Ubuntu 22.04 suddenly can't load any drivers

Jack M

12/30/23, 8:05 PM

I installed Ubuntu 22.04 (desktop) the other day on a tower. I then installed a custom driver for a wi-fi adapter that didn't work out of the box, and some proprietary NVidia drivers (which were already working when Ubuntu started, I didn't have to do anything to install them).

Everything was fine for a day or so. Just now, I booted up the machine again, and the screen was in 1024x746. I saw this behavior last week when trying to get the NVidia drivers working on an older Ubuntu install, so I recognized it as probably a symptom of those drivers not loading this time. However, I also noticed that my wi-fi was down - the Wi-fi section doesn't even appear in the settings, i.e. Ubuntu doesn't even see the adapter. So I conclude that somehow, Ubuntu is suddenly unable to load any drivers.

I'd rather not reinstall Ubuntu again (I've done that too many times this week for my taste).

Might also be relevant that the last thing that happened before this was that the system was improperly powered down. The screen was off and I hit the power button thinking I was turning the thing on, but instead it switched off. Now every time it boots, during booting Ubuntu gives me a message about "Press Ctrl+C to cancel file system checks" or something like that. Nothing particularly sensitive should have been happening when I turned the thing off (as far as I know it was just idling at the login screen), but since the screen was off at the time I have no idea.

How can I at least post-mortem this, and hopefully fix it?

Other

388

1 + 1

drivers

22.04

Jack M

12/30/23, 8:26 PM

I didn't manually install the nvidia drivers, they were installed and loaded already when I installed Ubuntu (I did find that I had to manually install them last week on a previous Ubuntu install - don't know why it worked this time). For the Wi-fi drivers I followed the instructions in the linked repo - `make` followed by `sudo make install`.

Score:0

Ubuntu

Jack M

12/30/23, 8:36 PM

I seem to have fixed the problem. As near as I can tell, what happened is that Ubuntu updated the kernel version behind my back and thereby invalidated the drivers I had installed.

The reason I think this is because when I was investigating this, I thought I'd try and get the names for the actual kernel modules corresponding to the Nvidia and wi-fi stuff, so I followed this advice and looked in /lib/modules/[kernel_version]. I was a little bit surprised to find two kernel versions:

jack@tower:~$ ls /lib/modules
5.15.0-43-generic  5.15.0-56-generic

Looking in the .0-43 folder, I found some NVidia stuff:

jack@tower:~$ ls /lib/modules/5.15.0-43-generic/kernel
arch     fs      net            nvidia-470     nvidia-515     ubuntu
block    kernel  nvidia-390     nvidia-470srv  nvidia-515srv  v4l2loopback
crypto   lib     nvidia-418srv  nvidia-510     samples        zfs
drivers  mm      nvidia-450srv  nvidia-510srv  sound

But none in the 56 directory (I have since installed those drivers again, so I can't provide ls output, you'll just have to take my word for it). At this point uname -r returns the 56 version.

This made me a little suspicious so I uninstalled my custom Wi-fi driver and re-installed it. As I did so I noted that the installer script was putting stuff in the 56 kernel version directory. I checked the same location in the 43 directory and sure enough, there was the wifi file (88x2bu.ko).

After a reboot, Wi-fi worked again. I then went into the "Additional Drivers" Ubuntu program and re-installed the NVidia drivers (there's no Update button so I had to deselect and re-select the right version and hit "Apply changes"). After another reboot, graphics work properly again.

If anyone could explain to me if this could really be what happened, how to confirm it, how it happened, and how to avoid it in future I'd be very grateful.

+ 3

Jack M

12/30/23, 9:38 PM

@Nmath Unexpected behavior that causes the system to appear completely broken out of nowhere the next time it's booted is a bug, no matter what the excuse is. It's one thing for the custom wi-fi module I installed to require some fiddling when the kernel changes, but in this case it would seem the nvidia drivers have issues too, which shouldn't happen. I didn't change any notification settings - but anyway, even if I manually approved a kernel update at some point, it should ideally be impossible for that to break important drivers without me being loudly warned about it first.

Jack M

12/30/23, 9:38 PM

Not strictly relevant, but still - let's not promote a culture of low standards here.

Jack M

12/30/23, 10:29 PM

@Nmath Sorry about that, not trying to pick a fight - you were very helpful. It just seemed like you were implying this was somehow user error, which is a common response on tech forums, but I'm probably also oversensitive.

Elon Musk

I sit in a Tesla and translated this thread with Ai:

EN: Ubuntu 22.04 suddenly can't load any drivers

Post an answer

Most people don’t grasp that asking a lot of questions unlocks learning and improves interpersonal bonding. In Alison’s studies, for example, though people could accurately recall how many questions had been asked in their conversations, they didn’t intuit the link between questions and liking. Across four studies, in which participants were engaged in conversations themselves or read transcripts of others’ conversations, people tended not to realize that question asking would influence—or had influenced—the level of amity between the conversationalists.