Obviously I am a noob ubuntu user so please forgive any terrible mistakes I might do or required knowledge I might not have :D
The expected behavior
I have an laptop Dell XPS13 running a recently installed Ubuntu 20.04 focal on witch I want to improve the video experience with an Nvidia GTX 1660 SUPER in a eGPU Razor Core X ideally using the output on an external display.
The actual behavior
I have never successfully get anything but a black screen on the external display.
What I have tried
I have enabled Thunderbolt support in BIOS and I set it to require no security so it is recognized as soon as I plug it in.
I have installed the drivers listed by the ubuntu-driver devices which is mainly the 440 version of the nvidia-driver:
ubuntu-drivers devices
== /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1c.4/0000:03:00.0/0000:04:01.0/0000:06:00.0/0000:07:01.0/0000:08:00.0 ==
modalias : pci:v000010DEd000021C4sv00001462sd0000C758bc03sc00i00
vendor : NVIDIA Corporation
model : TU116 [GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER]
manual_install: True
driver : nvidia-driver-440 - distro non-free recommended
driver : nvidia-driver-440-server - distro non-free
driver : xserver-xorg-video-nouveau - distro free builtin
I have run sudo ubuntu-driver autoinstall and reboot
Login screen keeps coming back though I am enetring my password correctly.
If I unplug the eGPU I can pass the login screen.
If I reconnect it and run nvidia-smi I get this:
sudo nvidia-smi
[sudo] password for andrei:
Tue Sep 8 17:55:42 2020
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 440.100 Driver Version: 440.100 CUDA Version: 10.2 |
|-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
| GPU Name Persistence-M| Bus-Id Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan Temp Perf Pwr:Usage/Cap| Memory-Usage | GPU-Util Compute M. |
|===============================+======================+======================|
| 0 GeForce GTX 166... Off | 00000000:3C:00.0 Off | N/A |
| 0% 40C P0 12W / 130W | 0MiB / 5944MiB | 0% Default |
+-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes: GPU Memory |
| GPU PID Type Process name Usage |
|=============================================================================|
| No running processes found |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Other notes:
- I have no
/etc/X11/xorg.conf - the
/usr/lib/modprobe.d/nvidia-graphics-drivers.conflooks like this:
blacklist nouveau
blacklist lbm-nouveau
alias nouveau off
alias lbm-nouveau off
I run also nvidia-settings and I get this:
ERROR: Unable to load info from any available system
(nvidia-settings:4382): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL : 18:09:30.505: g_object_unref: assertion 'G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed
Message: 18:09:30.507: PRIME: Requires offloading
** Message: 18:09:30.507: PRIME: is it supported? yes
** Message: 18:09:30.534: PRIME: Usage: /usr/bin/prime-select nvidia|intel|on-demand|query
** Message: 18:09:30.534: PRIME: on-demand mode: "1"
** Message: 18:09:30.534: PRIME: is "on-demand" mode supported? yes
There is no output on the external display.
I have added also tried with the ubuntu graphic driver repository sudo apt-add-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppaand repeated the upper presented proces with a newly recommended driver nvidia-driver-450 however the results were similar, mainly inability to login or flickering login screen and sadly no output trough the external video card.
I also have tried using the egpu-switcher, 'nvidia-configwhich , I guess mainly tried to create/modify the /etc/X11/xorg.conf` however there was never an output on my external display (which is functional :) because works when the same cable is connects directly to my laptop).
If anybody can suggest something that will end this sufferance in a happy ending manner for me and for all the hardware and software mentioned, it will be highly appreciated :)
Thank you!
Update
Running nvidia-settings is logging this:
ERROR: Unable to load info from any available system
(nvidia-settings:20812): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL : 01:58:56.002: g_object_unref: assertion 'G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed
Message: 01:58:56.005: PRIME: Requires offloading
** Message: 01:58:56.005: PRIME: is it supported? yes
** Message: 01:58:56.039: PRIME: Usage: /usr/bin/prime-select nvidia|intel|on-demand|query
** Message: 01:58:56.039: PRIME: on-demand mode: "1"
** Message: 01:58:56.039: PRIME: is "on-demand" mode supported? yes
