What is the recommended method for installing NVIDIA proprietary drivers ?

Hi,

Trying to switch from Nouveau to the NVIDIA proprietary drivers to see what works best but my previous attempt required a reinstall to get the system functional.

The wiki; https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:NVIDIA_the_hard_way Suggests that I should just be able to use the NVIDIA binary installer, I tried the shortlived one, and initially it failed to properly blacklist nouvea, so I ran the command to do it manually and on the reboot I’d get a Oh no! Error please Log Out but Logging Out would just circle me straight back to that screen. This was somewhat bad.

On a reread I see that you’re supposed to run the NVIDIA binary as user root ? I was using sudo. Is that correct ? Or should I be doing something else like using the Superuser Terminal in KDE ? (I was using Gnome before but decided to go with KDE this time).

Continual reinstalls aren’t exactly desirable for me, I’ve got an Atheros E2400 for my network card so I have to recompile the drivers myself and then do a zypper dup after every install (since the patches haven’t been added into the latest kernel) and I’ve got a Killer Bigfoot 1135 for my wireless which I’ve completely failed to get working at all despite having spent 2 days on this “little” project.

Thanks

Because Tumbleweed is a rolling distro and changes so often you must use the manual install or the hard way as some call it

sudo should be ok but if you become root via su - (note the dash) then you do have the full root environment

Note also you did not tell what NVIDA card. Also if theisis a notebook or not. If notebook you probably have what is called an Optimus system (Intel+NVIDIA GPU) in which case you must use Bumblebee and the nvidia-bumblebee driver NOT the normal NVIDIA driver

So it is hard to advise with no idea what you have :open_mouth:

Hi, sorry, my card information is that its 2x 980Ms in SLI in a Laptop , so I don’t have Optimus.

This section of the wiki: https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:NVIDIA_the_hard_way#openSUSE_Tumbleweed_and_Leap suggests that I should just be able to use the nvidia binary but as I mentioned that failed spectacularly.

ETA - Ahh, I think I see what’s going on. The entire page is about how too install the binary drivers on Tumbleweed. The structure particularly for section 6 is just misleading.

If you don’t like continual installs I suggest the Tumbleweed is not for you. It requires them since it is constantly changing. Maybe try leap or 13.2

You said you tried the short branch. Did you try the long branch? My understanding is the the short branch is beta

well no you can’t use the binary, with tw you need to build the nvidia driver from the nvidia source package, you need to install your current kernel-devel gcc and a few other development packages and then run nvidia’s build script (which is embedded in the run file)

I have no issues with continual reinstalls generally , I just have a problem right now because both my network interfaces (Qualcomm E2400 for my NIC and a Killer 1135 for my Wireless) are too new even for Tumbleweed. I don’t think they are even in the latest kernel RC which makes reinstalls a special kind of hell.

Also that recommends logging out to a terminal login but that option doesn’t appear on the shutdown or login menus in Tumbleweed. Is there a proper method to fallback to a console only login for Tumbleweed ?

At boot press e

find line starting linux or linixefi

go to true end of line (it wraps)

add space and a 3 press F10 to continue boot to terminal

Thanks. I’ll give that a try.

doesn’t ctrl+alt+F1 work on tw?
then just run init 3 to switch to terminal and login as root.

Yeah, ctrl-alt-F1 works on Tumbleweed normally. It didn’t work after the spectacular failure though (bright screen but no login). If I logged out of KDE and then used ctrl-alt-F1 to switch to Terminal login, how would I properly shutdown the login manager which is using Noveau for its graphics to avoid conflicts ?

executing **init 3 **kills the graphics server including novau

Wanted to say thank you. Managed to get it working and even have SLI running.

The NVIDIA installer blacklist attempts aren’t being respected at the moment, you need to do the manual thing. I’m actually suspecting that nouvea doesn’t work with my card properly yet since blacklisting it had no effects at all on graphics while installing the NVIDIA drivers has made things much much snappier.

You have to run “mkinitrd” after blacklisting nouveau (or running the nvidia installer), or add “nomodeset”/“nouveau.modeset=0” to the kernel command line.
Otherwise nouveau will be started already before your actual root partition is mounted and the blacklist is even seen by the system.

I did run mkinitrd after the first run of the NVIDIA installer and its blacklist still wasn’t respected (nouveau was still loaded anyway on my next restart).

Hi,
Add this to your /etc/modeprobe.d/50-blacklist.conf

# generated by nvidia-installer
blacklist nouveau
options nouveau modeset=0  

Then run mkinitrd
after that reboot your machine, in the grub-2 screen
press

e

at the end of the kernel parameter add

single

then press F10, after the textmode booting is finished, type your root password
then cd /to/your/nvidia_installer and run it.

I am not using tumbleweed but Leaf 42.1 and this procedure works nicely,
in-fact I just did it this morning by installing the latest .run nvidia driver installer from nvidia site.

Following my post
Please see /etc/default/grub if the failsafe mode contains this

# kernel command line options for failsafe mode
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_RECOVERY=single

Then my above post should work.

Thanks but I already resolved that by using the manual instruction on the wiki. I was just making a note that it wasn’t being respected in case that’s a bug (the way the Wiki’s written somewhat suggests that OpenSUSE should respect the NVIDIA installers blacklisting).

With “manual instruction” you mean blacklisting nouveau yourself?

So then why do you think the blacklist is/was not respected, if it made it work? :wink:

I was just making a note that it wasn’t being respected in case that’s a bug (the way the Wiki’s written somewhat suggests that OpenSUSE should respect the NVIDIA installers blacklisting).

Yes it should. And it does in my experience (although I haven’t tried Tumbleweed).

But note that the blacklist just means that the nouveau kernel module is not loaded automatically at the beginning of the boot.
If for some reason Xorg decides to use the nouveau driver (e.g. because nvidia cannot be loaded for some reason, or the xorg.conf tells it to do so), it will also (try to) load the nouveau kernel module then, even if it is blacklisted.

So, blacklisting nouveau does not disable it. If you don’t install the nvidia driver, nouveau is still being used as graphics driver despite it being blacklisted.
To disable nouveau without installing nvidia, you need to add “nomodeset” or “nouveau.modeset=0” to the kernel command line, or create an xorg.conf (or xorg.conf.d snippet) that tells Xorg to load a different driver (“modesetting”, “nv”, “fbdev”, or “vesa”).
But using the nvidia driver is definitely preferable, I’d say… :wink:

Will it work without nouveau? The only modesetting driver for nVidia is nouveau, is not it?

No idea, never tried it. Probably not.

But the nouveau kernel module is still there and can be loaded anyway when you create an xorg.conf to use “modesetting”, so I don’t really understand your question.