Can't make NVidia GPU usable on Ubuntu 18.04 (Asus notebook)

Question

I have already tried everything I could find to make Ubuntu 18.04 on Asus TUF FX504GE recognize the GTX 1050Ti in it. Nothing can make nvidia-smi outputs what it should.

I already tried:

Installing nvidia drivers on 18.04
- Here dpkg-divert outputs nothing related to nvidia
Chapter 4. Installing the NVIDIA Driver (from NVidia)
- Here I had to do that nouveau.modeset=0 editing on Grub lines to boot without any interface and run that .run downloaded from NVidia. It failed on nvidia preinstall stuff and, when I selected install anyway, although it installed the driver, by the end, it couldn't find nvidia-drm
Installing Linux on ASUS TUF FX504 GE
- Although this link was gold to me, allowing me to install Ubuntu 18 (because 16 strangely cursed everything), this also didn't make GPU usable

I have:

Notebook Asus TUF Gaming FX504GE series, GTX 1050Ti
Kernel version: 5.3.0-26-generic
Ubuntu version: 18.04.03 LTS
Software & Updates
About Ubuntu:
lshw video's output

$ sudo lshw -c video
  *-display UNCLAIMED       
       description: 3D controller
       product: GP107M [GeForce GTX 1050 Ti Mobile]
       vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0
       version: a1
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list
       configuration: latency=0
       resources: memory:a3000000-a3ffffff memory:90000000-9fffffff memory:a0000000-a1ffffff ioport:4000(size=128) memory:a4000000-a407ffff
  *-display
       description: VGA compatible controller
       product: Intel Corporation
       vendor: Intel Corporation
       physical id: 2
       bus info: pci@0000:00:02.0
       version: 00
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pciexpress msi pm vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
       configuration: driver=i915 latency=0
       resources: irq:143 memory:a2000000-a2ffffff memory:80000000-8fffffff ioport:5000(size=64) memory:c0000-dffff

NVidia related installed packages:

$ apt list --installed | grep -P 'nvidia|cuda'

WARNING: apt does not have a stable CLI interface. Use with caution in scripts.

libnvidia-cfg1-415/bionic,now 415.27-0ubuntu0~gpu18.04.2 amd64 [installed,automatic]
libnvidia-common-415/bionic,bionic,now 415.27-0ubuntu0~gpu18.04.2 all [installed,automatic]
libnvidia-compute-415/bionic,now 415.27-0ubuntu0~gpu18.04.2 amd64 [installed,automatic]
libnvidia-decode-415/bionic,now 415.27-0ubuntu0~gpu18.04.2 amd64 [installed,automatic]
libnvidia-encode-415/bionic,now 415.27-0ubuntu0~gpu18.04.2 amd64 [installed,automatic]
libnvidia-fbc1-415/bionic,now 415.27-0ubuntu0~gpu18.04.2 amd64 [installed,automatic]
libnvidia-gl-415/bionic,now 415.27-0ubuntu0~gpu18.04.2 amd64 [installed,automatic]
libnvidia-ifr1-415/bionic,now 415.27-0ubuntu0~gpu18.04.2 amd64 [installed,automatic]
nvidia-compute-utils-415/bionic,now 415.27-0ubuntu0~gpu18.04.2 amd64 [installed,automatic]
nvidia-dkms-415/bionic,now 415.27-0ubuntu0~gpu18.04.2 amd64 [installed,automatic]
nvidia-driver-415/bionic,now 415.27-0ubuntu0~gpu18.04.2 amd64 [installed]
nvidia-kernel-common-415/bionic,now 415.27-0ubuntu0~gpu18.04.2 amd64 [installed,automatic]
nvidia-kernel-source-415/bionic,now 415.27-0ubuntu0~gpu18.04.2 amd64 [installed,automatic]
nvidia-prime/bionic-updates,bionic-updates,now 0.8.8.2 all [installed,automatic]
nvidia-settings/unknown,now 440.33.01-0ubuntu1 amd64 [installed,automatic]
nvidia-utils-415/bionic,now 415.27-0ubuntu0~gpu18.04.2 amd64 [installed,automatic]
xserver-xorg-video-nvidia-415/bionic,now 415.27-0ubuntu0~gpu18.04.2 amd64 [installed,automatic]

