GUI broken due to failed NVidia driver installation

[N1GHTS]

Hardware: Dell Mobile Precision 7520 (Laptop)
Video: NVIDIA Quadro M1200, Intel HD Graphics 630
OS: OpenSUSE Leap 42.3

Current Operational Problem: Boots into terminal screen. Screen flashes once per second.
How this happened: Attempted to install the proprietary Nvidia driver using the instructions for NVIDIA_the_hard_way.

Other things I tried:

• Reverting to nouveau in a desperate attempt to get my computer working again. It failed.
• Installing RPM redhat video drivers from the Dell website for this laptop. The Nvidia installation failed due to newer kernel.
• Reinstalling proprietary driver. It claims success but does not boot up properly.

I'm not exactly sure how to proceed. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[malcolmlewis]

Hardware: Dell Mobile Precision 7520 (Laptop)
Video: NVIDIA Quadro M1200, Intel HD Graphics 630
OS: OpenSUSE Leap 42.3

Current Operational Problem: Boots into terminal screen. Screen flashes once per second.
How this happened: Attempted to install the proprietary Nvidia driver using the instructions for NVIDIA_the_hard_way.

Other things I tried:

• Reverting to nouveau in a desperate attempt to get my computer working again. It failed.
• Installing RPM redhat video drivers from the Dell website for this laptop. The Nvidia installation failed due to newer kernel.
• Reinstalling proprietary driver. It claims success but does not boot up properly.

I'm not exactly sure how to proceed. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Hi and welcome to the Forum
You need to set up Bumblebee for the dual graphics, see here;
https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:NVIDIA_Bumblebee

[N1GHTS]

Hello malcolmlewis, thank you for your quick reply.

I tried all the steps explained in your link, except that instead of installing the NVidia driver the easy way, I did it the hard way with the proprietary driver program.

The entire procedure appeared to go flawlessly. Unfortunately when I rebooted to test it, I am greeted with a black screen and a mouse cursor. It's as if Plasma shell has not booted up.

Any ideas what I should try next?

[malcolmlewis]

Hello malcolmlewis, thank you for your quick reply.

I tried all the steps explained in your link, except that instead of installing the NVidia driver the easy way, I did it the hard way with the proprietary driver program.

The entire procedure appeared to go flawlessly. Unfortunately when I rebooted to test it, I am greeted with a black screen and a mouse cursor. It's as if Plasma shell has not booted up.

Any ideas what I should try next?

Hi
What desktop environment are you using, looks like newish hardware (Touchscreen, 4K etc?), wonder if it needs a later kernel....

Do you have the package drm-kmp-default installed, if so remove that and rebuild initrd;

zypper rm drm-kmp-default
mkinitrd

[N1GHTS]

Hi
What desktop environment are you using, looks like newish hardware (Touchscreen, 4K etc?), wonder if it needs a later kernel....

No touch screen, no 4K. The specs are very nice for a laptop, but I opted out of bells and whistles like that.

Note that when I installed OpenSUSE everything worked fine, so I don't think this is a newish-hardware problem. Since the nouveau driver was glitchy and the OS complained about "no video accelerator found" when using VMWare Player, I decided to take the Leap (pun intended) and install the proprietary drivers. That's why I'm having problems now.

Do you have the package drm-kmp-default installed, if so remove that and rebuild initrd;

zypper rm drm-kmp-default
mkinitrd

sudo zypper rm drm-kmp-default
[sudo] password for root: 
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...
'drm-kmp-default' not found in package names. Trying capabilities.
Resolving package dependencies...

The following 4 packages are going to be REMOVED:
  bbswitch bbswitch-kmp-default kernel-default-4.4.76-1.1 kernel-default-4.4.126-48.2

