[SOLVED] Problem with nvidia after update

[jorritTyb]

Hi all.

I have a MSI laptop with a RTX 3080 on which I installed Kubuntu 21.10. All was working perfectly and I was using good performance with my video card (using the proprietary driver version 470).
Yesterday however there was a system update which I always do as soon as I can and I noticed it contained some nvidia things. I updated and after that worked on. However, later that day I booted my laptop again and I now have several problems:

• My second monitor is no longer recognized. In Display Configuration there is only one screen (my laptop screen) and nothing else
• The nvidia driver no longer appears to be working even though the driver manager still says: 'Using NVIDIA driver metapackage from nvidia-driver-470 (proprietary, tested). I know it is not working because 3D games (like Vintage Story now run at 70 seconds per frame instead of 70 frames per second)

If I try to run nvidia-settings I get an empty window and this appears on the console:

jorrit@jorrit-Raider:~$ nvidia-settings

ERROR: NVIDIA driver is not loaded


ERROR: Unable to load info from any available system


(nvidia-settings:33846): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: 05:22:14.696: g_object_unref: assertion 'G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed
** Message: 05:22:14.697: PRIME: No offloading required. Abort
** Message: 05:22:14.697: PRIME: is it supported? no

dkms status

The prime-select command is set to 'nvidia'

Also nvidia-smi says:

jorrit@jorrit-Raider:~$ nvidia-smi
NVIDIA-SMI has failed because it couldn't communicate with the NVIDIA driver. Make sure that the latest NVIDIA driver is installed and running.

What can I do to get my second monitor back and a working nvidia driver? Also is it to be expected that system updates do such breaking changes on drivers?

Thanks in advance!

[jorritTyb]

Never mind, solved both problems with:



sudo update-initramfs -u

Still wondering though. I like Linux a lot and when my system works it works so nicely. However, this kind of problem leaves me wondering how less tech-savy people are going to be able to fix things like this.

[Snowhog]

I'm going to guess here, that in 'yesterdays' system update there was a kernel update (new kernel)? Do you have the package dkms installed? If not, install it. dkms (Dynamic Kernel Module Support) ensures that kernel modules separately installed; not part of the kernel; are dynamically maintained when the kernel using such modules is updated or a newer kernel comes down the pike.

[jorritTyb]

Indeed there was a kernel update. Thanks for the tip! Why isn't dkms installed standard then? Seems like something pretty essential

[jorritTyb]

Oh, just noticed I actually already have dkms installed. Do I need to do anything special to make it work?

[oshunluvr]

Oh, just noticed I actually already have dkms installed. Do I need to do anything special to make it work?

You shouldn't have to. The update procedure is supposed to update initramfs and dkms automatically. Next time you do a "full-upgrade" that includes a kernel update, do it from the command line and observe the actions. You should see update-initramfs and dkms update during the process. If you don't - something is amiss.