[SOLVED] Clean LM 20.2 - Nvidia-settings blank + unable to select Nvidia as main card

[jlselu]

Hi everyone, lets hope you can help me with my issue. I've been user of LM since years ago, and within my current laptop I've been running it through several versions and upgrades without issues till today.

I have this Graphic card in my current LM setup (this is the old installation, not the new I'm trying to do):

Graphics:
Device-1: Intel HD Graphics 630 driver: i915 v: kernel
Device-2: NVIDIA GP107M [GeForce GTX 1050 Mobile] driver: nvidia v: 450.119.03
Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.9 driver: modesetting,nvidia
unloaded: fbdev,nouveau,vesa resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz
OpenGL: renderer: GeForce GTX 1050/PCIe/SSE2 v: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 450.119.03

The thing is, I have had some issues since the infamous Nvidia driver 450 was removed from the 'ubuntu-drivers' part, and even though I succeed to install it manually, my PC has been randomly freezing.

I wanted to try 20.2 in a clean install in other partition of my laptop, but the problem I find is that, in a clean LM 20.2 install, and after running 'Third-party controllers' to install the nvidia driver (390, or 460 or 465), the nvidia-prime applet appears, but in the first option of the Context menu, it shows the Intel card name, even if I select any other mode (like Nvidia performance mode) and, of course, after restarts, etc.

The *only* way that make it works, and that I found in a post I can't find anymore, is to run 'sudo service lightdm restart', then the right Graphic Card (Nvidia) is selected, but this only last till next restart.

Another weird symptom of all this, is that the nvidia-settings windows is totally empty at the beginning, and after some changes of 'mode' back and forth it only shows the option of the PRIME profiles... but nothing as the normal case of all the options of the nvidia settings, thermal settings, etc

Note: I'm doing a Legacy install (not EFI), this is because I have the main system installed without EFI. Secure Boot is disabled of course

Just to be sure that was not something just of my Pc, I tried a clean install of Ubuntu 20.04 and there everything worked ok, nvidia selection, settings, etc. all ok except that Ubuntu itself is horrible to use compared with LM Cinnamon

Thanks in advance for the help

Edit: I tried reinstall several times, redownload of the ISO, just in case, use different nvidia drivers versions, tested with kernel 5.4, 5.8 and 5.11, I tried to change the Display settings to 'force' it to save some xorg config file, but nothing...

Edit2: adding system info:
- Linux Mint 20.2 Cinnamon 64 bits
- System details (inxi): https://termbin.com/f65c - Obtained from "old" installation, not the new one with 20.2
- System details (inxi): https://termbin.com/yaro - Obtained from the new 20.2 setup with the issue

[jlselu]

One extra info:
In the old system, where everything is working fine, the Xorg.log looks like this:
[ 6.504] (II) xfree86: Adding drm device (/dev/dri/card1)
[ 6.539] (II) xfree86: Adding drm device (/dev/dri/card0)
[ 6.546] (**) OutputClass "Nvidia Prime" ModulePath extended to "/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/nvidia/xorg,/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
[ 6.546] (**) OutputClass "Nvidia Prime" setting /dev/dri/card1 as PrimaryGPU

while in the new system looks just like this:
[ 4.400] (II) xfree86: Adding drm device (/dev/dri/card0)

I can also see that the old system this folder:
/usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers
contains a nvidia_drv.so
but the new system doesn't

[roblm]

The *only* way that make it works, and that I found in a post I can't find anymore, is to run 'sudo service lightdm restart', then the right Graphic Card (Nvidia) is selected, but this only last till next restart.

Follow the instructions in this post:
viewtopic.php?p=1895521#p1895521

After rebooting, use this command in the Terminal: inxi -Fxrz

In the Menu at the top, select Edit > Select All and then Edit > Copy

Open the Mint Forum reply window and select </> at the top. Press Ctrl+V to paste the copied lines into a code display window.

[jlselu]

The *only* way that make it works, and that I found in a post I can't find anymore, is to run 'sudo service lightdm restart', then the right Graphic Card (Nvidia) is selected, but this only last till next restart.

Follow the instructions in this post:
viewtopic.php?p=1895521#p1895521

After rebooting, use this command in the Terminal: inxi -Fxrz

In the Menu at the top, select Edit > Select All and then Edit > Copy

Open the Mint Forum reply window and select </> at the top. Press Ctrl+V to paste the copied lines into a code display window.

