[Cross-posted: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/273497/no-gui-after-reboot-no-obvious-errors-opensuse-13-2-nvidia-drivers]
Short version: Rebooted for the first time in months, following daily updates; proprietary Nvidia drivers; no GUI (KDE); no smoking gun (so far) in logs.
Specs:
- openSuSE 13.2 (64-bit), fully up to date
- kernel 3.16.7-35-desktop
- Nvidia GeForce 970
- G04 drivers v361.28-33.1.x86_64 (latest version at download.nvidia.com/opensuse/13.2)
- but latest version available by direct download from Nvidia is 361.42
Long version:
I have a desktop computer with an Nvidia GeForce 970 video card, and two monitors hooked up to it, one via DVI and one via HDMI.
I am running openSuSE 13.2, which I update almost daily, currently at kernel 3.16.7-35-desktop, and use the proprietary Nvidia drivers, currently at 361.28-33.1.x86_64, for the sake of games. That is the latest version of the drivers available from the official repo for openSuSE 13.2, although v361.42 is available for direct download and installation “the hard way”.
Kernel and video drivers had been updated at least once since the last time I rebooted (or even logged out), which was at least a few months ago.
Now I have rebooted, and cannot get back into the GUI (KDE).
The console output (on the DVI monitor, which is where Grub2 normally runs; the HDMI monitor (which is my primary display) now doesn’t get any signal at all) from the boot process is not perfectly consistent in where it stops: sometimes “Reached target Graphical Interface”, sometimes “Starting Command Scheduler…”, sometimes “Started SuSEfirewall2 phase 2”. But it is always after “Started X Display Manager”.
CTRL-ALT-F7 shows a completely blank screen. (1 through 6 are normal console terminals, and 8 shows just a flashing underscore.)
I have force-reinstalled the four Nvidia driver packages (G04) to make sure that they are compiled for my current kernel.
Interestingly, some of the package names are 361.28.k3.16.6_2-33.1.x86_64, which suggests that they are meant for kernel v3.16.6-2, whereas I am running 3.16.7-35. And compiling for 3.16.6-2 fails, with files-not-found /lib/modules/3.16.6-2-desktop/modules.{order|builtin}, although otherwise that folder looks the same as the modules for 3.16.7-35-desktop and 3.16.7-32-desktop.
journalctl --full -b
shows messages from kdm indicating a successful start - eg.: plymouth is active on VT7, reusing for :0.
And kdeinit5: opened connection to :0.
The only messages I can find in the boot logs that might be a cause for concern are:
- NVRM: Your system is not currently configured to drive a VGA console on the primary VGA device. The NVIDIA Linux graphics driver requires the use of a text0mode VGA console. Use of other console drivers including, but not limited to, vesafb, may result in corruption and stability problems, and is not supported.
- Registry: Xlib: extension “XEVIE” missing on display :0
- QXcbConnection: XCB error: 148 (Unknown)
/var/log/Xorg.0.log
has only one message, right at the end of the file, that looked in any way suspicious to me (but I’m no expert):
NVIDIA(0): ACPI: failed to connect to the ACPI event daemon; the daemon may not be running or the “AcpidSocketPath” X configuration option may not be set correctly. When the ACPI daemon is available, the NVIDIA X display driver will try to use it to receive ACPI event notifications.
Booting into Windows, everything works as expected, so I am ruling out an issue with the video card or HDMI monitor.
I have not yet tried uninstalling the Nvidia drivers and switching to nouveau, nor manually updating the Nvidia drivers to 361.42.
I can get into the GUI as normal by rolling the system back to an earlier snapper snapshot, but would rather figure out the current issue than potentially lose months of files.
I am willing to dist-upgrade the system to Leap 42.1, but not without good reason to think that doing so would fix the GUI issue. (Interestingly, the version of the Nvidia drivers from the official repo is the same for 42.1 as it is for 13.2: 361.28.)
So: suggestions on how to fix this, or where to look next?