How to install the Nvidia proprietary drivers in LinuxMint

[SanfordandSunRa]

I am having a problem; as soon as I go into tty1, without my taking any further action I get this repeated error message.

buffer I/O error on dev fd0

I'm not running a floppy drive, and I removed all other USB devices from the computer thinking that might be the problem, to no avail. Any ideas what might be causing this? It prevents me from going further into the process described on the first page.

I'm running 14.1 Cinnamon edition, 64-bit. This is a fresh install on a hard drive that was a duel-booter (Win 7 and Mint 13). Finally cutting the umbilical cord with MSoft. The card I'm trying to set up is a GTX 460 as well. Video seemed smooth on 13 but I noticed everything (web browsing, 1080p video on VLC) was glitchy on this install, a sort of "dropped frames" effect. Not horrible but would like it to be smooooth. I have a Phenom X4 with 8G of DDR2. Thanks.

EDIT: I just ignored the error messages and was able to run the driver install up to a point, but then I got a message saying the nouveau driver was still installed. The installer's workaround didn't work, so I rebooted and deleted the file mentioned when you try the workaround. It's telling me to read the read me file at nvidia.com, but I can't find any such doc. Also getting hung up on a *checking battery status* message in tty1. Will try replacing mobo battery next.

EDITED AGAIN: Replaced mobo battery and went through Bios settings again and was able to install the driver. I still had the "checking battery status" message at one point, and what I typed failed to be visible again after that (this was happening before but I didn't mention it). Pressing alt + ctrl +F8 and then going back to tty1 again by pressing alt + ctrl + F1 fixed that. Now I'm gaming and watching videos in freedom-hating eye candy glory. Thanks to the author of this thread for helping out!

[Cylonbunny]

I have a GTX 670M and have followed these instructions twice now. However, when I restart MDM after updating the drivers the OS goes into fallback graphics mode and I have a 640x480 resolution. Running the NVIDIA X Server Settings program confirms I am not running an NVIDIA driver and asks me to run nvidia-xconfig again – which I have done many times now. Earlier, I tried to add the NVIDIA drivers using a different method, but I ended up in the same situation and had to reinstall the OS (its a fresh install).

I have checked my BIOS but it has no settings I can change except for the boot preference order -__-

Does anybody have any idea of what I am doing wrong / should try? I am pulling what little hair I have left out!

[zerozero]

Does anybody have any idea of what I am doing wrong / should try? I am pulling what little hair I have left out!

what edition of mint are you using?
according to the specs that card has optimus technology http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop ... m/features so the only option is going to be bumblebee (but the way you install it is dependent of the mint edition you are using)
start please by sharing the output of

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inxi -SGx

[josealb77]

Hello,
after the first reboot with the nouveau driver blacklisted I get the 2nd case: "be in a low graphics mode, in which case, you will need to hit ctrl+alt+f1 at the same time to get to tty1, and then login there" but when I hit ctrl+alt+f1 I just get a black screen. My monitor does not turn off, it is just that I can't login at any other tty but the graphic one with a low graphics mode. tty1, tty2, tty3... any of the other eleven just show a black screen. It happens in my x64 pc and in my pentium4 x86 pc.
I'm using the 3.8.0rc1 kernel, I've updated to the 3.8.0-999.201212310405_amd64 but this still happens. My graphic card is an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460.

[McLovin]

Hello,
after the first reboot with the nouveau driver blacklisted I get the 2nd case: "be in a low graphics mode, in which case, you will need to hit ctrl+alt+f1 at the same time to get to tty1, and then login there" but when I hit ctrl+alt+f1 I just get a black screen. My monitor does not turn off, it is just that I can't login at any other tty but the graphic one with a low graphics mode. tty1, tty2, tty3... any of the other eleven just show a black screen. It happens in my x64 pc and in my pentium4 x86 pc.
I'm using the 3.8.0rc1 kernel, I've updated to the 3.8.0-999.201212310405_amd64 but this still happens. My graphic card is an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460.

