pymol wont work with nvidia-driver 352.63 on ubuntu 14.04.3

Question

I just installed Ubuntu 14.04.3 and did sudo apt-get install pymol. Pymol works well with the open driver (selected by default) in the additional drivers window.

fmp@eva02:~$ pymol
 PyMOL(TM) Molecular Graphics System, Version 1.7.0.0.
 Copyright (c) Schrodinger, LLC.
 All Rights Reserved.

    Created by Warren L. DeLano, Ph.D. 

    PyMOL is user-supported open-source software.  Although some versions
    are freely available, PyMOL is not in the public domain.

    If PyMOL is helpful in your work or study, then please volunteer 
    support for our ongoing efforts to create open and affordable scientific
    software by purchasing a PyMOL Maintenance and/or Support subscription.

    More information can be found at "http://www.pymol.org".

    Enter "help" for a list of commands.
    Enter "help <command-name>" for information on a specific command.

    Hit ESC anytime to toggle between text and graphics.

    Detected OpenGL version 2.0 or greater. Shaders available.
    Detected GLSL version 1.30.
    OpenGL graphics engine:
    GL_VENDOR:   Intel Open Source Technology Center
    GL_RENDERER: Mesa DRI Intel(R) Haswell Mobile 
    GL_VERSION:  3.0 Mesa 10.5.9
    Adjusting settings to improve performance for Intel cards.
    Detected 4 CPU cores.  Enabled multithreaded rendering.
    PyMOL: abrupt program termination.

But won't work if the driver is the nvidia 352

fmp@eva02:~$ pymol
X Error of failed request:  BadValue (integer parameter out of range for operation)
   Major opcode of failed request:  154 (GLX)
   Minor opcode of failed request:  24 (X_GLXCreateNewContext)
   Value in failed request:  0x0
   Serial number of failed request:  29
   Current serial number in output stream:  30

Control-C will not kill the process.

Happens the same thing with the 340 driver and with the 352-updates my computer won't boot. (To solve it: I did Ctrl + Alt + F1 [several times actually because the screen kept printing "Restoring state" message every 4 seconds while getting me out of Ctrl + Alt + F1 mode. Strangely enough the prompt remembers where it was..] and so I was able to login and do sudo apt-get purge nvidia)

fmp@eva02:~$ lspci | grep -e VGA -e 3D 
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Haswell-ULT Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09) 04:00.0 
3D controller: NVIDIA Corporation GK208M [GeForce GT 740M] (rev a1)

So...anyone know how to solve this?

Answer 1

I am referring to this answer from my other answers. I had a login loop issue as mentioned here. Yours is a different issue but getting the right nvidia driver could fix it.

First uninstall the currently installed NVIDIA drivers.Boot the computer, when the GRUB menu appears ...

Highlight the Ubuntu menu entry and press the E key.Add nouveau.modeset=0 to the end of the linux line. Press F10 to boot the Ubuntu operating system.

When the login screen appears press Ctrl+Alt+F1.Enter your user name and the password, then execute :

sudo apt-get purge nvidia*  
sudo reboot 

Now install the latest official stable NVIDIA drivers.Boot the computer, when the GRUB menu appears ...

Highlight the Ubuntu menu entry and press the E key.Add nouveau.modeset=0 to the end of the linux line. Press F10 to boot the Ubuntu operating system.

When the login screen appears press Ctrl+Alt+F1. Enter your user name and the password, then execute :

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nvidia-361 nvidia-prime
sudo reboot

Note : Maybe it is explicitly necessary to select the NVIDIA adapter in BIOS.

In case you have installed the nvidia driver from their site then uninstall it as per that instructions.Uninstall that driver by running, as root, sh ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-361.28.run and follow the on screen instructions.

Note : The solution I have provide has been tested on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Ubuntu 15.10 for two Nvidia GPUs on two different system.