Okay, finally got the proprietary driver to work. If anyone finds this post and has the same problem, what you do is run "sudo nvidia-xconfig" from Konsole or the terminal. That will rebuild xorg.conf with the correct settings for NVIDIA's stupid proprietary driver. Reboot your machine and it *should* work.

Also ... You may need to blacklist nouveau in modprobe.d and rebuild your initramfs.

[spoon]

Re: Cannot login after upgrading with NVIDIA driver enabled

Also ... You may need to blacklist nouveau in modprobe.d and rebuild your initramfs.

Spadge, or anyone else, I'm wondering if you could explain exactly how to do the above.

Plus this seems to be a pretty common problem folks are having with Nvidia cards. Do you suppose they will have to release a new liveCD with a bug fix for this?

Thanks

[doctordruidphd]

Re: Cannot login after upgrading with NVIDIA driver enabled

I'm wondering if you could explain exactly how to do the above

Interesting thing is, for the first time, I found that the installation process did that for me.

Take a look in your /etc/modprobe.d directory, and see if you have a file nvidia-graphics-drivers.conf. It may actually be a symbolic link. If it doesn't exist, then create it with an editor (you will need to use sudo or kdesudo to create the file). the file should contain the following:

blacklist nouveau
blacklist lbm-nouveau
blacklist nvidia-173
blacklist nvidia-96

Once you have created this file, then

sudo update-initramfs -u

and reboot. This will prevent the listed drivers from loading.

[footer]

Re: Cannot login after upgrading with NVIDIA driver enabled

I've experienced problems with my nvidia card/drivers and Kubuntu. This upgrade though (11.04) has been about the worst so far ... and I've been using Kubuntu since 5.04! I'm currently batting a 3+ minute delay from kernel load to KDE login screen (in another thread in this forum) ... no idea what's causing that. I have yet to dig into the proprietary driver issues, but I seem to be using a driver that allows for acceleration, etc. since my desktop works as before the upgrade when I was using the prop. nvidia driver.

Anyway, I'm growing weary of fiddling with config files all the time and wish that, for the most part, things would just work. But then I guess I'd be using a Mac or Windows OS. But it is sad that we've come this far and anyone new to Linux might have to go through all this to make it work.

Well, not going there so turning the whining off for now.

Thanks for reading!

[doctordruidphd]

Re: Cannot login after upgrading with NVIDIA driver enabled

things would just work. But then I guess I'd be using a Mac or Windows OS

Wanna bet? Can't speak for the Mac, but as far as the other OS is concerned, I came here because no matter what I did it NEVER worked right. Admittedly linux takes a lot of fiddling if you want it to do more than the packagers envisioned, but at the end of the day it winds up working. Way more than I can say for the pay-whether-it-works-or-not OS.

OK, this isn't the flame board, sorry. A target of opportunity is a legitimate shot, though.

As to the problem at hand, a couple of suggestions:

1. Make sure your /etc/fstab file doesn't contain any devices that aren't there.

2. Remove plymouth, whether using apt-get remove --purge or by physically deleting all of its files and running sudo update-initramfs -u .That should allow you to see where in the boot process you are stalling.

3. You can tell if you are using an installed nvidia driver with the following command:
dpkg-query --list nvidia
Among the lines it spits out, and starting with ii are actually installed. If nothing comes out installed, you are probably using the proprietary driver. FYI - I have found that the nvidia-current package installed using the x-swat repository works just as well as the proprietary driver, and is a lot more convenient to maintain.

[Tiger 955]

Re: Cannot login after upgrading with NVIDIA driver enabled

HELP I've got the same problem - K logo doesn't come into focus, intro music plays but unable to get past this.
Have tried all the above suggestions but to no avail.
when running dpkg-query --list nvidia it returns: No packages found matching nvidia.

When running sudo nvidia-xconfig it returns: Using X configuration file: "/etc/X11/xorg.conf"
Backed up file '/etc/X11/xorg.conf' as /etc/X11/xorg.conf.backup'
New X configuration file written to '/etc/X11/xorg.conf'

The black list file is there as above.

When running sudo update-initramfs -u returns: update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-2.6.38-8-generic
W: mdadm: /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf defines no arrays.

I am / was running two monitors if this makes a difference?!?

Thanks in anticipation.

[dibl]

Re: Cannot login after upgrading with NVIDIA driver enabled

when running dpkg-query --list nvidia it returns: No packages found matching nvidia.

Try it again, with a "sudo" prefix.

When running sudo nvidia-xconfig ...

No no, nvidia-xconfig is a graphical package, so you must use "kdesudo" to run it in root mode (if that's what you want to do).

I am no expert on mdadm, but if you are using a raid, and it is broken, then your problem may have nothing to do with the video driver. Can you boot the system in recovery mode? If so, I would advise doing that, and then at the tty console you need to confirm that your drives are mounted and your filesystems are intact. If they are, then you can continue your investigation of a video driver problem. This might or might not be helpful: http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3107406.0

[Tiger 955]

Re: Cannot login after upgrading with NVIDIA driver enabled

Thanks for the reply dibl.

I'm not running a raid system.

