I have made a fresh new installation of Ubuntu 20.04.3 on a desktop computer (with an RTX 3080 Ti GPU), and would like to install NVIDIA drivers and CUDA. I have had this working earlier on this machine, but now I encounter some odd issues.
I have installed NVIDIA drivers via "Software & Updates" -> Additional drivers, and used the driver metapackage from nvidia-driver-470 (proprietary, tested)
and also the -495 ditto. I have also tried running sudo apt install nvidia-driver-495
(as per this thread) from the terminal. Each of these attempts was done on a fresh re-installation of Ubuntu.
In all these cases, the driver installation itself worked fine. However, upon reboot, Ethernet was no longer available. There was not even any option for it in Settings; in the Network tab, there was only VPN, but no Intel Ethernet and Realtek Ethernet that I had before the NVIDIA installation. Also, some of the applications (e.g. Timeshift, Redshift) that I had installed prior to installing the NVIDIA driver disappeared.
Reverting to the Noveau driver did not help with ethernet.
I don't know if something more went wrong; since I only have a wired internet connection, I simply quickly reinstalled Ubuntu. I was so frustrated I did not even check if the NVIDIA drivers were working properly... But on one of these occasions, nvidia-smi
did work correctly right after install, before reboot.
What can I do to get CUDA working on this machine? In case Ethernet disappears again during an installation, how can it be brought back (without internet access?)?