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[1]. And, I have a 'decent' GPU - Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 (the best you could get when I built the system in 2024). In trying to install the latest Nvidia driver, I set off on a week-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 am approaching with greater scrutiny now. I'm documenting the things that I encounter in this journey.
Why not just continue to use Nouveau, a project of the freedesktop community? I mean "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" - right? In principle, I'd very much like to use nouveau. I'm not even sure that any alternative is "better" in any way - especially since I am not a gamer[2]. My use case is to get the best performance from local LLMs. As I become familiar with the methods to switch video drivers reliably, I intend to run benchmarks and explore the benefits of one configuration vs another.
Status[edit]
As of 2025-07-03, I'm still not running with an NVIDIA driver. According to a Reddit thread just days ago, it's always been rather messy getting the right system together. I should "upgrade your system either to Ubuntu 25.04 for Wayland experience and no working suspend to RAM, or to 24.04 if you need suspend to RAM, but are Ok with using X11 instead of Wayland."
Since I'm on 24.04, and I've tried using X11 instead of Wayland without success, I plan to ensure my home directory is on its own partition and reinstall the OS to 25.04
Opposite[edit]
To go the opposite route, purging all proprietary drivers and installing the open source Nouveau driver, you pretty much just sudo apt install xserver-xorg-video-nouveau You might find seemingly good content/tutorials by linuxconfig, but I'm intentionally not linking to their site or YouTube videos because their content is plausible, but sketchy - IOW, it is Artificial Intelligence slop. [3]
About this System[edit]
In your desktop environment, you can access 'System Settings' -> 'About this System' (KInfoCenter) to display basic info about your Software and Hardware environment including the 'graphics processor'. Mine says NV197 - which is the codename given to the card by the Nouveau project[4]. You can click on 'Show More Information' which reveals a multi-tab dialog for OpenCL, OpenGL, Vulkan, Window Manager and X-Server with extensive Graphics info.
Or, you can also get details from a variety of CLI commands like glxinfo, lspci etc.
glxinfo | grep -E "OpenGL version|OpenGL renderer"
OpenGL renderer string: NV197
OpenGL version string: 4.3 (Compatibility Profile) Mesa 24.2.8-1ubuntu1~24.04.1
If you are on a TTY (without a display), lspci shows the same info
lspci | grep VGA
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation AD107 [GeForce RTX 4060] (rev a1)
After the installation of Nvidia drivers fails, you won't have a functioning GPU, since you will no longer have the nouveau driver available either, and so the output of the same glxinfo command will show that "llvmpipe" is the renderer.
OpenGL renderer string: llvmpipe (LLVM 19.1.1, 256 bits)
OpenGL version string: 4.5 (Compatibility Profile) Mesa 24.2.8-1ubuntu1~24.04.1
LLVMpipe is a software rasterizer within the Mesa 3D graphics library that utilizes the LLVM compiler infrastructure to perform rendering entirely on the CPU. It acts as a software fallback when a dedicated GPU or its drivers are unavailable or malfunctioning, allowing OpenGL applications to run without hardware acceleration. Essentially, LLVMpipe takes over the rendering process when the GPU can't or shouldn't be used.
If dpkg shows xserver-xorg-video-nouveau is installed, then you can switch to it from e.g. "Driver Manager" in Settings.
Synaptic will allow you to view drivers, but you won't be able to switch from that interface (you'll get an error message about a lock file).
Although switching drivers from the system settings interface appears to complete without error, I'm not sure how well it works - if at all.
I was getting a broken desktop (single monitor, no good results from things like nvidia-smi) after installing Nvidia drivers, and so I tried switching to nouveau - and it somehow eventually worked.
apt-get remove -y --purge '^libnvidia-.*' && apt-get remove -y --purge '^nvidia-*' && apt-get remove -y --purge '*575*' && apt -y autoremove apt -y autoclean shutdown -r now (recovery mode) vim /etc/default/grub update-grub
After doing a couple of reboots changing the boot 'modeline' and 'nosplash' options from a recovery console or the TTY, I didn't seem to get anywhere. But when I issued a 'startX' command, and the system booted into the GNOME desktop instead of KDE (?!!??), then I had dual monitors again. Amazingly nvidia-smi returned results, but glxinfo says now that I'm using onboard graphics from the CPU (not the GPU) but it doesn't say LLVMpipe
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa Intel(R) Graphics (RPL-S)
OpenGL version string: 4.6 (Compatibility Profile) Mesa 24.2.8-1ubuntu1~24.04.1
sudo lsmod|grep -i nvidia nvidia_uvm 2158592 4 nvidia_drm 139264 5 nvidia_modeset 1736704 6 nvidia_drm nvidia 11550720 81 nvidia_uvm,nvidia_modeset ecc 45056 2 ecdh_generic,nvidia video 77824 3 xe,i915,nvidia_modeset
Grub right now is 'normal'
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
The NVIDIA persistence daemon is running
systemctl list-units --type service --all | grep nvidia
nvidia-persistenced.service loaded active running NVIDIA Persistence Daemon
dkms shows that kernel modules are installed for two kernels
dkms status nvidia/575.57.08, 6.8.0-60-generic, x86_64: installed (Original modules exist) nvidia/575.57.08, 6.8.0-62-generic, x86_64: installed (Original modules exist)
GUI is stuck[edit]
In theory, the GUI (see image) allows you to effortlessly choose and switch between multiple drivers. There are even YouTube videos that show how it's supposed to work[5]. In practice, at least on my system, installing a second driver is not possible from a Graphical desktop environment.