4 packages to remove.
After the operation, 473.8 MiB will be freed.
Continue? [y/n/...? shows all options] (y): y
(1/4) Removing bbswitch-0.8-12.2.1.x86_64 .................................................................................................................................................................[done]
(2/4) Removing bbswitch-kmp-default-0.8_k4.4.114_42-12.2.1.x86_64 .........................................................................................................................................[done]
Additional rpm output:
Creating initrd: /boot/initrd-4.4.126-48-default                                                                                                                                                                 
dracut: Executing: /usr/bin/dracut --logfile /var/log/YaST2/mkinitrd.log --force /boot/initrd-4.4.126-48-default 4.4.126-48-default                                                                              
dracut: *** Including module: bash ***                                                                                                                                                                           
dracut: *** Including module: systemd ***                                                                                                                                                                        
dracut: *** Including module: warpclock ***                                                                                                                                                                      
dracut: *** Including module: systemd-initrd ***                                                                                                                                                                 
dracut: *** Including module: i18n ***                                                                                                                                                                           
dracut: Could not find FONT_MAP none!                                                                                                                                                                            
dracut: *** Including module: drm ***                                                                                                                                                                            
dracut: *** Including module: plymouth ***                                                                                                                                                                       
dracut: *** Including module: btrfs ***                                                                                                                                                                          
dracut: *** Including module: kernel-modules ***                                                                                                                                                                 
dracut: *** Including module: resume ***                                                                                                                                                                         
dracut: *** Including module: rootfs-block ***                                                                                                                                                                   
dracut: *** Including module: suse-btrfs ***                                                                                                                                                                     
dracut: *** Including module: suse-xfs ***                                                                                                                                                                       
dracut: *** Including module: terminfo ***                                                                                                                                                                       
dracut: *** Including module: udev-rules ***                                                                                                                                                                     
dracut: Skipping udev rule: 40-redhat.rules                                                                                                                                                                      
dracut: Skipping udev rule: 50-firmware.rules                                                                                                                                                                    
dracut: Skipping udev rule: 50-udev.rules                                                                                                                                                                        
dracut: Skipping udev rule: 91-permissions.rules                                                                                                                                                                 
dracut: Skipping udev rule: 80-drivers-modprobe.rules                                                                                                                                                            
dracut: *** Including module: biosdevname ***                                                                                                                                                                    
dracut: *** Including module: dracut-systemd ***
dracut: *** Including module: haveged ***
dracut: *** Including module: usrmount ***
dracut: *** Including module: base ***
dracut: *** Including module: fs-lib ***
dracut: *** Including module: shutdown ***
dracut: *** Including module: suse ***
dracut: *** Including modules done ***
dracut: *** Installing kernel module dependencies and firmware ***
dracut: *** Installing kernel module dependencies and firmware done ***
dracut: *** Resolving executable dependencies ***
dracut: *** Resolving executable dependencies done***
dracut: *** Pre-linking files ***
dracut: *** Pre-linking files done ***
dracut: *** Hardlinking files ***
dracut: *** Hardlinking files done ***
dracut: *** Stripping files ***
dracut: *** Stripping files done ***
dracut: *** Generating early-microcode cpio image ***
dracut: *** Constructing GenuineIntel.bin ****
dracut: *** Store current command line parameters ***
dracut: Stored kernel commandline:
dracut:  resume=UUID=14028f7d-0863-42b3-be62-c96d03ec37eb
dracut:  root=UUID=b635e39f-3012-4e4d-827b-1670d0673cf2 rootfstype=btrfs rootflags=rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache,subvolid=259,subvol=/@/.snapshots/1/snapshot,subvol=@/.snapshots/1/snapshot
dracut: *** Creating image file '/boot/initrd-4.4.126-48-default' ***
dracut: *** Creating initramfs image file '/boot/initrd-4.4.126-48-default' done ***
Creating initrd: /boot/initrd-4.4.76-1-default
dracut: Executing: /usr/bin/dracut --logfile /var/log/YaST2/mkinitrd.log --force /boot/initrd-4.4.76-1-default 4.4.76-1-default
dracut: *** Including module: bash ***
dracut: *** Including module: systemd ***
dracut: *** Including module: warpclock ***
dracut: *** Including module: systemd-initrd ***
dracut: *** Including module: i18n ***
dracut: Could not find FONT_MAP none!
dracut: *** Including module: drm ***
dracut: *** Including module: plymouth ***
dracut: *** Including module: btrfs ***
dracut: *** Including module: kernel-modules ***
dracut: *** Including module: resume ***
dracut: *** Including module: rootfs-block ***
dracut: *** Including module: suse-btrfs ***
dracut: *** Including module: suse-xfs ***
dracut: *** Including module: terminfo ***
dracut: *** Including module: udev-rules ***
dracut: Skipping udev rule: 40-redhat.rules
dracut: Skipping udev rule: 50-firmware.rules
dracut: Skipping udev rule: 50-udev.rules
dracut: Skipping udev rule: 91-permissions.rules
dracut: Skipping udev rule: 80-drivers-modprobe.rules
dracut: *** Including module: biosdevname ***
dracut: *** Including module: dracut-systemd ***
dracut: *** Including module: haveged ***
dracut: *** Including module: usrmount ***
dracut: *** Including module: base ***
dracut: *** Including module: fs-lib ***
dracut: *** Including module: shutdown ***
dracut: *** Including module: suse ***
dracut: *** Including modules done ***
dracut: *** Installing kernel module dependencies and firmware ***
dracut: *** Installing kernel module dependencies and firmware done ***
dracut: *** Resolving executable dependencies ***
dracut: *** Resolving executable dependencies done***
dracut: *** Pre-linking files ***
dracut: *** Pre-linking files done ***
dracut: *** Hardlinking files ***
dracut: *** Hardlinking files done ***
dracut: *** Stripping files ***
dracut: *** Stripping files done ***
dracut: *** Generating early-microcode cpio image ***
dracut: *** Constructing GenuineIntel.bin ****
dracut: *** Store current command line parameters ***
dracut: Stored kernel commandline:
dracut:  resume=UUID=14028f7d-0863-42b3-be62-c96d03ec37eb
dracut:  root=UUID=b635e39f-3012-4e4d-827b-1670d0673cf2 rootfstype=btrfs rootflags=rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache,subvolid=259,subvol=/@/.snapshots/1/snapshot,subvol=@/.snapshots/1/snapshot
dracut: *** Creating image file '/boot/initrd-4.4.76-1-default' ***
dracut: *** Creating initramfs image file '/boot/initrd-4.4.76-1-default' done ***


