Cannot install nvidia driver on brand new ubuntu installation

Question

There's some problem with the nvidia drivers packages. After knocking my head against the wall with this, I did a fresh install of Ubuntu 18.04.2, installed updates, and ran:

   > sudo apt update
   > sudo apt upgrade
   > sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
   > sudo apt update
   > sudo ubuntu-drivers devices
== /sys/devices/pci0000:40/0000:40:03.1/0000:43:00.0 ==
modalias : pci:v000010DEd0000128Bsv0000196Esd0000118Bbc03sc00i00
vendor   : NVIDIA Corporation
model    : GK208B [GeForce GT 710]
driver   : nvidia-driver-410 - third-party free
driver   : nvidia-driver-390 - third-party free
driver   : nvidia-driver-415 - third-party free recommended
driver   : nvidia-driver-396 - third-party free
driver   : xserver-xorg-video-nouveau - distro free builtin

   > sudo apt install nvidia-driver-415

And I get a broken packages problem, like so:

   Reading package lists... Done
   Building dependency tree       
   Reading state information... Done
   Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
   requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
   distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
   or been moved out of Incoming.
   The following information may help resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 nvidia-driver-415 : Depends: libnvidia-gl-415 (= 415.27-0ubuntu0~gpu18.04.2) but it is not going to be installed
                     Depends: nvidia-dkms-415 (= 415.27-0ubuntu0~gpu18.04.2) but it is not going to be installed
                     Depends: libnvidia-ifr1-415 (= 415.27-0ubuntu0~gpu18.04.2) but it is not going to be installed
                     Recommends: nvidia-settings but it is not going to be installed
                     Recommends: libnvidia-compute-415:i386 (= 415.27-0ubuntu0~gpu18.04.2)
                     Recommends: libnvidia-decode-415:i386 (= 415.27-0ubuntu0~gpu18.04.2)
                     Recommends: libnvidia-encode-415:i386 (= 415.27-0ubuntu0~gpu18.04.2)
                     Recommends: libnvidia-ifr1-415:i386 (= 415.27-0ubuntu0~gpu18.04.2)
                     Recommends: libnvidia-fbc1-415:i386 (= 415.27-0ubuntu0~gpu18.04.2)
                     Recommends: libnvidia-gl-415:i386 (= 415.27-0ubuntu0~gpu18.04.2)

It doesn't matter which driver I choose, there's always some conflict like above.

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 18 '19 at 20:20

I confirm I had exactly the same issue on fresh install of 18.04.2. Solution here helped me.

My starting conditions:

After a fresh install, I had standard 390 drivers installed
Then I added this 3rd party PPA
Update to any higher version of drivers failed, with the same set of errors as yours.

Solution from the above link:

    sudo apt-get remove --purge nvidia-*
    sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall

The solution resulted in fully functional auto-install of latest 415.27 drivers.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 17 '19 at 05:14

Hm I think those are dependency problems caused by using a 3rd party mirror. Try using the official mirrors. I'm unsure if they still support your graphics card though. I think, if the old drivers need to be used, there might be kernel modules compilation problems in addition.

Cannot install nvidia driver on brand new ubuntu installation

2 Answers2