I am using Ubuntu Studio 20.04 LTS, and I am trying to get higher performances for a video game (FlightGear). According to lspci, I got two GPU's on my Acer TravelMate 5360:
~$ lspci | grep VGA
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GF119M [GeForce GT 520M] (rev a1)
But the nvidia drivers seem not to work:
~$ nvidia-smi
NVIDIA-SMI has failed because it couldn't communicate with the NVIDIA driver. Make sure that the latest NVIDIA driver is installed and running.
~$ nvidia-settings
ERROR: NVIDIA driver is not loaded
ERROR: Unable to load info from any available system
(nvidia-settings:10198): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: 15:41:24.368: g_object_unref: assertion 'G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed
** Message: 15:41:24.374: PRIME: Requires offloading
** Message: 15:41:24.374: PRIME: is it supported? yes
** Message: 15:41:24.467: PRIME: Usage: /usr/bin/prime-select nvidia|intel|on-demand|query
** Message: 15:41:24.467: PRIME: on-demand mode: "1"
** Message: 15:41:24.467: PRIME: is "on-demand" mode supported? yes
I tried to manually activate the nvidia drivers:
~$ sudo modprobe nvidia
modprobe: ERROR: could not insert 'nvidia': No such device
~$ sudo modprobe nvidia_drm
~$ dmesg
[...]
[ 266.952607] nvidia-nvlink: Nvlink Core is being initialized, major device number 235
[ 266.955482] NVRM: The NVIDIA GeForce GT 520M GPU installed in this system is
NVRM: supported through the NVIDIA 390.xx Legacy drivers. Please
NVRM: visit http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html for more
NVRM: information. The 470.57.02 NVIDIA driver will ignore
NVRM: this GPU. Continuing probe...
[ 266.955489] NVRM: No NVIDIA GPU found.
[ 266.955719] nvidia-nvlink: Unregistered the Nvlink Core, major device number 235
According to the website specified in the dmesg message, my GPU is supported only until version 390. But installing that version makes my screen stay black when the login screen should appear upon boot. Right now, I have the newest version (470) installed. What can I do ?
EDIT: I tried all the solutions in the answers to this question, but none of them helped. I also just tried reinstalling the 390 nvidia drivers - I again got a black login screen. Interestingly, when I add nomodeset to the kernel boot parameters in Grub, I get the login screen, and the desktop after that, too. nvidia-smi then shows the expected output:
~$ nvidia-smi
Mon Jul 26 20:04:29 2021
+---------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 390.144 Driver Version: 390.144 |
|-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
| GPU Name Persistence-M| Bus-Id Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan Temp Perf Pwr:Usage/Cap| Memory-Usage | GPU-Util Compute M. |
|===============================+======================+======================|
| 0 GeForce GT 520M Off | 00000000:01:00.0 N/A | N/A |
| N/A 56C P8 N/A / N/A | 4MiB / 964MiB | N/A Default |
+-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
+---------------------------------------------+
| Processes: GPU Memory |
| GPU PID Type Process name Usage |
|=============================================================================|
| 0 Not Supported |
+---------------------------------------------+
But nvidia-settings still shows this:
ERROR: Unable to load info from any available system
(nvidia-settings:10198): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: 15:41:24.368: g_object_unref: assertion 'G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed
** Message: 15:41:24.374: PRIME: Requires offloading
** Message: 15:41:24.374: PRIME: is it supported? yes
** Message: 15:41:24.467: PRIME: Usage: /usr/bin/prime-select nvidia|intel|on-demand|query
** Message: 15:41:24.467: PRIME: on-demand mode: "1"
** Message: 15:41:24.467: PRIME: is "on-demand" mode supported? yes
and has only one page PRIME profile available. Also I can by no means adjust my screen brightness (xrandr, xbacklight backlightctl) - all just do nothing.