Trying Failsafe mode from login screen, it just flashes black screen & comes back to login screen!

Putting sudo in front of dpkg-query --list nvidia returned the same result.

kdesudo nvidia-xconfig returns: kdesudo: cannot connect to X server

Tried option 2 an unofficial *buntu way, from the link, still no joy!

[doctordruidphd]

Re: Cannot login after upgrading with NVIDIA driver enabled

There is no "nvidia" package, and dpkg-query --list expects an exact match.
Try dpkg-query --list nvidia-current
If it shows nvidia-current is installed, then try moving your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file out of the way (rename it to, for example, xorg.conf.old -- you will need sudo to do this) and then
sudo dpkg-reconfigure nvidia-current which should install a new, bare-bones xorg.conf

If you ARE getting the kdm greeter (login screen) but kde itself isn't starting, then your video driver might be OK, and you are actually having a plasma crash. When you get the black screen, hit ALT-F2 and see if the launcher box comes up. If it does, type konsole and that should bring up a terminal. Then type plasma-desktop and see what happens. If you just get a video flash, then plasma is messed up, and you will need to either delete, or move out of the way by renaming, ~/.kde/share/config/plasma* (there will be several files there).

The other thing you might need to do to fix this is disable compositing in kwin. Edit the ~/.kde/share/config/kwinrc file, look for the [Compositing] section, find the Enabled=true line and change true to false. The try starting kde again.

[Tiger 955]

Re: Cannot login after upgrading with NVIDIA driver enabled

Thanks for the help doctordruidphd.

I also think the video drivers are OK as nvidia-current is installed with latest version.

I get the kdm greeter login the icons (hd, tools, world, desktop) all come up into focus but it stops with the last icon (K) out of focus, then the intro music plays & it just sits there.

Tried the plasma-desktop command from the console (ALT-F2 didn't work, but can login to the console from the login screen (red icon gives this choice))
It stayed black screen & replied:-
Plasma desktop (1985):KUniqueApplication:Cannot find the D-Bus session server:"//bin/dbus-launch terminated abnormally with the following error:Autolaunch error:X11 initialization failed"
Plasma desktop (1985):KUniqueApplication:Pipe Closed uexpectedly

Tried to find the plasma* files but ls doesn't list anything in /.kde/share/config/ !?!?, had to login as root to get to the directory.

Any more help would be greatly appreciated as I have a lot of work I need to be doing on the PC.

[doctordruidphd]

Re: Cannot login after upgrading with NVIDIA driver enabled

OK, new suggestiion:

Log in with the console, then

sudo service kdm stop
cd ~
mv .kde .kde-old
sudo service kdm start

see if that starts your desktop. I suspect that either there is a problem with a kde config file, in which case this should start the desktop up, or there may be other video issues, particularly with acceleration. If this experiment doesn't work, then I guess the next step might be to download the latest beta video driver from NVIDIA, and go through dibl's procedure for removing your old drivers and try installing it. Oh yeah, be sure to read on the NVIDIA site which cards are actually supported by the driver, as that could also be a problem. There are known issues with Optima (I think that's what it is called) in some newer laptops, and you might be stuck reverting to vesa, or else actually going with nouveau.

[Tiger 955]

Re: Cannot login after upgrading with NVIDIA driver enabled

I've reinstalled kdm, kde etc as per other postings with similar fault, still no luck, as with your latest. The 5th icon (K) on greeter is barely visible when it freezes.

There is a beta driver for my Ge Force 7300le card same release date as none beta version (are these different?) Will try to install but not sure how to from console.

Last resort reinstall 10.10 must get it working soon.

Thanks

[doctordruidphd]

Re: Cannot login after upgrading with NVIDIA driver enabled

I don't know anything about setting up dual screen video, but there could be some problem there. So I'm shotgunning it at this point.

What I would try is, removing the secondary monitor (unplugging it from the video card) and see if you can get it to come up.

You might take a look at your /var/log/Xorg.0.log file, and see if it ends with any errors, or anything looking suspiciously like an error.

Another thing to try: when you boot the system, in the grub menu, once you have highlighted what you want to boot, hit the e key. If there is a line that says gfxpayload then rub out that line with the backspace key. Then look for the line that starts with linux. There will be a statement in that line that starts with /boot followed by one that starts with root=; leave those alone, but rub out everything after the root statement (these changes are only temporary). Then hit CTL-X to boot. There should be no splash screen, and see what happens after that.

If not, then I guess try booting from an 11.04 live cd. If that doesn't come up, then there is a kernel issue -- that is possible, and if so, there are probably kernel boot flags that could be used to fix it.

[Tiger 955]

Re: Cannot login after upgrading with NVIDIA driver enabled

Well, live cd booted OK so decided to install from this with the risk of loosing data. Installation OK but I have two drives & it only saw one of them? my spare backup drive (I think).
Checking video settings & setting up to work both monitors I noticed the driver was 173. something & the nvidia-common was not activated! So activated this (which down loaded files etc) & on re-boot SAME PROBLEM, freezes at the K icon with it all fuzzy. So this must be the problem. What is the best way forward from here? try the beta driver.
Can I reinstall the 173.* driver from the console & how?

Thanks again.