nVidia problems again

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Started after a clean 42.1 installation from DVD.

1.Logged in as user to a Plasma5 session. Result - Black screen. No CTL-ALT-Fx screens available. Had to power down.
2.Edited grub on boot-up to include “nomodeset”. Result - Got a 640 x 480 KDE to work with. Opened Yast and found that the grub setting for Vga was "Unspecified. Set that to something lower that what my monitor will do to be safe, set to 1024 x 768.
3.Rebooted. User login screen froze before I could log in. This time the screen turned white with waves. Same for CTL-ALT-Fx. Had to power down.
4.Searched on the internet for “opensuse leap 42.1 nvidia graphics” and got to SDB:NVIDIA drivers page.
5.Rebooted with grub modified to stop at level 3 console start. Graphical Yast is hard to work with at 640 x 480. Logged in as root and invoked yast.
6.Followed instruction 1 - 4 in the “Recommended Procedure” section. But I could not follow the next instruction, “Click Extras in the top bar, then click Install All Matching Recommended Packages”, because ther was no “Extras” in the top bar. So I invoked “zypper inr”.
7 Rebooted. Result - Back to the black screen

This is a GeForce 7025/630A. Now I’ve been down this road before with another box and a different Nvidia model. I spent a lot of time doing it the “hard way” only to have it fail at the very end of the compile process. With several recommended drivers from nVidia. Is there a simple way I can revert to a nouveau driver that works? If not what do I have to remove to do it the “hard way”. By the way if I stick the old drive back in the box it runs 13.2 perfectly.

Thanks for any advice.

2

As you should know (because of a similar thread of yours recently), the G02 nvidia driver (304.132) is broken currently.
Download the older 304.131 from nvidia’s homepage and install it the hard way, that one should work.

Here’s the bug report btw:
http://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1003918

nividia is aware of the problem (it’s caused by a security fix in the latest version)…

3

PS:

What error?
Do you have kernel-devel and kernel-default-devel installed?

Is there a simple way I can revert to a nouveau driver that works?

Uninstall the nvidia packages and nouveau will be used.
Whether it works or not is a different story though.

Adding “nomodeset” to the boot options disables nouveau and should give you a graphical system in any case, with a generic driver.

If not what do I have to remove to do it the “hard way”.

“nvidia-installer --uninstall”

4

Yes you are right, I should know. I did try to find that link. Started again.

1.Booted to level 3. Logged in as root and followed the “hard way” instructions on the SDB:NVIDIA drivers page.
2.Invoked zypper install -t pattern devel_C_C++ devel_kernel
3.Downloaded the NVIDIA binary driver (304.131)
4.Ran the *.run file. It complained about nouveau and aborted.
5.Edited the /etc/modprobe.d/50-blacklist.conf to include “blacklist nouveau”.
6.Ran mkinitrd and then rebooted to level 3.
7.Ran the *.run file. It crashed and the log file is below.

nvidia-installer log file '/var/log/nvidia-installer.log'
creation time: Sat Nov 19 18:14:51 2016
installer version: 304.131


PATH: /sbin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/sbin:/root/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/games


nvidia-installer command line:
    ./nvidia-installer


Using: nvidia-installer ncurses user interface
-> License accepted.
-> Installing NVIDIA driver version 304.131.
-> Running distribution scripts
   executing: '/usr/lib/nvidia/pre-install'...
   grep: /etc/sysconfig/kernel: No such file or directory
-> done.
-> Performing CC sanity check with CC="cc".
-> Performing CC version check with CC="cc".
ERROR: Neither the '/usr/src/linux/include/linux/version.h' nor the '/usr/src/linux/include/generated/uapi/linux/version.h' kernel header file exists.  The most likely reason for this is that the kernel source files in '/usr/src/linux' have not been configured.
5

Hm, somebody else had the same problem recently.

What does “ls -l /usr/src” say?

Probably creating a symlink will help:

sudo ln -s /usr/src/linux/version.h /lib/modules/4.1.34-33-default/build/include/generated/uapi/linux/version.h

(if you are not using the latest 42.1 kernel, you’d need to adapt the path accordingly)

Although that shouldn’t be necessary normally. (unless you ran “make cloneconfig” or similar inside /usr/src/linux/ already…)

6

ls -l /usr/src returns

total 16lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   15 Nov 19 17:46 linux -> linux-4.1.34-33
drwxr-xr-x 23 root root 4096 Nov 19 17:47 linux-4.1.34-33
drwxr-xr-x  3 root root 4096 Oct 20 06:52 linux-4.1.34-33-obj
drwxr-xr-x  3 root root 4096 Oct 20 06:52 linux-obj
drwxr-xr-x  8 root root 4096 Oct 29  2015 packages

and sudo ln -s /usr/src/linux/version.h /lib/modules/4.1.34-33-default/build/include/generated/uapi/linux/version.h returns

ln: failed to create symbolic link ‘/lib/modules/4.1.34-33-default/build/include/generated/uapi/linux/version.h’: File exists
7

Hm, looks ok actually.
Though I’m not sure at the moment whether linux-obj shouldn’t rather be a symlink too.
Maybe not though.

and sudo ln -s /usr/src/linux/version.h /lib/modules/4.1.34-33-default/build/include/generated/uapi/linux/version.h returns

ln: failed to create symbolic link ‘/lib/modules/4.1.34-33-default/build/include/generated/uapi/linux/version.h’: File exists

It’s the other way round:

sudo ln -s /lib/modules/4.1.34-33-default/build/include/generated/uapi/linux/version.h /usr/src/linux/version.h

Sigh, I always mix that up…

8

We all make mistakes. Look at me. Anyway I’ve been on this for too long today, especially since my connection to the repositories has been incredibly slow, so I’ll let you know what happened tomorrow.

9

Yes, it works now. My only remaining problem is that I can’t set the resolution from my Desktop Settings. It only assumes “Default”. So I set 1280 x 1024 in the grub boot parameters with YaST, and I got a 1280 x 1024 desktop. Other nVidia installations included an nVidia utility that set other parameters, and I don’t seem to have that.

Many thanks for all the dedicated help. I’m almost at my road’s end.

10

nvidia-sttings

Should be there if you installed nvidia driver

11

Yes, although it may not show up in the menu.
Can you run it manually via “nvidia-settings” as gogalthorp suggested already?

And the grub resolution should not be used for the desktop if the nvidia driver is used (only fbdev “forwards” it AFAIK).

So maybe provide /var/log/Xorg.0.log to check.

12

I thought nvidia-settings was part of the *.run package but no.

# nvidia-settings
If 'nvidia-settings' is not a typo you can use command-not-found to lookup the package that contains it, like this:
    cnf nvidia-settings
linux-45y1:/home/ingrid # zypper se nvidia-settings
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...
No packages found.

It must be in the packman repository which I haven’t enabled yet. Moving on (slowly).

13

Yes, it should be.

Did you maybe uninstall the nvidia rpms after you installed the .run package?
That would remove the installed binary.

Try to reinstall the driver.

It must be in the packman repository which I haven’t enabled yet. Moving on (slowly).

No, it isn’t available in Packman.

It was years ago, but it always was outdated and it cannot match all available nvidia driver versions anyway.
And there’s no point in providing it in Packman, as it is part of the driver.