New motherboard, changed driver, no desktop

[lcharles]

I recently had to replace my motherboard. Initially there seemed to be no problems. However after about 20 minutes the screen went black, if I pressed a key like the "Shift" key I got the Desktop back. After a bit the same thing happened. So I figured there was some conflict with the video driver. I had been using Nvidia 310 (listed as "beta"). So I decided to go back to the recommended driver 304. I used the driver update app from the system menu. After it was done I rebooted as recommended. After an initial Kubuntu screen, at the point it goes to the login screen, it goes black and I get a login command prompt.

If I try "startx" I get a lot of output but the problem seems to be this: "Using '/usr/share/x11/xorg.conf.d NVIDIA API mismatch. Kernel module has version 310 but this NVIDIA driver componet has version 304. Please make sure that the Kernel module and the NVIDIA driver component have the same version.

I'm running kernel version 3.2.0-45-generic.

[lcharles]

So I took the advice of another post in this section "Serious problems with nVidia proprietary driver installation on 64-bit Kubuntu 12.04" by Ceasar. I ran the section with the following commands in a terminal:

1. sudo rmmod nvidia
2. sudo apt-get purge nvidia-current (or nvidia-current-updates - depending on which You have previously installed)
3. sudo rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf
4. sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

and I got my desktop back. The wierd part is that I don't seem to be running the Nouveau driver, I seem to be back to Nvidai 310. How do I check what driver is really the installed one? How do I check that everything is ok with the system so I don't have the same problem in the future if I try to change the driver?

[eddieg538]

I have an older nvidia card and mine goes black after 25 minutes, I changed it from 20. This is a screen setting in your power manager in system settings and can be turned off. I suspect there was nothing wrong in your driver. This power management is on by default and set to 20 minutes. I use the 304 driver.

[lcharles]

eddieg538,

I think you're right but the last part of the post still stands.

How do I check what driver is really the installed one? How do I check that everything is ok with the system so I don't have the same problem in the future if I try to change the driver?

[oshunluvr]

One way is to do:

cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log |grep Driver

The output should have a line in it something like:

(II) NVIDIA Unified Driver blah blah blah...

[eddieg538]

Following oshunluvr's is what I would do. Mine reads...

[ 34.678] X.Org Video Driver: 11.0
[ 34.807] Module class: X.Org Video Driver
[ 34.808] Module class: X.Org Video Driver
[ 34.808] ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 11.0
[ 34.810] Module class: X.Org Video Driver
[ 34.810] ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 11.0
[ 34.810] ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 11.0
[ 34.811] Module class: X.Org Video Driver
[ 34.811] Module class: X.Org Video Driver
[ 34.811] ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 11.0
[ 34.821] Module class: X.Org Video Driver
[ 34.821] ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 11.0
[ 34.821] ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 11.0
[ 34.821] (II) NVIDIA dlloader X Driver 304.88 Wed Mar 27 14:32:42 PDT 2013
[ 34.821] (II) NVIDIA Unified Driver for all Supported NVIDIA GPUs
[ 34.837] ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 11.0
[ 37.398] Module class: X.Org XInput Driver
[ 37.410] Module class: X.Org XInput Driver

[lcharles]

Thanks,

lcharles