After several months of fighting with version 42.2, I’ve run into an issue that
I cannot figure out how to solve.
I have two computer systems: A desk machine that I use for normal usage, and
a laptop that I use when traveling. The OS and data reside on a Solid-State drive
that is removed from the desk machine and transferred to the Laptop when I need
to be mobile. This eliminates the need for pains-taking copying of data between
the two machines. This arrangement worked perfectly (as did a lot of other stuff)
under SUSE 13.2. Unfortunately, Under 42.2, this functionality is broken.
If 42.2 is booted in the laptop, Plasma will NOT start unless the Nvidia
proprietary drivers are removed BEFORE the disk is moved.
These drivers MUST be installed when running on the Desk machine, or I get frequent lock-ups from
the Nouveau drivers.
So before I travel, I need to remember to remove the Nvidia drivers, a 10-15 minute exercise.
When I return, I need to remember to re-install the drivers (again, another 10-15 minutes + a reboot).
If I forget to do the removal before travel, I have a non-functional machine, as I need the OS active to
remove the drivers! This has already hit me twice (Fortunately these were short trips).
If I forget to reinstall the Nvidia on return, My machine will experience hangs
(usually during something important!)
The desk machine is an AMD 8 core with an NVIDIA GT218 display card.
The laptop is a Lenovo T420s Thinkpad with Intel graphics.
Again, this was NOT an issue with 13.2. The proprietary drivers never caused an
issue in the Thinkpad. Short of returning my system to this level,
is there anything that I can do to remedy this problem?
Yes.
Having nvidia installed breaks OpenGL support for all other drivers (because it replaces some system libraries), and Plasma5 requires OpenGL.
If I forget to do the removal before travel, I have a non-functional machine, as I need the OS active to
remove the drivers! This has already hit me twice (Fortunately these were short trips).
You can uninstall the driver in text mode too, or login to IceWM or similar (anything except Plasma and GNOME should work I think).
Again, this was NOT an issue with 13.2. The proprietary drivers never caused an
issue in the Thinkpad.
Of course it was, it’s a problem with nvidia since it exists.
But earlier Plasma versions (4.x) did not necessarily need working OpenGL support (that’s actually a change in Qt5, the latest versions do finally include a software renderer too, so this may “improve” again in the future).
So before I travel, I need to remember to remove the Nvidia drivers, a 10-15 minute exercise.
When I return, I need to remember to re-install the drivers (again, another 10-15 minutes + a reboot).
10-15 minutes?
How are you installing them?
It never took anyway near as long here.
Short of returning my system to this level,
is there anything that I can do to remedy this problem?
There were attempts to create a script to dynamically switch between nvidia and intel (or nvidia and nouveau) here in this forum.
In short, you need to switch the symlink /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/extensions/libglx.so to point to the corresponding libglx (either nvidia’s or Xorg’s) via update-alternatives, and enable/disable the linker overrides in /etc/ld.conf.so/nvidia-gfxG0X.conf (e.g. by commenting out the lines with ‘#’).
I use YAST. It takes quite a bit of time to rebuild the kernel & intrd (at least on my system).
You can uninstall the driver in text mode too, or login to IceWM or similar (anything except Plasma and GNOME should work I think).
I DID try to uninstall from text model using ZYPPER. However, I did NOT have an internet connection, and ZYPPER refused to run unless it
could connect. Donno if there is some magic to get around this, or if there is another way to remove the drivers.
There were attempts to create a script to dynamically switch between nvidia and intel (or nvidia and nouveau) here in this forum.
In short, you need to switch the symlink /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/extensions/libglx.so to point to the corresponding libglx (either nvidia’s or Xorg’s) via update-alternatives, and enable/disable the linker overrides in /etc/ld.conf.so/nvidia-gfxG0X.conf (e.g. by commenting out the lines with ‘#’).
Use the “–no-refresh” switch for zypper, it won’t try to refresh the online repos then.
Although, you should be offered to ignore that connection error too.
Or use “rpm -e xxx” to uninstall the packages.
YaST can be used in text mode too.
I’ll give this a look-see. Even if I cannot automatically run the script, at least I have some way of restoring usability while on the road.
It is possible to run that script automatically during boot, e.g. via /etc/init.d/boot.local .
And it should detect automatically whether intel or nvidia is used and modify the system accordingly.
I’m just not sure whether that exact version posted there still fully works (it definitely worked in the past), and I cannot test it myself (as I don’t have an nvidia system currently).