If you go into the Graphical User Interface (GUI) for "System Settings" and then "Hardware -> Driver Manager" it would appear to allow you to simply choose to use a proprietary driver from Nvidia. But all the choices are disabled (grayed out). 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.
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]
Documentation for installing NVidia drivers is at https://docs.nvidia.com/datacenter/tesla/driver-installation-guide/
The installation guide for the v570 of the driver (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 graphics driver from nouveau to nvidia and succeeded in part by modifying the boot parameters in grub to deny nouveau. Note that the boot parameters were used only during the process to stop using one driver and install the other driver. It is not a configuration that would allow you to have two different boot menu entries in GRUB in order to use two graphics modes.
Over in the Manjaro Linux forums, a user asked a similar question: How do I switch between Nvidia and Nouveau drivers on boot? They tried using
modprobe.blacklist=nvidia systemd.setenv=GPUMOD=nouveau rd.driver.blacklist=nvidia nouveau.modeset=1 nvidia.modeset=0
But ultimately had to install the OS twice on different disk partitions in order to choose to boot one system or the other depending on what graphics driver they needed to use.
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.
When troubleshooting keeps turning up mysteries, you have to check your assumptions.
sudo modprobe nvidia
modprobe: ERROR: could not insert 'nvidia': Key was rejected by serviceSee Kernel modules
Tools and Troubleshooting[edit]
Ubuntu wants you to use the 'ubuntu-drivers' tool[6].
NVIDIA seems to just settled on a new mechanism[7] rather than downloading the (former?) .run installers: wget https://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/repos/ubuntu2404/x86_64/cuda-keyring_1.1-1_all.deb dpkg -i cuda-keyring_1.1-1_all.deb apt update apt install nvidia-open
NVIDIA distributes a script called nvidia-bug-report.sh that you can and should run[8] to collect detailed information about any problems.
Interesting Notes[edit]
Usually, when you have 'sudo' or root privileges you can do more. One exception is the X-Server. Root access to the server may be restricted. In that case,
glxinfo
will give
Error: unable to open display
A regular user will have no problem running glxinfo.
Different Desktop Environments[edit]
As a regular user, my DE is KDE Plasma (using Kubuntu) rather than the GNOME default of Ubuntu
Subpages[edit]
References[edit]
- ↑ https://docs.nvidia.com/cuda/cuda-c-programming-guide/index.html#the-benefits-of-using-gpus
- ↑ I'm not opposed in any way, I just don't have the time to add another hobby. This is a clarifying statement for my use-case, and therefore, requirements.
- ↑ linuxconfig.org/how-to-install-nvidia-drivers-on-ubuntu-24-04 describes how to get Nvidia drivers working on Ubuntu 24, but curiously refers to deprecated commands like 'ubuntu drivers autoinstall'. They have a whole section where they talk about downloading 'drivers' from Nvidia - but the '.run' files are not drivers at all, they are installers. And they instruct you to use 'telinit' to switch runlevels when the concept of SysV runlevels is obsolete (and thus so is the command). Granted the telinit command will be transparently translated into systemd unit activation requests, but old, deprecated "howto" is "how NOT to".
- ↑ https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/CodeNames.html
- ↑ I do not want to link to AI-generated content that creates a worse Internet, but this is what I'm refering to www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmGfi1ldBqc The bot doesn't respond to questions, so is my experience different because I have Secure Boot enabled? Is my experience different because something changed in the OS between Ubuntu 20 and Ubuntu 24?
- ↑ https://documentation.ubuntu.com/server/how-to/graphics/install-nvidia-drivers/
- ↑ https://docs.nvidia.com/datacenter/tesla/driver-installation-guide/
- ↑ https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/if-you-have-a-problem-please-read-this-first/27131
