6.4.4 nvidia driver 535.54.03 doesnt work after kernel update

Ask Fedora
, ,
1

I am using Lenovo Legion 5 Pro 16ITH6 with rtx 3050 mobile nvidia gpu
Upgrading from 6.3.12 to 6.4.4 caused the nvidia driver (nvidia-powerd.service) failed in boot, and it still works fine when i having booted in 6.3.12, but it took a lot of time to boot (like 2 or 3 minute)

the “systemctl status nvidia-powerd.service” output, having booted into 6.4.4:

× nvidia-powerd.service - nvidia-powerd service
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/nvidia-powerd.service; enabled; preset: enabled)
    Drop-In: /usr/lib/systemd/system/service.d
             └─10-timeout-abort.conf
     Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Sun 2023-07-23 16:36:48 +0330; 1min 43s ago
    Process: 1138 ExecStart=/usr/bin/nvidia-powerd (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
   Main PID: 1138 (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
        CPU: 8ms

Jul 23 16:36:48 fedora systemd[1]: Starting nvidia-powerd.service - nvidia-powerd service...
Jul 23 16:36:48 fedora /usr/bin/nvidia-powerd[1138]: nvidia-powerd version:1.0(build 1)
Jul 23 16:36:48 fedora /usr/bin/nvidia-powerd[1138]: Allocate client failed 38
Jul 23 16:36:48 fedora /usr/bin/nvidia-powerd[1138]: Failed to initialize RM Client
Jul 23 16:36:48 fedora systemd[1]: nvidia-powerd.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Jul 23 16:36:48 fedora systemd[1]: nvidia-powerd.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Jul 23 16:36:48 fedora systemd[1]: Failed to start nvidia-powerd.service - nvidia-powerd service.

nvidia-smi output in 6.4.4:

NVIDIA-SMI has failed because it couldn't communicate with the NVIDIA driver. Make sure that the latest NVIDIA driver is installed and running.

and i think this is maybe a bug and i report it on bugzilla
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2224839

2

Hello @goldenhat ,
Whenever the kernel updates, nvidia drivers always lag in updating and they break. Usually, when I was using nvidia gear, I would just use the open source built in nvidia kernel driver (nouveau) since it would get updated with every kernel update. But I do not use nvidia gear now and haven’t for some time so newer cards may not be supported as well on the generic open source kernel driver.

3

The error may exist as a result of the user doing a reboot quickly after a kernel update, which can interrupt the akmods rebuild of the drivers.

The easiest fix I have found is a simple

  1. sudo dnf remove kmod-nvidia-6.X.X* to remove the failing drivers (use the kernel version that has failed – in this case 6.4.4 )
  2. followed by sudo akmods --force to rebuild and reinstall the driver for the running kernel.
  3. Then after waiting at least 5 minutes for that step to properly complete do a reboot.

This seems to work in almost all cases.

1 Like