Nvidia Drivers for Fedora 44 - Black screen after boot

Ask Fedora
1

So I’ve recently made the move to Fedora after a long time on debian due to the need to use Da vinci Resolve for video editing.
So I have a 4070 Nvidia card.
I followed a few guides to install Nvidia drivers however each time resulted in a black screen after a reboot

Running below shows my gpus

lspci -nnk | grep -iA3 "VGA\|3D"
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation AD102 [GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER] [10de:2689] (rev a1)
	Subsystem: ZOTAC International (MCO) Ltd. Device [19da:7675]
	Kernel driver in use: nouveau
	Kernel modules: nouveau
--
10:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Raphael [1002:164e] (rev c7)
	Subsystem: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd Device [1458:d000]
	Kernel driver in use: amdgpu
	Kernel modules: amdgpu

First Steps i tried to install Nvidia drivers

sudo dnf install https://mirrors.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm https://mirrors.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm -y

sudo dnf install akmod-nvidia xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-cuda -y

Rebooting here will produce a black screen.

I then followed this guide with steps

sudo dnf update
Enable RPM fusion
sudo dnf install Making sure you're not a bot!(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm Making sure you're not a bot!(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm
(Skipped secureboot as i confirmed it’s disabled)
sudo dnf install akmod-nvidia
sudo dnf install xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-cuda # Required for nvidia-smi and CUDA support

My drive is Luks encrypted so i followed the steps there too
sudo grubby --update-kernel=ALL --args=‘plymouth.use-simpledrm=1’
printf ‘%s\n’ ‘force_drivers+=" nvidia nvidia_modeset nvidia_uvm nvidia_drm "’ | sudo tee /etc/dracut.conf.d/nvidia.conf
(Prevent my AMD gpu taking over)
echo ‘omit_drivers+=" amdgpu "’ | sudo tee /etc/dracut.conf.d/omit-amdgpu.conf
sudo dracut --force

I did see this error which is listed as a common problem on the guide

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

The guide also implies that the black screen is just a graphical issue and you can input your luks password. However I’ve attempted this twice and wasn’t able to either time. (I rebuilt the pc from Fedora live USB after each failure).

Any help would be massively appreciated!

2

remove this file and regenerate the initramfs

don’t skip this step. you can skip the last part enrolling the key.

in general the so called comprehensive guide has a lot of questionable advice and mistakes.

3

Oh dear… Is there an official guide i can follow rather than some random on github?

4

in general try to do the required basic stuff only and confirm that it works. You tried all tweaks all at once without knowing what they actually do.
You included the nvidia drivers but left amdgpu driver out of the initramfs. This might not play well on a laptop. You did not specify your type of hw.

Your current install: try removing rhgb and plymouth.use-simpledrm=1 from the cmdline in grub. Hold the left shift key while booting end then ‘e’ to enter the editor.
This hopefully will boot into luks , you will see text, when it stops use the return key once, and there should be the prompt for the password to unlock the drive.

5

Thanks for your reply. Do I have to follow the secureboot page if secureboot is disabled?

Thanks i’ll give it a try

6

to some degree yes.
On a new install before installing akmod-nvidia it’s better to install akmods first and then run sudo systemctl restart akmods, this will generate the keys to sign the modules.

8

Legend!

I am now on the latest nvidia drivers.

I followed the secure boot steps, installed akmod package first. I gave it 10 minutes inbetween installing the akmod-nvidia just in case modules were still building…

I also followed the Luks steps outlined in the github page.

Perhaps the fedora Nvidia page should be updated to incorporate those steps?

Thanks for your help!

9

Do this ONLY if you intend to have the nvidia driver stored in the initramfs image and it WILL make that image larger than standard. This is not required and not usually recommended.

I think you mean the rpmfusion how-to page.
Just an FYI. There has been a request made to have the akmods package create the key when it is initially installed instead of relying on a reboot or manual action to initially create that key.