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as mentioned in the title, I'm no longer able to load Ubuntu with the proprietary NVIDIA drivers since the update to kernel 3.13.0-27 and it is still not working for 29. The nouveau drivers work fine, but as I'm using CUDA for some applications it won't do. I tried to reinstall the drivers on several occasions (with sudo apt-get purge nvidia*) but I always boot into the low graphics mode of the login screen and after login unity won't load.

I'm using nvidia-331-updates but also tried different versions, but all of them gave me the same results. Everything worked fine before the update and even after the update, until 3.13.0-29 I was able to load the drivers by starting with the 3.14.0-24 kernel. This, however, stopped working today with another update. I've also tried to re-install ubuntu-desktop and unity with no change in result. I've got an NVIDIA GTX 570. Any ideas?

Here's the output of lspci -nnk | grep -iA2 VGA (after removing the nvidia drivers):

VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation GF110 [GeForce GTX 570 Rev. 2] [10de:1086] (rev a1)
Subsystem: NVIDIA Corporation Device [10de:0871]
Kernel driver in use: nouveau

And here the output of grep -e '(EE)' /var/log/Xorg.0.log

(EE) Failed to load module "nvidia" (module does not exist, 0)
[    19.612] (EE) Failed to load module "nvidia" (module does not exist, 0)
[    19.652] (EE) [drm] KMS not enabled
[    19.652] (EE) [drm] KMS not enabled
[    19.652] (EE) open /dev/dri/card0: No such file or directory
[    19.652] (EE) open /dev/dri/card0: No such file or directory
[    19.652] (EE) open /dev/dri/card0: No such file or directory
[    19.652] (EE) open /dev/dri/card0: No such file or directory
[    19.667] (EE) Screen 0 deleted because of no matching config section.
[    19.667] (EE) Screen 0 deleted because of no matching config section.
[    19.700] (EE) FBDEV(0): FBIOBLANK: Invalid argument
[    19.735] (EE) AIGLX: reverting to software rendering
[    20.383] (EE) FBDEV(0): FBIOBLANK: Invalid argument
Tom Göckel
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  • are you using proprietary driver from Ubuntu repos or manually installed? – JoKeR Jun 06 '14 at 22:02
  • I'm using the one from the repos. – Tom Göckel Jun 07 '14 at 06:42
  • please add the output lspci -nnk | grep -iA2 VGA – JoKeR Jun 07 '14 at 06:47
  • did you try to re-install the driver? – JoKeR Jun 07 '14 at 07:22
  • I've re-installed it several times. I'll post the output as soon as I'll get back to the PC. – Tom Göckel Jun 07 '14 at 14:50
  • I've added the output to my post. – Tom Göckel Jun 10 '14 at 08:12
  • install nvidia using this simple tutorial http://askubuntu.com/questions/479504/ubuntu-14-04-crashes-after-installing-nvidia-331-or-nvidia-current-driver-gtx-7/479508#479508 exclude hybrid-graphics that mentioned for the OP user. – JoKeR Jun 10 '14 at 09:02
  • also, you can always use my complete guide for manually installed nvidia driver http://askubuntu.com/questions/66328/how-do-i-install-the-latest-nvidia-drivers-from-the-run-file/423619#423619 – JoKeR Jun 10 '14 at 09:06
  • I followed your guide to install the drivers from the repo but the outcome remained the same, the desktop won't load with the nvidia drivers while it works with the nouveau drivers. I could try to install the drivers from NVIDIA but I would prefer it to work with those from the repo. Also sudo nvidia-xconfig was not recognized as a command, but I'm not sure whether that is related to the problem. – Tom Göckel Jun 10 '14 at 11:04
  • do you have 2 GPUs? that means two video cards (integrated one) – JoKeR Jun 10 '14 at 11:11
  • There is an onboard GPU that I don't use. – Tom Göckel Jun 10 '14 at 11:14
  • so you have two GPUs, that means you have hybrid-graphics you should've mentioned it, in this case use the first link from the comment that I posted there's link about Hybrid-Graphics video cards. – JoKeR Jun 10 '14 at 11:19
  • No, it's a desktop PC, no hybrid graphics. My monitors are only connected to the Nvidia GPU. – Tom Göckel Jun 10 '14 at 11:35
  • in other way you can use my guide for manual installation. If everything will be done as instructed it will work. – JoKeR Jun 10 '14 at 11:38
  • While trying to install the drivers from your guide I was able to find the source of my problem. Thanks for you time! – Tom Göckel Jun 10 '14 at 12:46

1 Answers1

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I finally figured out the problem and I'm not sure whether this is a bug or a feature.

Because I'm using the CUDA compiler I used update-alternatives to set gcc 4.4 as my default compiler. However, since the latest kernel updates, the nvidia drivers fail to build if the default compiler is set to a different version while the kernel is build with 4.8. When trying to manually installing the official nvidia drivers without dkms (which alway failed) I finally got an error message that pointed me into the right direction.

Setting back the default gcc to 4.8 solved my problem and I was able to install the driver both from the repo and from the nvidia site. This one was tough to figure out because there were no error messages whatsoever during the installation of the drivers from the repos!

Tom Göckel
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