Fedora 30 KDE Nvidia Geforce GT 130M, Kernel 5.1.5 akmod 340.107 boot stops after Plymouth

[nightromantic]

@skeydan

No, but for deep learning

I’d still suggest for you to try either rpmfusion’s or negativo’s packaged driver, even if not right now. See also about packaged/native driver experience people reported in this thread:

Is there any point using the official NVIDIA drivers?

Hi, Since I’ve migrated to Fedora (F28) I’ve been installing the Nvidia driver with almost every kernel upgrade. DKMS only a handful of times manages to compile the driver with the new kernel update. Most of the times I have to download the newest version of the driver from Nvidia’s website to make sure the kernel supports it. If I don’t plan to do any gaming on Fedora (I dual-boot to Windows for that), is having the Nvidia driver installed worth all the hassle? Are there any features that mak…

My points there are the same I wrote to you, look for other people’s experience with packaged drivers. My own experience concurs: it’s cleaner and easier way to install/upgrade/remove nvidia’s driver.

Also you can test both uninstalling driver you have now, then rebooting and looking if you can boot successfully to 5.1 and installing latest driver from negativo17 afterwards. ) Also you can wait for a couple of days to see if negativo’s packages will update.

[biosharkdev (R.J.S.)]

@nightromantic

I don’t agree with @biosharkdev on the topic of driver installation. I think we all better off using packaged driver, not one directly from nvidia. Packaged one can be upgraded/removed safely without leaving junk all over you Fedora installation.

But the good thing is we all are free to decide ourselves what do we want to do. @biosharkdev likes driver directly from nvidia – ok, good for him! ) I don’t like it and like packaged ones instead – it’s ok while I can get them. I can’t be 100% sure I can always get one, as we’ve discussed above.

It only leaves junk if you blindly install it. If you know all the steps you’ve done intaling it, you can trace your steps back while uninstalling. Having an RPM is all good and nice, but as you have pointed out, it’s not always available. So for this reason I have chosen to install the proprietary ones, taking the latest one straight from the source.

In my daily professional work I like to know what and where am I installing things. Hence I don’t shy away from a guide that explains all steps involved in setting up the proprietary drivers properly. Due to security reasons I like to get drivers from the source.

However I personally will soon switch form the Nvidia drivers to the open source one. At least to give them a proper test.

P.S. I’ve read quite a few bad reviews about negativo17’s repository including the fact that it replaces some Fedora libraries. On reddit as well (Reddit - Dive into anything). This are exactly the kind of security issues I am concerned with when installing from 3rd party repos, so if I have a go, I’ll better take the driver from it’s original source.

[nightromantic]

@biosharkdev

It only leaves junk if you blindly install it.

Yep, you can keep track and remove manually and accurately, but new user isn’t likely to do it. Package manager doing this for you is much cleaner, easier, less error-prone and time-consuming.

One other thing is nvidia’s driver is generic. It doesn’t care for fedora’s packaging guidelines, or Fedora-specific quirks. Package maintainer can include Fedora-specific patches, and a good one definitely should follow guidelines)

By the way, nvidia’s installer can easily replace some system libraries too, and you’ll be hard presses to spot it (no trace in package manager).

I’ve not seen bad things about n17, repo, though I haven’t searched for them much. By the way, link you provided seems to show absolutely no reasoning why it’s bad, the person just states we shouldn’t point new users to it. When I did use it, I remember negativo17 explaining very clearly what he did and why. I think libraries he replaced were (a) optional and (b) compiled to utilize GPU hardware decoding. Maybe also patched gnome compositor was there for it to work better with NVidia’s driver.

I totally do agree with you regarding security concerns. Cornerstone of it is the matter of trust. You have to trust maintainer of the package you’re installing, there’s no way around it.

Though there are points both for packaged version (more eyes / checks, clear install / remove trail) and for “native” version (less possibility for man in the middle). Also from stability/usability standpoint I trust package maintainers to not to cripple my system, and I’m not so sure about nvidia’s driver).

Edit: ow, and from security standpoint you should be better off running open source driver Although it’s debatable too to some point ) And you’re going to try it, that’s good. ) I do use it myself.

As I said earlier, it’s good we’re free to make our own choice, and there’s noone demanding one-way-fit-all approach from us.

I think if we continue this discussion it should be moved to it’s own topic, as it can be not very useful to someone with problems after 5.1.5 kernel update.

[heliosstyx]

@nightromantic

And another thing ) Do you use your computer for gaming? If not then you can try using open source nouveau driver instead of proprietary nvidia one. It’s better in some areas, but in the same time it doesn’t provide 3D performance anywhere close to nvidia’s driver, and it works better on some cards than on others. It’s no-go for gaming, but if you don’t do it then you can test and see if it works ok on your machine

@nightromantic: Thank you for your great help. No, I am not using my notebook for gaming. I play my games only on my XBox, there are no problems like here discussed.

