Failing to install nvidia driver on F43

Ask Fedora
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1

I just installed Fedora 43 on a machine which has an nvidia card. Want to use the proprietary driver becase nouveau is glitchy and also I do some cuda programming.

I had the initial setup wizard enable rpm fusion during installation.

Went into the software center and installed the nvidia driver.

Got prompted to click “enable” to enable the driver on next boot. Rebooted. Still using nouveau and the prompt to “click enable to enable the nvidia driver on next reboot” is there again.

Tried clicking the prompt again and rebooting several times, but the prompt just comes back and I’m still running nouveau.

Meanwhile, I cannot start any apps from the gnome launcher anymore - just get the spinning cursor and nothing happens.

Is there some way out of this mess please?

6

I don’t have a good answer, but it sounds like what this user is also experiencing:

I might have suggested following the RPMFusion docs to install from the command line, but that didn’t seem to help the person here.

They suggest that:

This problem doesn’t happen if Nvidia driver is installed immediately after a fresh install and then updating all other packages.

However, maybe you already did that? (Not sure whether you updated your other packages after installation, before installing the Nvidia driver.)

7

I just followed this guide - Changes/NvidiaInstallationWithSecureboot - Fedora Project Wiki

( and yes, I do have Secure Boot enabled, works with Ubuntu and Manjaro just fine with NVIDIA drivers )

The doc linked above is on the official Fedora site, so it seemed like a trustworthy source.

I’ve switched to a text console using Ctrl+Alt+F3, logged in, ran sudo dnf remove akmod-nvidia and the prompt to re-enable it went away.

However, I still cannot run any apps (from apps launcher or from the dock) - the cursor spins for a few seconds and then nothing happens.

In other words, my brand new Fedora 43 install is completely non-functional.

8

Update

Unplugged my monitor from the NVIDIA card and plugged into the motherboard.

Now the “click Enable to enable the NVIDIA driver” actually did something. Apparently it was not able to run for the same (unknown) reason as all my other apps were not able to run.

It noticed that I have Secure Boot enabled and generated a MOK, which I then enrolled and rebooted - and still got the prompt to “enable NVIDIA”, which then generated a new MOK with a new, different, security code (even though I enrolled the first one).

This is clearly not working. Fedora 43 is just not compatible with NVIDIA - I had a serious issue during installation (where I could not get past the Privacy settings screen, solved also by plugging the display in the motherboard to use the Intel built-in video). Now I can’t install the drivers.

I’m just going to wipe my new Fedora 43 installation by deleting its partitions and go back to Ubuntu which works 1000 times better.

9

You are free to do what you choose.
However there are 2 guides to making nvidia drivers work on fedora.
One is in the file /usr/share/doc/akmods/README.secureboot
The second is the how-to at the rpmfusion web site.

Both give the same instructions.

What many users fail to understand is that with a brand new installation of the driver the mok keys are not generated until either the user manually does so according to those instructions, or the system has been rebooted. With the first reboot after akmods is installed the new signing keys will automatically be created .

In either of those cases the modules will be built before the signing key is available and thus will be unsigned. The fix is very simple and has been discussed many times on this forum.
The command sudo akmods --rebuild --force will rebuild the driver and it will be properly signed.

Once the signed driver is available and the key has been imported into the bios secure boot allows the system to load the driver at the next boot. As long as the driver is not signed the driver cannot be loaded and the system will always fall back to the nouveau driver