blank screen from nvidia on ubuntu

Question

I installed Nvidia drivers using the official method and also as advised here by Rexford.

I still ended up with a black/blank screen. Addidtinally, i couldnt uninstall using apt-get purge nvidia*under ctrl-alt-f1. I've definitely read and redownloaded many times.

sudo dkms autoinstall gives no output

glxinfo says unable to open display

lsof | grep nvidia show nvidia is available

modprobe -R nvidia shows the installed nvidia_346

lspci -vnn | grep -I VGA -A 12 shows kernel driver in use: i915 but also shows my graphics card clearly.

Any ideas??

You tried this? https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/Nvidia#Low.2FMissing_Screen_Resolutions — TheWanderer, Sep 07 '15 at 23:40
Any ideas on how I can use that please? Can't open xrandr right now. Screen is black. — nyxee, Sep 07 '15 at 23:55
Oops. That's the wrong section. Here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/Nvidia#Screen_Blanks.2FMonitor_Turns_Off — TheWanderer, Sep 08 '15 at 00:09
Initially, I had the lgon sound with no scrern, mentioned under Screen Blanks/Monitor Turns Off. I was a bit unfortunate to mis-type /etc/X11/... with a small x so I missed out on that simple help and dived deep into the unknown.. — nyxee, Sep 08 '15 at 00:18
I'd got the section, typing from a tablet. How can u start afresh? I can't delete the erring nvidia drivers. — nyxee, Sep 08 '15 at 00:22
Going here https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/Nvidia#Installation_without_X_.2F_from_the_console to try and start again. — nyxee, Sep 08 '15 at 00:26
I've finally removed nvidia drivers by typing the entire command apt-get --purge remove nvidia-36. I'm up now, how do iIinstall NVIDIA?? — nyxee, Sep 08 '15 at 00:35
Reboot and see if you still have a blank screen. We can work from there if everything's back to normal. — TheWanderer, Sep 08 '15 at 00:39
After removing the nvidia, I managed to get in. But, I don't have the drivers. — nyxee, Sep 08 '15 at 00:53

nyxee · Answer 1 · 2015-09-09T15:46:49.000

I stopped lightdm using 'service stop lightdm'

Then enabled nvidia-graphics using 'sudo prime-select nvidia'

I edited /etc/X11/xorg.conf to look like this (exactly):

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier "layout"
    Screen 0 "nvidia"
    Inactive "intel"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier "intel"
    Driver "modesetting"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier "intel"
    Device "intel"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier "nvidia"
    Driver "nvidia"
    BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier "nvidia"
    Device "nvidia"
    Option "UseDisplayDevice" "none"
EndSection

Then made it un-editeable by any process using:

chattr +i xorg.conf

Note: if you want to make it editable again, just use

chattr -i xorg.conf

Then, I disabled a component of Nvidia called gpu-manager by commenting out all the lines in /etc/init/gpu-manager.conf

Then restarted X using `service start lightdm'.

to retrun to the intel GPU, re-enable gpu-manager, make xorg.conf editeable again, activate intel mode using sudo prime-select intel and restart X using service lightdm start.

Summarized from Solving the Ubuntu 14.04 – NVIDIA 346 – nvidia-prime black screen issue.

There was a minor hiccup, window menus disappeared (which I noticed thanks to having startup window programs) and the unity launcher disappeared too. I realised that stopping and starting lightdm solved the issue until my next reboot. When I made lightdm default via sudo dpkg-reconfigure lightdm the issue looks sooved permanently. I had previously deleted ~/config/dconf but the problem had re-surfaced many hours later. — nyxee, Sep 09 '15 at 15:37

blank screen from nvidia on ubuntu

1 Answers1