Xorg's log about NVidia

$ cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep -i nvidia
[    13.485] (**) OutputClass "nvidia" ModulePath extended to "/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/nvidia/xorg,/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
[    13.485] (**) OutputClass "Nvidia Prime" ModulePath extended to "/x86_64-linux-gnu/nvidia/xorg,/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/nvidia/xorg,/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
[    13.485] (**) OutputClass "Nvidia Prime" setting /dev/dri/card1 as PrimaryGPU
[    13.493] (II) Applying OutputClass "nvidia" to /dev/dri/card1
[    13.493]    loading driver: nvidia
[    13.493] (II) Applying OutputClass "Nvidia Prime" to /dev/dri/card1
[    13.493]    loading driver: nvidia
[    13.729] (==) Matched nvidia as autoconfigured driver 0
[    13.729] (II) LoadModule: "nvidia"
[    13.729] (II) Loading /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/nvidia/xorg/nvidia_drv.so
[    13.740] (II) Module nvidia: vendor="NVIDIA Corporation"
[    13.748] (II) NVIDIA dlloader X Driver  440.26  Sun Oct 13 17:46:52 UTC 2019
[    13.748] (II) NVIDIA Unified Driver for all Supported NVIDIA GPUs
[    13.748] (II) NOUVEAU driver for NVIDIA chipset families :
[    13.759] (II) NVIDIA(0): Creating default Display subsection in Screen section
[    13.759] (==) NVIDIA(0): Depth 24, (==) framebuffer bpp 32
[    13.760] (==) NVIDIA(0): RGB weight 888
[    13.760] (==) NVIDIA(0): Default visual is TrueColor
[    13.760] (==) NVIDIA(0): Using gamma correction (1.0, 1.0, 1.0)
[    13.760] (II) Applying OutputClass "nvidia" options to /dev/dri/card1
[    13.760] (II) Applying OutputClass "Nvidia Prime" options to /dev/dri/card1
[    13.760] (**) NVIDIA(0): Option "AllowEmptyInitialConfiguration"
[    13.760] (**) NVIDIA(0): Option "IgnoreDisplayDevices" "CRT"
[    13.760] (**) NVIDIA(0): Enabling 2D acceleration
[    13.761] (II) Loading sub module "glxserver_nvidia"
[    13.761] (II) LoadModule: "glxserver_nvidia"
[    13.761] (II) Loading /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/nvidia/xorg/libglxserver_nvidia.so
[    13.819] (II) Module glxserver_nvidia: vendor="NVIDIA Corporation"
[    13.819] (II) NVIDIA GLX Module  440.26  Sun Oct 13 17:44:48 UTC 2019
[    13.821] (II) NVIDIA: The X server does not support PRIME Render Offload.
[    13.825] (II) NVIDIA(0): NVIDIA GPU GeForce GTX 1050 Ti (GP107-A) at PCI:1:0:0 (GPU-0)
[    13.825] (--) NVIDIA(0): Memory: 4194304 kBytes
[    13.825] (--) NVIDIA(0): VideoBIOS: 86.07.50.00.59
[    13.825] (II) NVIDIA(0): Detected PCI Express Link width: 16X
[    13.825] (II) NVIDIA(0): Validated MetaModes:
[    13.825] (II) NVIDIA(0):     "NULL"
[    13.825] (II) NVIDIA(0): Virtual screen size determined to be 640 x 480
[    13.825] (WW) NVIDIA(0): Unable to get display device for DPI computation.
[    13.825] (==) NVIDIA(0): DPI set to (75, 75); computed from built-in default
[    13.980] (II) NVIDIA: Using 24576.00 MB of virtual memory for indirect memory
[    13.980] (II) NVIDIA:     access.
[    13.997] (II) NVIDIA(0): Setting mode "NULL"
[    13.999] (==) NVIDIA(0): Disabling shared memory pixmaps
[    13.999] (==) NVIDIA(0): Backing store enabled
[    13.999] (==) NVIDIA(0): Silken mouse enabled
[    13.999] (==) NVIDIA(0): DPMS enabled
[    13.999] (WW) NVIDIA(0): Option "PrimaryGPU" is not used
[    13.999] (II) NVIDIA(0): [DRI2] Setup complete
[    13.999] (II) NVIDIA(0): [DRI2]   VDPAU driver: nvidia
[  1363.870] (II) NVIDIA(0): Setting mode "NULL"
[  3115.004] (II) NVIDIA(GPU-0): Deleting GPU-0