(3/4) Removing kernel-default-4.4.126-48.2.x86_64 .........................................................................................................................................................[done]
(4/4) Removing kernel-default-4.4.76-1.1.x86_64 ...........................................................................................................................................................[done]

sudo mkinitrd
No kernel found in /boot or bad modules dir in /lib/modules

eh.. I think I broke it even more

[malcolmlewis]

No touch screen, no 4K. The specs are very nice for a laptop, but I opted out of bells and whistles like that.

Note that when I installed OpenSUSE everything worked fine, so I don't think this is a newish-hardware problem. Since the nouveau driver was glitchy and the OS complained about "no video accelerator found" when using VMWare Player, I decided to take the Leap (pun intended) and install the proprietary drivers. That's why I'm having problems now.

sudo zypper rm drm-kmp-default
[sudo] password for root: 
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...
'drm-kmp-default' not found in package names. Trying capabilities.
Resolving package dependencies...

The following 4 packages are going to be REMOVED:
  bbswitch bbswitch-kmp-default kernel-default-4.4.76-1.1 kernel-default-4.4.126-48.2

4 packages to remove.
After the operation, 473.8 MiB will be freed.
Continue? [y/n/...? shows all options] (y): y

<snip>

sudo mkinitrd
No kernel found in /boot or bad modules dir in /lib/modules

eh.. I think I broke it even more

Hi
Re-install the kernel;

zypper in kernel-default

Strange you don't see drm-kmp-default..... what repositories do you have? Also desktop environment in use?

[N1GHTS]

Hi
Re-install the kernel;

zypper in kernel-default

Thanks. Done.

Strange you don't see drm-kmp-default..... what repositories do you have? Also desktop environment in use?

My repositories should be the default. I haven't really done much with this OS since I installed it fresh a week or two ago. I'm using KDE. Think of this as a fresh install of OpenSUSE Leap with KDE.

I'm still getting a black screen with mouse cursor.

[N1GHTS]

So I guess I should re-install the OS and continue using nouveau since that worked?

[malcolmlewis]

So I guess I should re-install the OS and continue using nouveau since that worked?

Hi
Well you should just remove the Bumblebee stuff and make sure there is no nouveau.conf file in /etc/modprobe.d that blacklists the nouveau driver and run the mkinitrd command and see how it goes.

Can you disable the nvidia or intel gpu in the BIOS?

[N1GHTS]

Can you disable the nvidia or intel gpu in the BIOS?

No, I checked.

Well you should just remove the Bumblebee stuff and make sure there is no nouveau.conf file in /etc/modprobe.d that blacklists the nouveau driver and run the mkinitrd command and see how it goes.

Before doing that, since Xorg starts up fine (which is why I see a mouse cursor that I can move around with my mouse), what procedure can I use to find out why Plasma shell is not starting up? Is there a log somewhere that might give me a clue as to why it's not showing me any interface?

In other words I don't think the graphics driver failed. What might you recommend other than giving up?