Nvidia driver issues on Xubuntu 18.04, can't reach login screen

Question

I'm running a laptop with Nvidia Optimus on Xubuntu 18.04, and I can't seem to get the nvidia drivers to work at all.

I've run both Kubuntu 18.04 and Ubuntu Budgie 18.04, and was able to login using nvidia-390 drivers (although the login screen was black until I tried logging in, which allowed me to log in using nvidia drivers, the login screens just never loaded?), but on Xubuntu 18.04, it feels like I've tried everything to get nvidia drivers to work period. I've tried upwards of 6 different nvidia drivers (340, 380, 384, 390, there's likely some others I'm forgetting), tried running nvidia-xconfig, tried deleting /etc/X11/xorg.conf, even trying editing grub boot options.

The closest I have seemingly gotten is changing no grub boot options, installing any nvidia driver, and running nvidia-xconfig. This still doesn't allow me to boot into the login screen, but it will show the splash login screen as always, but the bootup will freeze with a non-blinking cursor in the upper left of the screen.

I can get into a TTY with CTRL+ALT+F1, and make changes there, I just am never able to actually get into a login screen. Grub is completely viewable, and without doing nvidia-xconfig, I can still get into a TTY, but the screen is completely blank until I enter a TTY, as opposed to with nvidia-xconfig, where I can get into a TTY, but it freezes on that non-blinking cursor.

I've been banging my head against a wall for days trying to figure this out, so any help is appreciated, and I can get more information as needed.

Solution

I used Xubuntu 16.04 and it worked good, just one time issues with NVIDIA drivers, but since then i didn't have issues. Well with coming of Xubuntu 18.04 i had no cuda support in Blender. I though it was a problem with Quadro GPUs... then i removed Quadro, got a new Gigabyte GTX 750 ti 4GB Ram, did a fresh reinstall and configured the drivers, but on rendering in Blender was running in Xeon CPU. Tried to install drivers from NVIDIA and setup failed in TTY1. I formatted again the machine, downloaded again NVIDIA drivers and still it failed. During these installations and tests, it i had several bugs.

Probably i will install old Xubuntu 16.04 again. I think there is something wrong on new LTS versions of Ubuntu family and between loosing all this time trying to make it work... instead of install and get back to the work there is a huge difference. Of course this is not the kind of way i like to spend my time or getting other GPU cards hopping this or that might work.

I hope someone fix this soon.

Comments

[sbergeron]

Just checking, do the nouveau open source drivers work on this system? Since this is an optimus system, have you done anything with bbswitch/bumblebee and the like?

[Glenn van Acker]

have you checked that the login screen is installed? could be a broken installation, or no installation at all. and what dm are you using? as mentioned above, try to add the nouveau driver in grub, and see if that boots up, may just be a misconfiguration

[Ness]

I can try to use the nouveau driver, and I've reinstalled the OS ~3 times while testing this, so I don't think that the installation has been broken all three times. Pretty sure that I'm using lightdm? I believe that is the default in Xubuntu.

[nilsonneto]

Sounds like this bug report bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nvidia-graphics-drivers-39‌​0/…

[Tim Richardson]

There have been big changes to the nvidia drivers in 18.04. And they are not good. I have two Optimus laptops, and I can't think of any good news to report. The root causes seems to be bug in systemd which means the nvidia card can not be turned off by bbswitch, and this has cascading consequences. I will stay on 17.10 and pray for a miracle. I can get it to log in with lightdm but it breaks easily and it is slow to switch intel/nvidia modes since it completely uninstalls/install nvidia and rebuilds initramfs. The devs have struggled to get something which works at all, I think.

[Tim Richardson]

I gave up with ubuntu 18.04. I think the new approach is irredeemable. Even if the logind bug is fixed, the new prime-select is committed to a restart. I'm sure there is a reason for this backwards step, but right now I have the latest Nvidia driver on Mint 18.3 and changing between nvidia and intel with no reboot required (so Mint is not affected by any of the preime-select problems of Ubuntu 18.04)

[Ravexina]

People should not install modified versions of xubuntu (or any other distribution) from unknown sources!

[Zanna]

it is not a good idea to edit /boot/grub.cfg as it gets regenerated automatically when update-grub is called, which happens automatically when, for example, a new kernel is installed, and also you may make a syntax error that causes the system to become unbootable. Instead you should add that parameter to /etc/default/grub as you described in relation to the second option.