Nvidia on Ubuntu
Because I wanted to run a local Artificial Intelligence platform called Ollama, I wanted to ensure that my GPU was fully utilized in the system since GPUs are the particular type of hardware best suited for these Vector calculations. And, I have a 'decent' GPU - Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 (the best you could get at the time). In trying to install the latest Nvidia driver, I set off on a week's long journey of learning, frustration and perseverance discovering the inner workings of Ubuntu 24.04, Xorg, the Linux kernel and kernel modules, DRM, Secure Boot, initramfs and more.
I still do not have the Nvidia driver loaded - even after 40+ reboots and attempts. Instead I'm using the Nouveau driver but at least I have a working system and I believe now that I've finally figured out what needs to be done to disable Nouveau and install Nvidia - a project that I might tackle shortly. I'm just documenting the things that I encountered in this journey so that I can pick it back up at the right time.
Opposite[edit]
To go the opposite route, purging all proprietary drivers and installing the open source Nouveau driver, there's a good albeit older tutorial at https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-uninstall-the-nvidia-drivers-on-ubuntu-20-04-focal-fossa-linux
GUI is stuck[edit]
If you go into the Graphical User Interface (GUI) for "System Settings" and then "Hardware -> Driver Manager" where it would appear to allow you to simply choose to use a proprietary driver from Nvidia, and you find that the choices are all disabled (grayed out), that is because no other driver is found on the system. You would need to download a driver through your package manager first. However, the major caveat is that every attempt I made to "install an Nvidia driver" - whether through a graphical package manager like Synaptic, or the CLI using apt or dpkg, would just result in a "non-working" graphics system where I didn't even have dual monitor support. In theory, if you have multiple drivers, the GUI allows you to effortlessly choose and switch between them. In practice, installing a second driver is not possible from a Graphical desktop environment.
X.org[edit]
Here is the Xorg.log file from my first boot into a clean system having no Nvidia drivers.
Nouveau[edit]
The XServer is loading the nouveau driver package xserver-xorg-video-nouveau.
From the package description:
This driver for the X.Org X server (see xserver-xorg for a further description) provides support for NVIDIA Riva, TNT, GeForce, and Quadro cards.
This package provides 2D support including EXA acceleration, Xv and RandR. 3D functionality is provided by the libgl1-mesa-dri package.
This package is built from the FreeDesktop.org xf86-video-nouveau driver.
Inspection[edit]
dpkg can show us what packages are installed with 'nouveau' in the name.
dpkg -l | grep -i nouveau
ii libdrm-nouveau2:amd64 2.4.122-1~ubuntu0.24.04.1 amd64 Userspace interface to nouveau-specific kernel DRM services -- runtime
ii xserver-xorg-video-nouveau 1:1.0.17-2build1 amd64 X.Org X server -- Nouveau display driver
And, lsmod can show us what kernel modules are loaded with 'nouveau' in the name.
lsmod | grep nouveau
nouveau 3096576 68
drm_gpuvm 45056 2 xe,nouveau
drm_exec 12288 3 drm_gpuvm,xe,nouveau
gpu_sched 61440 2 xe,nouveau
drm_ttm_helper 12288 2 xe,nouveau
ttm 110592 4 drm_ttm_helper,xe,i915,nouveau
drm_display_helper 237568 3 xe,i915,nouveau
mxm_wmi 12288 1 nouveau
i2c_algo_bit 16384 3 xe,i915,nouveau
video 77824 3 xe,i915,nouveau
wmi 28672 4 video,wmi_bmof,mxm_wmi,nouveau
modinfo tells us details about the kernel module, including the dependencies.
What files does the nouveau driver install?
dpkg -L xserver-xorg-video-nouveau
/. /usr /usr/lib /usr/lib/xorg /usr/lib/xorg/modules /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/nouveau_drv.so /usr/share /usr/share/bug /usr/share/bug/xserver-xorg-video-nouveau /usr/share/doc /usr/share/doc/xserver-xorg-video-nouveau /usr/share/doc/xserver-xorg-video-nouveau/README.Debian /usr/share/doc/xserver-xorg-video-nouveau/changelog.Debian.gz /usr/share/doc/xserver-xorg-video-nouveau/copyright /usr/share/man /usr/share/man/man4 /usr/share/man/man4/nouveau.4.gz /usr/share/bug/xserver-xorg-video-nouveau/script
NVidia[edit]
The installation guide (46 chapters) is at https://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/570.153.02/README/
I've read the whole thing.
