I’ve been installing nvidia drivers “the hard way” with nouveau blacklisted. I was using 384.111 and after updating it fails to load. I checked to see if new drivers would work, I downloaded 384.130 and 390.48 and both are failing as well.
hwinfo --gfxcard
35: PCI 100.0: 0300 VGA compatible controller (VGA)
[Created at pci.378]
Unique ID: VCu0.VB+SQn46RcA
Parent ID: _Znp.FMDgKnDywJ4
SysFS ID: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:02.0/0000:01:00.0
SysFS BusID: 0000:01:00.0
Hardware Class: graphics card
Model: "nVidia GM204 [GeForce GTX 970]"
Vendor: pci 0x10de "nVidia Corporation"
Device: pci 0x13c2 "GM204 [GeForce GTX 970]"
SubVendor: pci 0x1458 "Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd"
SubDevice: pci 0x366a
Revision: 0xa1
Memory Range: 0xfd000000-0xfdffffff (rw,non-prefetchable)
Memory Range: 0xc0000000-0xcfffffff (ro,non-prefetchable)
Memory Range: 0xd0000000-0xd1ffffff (ro,non-prefetchable)
I/O Ports: 0xe000-0xefff (rw)
Memory Range: 0x000c0000-0x000dffff (rw,non-prefetchable,disabled)
IRQ: 10 (no events)
I/O Ports: 0x3c0-0x3df (rw)
Module Alias: "pci:v000010DEd000013C2sv00001458sd0000366Abc03sc00i00"
Driver Info #0:
Driver Status: nouveau is not active
Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe nouveau"
Driver Info #1:
Driver Status: nvidia_drm is not active
Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe nvidia_drm"
Driver Info #2:
Driver Status: nvidia is not active
Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe nvidia"
Config Status: cfg=new, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown
Attached to: #21 (PCI bridge)
Primary display adapter: #35
dmesg | grep nvidia
3.390449] **nvidia**: loading out-of-tree module taints kernel.
3.390458] **nvidia**: module license 'NVIDIA' taints kernel.
3.405296] **nvidia**: module verification failed: signature and/or required key missing
- tainting kernel
3.405603] **nvidia**: Unknown symbol swiotlb_map_sg_attrs (err 0)
3.427091] **nvidia**_modeset: Unknown symbol nv_kthread_q_flush (err 0)
3.427100] **nvidia**_modeset: Unknown symbol **nvidia**_register_module (err 0)
3.427111] **nvidia**_modeset: Unknown symbol nv_kthread_q_schedule_q_item (err 0)
3.427129] **nvidia**_modeset: Unknown symbol **nvidia**_get_rm_ops (err 0)
3.427145] **nvidia**_modeset: Unknown symbol nv_kthread_q_item_init (err 0)
3.427153] **nvidia**_modeset: Unknown symbol nv_kthread_q_stop (err 0)
3.427158] **nvidia**_modeset: Unknown symbol **nvidia**_unregister_module (err 0)
3.427173] **nvidia**_modeset: Unknown symbol nv_kthread_q_init (err 0)
3.463414] **nvidia**: Unknown symbol swiotlb_map_sg_attrs (err 0)
13.001497] **nvidia**: Unknown symbol swiotlb_map_sg_attrs (err 0)
13.056175] **nvidia**_modeset: Unknown symbol nv_kthread_q_flush (err 0)
13.056191] **nvidia**_modeset: Unknown symbol **nvidia**_register_module (err 0)
13.056209] **nvidia**_modeset: Unknown symbol nv_kthread_q_schedule_q_item (err 0)
13.056234] **nvidia**_modeset: Unknown symbol **nvidia**_get_rm_ops (err 0)
13.056257] **nvidia**_modeset: Unknown symbol nv_kthread_q_item_init (err 0)
13.056271] **nvidia**_modeset: Unknown symbol nv_kthread_q_stop (err 0)
13.056284] **nvidia**_modeset: Unknown symbol **nvidia**_unregister_module (err 0)
13.056305] **nvidia**_modeset: Unknown symbol nv_kthread_q_init (err 0)
13.096097] **nvidia**: Unknown symbol swiotlb_map_sg_attrs (err 0)
23.708166] **nvidia**: Unknown symbol swiotlb_map_sg_attrs (err 0)
23.760048] **nvidia**: Unknown symbol swiotlb_map_sg_attrs (err 0)
45.926186] **nvidia**: Unknown symbol swiotlb_map_sg_attrs (err 0)
320.368353] **nvidia**: Unknown symbol swiotlb_map_sg_attrs (err 0)
551.787458] **nvidia**: Unknown symbol swiotlb_map_sg_attrs (err 0)