How can I remove the nvidia drivers 340.xx (akmods) safely and to install the nouveau driver again? Is it risky to use nouveau driver (overheating etc.)?

[nightromantic]

You don’t need to install anything, just removing the driver and rebooting should do the trick.

Also you can try to temporary switch to nouveau without uninstalling it though i’ve not tested it myself and can’t say if it works with 340xx.

There should not be issues with overheating, but performance and usability can be not very good for some GPUs (some older ones too), so you should test it yourself. I’ve used it myself on quite old NVidia card (which supported legacy proprietary driver 390xx and nothing newer) without issues.

It’s easy to uninstall proprietary driver, test nouveau, and reinstall proprietary one if you decide you like the old way better.

[skeydan (Sigrid Keydana)]

Thanks @nightromantic!

@nightromantic

I’d still suggest for you to try either rpmfusion’s or negativo’s packaged driver, even if not right now. See also about packaged/native driver experience people reported in this thread:

Thanks for pointing me to that thread! I’ll go through it and also take a look at negativo17. You’re right, it seems like I don’t really have anything to lose here (plus, no more manual CUDA updates…).

@nightromantic

Also you can test both uninstalling driver you have now, then rebooting and looking if you can boot successfully to 5.1 and installing latest driver from negativo17 afterwards. )

Yeah, I think I might do that. Probably I’ll wait some time and if the next say, 2 kernel updates don’t help I’ll try uninstalling the nvidia driver and get a negativo17 one.
Trying out different ways of installing the nvidia driver does not sound as scary as the initial switch from nouveau to nvidia (((including its modifications to BIOS, backing up initramfs, blacklisting nouveau and what not)))

[nightromantic]

@skeydan

Trying out different ways of installing the nvidia driver does not sound as scary as the initial switch from nouveau to nvidia (((including its modifications to BIOS, backing up initramfs, blacklisting nouveau and what not)))

You know, if you went with rpmfusion’s or negativo’s packaged version in the first place, you won’t be scared at all) The majority of this hassle are now done by the packages without you even noticing.

From one viewpoint it’s good to understand what it really takes to switch driver and what technical details are behind it. From the other for user who don’t want all of this information packages are much more user-friendly.

Please also note @biosharkdev, points about security and some people saying negativo’s repo should not be recommended to new users. I myself used negativo’s packages, read his whys and how-tos, I got some new understanding from his explanations, and I like his work. That’s my personal subjective opinion. Also I haven’t any serious issue using his packages, and they are very easy to remove if you don’t like something.

Also there’re quite a few mentions that his work is used by rpmfusion and that maybe even he’s one of the maintainers there (I don’t know and haven’t tried to find out). rpmfusion’s driver can be considered more stable, and negativo’s more experimental one.

[skeydan (Sigrid Keydana)]

@nightromantic

You know, if you went with rpmfusion’s or negativo’s packaged version in the first place, you won’t be scared at all) The majority of this hassle are now done by the packages without you even noticing.

interesting, I had no idea

[straycat]

A word of caution about negativos repo it only supports the latest versions of the nvidia drivers and is not compatable with the rpmfusion repo.I’ve been using negativo for several years and have never had any issues but this is a newer 1050 nvidia card.It did take a couple reboots with the latest kernel to build this time.Also negativo builds off dkms as rpmfusion builds off akmods.I do have a couple computers running older nvidia cards and one is using the 304.xx driver from rpmfusion.I’m still on fedora 29 and it hasn’t upgraded yet to the 5.1 kernel so I’ll have to see if it builds.If you wish to remove the driver (sudo dnf remove nvidia) should work then just reboot and reinstall the driver with (sudo dnf install xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-340xx akmod-nvidia-340xx) if your using rpmfusion. also insure that when the kernel updated to 5.1 kernel-devel headers etc. all updated as well.As was stated earlier it may take a few days for rpmfusion to update to the latest builds.You can also check on rpmfusions site and look in packages to see if the akmod and kmod packages have been updated yet.

[heliosstyx]

Thank you @nightromantic. Your instructions were helpfully, but some programs crashes (K-Mail, krusader etc.) under KDE, because the latest qt 5.12.x version has compatibility issues with the latest nouveau-driver (NV96), so I have to use the nvidia driver 340.xx or my desktop is unusable. Plasma is qt centered and so there is no way out. The same issues are under Debian too. With the end of nvidia driver 340.xx I have to leave Fedora.

Thank to all other dudes for the hot discussion.

[skeydan (Sigrid Keydana)]

Thanks again @nightromantic @biosharkdev.

Turned out that whatever I did, I could not boot into a 5.1 kernel, so I reinstalled and this time, I went with negativo17 as you recommended

All went great, I only have one leftover problem building TensorFlow (https://github.com/negativo17/cuda/issues/18).

[nightromantic]

@skeydan,

glad you’ve resolved at least the major problem :))