Installing NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 on Ubuntu 13.04

Question

I have a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 graphic card with Ubuntu 13.04 running kernel 3.8.0-19 (tried with 3.10.0-999, same issue) and whenever i tried to install NVIDIA driver, either by downloading the *.run file from http://www.nvidia.com and installing it as root (during installation it give some errors as it failed to set runlevel), or doing those following steps:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nvidia-current nvidia-settings

Whenever I reboot the system, all my screen is messed up (with lower resoluition that should be, and with left and top bars missing), and worked hard to uninstall this driver and get my screen resolution and bars back. Are there any secure and working way to install NVIDIA driver for that graphic card?

Solution

I had the same problem, tried every answer i could found on the net and it didn't work.

if you are in this case :

• on startup your bios is visible only with your nvidia card
• ubuntu is visible only with the motherboard screen outpout

the reason seems to be the bad detection of device with modern bios (new motherboard, and relative old video card).

Try doing the following : first follow the indications there : http://ubuntuguide.net/how-to-install-nvidia-graphics-driver-in-ubuntu-10-10-maverick-meerkat ie :

• do the install of nvidia-current as suggested everywhere
• make sure you have a xorg.conf file in /etc/X11/
• once you are back on your problem with black screen etc, the idea is to have a terminal open from now. if you have it go to next step, otherwise try : connect your monitor to the motherboard outpout, reboot, go to the grub (double shift on startup after the bios), select the option advanced option for ubuntu, connect internet and go root console.
• edit the xorg.conf file : sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf

• and once there : what did change everything is to add the line

  BusID "PCI:01:00:0"

in the section "Device", in my case that give this code :

Section "Device"
  Identifier     "Device0"
  Driver         "nvidia"
  VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
  BusID          "PCI:01:00:0"
EndSection

save (ctrl+x), connect your monitor to the nvidia card and reboot, in my case, this solved the problem.

Comments

[gertvdijk]

Yeah, exactly. The GTX 560 is supported for any version included in Ubuntu 13.04. I don't see why this got downvoted.

[jbp]

Thank you, I had the exact same problem of what you describe above. Just adding "BusID" line as you suggested did the trick.