NVidia graphics card with no memory?

English Install/Boot/Login
1

I’m running an Alienware PC with an nVidia graphics card. I recently had problems with my graphics after upgrading from Leap 15.0 to Leap 15.3, and the whole shenanigans of trying to get my graphics to work can be found here. The problem was that, if I used the nVidia driver, it failed to load and I got some very crude graphics. The Nouveau driver loaded but, while my graphics worked for everyday work, they run slow, extremely slow, for games.

I decided to stick with Nouveau for the moment, since my gaming is a nice-to-have, but I’ve been doing some poking around. I’ve discovered that my main ganing program reports:

Graphics Card Vendor: nouveauGraphics Card: NV124
Graphics Card Memory: 0 MB

I’m sure that zero memory can’t be right, though I have no documentation as to what was detected under Leap 15.0. But the program’s inability to use graphics memory would be consistent with what I see.

My graphics card is

inxi -Gxx
**Graphics:**
  **Device-1:** NVIDIA GM204 [GeForce GTX 980] **driver:** nouveau **v:** kernel
    **bus-ID:** 03:00.0 **chip-ID:** 10de:13c0
  **Display:** x11 **server:** X.Org 1.20.3 **compositor:** kwin_x11 **driver:**
    **loaded:** nouveau **unloaded:** fbdev,modesetting,vesa **failed:** nvidia
    **alternate:** nv **resolution:** 1920x1080~60Hz **s-dpi:** 96
  **OpenGL:** **renderer:** NV124 **v:** 4.3 Mesa 20.2.4 **direct render:** Yes

Several alternatives occur to me:

  1. I was dreaming when I thought my graphics card had memory.

  2. A hardware error occurred at the time I was upgrading, which resulted in the loss of the graphics card’s memory but otherwsie I works fine.

  3. The Nouveau driver is detecting the card’s memory but not passing it through to the program.

  4. The Nouveau driver is not detecting the card’s memory.

I was previously using the nVidia driver under Leap 15.0.

I really would welcome some ideas, even if to tell me this discovery is irrelevant!

If it’s at all any help, the /var/log/Xorg.0.log can be read at https://paste.opensuse.org/17564806

2

Hi
Only thing I can think of is the card firmware has gone foobar, perhaps google on firmware flashing for you card?

What does the following show?


glxinfo | egrep -i 'device|memory'
3 
glxinfo | egrep -i 'device|memory'
    **Device**: NV124 (0x13c0)
    Video **memory**: 4079MB
    Unified **memory**: no

An uneducated reading of that would suggest that there was plenty of memory there. But presumably that command would depend on the firmware, which would mean it is okay. So where do I go from here?

4

Hi
So it’s all good then, install the latest driver for your card (G06) and see how the above command goes, and check the output from the command nvidia-smi.

5

The problem is that if I load the nVidia driver from the repo everything fails because, I am told, it seems there’s something missing in the kernel. See the original thread for this. Previously, under earlier versions of openSuse, I have manually installed the nVidia driver according to this method. Interestingly, I’ve installed G04 this way, the repo installed G05 and now you tell me I should install G06. Are you suggesting I install G06 manually? Or force G06 from the repo?

I really need to have things clear before I go ahead with anything.

6

Hi
I prefer the manual way for the driver, cuda and cudnn. Try the G06 from the repository else switch to the hard way?

7

So I installed the G06 drivers from the repo, using Yast, with the same results as when I installed the G06 drivers - openSuse loaded the default drivers and I got an 800x600 screen instead of my monitor size. When this happened before I was told that this was down to a missing module in the kernel, although I carefully included the nvidia kernel module.

I’m prepared to try again if I’m given advice on what debugging information I can get to post here so that I can move on.

I’d rather not go back to ‘the hard way’ now that there’s supposed to be a working method via the repos. What is installed using the manual method that I don’t get via the repo?

8

And having installed G06 then deinstalling it, my gaming program tells me my driver is Mesa, or something like that. I can’t quite make it out because it freezes the screen. How do I get Nouveau back. At least the screen worked using that, even if extremely badly.

Again, as with Nouveau, or everything else my graphics is working well.

Addendum: I managed to read it. It says

Graphics Card Vendor: Mesa/X.orgGraphics Card: llvmpipe (LLVM 11.0.1, 256 bits)
Graphics Card Memory: 0 MB

9

I gather that Mesa is a 3D package. There’s a nouveau plugin installed in my openSuse. I’ve tried running both with and without it being installed and the results are the same.

Somehow, installing and deinstalling the G06 Nvidia drivers has created a problem I need to get rid of. At the very least I’d like to back to where I was previously.

10

Hi
I don’t think it’s using the driver… if you unistalled, has the nouveau blacklist been removed? If it hasn’t, then remove and run the command mkinitrd should restore.

11

Solved the Mesa problem by a process of elimination. I accidentally uninstalled firmware module for nvidia.

So back to square one.

So I’m looking for how to debug the nvidia driver problem.

12

Hi
What does the output of nvidia-smi (assuming the driver is installed) show?

13

Thanks for the prompt reply.

I’ll try that and post the output when I have time, hopefully tomorrow.

14

Is this a laptop. If so, you are running with Optimus hardware (Intel+NVIDIA GPUs) which requires special handling. You need SUSE-prime installed to control the selection of which GPU you want in control

15

Is this a laptop. If so, you are running with Optimus hardware (Intel+NVIDIA GPUs) which requires special handling. You need SUSE-prime installed to control the selection of which GPU you want in control

If the NVIDIA is a built in GPU it may not have any dedicated memory it would use sections of main memory

16

No, it’s an Alienware desktop. The check I did above suggests it has memory, and I was running things okay under Leap 15.0.

17

The output from nvidia-smi:

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

This confirms what I thought. Something is missing from my installation of the nvidia driver. So what do I do to find out why it isn’t loading?

18

Hi
Does inxi -G show the nvidia driver in use? What driver are you using?

19

Apologies for the slow response to attempts to help me. I have to reinstall G06 every time. Normally I’m using Nouveau, as stated in the original post.

This is with G06 installed via Yast. Except it failed to load.

inxi -GGraphics:
  Device-1: NVIDIA GM204 [GeForce GTX 980] driver: N/A
  Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 1.20.3 with: Xwayland
    driver: X: loaded: nouveau
    unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa failed: nvidia
    gpu: N/A resolution: 800x600~75Hz
  OpenGL: renderer: llvmpipe (LLVM 11.0.1 256 bits)
    v: 4.5 Mesa 20.2.4
20

Hi
Now your running Xwayland, before you were running X11_kwin? Not really sure, is nouveau blacklisted and initrd rebuilt?