Laptop always uses Intel graphics instead of Nvidia

[Daniel]

A little while ago an update was installed for the Nvidia drivers, and now my laptop always uses the Intel integrated graphics instead of the Nvidia card. I've had this problem before and no matter what I do I can't get my laptop to use the Nvidia drivers. The last few times it happened (on previous versions of Kubuntu) I ended up reinstalling Kubuntu as that was the fastest way of getting everything to work again as nothing else seems to work.

My graphics card is a TU116 [GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Mobile] as reported by the Driver Manager. In the Driver Manager I tried every available proprietary driver and nouveau driver as well. None of them fixing the problem. According to the documentation from Nvidia my card is still supported by their drivers.

I tried a few commands I found on askubuntu in threads of people who had a similar problem, but none of them worked either.

lspci -v

gives (among other outputs) the following outputs for the integrated graphics and for my graphics card:

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation CoffeeLake-H GT2 [UHD Graphics 630] (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
DeviceName: Onboard - Video
Subsystem: Dell CoffeeLake-H GT2 [UHD Graphics 630]
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 164
Memory at eb000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
Memory at 80000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
I/O ports at 5000 [size=64]
Expansion ROM at 000c0000 [virtual] [disabled] [size=128K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: i915
Kernel modules: i915

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation TU116M [GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Mobile] (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
Subsystem: Dell TU116M [GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Mobile]
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 255
Memory at ec000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
Memory at c0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
Memory at d0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=32M]
I/O ports at 4000 [disabled] [size=128]
Expansion ROM at ed000000 [disabled] [size=512K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel modules: nvidiafb, nouveau

lspci -vnnn | perl -lne 'print if /^\d+\:.+(\[\S+\:\S+\])/' | grep VGA

gives:

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation CoffeeLake-H GT2 [UHD Graphics 630] [8086:3e9b] (prog-if 00 [VGA controlle
r])
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation TU116M [GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Mobile] [10de:2191] (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA
controller])

nvidia-smi -a

gives (I have ran the command with the latest driver installed):

NVIDIA-SMI has failed because it couldn't communicate with the NVIDIA driver. Make sure that the latest NVIDIA driver is installed and
running.

nvidia-settings​

when run in Konsole gives the following output there:

ERROR: NVIDIA driver is not loaded


(nvidia-settings:3682): Gtk-WARNING **: 20:24:44.400: Theme parsing error: gtk.css:1649:16: '-gtk-icon-size' is not a valid property n
ame

(nvidia-settings:3682): Gtk-WARNING **: 20:24:44.400: Theme parsing error: gtk.css:1652:16: '-gtk-icon-size' is not a valid property n
ame

(nvidia-settings:3682): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: 20:24:44.424: g_object_unref: assertion 'G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed

** (nvidia-settings:3682): CRITICAL **: 20:24:44.426: ctk_powermode_new: assertion '(ctrl_target != NULL) && (ctrl_target->h != NULL)'
failed

ERROR: nvidia-settings could not find the registry key file or the X server is not accessible. This file should have been installed
along with this driver at /usr/share/nvidia/nvidia-application-profiles-key-documentation. The application profiles will
continue to work, but values cannot be prepopulated or validated, and will not be listed in the help text. Please see the
README for possible values and descriptions.

** Message: 20:24:44.454: PRIME: No offloading required. Abort
** Message: 20:24:44.454: PRIME: is it supported? no

So I assume the driver is not loaded even though I told my laptop to load it. The settings utility that it opens doesn't give me any opportunity to load the driver, or to say that it should be loaded after the next reboot.

prime-select query

initially told me on-demand but manually changing it to nvidia did not give any result. My laptop still uses the integrated graphics.

Is my graphics card no longer supported in Linux? I remember it working under 20.04 but given problems under later versions of Kubuntu (I also tried to get it working under the KDE spin of Fedora, but that gave me even more problems with the graphics card in that it didn't even install correctly. A reinstall of Kubutu will at least recognise it correctly - the problems start later after update come through.)

Or is it even possible that something is wrong with the actual hardware? How can I test for this?

Thank you!

[Schwarzer Kater]

According to Nvidia the supported Linux drivers for your GTX 1660 Ti graphics card are: 535.x, 530.x, 525.x and 520.x.


What does cat /proc/cmdline say?

Did you search e.g. sudo dmesg -H for hints?

Do you have settings files in /etc/X11 or /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d for you Nvidia card?

