[SOLVED] Updating the system via updates manager messed the nvidia driver

lpallard · 01-22-2020, 07:00 AM

Hello, on my media center (regular computer equipped with a Nvidia GFeforce GT440), all was working well until the update manager icon showed up yesterday saying there were updates available. I reviewed the list of updates and noticed among other things that the new kernel 5.0.3 was available so I decided to go ahead with updating the system.

The updates ran fine (so it seems) then the update manager asked for a reboot.

Upon rebooting, I was greeted with a lower resolution screen on my TV. I logged in and went to the diasplay manager of Cinammon only to find out that the monitor was identified as "Unknown", the resolution was set to 1280x1024 instead of 1920x1080 and the refresh rate was set to 77Hz instead of 60Hz.

I launched the nvidia setting manager via CLI and got this:

Code:

htpcguest@htpc:~$ nvidia-settings

ERROR: NVIDIA driver is not loaded

ERROR: Error querying enabled displays on GPU 0 (Missing Extension).

ERROR: Error querying connected displays on GPU 0 (Missing Extension).

** Message: 07:49:28.659: PRIME: No offloading required. Abort
** Message: 07:49:28.659: PRIME: is it supported? no

ERROR: nvidia-settings could not find the registry key file. This file should
       have been installed along with this driver at
       /usr/share/nvidia/nvidia-application-profiles-key-documentation. The
       application profiles will continue to work, but values cannot be
       prepopulated or validated, and will not be listed in the help text.
       Please see the README for possible values and descriptions.

Clearly something in the updates messed the driver. The Nvidia driver was installed using the Driver manager. Since the installation of Mint from scratch, the driver in use has always been the "recommended" driver, nvidia-driver-390 (see attached screenshot). Funny thing is, when I open the driver manager, it still shows this driver as being in use.

A quick web search indicated that most people having similar issues is because they install the drivers with an unsupported method (either manually or via repos or PPA's).

1. What to do?
2. Is this normal for a standard system update to wreck the system like this?

Cheers

business_kid · 01-22-2020, 07:50 AM

Post the output of

Code:

ls -l /usr/lib/libGL*

and we can try the obvious check. Did you update or reinstall the Nvidia driver?

lpallard · 01-22-2020, 08:52 AM

Code:

htpcguest@htpc:~/Desktop$ ls -l /usr/lib/libGL*
ls: cannot access '/usr/lib/libGL*': No such file or directory

I dont know how to reinstall the driver as there are no "reinstall" buttons in the driver manager window and reinstalling it manually without knowing what I am doing probably would lead to further damage...

EDIT: Tried the following but it didnt work.

1. Set the "nouveau" driver as in use then rebooted
2. Uninstall "sudo apt-get remove xserver-xorg-video-fbdev" based on https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=301215 then rebooted
3. Went back to driver manager then set the nvidia driver as in use then rebooted.

Now its the same but display manager reports refresh rate as 0Hz

lpallard · 01-22-2020, 01:12 PM

Fixed it, uninstalled kernel 5.3.0 which seems buggy. Running 5.0.0 and all is fine now.