Replacing Nouveau[edit]
See NVIDIA driver 570.153.02 README common problems #nouveau where it says basically
- denylist it
- modify your initramfs
- modify Xorg to not load nouveau
We explore these in more detail below.
Over at StackExchange, a user asked how to switch nvidia driver from nouveau to nvidia proprietary and succeeded in part by modifying the boot parameters in grub to deny nouveau.
Denylist[edit]
I tried denylisting the nouveau driver and preventing it from doing modesetting by creating disable-nouveau.conf however I was unsuccessful in installing Nvidia drivers even with that in place, and performing operations from a recovery console.
I've looked at the initramfs and don't see where it is loading nouveau. Although I do see where the temporary disable-nouveau.conf file I created is read in.
Modify Initial Ram Disk[edit]
The initial ram disk is a gzipped CPIO archive
file /boot/initrd.img-6.8.0-62-generic
/boot/initrd.img-6.8.0-62-generic: ASCII cpio archive (SVR4 with no CRC)
But how do you examine it? with lsiniramfs
There are quite a lot of files that get named in it. So, pipe it through a pager like less
X.org.conf[edit]
I've looked at Xorg but I'm not sure how / if it is responsible for requiring nouveau - but I can clearly see that the package is installed.
dpkg -l | grep -E "xorg|xserver"
ii python3-xkit 0.5.0ubuntu6 all library for the manipulation of xorg.conf files (Python 3)
ii x11-xserver-utils 7.7+10build2 amd64 X server utilities
ii xorg 1:7.7+23ubuntu3 amd64 X.Org X Window System
ii xorg-docs-core 1:1.7.1-1.2 all Core documentation for the X.org X Window System
ii xorg-sgml-doctools 1:1.11-1.1 all Common tools for building X.Org SGML documentation
ii xserver-common 2:21.1.12-1ubuntu1.4 all common files used by various X servers
ii xserver-xephyr 2:21.1.12-1ubuntu1.4 amd64 nested X server
ii xserver-xorg 1:7.7+23ubuntu3 amd64 X.Org X server
ii xserver-xorg-core 2:21.1.12-1ubuntu1.4 amd64 Xorg X server - core server
ii xserver-xorg-input-all 1:7.7+23ubuntu3 amd64 X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
ii xserver-xorg-input-libinput 1.4.0-1ubuntu24.04.1 amd64 X.Org X server -- libinput input driver
ii xserver-xorg-input-wacom 1:1.2.0-1ubuntu2 amd64 X.Org X server -- Wacom input driver
ii xserver-xorg-legacy 2:21.1.12-1ubuntu1.4 amd64 setuid root Xorg server wrapper
ii xserver-xorg-video-all 1:7.7+23ubuntu3 amd64 X.Org X server -- output driver metapackage
ii xserver-xorg-video-amdgpu 23.0.0-1build1 amd64 X.Org X server -- AMDGPU display driver
ii xserver-xorg-video-ati 1:22.0.0-1build1 amd64 X.Org X server -- AMD/ATI display driver wrapper
ii xserver-xorg-video-fbdev 1:0.5.0-2build2 amd64 X.Org X server -- fbdev display driver
ii xserver-xorg-video-intel 2:2.99.917+git20210115-1build1 amd64 X.Org X server -- Intel i8xx, i9xx display driver
ii xserver-xorg-video-nouveau 1:1.0.17-2build1 amd64 X.Org X server -- Nouveau display driver
ii xserver-xorg-video-qxl 0.1.6-1build1 amd64 X.Org X server -- QXL display driver
ii xserver-xorg-video-radeon 1:22.0.0-1build1 amd64 X.Org X server -- AMD/ATI Radeon display driver
ii xserver-xorg-video-vesa 1:2.6.0-1 amd64 X.Org X server -- VESA display driver
ii xserver-xorg-video-vmware 1:13.4.0-1build1 amd64 X.Org X server -- VMware display driverModule Signing[edit]
On systems with Secure Boot enabled (mine), you most likely need to sign the module. See Signing NVIDIA Kernel Module. However, I didn't get an explicit message that signing was a problem; and I did see that the installation process signs the module with a generated key. I assume that the MOK process hooks into the trust system somehow.
