Signing Nvidia driver for Secure Boot after installation

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Krellan

Signing Nvidia driver for Secure Boot after installation

Post by Krellan »

I have Linux Mint 18.3 Cinnamon up and running on my laptop now, which is good. EFI correctly boots into Linux.

However, Secure Boot seems to inhibit the Nvidia drivers from running. Although Driver Manager shows Nvidia as selected, it is still running the Nouveau drivers, internally. There's no kernel module named "nvidia" loaded. Attempting to do "modprobe nvidia" from the command line says "Required key not available", confirming that it is blocked by the kernel enforcing Secure Boot.

After a few false starts, messing up my system to the point where I just got a blank screen unless running in Recovery Mode, and only software rendering at that point, I gave up and turned Secure Boot off in the BIOS, then reinstalled Linux Mint.

Now, I'm up and running with Nvidia drivers. I needed to do this for proper HDMI support, so I could drive an external monitor. Unfortunately, Nouveau doesn't get it right, badly corrupting the video on both monitors. So, being able to use the proprietary Nvidia drivers is a requirement for me.

After doing some more reading, though, I would like to try turning Secure Boot on again. Unfortunately, since my system is already installed by now, I can't go back and run the installation wizard on the bootable media, to walk through the Secure Boot driver validation wizard. Is there a way to accomplish what this would have done, even though the system is already installed? If possible, I don't want to wipe and reinstall it again.

I'm looking for the equivalent commands to somehow sign the nvidia module (and all of its dependencies) so that the kernel will load them. I assume the kernel is already signed, otherwise it wouldn't have booted from Secure Boot.

Thanks!

Josh
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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kc1di
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Re: Signing Nvidia driver for Secure Boot after installation

Post by kc1di »

Found this article on github that may be of help to you: https://gist.github.com/Rambou/c6769cae ... 2b86c3ef72
Easy tips : https://easylinuxtipsproject.blogspot.com/ Pjotr's Great Linux projects page.
Linux Mint Installation Guide: http://linuxmint-installation-guide.rea ... en/latest/
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Krellan

Re: Signing Nvidia driver for Secure Boot after installation

Post by Krellan »

Nice, thanks for the article.

Unfortunately, this laptop is one of those with dual GPU in it, and they're nested in a weird way that requires a delicate software dance in order to get them all working. And, I need to use an external monitor.

I'm wondering if it's possible to do it in a way that's compatible with what Linux Mint has already installed on my system?

I'm hesitant to just delete all nvidia* packages, because last time I did that, I destroyed the system, making it unusable. Sure wish there was a way to take a snapshot, but unfortunately, I'm running on bare hardware, not a VM.

Josh
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