UPDATE

For the 1000th time, I did sudo apt purge *nvidia*, and then sudo apt install nvidia-driver-440. And, trying a friend's advice, I also installed Bumblebee.

After this, nvidia-smi finally shows something:

Mon Jan 27 13:22:32 2020       
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 440.48.02    Driver Version: 440.48.02    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 105...  Off  | 00000000:01:00.0 Off |                  N/A |
| N/A   46C    P8    N/A /  N/A |      0MiB /  4042MiB |      0%      Default |
+-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes:                                                       GPU Memory |
|  GPU       PID   Type   Process name                             Usage      |
|=============================================================================|
|  No running processes found                                                 |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Although it is already a great advance, seems like I can't use GPU processing yet... (stuff like glmark2 still runs on Intel)...

Try running this. Does this work on your PC? May be it's the specific program, not the OS. https://www.geeks3d.com/20140304/gputest-0-7-0-opengl-benchmark-win-linux-osx-new-fp64-opengl-4-test-and-online-gpu-database/ — Tom, Jan 27 '20 at 17:03
Hi @Tom. Sorry for the delay. Actually I didn't need to test it. I just tested tensorflow-gpu and it's running! Thank you for your collaboration :) I will also make an answer about it. — griloHBG, Jan 28 '20 at 14:38
I can't answer because StackOverflow thinks my answer is Spam... What can I do?! — griloHBG, Jan 28 '20 at 15:09
If you solved everything by yourself, then you should be able to answer by your self; but make sure that they are detailed, not ,like two line answers. — Tom, Jan 28 '20 at 17:16
Here is the text of my answer: https://paste.gg/p/anonymous/32ccff4c4e344a708b23ab7f1e83f04b Stack overflow keeps saying that my answer is spam! I can't post it! — griloHBG, Jan 29 '20 at 18:50
grilotHBG, why don't you put that in your question?? Meanwhile, earn some points and come back to this question later? I think you need to have more than 15 points. — Tom, Jan 29 '20 at 19:04
Ok. I'will put that in the question as you suggests. About the reputation: if 15 is needed, StackOverflow should warn so and not about spam.... — griloHBG, Jan 29 '20 at 20:17
@Pilot6, yes. It is. I already answered the question (in the question) — griloHBG, Jan 29 '20 at 22:51
@griloHBG I would suggest you to put [solved] on a title, and write clearly that the solution is also written as a part of the question. — Tom, Jan 29 '20 at 23:09
@user68186, as you can see in the comments, Stackoverflow interprets my answer as spam. I don't could find help about this. If you know how to help, I will be glad to answer the right way. — griloHBG, Jan 30 '20 at 14:22

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 31 '20 at 15:27

Well, by the end, Bumblebee did the trick.

But, to make it work, after a lot of trials and errors, I did the following:

1. Purge EVERYTHING related to NVidia

What I mean: sudo apt purge *nvidia*

Note that I'm not doing nvidia* because it lefts behind stuff like libnvidia-whatever.so

2. Reboot

After this, the notebook was not booting properly: it was suddenly shutting down after some seconds of black screen. I had to edit GRUB before Ubuntu selection to set nouveau.modeset to 0 in order to proceed.