[Daniel]

cat /proc/cmdline

comes back with:

BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-6.2.0-1007-lowlatency root=UUID=c8151de0-63d4-4223-926f-22e450477eb6 ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7

sudo dmesg -H

comes back with:

[ +0.000274] nvidia-gpu 0000:01:00.3: i2c timeout error e0000000

I have tried to find the settings files in /etc/X11 and there is nothing there that looks like anything referring to the nvidia card, and /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d is completely empty.

The driver that is currently selected is 535.

[claydoh]

BOOT_IMAGE=

Use grub to boot to a normal stock kernel, you seem to be suffering from a recent Ubuntu/nvidia packaging bug that installed a number of non-standard kernels that don't work well with the Nvidia drivers and/or are missing appropriate kernel modules or headers for that low latency kernel.

[Daniel]

I seem to have the following kernels on my computer:

1 Ubuntu, with Linux 6.2.0-1007-lowlatency
3 Ubuntu, with Linux 6.2.0-1005-oracle
5 Ubuntu, with Linux 6.2.0-25-generic

I have tried to set the 6.2.0-25 kernel as the one to boot with. However, I have only been successful with booting to this kernel as a temporary boot. When I try to set it as the default it ignores me, and keeps booting into the low latency one. I have tried to follow several different guides I found online, with the same result for every one I tried. All guides seem to be several years old, so maybe some steps have been changed and I am not entering the correct commands?

Can you please point me to an up to date guide that I can follow as I just seem to be running round in circles?

Thank you!

[claydoh]

You simply need to boot to the good kernel (Ubuntu, with Linux 6.2.0-25-generic or similar), then uninstall the extras.

Use Muon/Synaptic to find all 'linux-image' packages installed, or run:

apt search linux-image | grep installed

Uninstall any listed that do not contain the word 'generic'.
Then make sure that the core kernel meta-packages are installed (they probably are)

sudo apt install linux-generic linux-headers-generic linux-image-generic

Then clean up any unneeded packages

sudo apt autoremove

To change the boot order, you both need to edit a config file, and then run sudo update-grub
The ordering starts at 0, so don't forget that. if the 6.2.0-25-generic kernel entry is the third one, after the two others plus their respective recovery modes, this one would be "4", not.
You can also install and try Grub Customizer.

Do you multiple Linuxes (Linuxi?) installed by any chance?

[Daniel]

I have changed the grub options to always give me the boot menu, so that I can choose which kernel to start with. I did this to see if my laptop still starts. It does, but it still shows the integrated Intel graphics driver as the one being used. I tried to select the nvidia drivers in the driver manager, but this crashes my computer near the end of the update process. (I've tried a few times.) Is this because I haven't done the other steps yet to automatically boot in the correct kernel, or is there something else that can cause this?

This computer only has the latest version of Kubuntu installed and no other OS.

[claydoh]

Is this because I haven't done the other steps yet to automatically boot in the correct kernel

No, not at all.
Managing Nvidia drivers simply sucks fish-oil flavored lollipops, on top of distro level packaging fubars.
Maybe reinstalling drivers will trigger modules to be rebuilt for all the installed kernels, but I really don't know. It is supposed to, I think. I gave up on Nvidia graphics quite a few years ago.
We do have plenty of users though, who hopefully can provide useful tips for this.

What does the Driver Manager show as being installed?

[Daniel]

I went all the way and uninstalled the drivers that did not have "generic" in their name. This seems to have worked as now when booting the correct kernel and nvidia driver are being loaded. I did not have to try to select the correct driver in the driver manager, and the nvidia card is now listed as the graphics processor in Info Centre. I did have to select performance mode in NVIDIA settings as the on-demand setting doesn't seem to work at all. (And on-demand was selected automatically.)

The driver manager is currently showing the following available drivers:
NVIDIA driver metapackage from nvidia-driver-535 (this is the one currently in use)
NVIDIA Server Driver metapackage from nvidia-driver-525-server
NVIDIA driver metapackage from nvidia-driver-470
NVIDIA driver (open kernel) metapackage from nvidia-driver-535-open
NVIDIA Server Driver metapackage from nvidia-driver-450-server
NVIDIA driver (open kernel) metapackage from nvidia-driver-535-server-open
NVIDIA Server Driver metapackage from nvidia-driver-535-server
NVIDIA driver metapackage from nvidia-driver-525
NVIDIA Server Driver metapackage from nvidia-driver-470-server
NVIDIA driver (open kernel) metapackage from nvidia-driver-525-open
X.Org X server -- Nouveau display driver from xserver-xorg-video-nouveau

So my issue seems to be fixed now. Many thanks!