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Hello and thanks in advance to anyone that tries to answer this tough one.

This is different from just installing the Nvidia drivers. This is a hosed system caused by updating my laptop while xorg-edgers ppa was in my repository list. This created a system with (in my case) the symptoms below. Un-installing and re-installing after purging the xorg-edgers ppa does not fix the issue.

I have an Asus N56J laptop with Ubuntu 14.04. It has an Nvidia 840M GPU. When I first built the machine I used the directions in http://www.binarytides.com/install-nvidia-drivers-ubuntu-14-04/ to add drivers for the nvidia GPU. All went well and everything ran perfectly. However, I did use the PPA from xorg-edgers and left that ppa in my list of repositories.

Yesterday, I got an Ubuntu update message so when ahead and did the update. The Kernel was updated to 3.16.0-50 and I am now showing a 14.04.3 release. But this update broke the system in a number of ways that make the system unusable.

The symptoms so far are:

  1. Firefox will become unresponsive if you go to certain web pages (maybe ones with video?). The screen greys out and never comes back.

  2. The backlit keyboard no longer lights up with the f3 or f4 buttons as it used to

  3. The mouse pointer goes away after you have been logged in for 30 seconds. If you wait about 1 minute, it comes back.

  4. Cntl-Alt-T no longer brings up a terminal window unless you have already started a Terminal window via clicking an Icon.

  5. The system will no longer shut down. You have to hard power it off.

  6. The system will no longer suspend when you close the screen.

I suspected that having the xorg-edgers repository was my issue as they have a warning saying not to upgrade your system without doing a ppa-purge of their repository. I did not do an upgrade of course but I thought it could be related. I have since did a ppa-purge of this repository and removed the nvdia drivers. This had no effect on my symptoms.

I noticed that this latest update did update my nvidia drivers (well libcuda1-340:amd64 (340.76-0ubuntu1~xedgers14.04.4, 340.93-0ubuntu0.0.1),nvidia-340:amd64 (340.76-0ubuntu1~xedgers14.04.4, 340.93-0ubuntu0.0.1) and nvidia-opencl-icd-340:amd64 (340.76-0ubuntu1~xedgers14.04.4, 340.93-0ubuntu0.0.1)) so I thought maybe this was the issue.

Any ideas on what I can try to fix this? I know I can re-install but would like to avoid that if possible.

Thanks again.

UPDATE:

I ended up reloading using the directions at: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2057342

That worked well although I had to restore /var/www/html directory and files. That got whacked. Interesting, mysql databases remained though even though the files are in /var.

I have a working system again (yeah!). I also reloaded the nvidia-340 drivers from the official Ubuntu repository and they are working well. There is probably an easier way to fix this if I could have identified the offending package (maybe from xorg-edgers ?).

Love this laptop and Ubuntu running on it. This was the first time something like this happened but it was a learning experience. Thanks again for the help.

Yet another Update:

Somehow my machine has again reverted back to the same broken state. I am not sure how as I don't recall doing any updates. I tried undoing minor configuration changes in /etc/default/grub (GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash acpi_osi=") as well as some changes to alsa to get the subwolfer working. Still it remains broken. I believe another rebuild is in my future. Its odd, as after the rebuild, everything works as it should. Then something suddenly breaks. If I get this solved, Ill update it here.

Bottom line is my issue has nothing to do with the xorg-edgers repository.

Update 3 I am fairly convinced it is a problem with libdrm-intel1. If I revert back to 2.4.56-1~ubuntu2 by doing a sudo apt-get install libdrm-intel1=2.4.56-1~ubuntu2 it fixes my issue but not immediately. There seems to be some config related to this package that needs to be reset as well. For example, I un installed the alsa packages which forced me to re-install the ubuntu desktop. with libdrm-intel1=2.4.56-1~ubuntu2 installed, my system returned to normal. Upgrading that package and rebooting caused it to break again.

If anyone has any advice on how to further isolate what I think is a bug, I would appreciate it. Thanks.

Tomicus
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1 Answers1

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You need to run these commands:

sudo apt-get install ppa-purge
sudo ppa-purge ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa
sudo apt-get purge nvidia*
sudo apt-get install nvidia-346 nvidia-prime

This will remove wrong drivers and install the correct ones.

Pilot6
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  • Can you please explain, what these commands are supposed to do? – David Foerster Oct 13 '15 at 17:48
  • Thanks. Did this but it had no effect that I could tell. One odd bit of information was that I was able to get the LED keyboard light function to work when I downgraded libdrm-intel1. So a sudo apt-get install libdrm-intel1=2.4.56-1~ubuntu2 once there were no nvidia drivers solved that issue. I then was so happy I installed the nvidia drivers and again everything broke. – Tomicus Oct 13 '15 at 21:19
  • @Pilot6 Thank you again for all your help. After messing with this for quite awhile I am thinking the only way to fix is just to rebuild. The Nvidia site says the 840M can use either the 340 or the 346 drivers. I was using the 340 driver from the xorg-edgers repository when all was working right. Only if I uninstall the nvidia drivers, and downgrade libdrm-intel does things somewhat work right (still my laptop won't suspend but other functions seem ok). Oddly, once I downgrade, I can then upgrade that package again and all still works. But adding in either nvidia drivers causes issues above. – Tomicus Oct 14 '15 at 18:00
  • If anyone has any other suggestions Ill try them. I am not going to rebuild for a day or two. Would love to avoid that. Once I downgrade libdrm-intel1, I can not remove the later version from my system as other packages need them. The system almost works fine (without nvidia drivers though), but the laptop will not suspend. I REALLY need the laptop to suspend when I close the lid.

    Any suggestions would be appreciated. Something (and I suspect it is configuration based) is not right. Quite Sad as Ubuntu really works well on this laptop (Asus N56J)

    BTW, I did try both 340 & 346 nvidia driver

     – Tomicus Oct 14 '15 at 19:19