How to do it:

At grub screen, with the selection cursor over Ubuntu, press e to open a text editor
Append to the Linux line (separated by a space) this: nouveau.modeset=0
Press Ctrl-x to proceed the boot
This was enough to make the notebook boot properly and proceed with the NVidia's driver quest.

3. Install the NVidia driver

According to ubuntu-driver devices (this command hangs a little to show its output):

ubuntu-drivers devices
== /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:01:00.0 ==
modalias : pci:v000010DEd00001C8Csv00001043sd000018FEbc03sc02i00
vendor   : NVIDIA Corporation
model    : GP107M [GeForce GTX 1050 Ti Mobile]
driver   : nvidia-driver-440 - third-party free recommended
driver   : nvidia-driver-415 - third-party free
driver   : nvidia-driver-430 - third-party free
driver   : nvidia-driver-435 - distro non-free
driver   : nvidia-driver-390 - third-party free
driver   : nvidia-driver-410 - third-party free
driver   : xserver-xorg-video-nouveau - distro free builtin

== /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.3 ==
modalias : pci:v00008086d0000A370sv00008086sd00000034bc02sc80i00
vendor   : Intel Corporation
manual_install: True
driver   : backport-iwlwifi-dkms - distro free

nvidia-driver-440 is recommended. So I installed it: sudo apt install nvidia-driver-440

4. Install Bumblebee

I followed the Setup for 14.04 and later on Bumblebee.

After the reboot, nvidia-smi was output (as I said on the question's update).

Then I tried to run some tensorflow-gpu test and it was running on GPU (as showed by nvidia-smi)!

Thank you all for all the help :)

what is the significance of bumblebee? it seems like that makes it so you can run specific games using the NVIDIA card but still using the integrated graphics to drive the screen. It is really required to do this for the 440 driver to work? — Michael, May 17 '20 at 08:20
@Michael, I can't say that Bumblebee is absolutely necessary to make 440 driver work. But Bumblebee was the tool for my case. Now I'm on Ubuntu 20.04 and everything was working right out-of-the-box :) — griloHBG, May 23 '20 at 22:17
what do you mean by "the notebook" in your answer? Like a colab or jupyter notebook? — Charlie Parker, Jul 19 '21 at 22:07
btw for me after purging I can't do ubuntu-driver devices...not sure if you ran something else before that but if you did you should mention it. — Charlie Parker, Jul 19 '21 at 22:07
seems like purge is not enough...you have to also run sudo apt autoremove? — Charlie Parker, Jul 19 '21 at 22:08
@CharlieParker, trying to answer your comments. Notebook: it's my notebook and you can see what is on the question. ubuntu-driver devices: actually, there is a typo and the correct is ubuntu-drivers devices. Purge is not enough: you can try with autoremove also, but I don't know how much it would help. — griloHBG, Jul 22 '21 at 14:42

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 26 '20 at 20:37

1

Have you tried going to the Software & Updates menu?

I installed my drivers during the installing of Ubuntu by allowing 3rd party drivers, but still had to come here to select it.

Hope it helps.

answered Jan 26 '20 at 20:37

Keith Böhler

11

Already did it. It has no effect... :( – griloHBG Jan 26 '20 at 20:49
@HenriqueGarcia Does it say No Process Found or Not Supported on the output of nvidia-smi? After choosing the nvidia driver 435 (proprietary)? – Tom Jan 27 '20 at 17:00
@Tom, after one more attempt (purging, reinstalling driver and installing Bumblebee), nvidia-smi now outputs accordingly. I also updated the question with this information. – griloHBG Jan 27 '20 at 18:36
@griloHBG You are using 440, my suggestion was to use 435, which is proprietary. – Tom Jan 28 '20 at 14:11
@Tom, why proprietary is better than non proprietary? – griloHBG Jan 29 '20 at 22:52
@griloHBG I'm not saying that it's better, it's just that it's worth trying. – Tom Jan 29 '20 at 23:07