Well, that was magic. It solved the issue, now it loads the Nvidia card as main from the beginning and nvidia-settings are back.

It's still unknown why this is necessary now when it wasn't on previous versions (at least since I've been using this specific laptop)

Thank you very much roblm!

Anyway, here's the ouput of the inxi command.

Code: Select all

System:
  Kernel: 5.11.0-22-generic x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: N/A 
  Desktop: Cinnamon 5.0.4 Distro: Linux Mint 20.2 Uma 
  base: Ubuntu 20.04 focal 
Machine:
  Type: Laptop System: HP product: HP Pavilion Power Laptop 15-cb0xx 
  v: Type1ProductConfigId serial: <filter> 
  Mobo: HP model: 836B v: 46.20 serial: <filter> UEFI [Legacy]: Insyde 
  v: F.09 date: 06/02/2017 
Battery:
  ID-1: BAT0 charge: 63.1 Wh condition: 64.6/64.6 Wh (100%) 
  model: HP Primary status: Charging 
  Device-1: hidpp_battery_0 model: Logitech G603 Wireless Gaming Mouse 
  charge: 55% (should be ignored) status: Discharging 
CPU:
  Topology: Quad Core model: Intel Core i7-7700HQ bits: 64 type: MT MCP 
  arch: Kaby Lake rev: 9 L2 cache: 6144 KiB 
  flags: avx avx2 lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx 
  bogomips: 44798 
  Speed: 2330 MHz min/max: 800/3800 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 2360 2: 2420 
  3: 2443 4: 2437 5: 2332 6: 2408 7: 2460 8: 2389 
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel HD Graphics 630 vendor: Hewlett-Packard driver: i915 
  v: kernel bus ID: 00:02.0 
  Device-2: NVIDIA GP107M [GeForce GTX 1050 Mobile] vendor: Hewlett-Packard 
  driver: nvidia v: 460.80 bus ID: 01:00.0 
  Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.9 driver: modesetting,nvidia 
  unloaded: fbdev,nouveau,vesa resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz 
  OpenGL: renderer: GeForce GTX 1050/PCIe/SSE2 v: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 460.80 
  direct render: Yes 
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel CM238 HD Audio vendor: Hewlett-Packard 
  driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus ID: 00:1f.3 
  Device-2: NVIDIA GP107GL High Definition Audio vendor: Hewlett-Packard 
  driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus ID: 01:00.1 
  Sound Server: ALSA v: k5.11.0-22-generic 
Network:
  Device-1: Intel Wireless 7265 driver: iwlwifi v: kernel port: 4000 
  bus ID: 04:00.0 
  IF: wlo1 state: up mac: <filter> 
  Device-2: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet 
  vendor: Hewlett-Packard driver: r8169 v: kernel port: 3000 bus ID: 05:00.0 
  IF: eno1 state: down mac: <filter> 
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 1.14 TiB used: 990.15 GiB (84.6%) 
  ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: Western Digital model: WDS256G1X0C-00ENX0 
  size: 238.47 GiB 
  ID-2: /dev/sda vendor: Samsung model: SSD 860 EVO 1TB size: 931.51 GiB 
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 62.65 GiB used: 16.54 GiB (26.4%) fs: ext4 
  dev: /dev/nvme0n1p1 
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 72.0 C mobo: N/A gpu: nvidia temp: 63 C 
  Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A 
Repos:
  No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list 
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/additional-repositories.list 
  1: deb https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/ focal main
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/lutris-team-lutris-focal.list 
  1: deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/lutris-team/lutris/ubuntu focal main
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories.list 
  1: deb http://mirrors.evowise.com/linuxmint/packages uma main upstream import backport
  2: deb http://es-mirrors.evowise.com/ubuntu focal main restricted universe multiverse
  3: deb http://es-mirrors.evowise.com/ubuntu focal-updates main restricted universe multiverse
  4: deb http://es-mirrors.evowise.com/ubuntu focal-backports main restricted universe multiverse
  5: deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ focal-security main restricted universe multiverse
  6: deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu/ focal partner
Info:
  Processes: 284 Uptime: 18m Memory: 23.38 GiB used: 3.10 GiB (13.2%) 
  Init: systemd runlevel: 5 Compilers: gcc: 9.3.0 Shell: bash v: 5.0.17 
  inxi: 3.0.38