I have had this issue a couple of times on various distros, the best solution to this is when you boot up the machine, hit "e" in the grub menu on the version of Mint that you are going to install the driver on, this will allow you to edit the boot line, change the section that says

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ro quietboot (quietsplash)

(i don't remember exactly what the quiet part is), and chage it to say

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text

this is will boot into a text only mode, allowing you to install the drivers. However, I'm not sure if Nvidia has updated the drivers to work with the new 3.8 kernels yet, so it may end up failing, but I cannot say for sure, as I haven't tried using the 3.8 kernel yet.

[josealb77]

I already had tried remove "ro quiet splash $vt_handoff" but no writting "text", nevertheless this neither worked. What really worked was removing

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ro   quiet splash $vt_handoff

and

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gfxmode $linux_gfx_mode

I think removing this last line was actually the key.
But sadly, as you said I think this driver isn't ready for the 3.8.0 kernel as I got two errors:a dkms and a gcc error. Lookint at make.log it says that Ihave to run 'make oldconfig && make prepare' on kernel src to fix it but I don't feel comfortable doing this with a new kernel, so I tried to install the nvidia drivers without dkms but then I got this other error message

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The compiler used to compile the kernel (gcc 4.6) does not exactly match the current compiler (gcc 4.7). The Linux 2.6 kernel module loader rejects kernel modules built with a version of gcc that does not exactly match that of the compiler used to build the running kernel.

As I do not NEED the nvidia privative drivers by the moment I will wait to the final 3.8.0 kernel be released and the nvida installer to be ready for that kernel. So I still continue working with the nouveau driver.

[RodneyLee]

is there an easy way to return to nouveau nvidia driver module, I keep getting window artifacts (a window that won't close) when printing, copining files to XP/Vmware
and google earth..., seems to me some kinda notice window but is just grey and cannot be closed

[bobble]

I've tried your installation instructions, but every time I get to a point where I have to reboot, I end up with a black screen after selecting the first line of the grub menu unless I elect to "e" edit it and add "nomodeset xforcevesa". That of course wipes out anything I've done to xorg.conf to use the Nvidia drivers.

[McLovin]

@bobbie
When grub loads, hit e to edit the entry, and find the part that says "quiet splash" and just delete those 2 words, that will give you a verbose boot up, and will show you any errors that are happening, try that, and post any errors that you find here so we can try to solve this issue.

[bobble]

@McLovin

Thanks for the offer to help. I've kind of given up on getting the Nvidia drivers to load for a while. I did finally find that I could edit grub with the "nomodeset" entry and get Mint to load that way.

I did a clean install of Mint 14 Nadia Mate with the "nomodeset" line added to grub and having been using it without the Nvidia drivers, but it would be nice if I could get the Nvidia drivers to work.

Over a period of several weeks, I did several clean installs of Mint 13 and tried to get Nvidia to work. I could activate the drivers, but they were never used and there were long lists of error in the Xorg.0.logs and other logs indicating that the Intel chip and Nvidia card weren't cooperating with each other and that there appeared to be some conflicts in memory address area. See my topic "Nvidia Issues"
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=122969 for more information.

I'll try again another time, but right now my attention has been diverted to solving some issues on my wife's W7 Laptop.

Thanks

[yoramdavid]

Hello and thank you for the tutorial, unfortunately it did not work for me.

In my case I need to install the Nvidia-173 driver.
I am on LinuxMint 14, installed yesterday, first time using it.

I downloaded the driver and made it executable as shown here.
I hit Ctrl+alt+F1 and went to console.
The command

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sudo /etc/init.d/mdm stop

gave a command not found error, so I assumed I had to use

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sudo /etc/init.d/kdm stop

instead and it did something, but like others I ended up with a black screen and no place to type.
Hitting Ctrl+alt+F1 did nothing so I had to press the reset button to reboot.
I went again in command line mode and continued to type the commands of the tutorial, but it did not work without shutting down the kdm.
So I ran the command

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sudo chmod +x nvidia-173.run

Then the command

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sudo ./nvidia-173.run

and it returned the error:

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Error: You seem to be running an X server; please exit X before installing.

So I tried again from the beginning:
I hit Ctrl+alt+F1 and went to console, then I ran:

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sudo /etc/init.d/kdm stop

and this time I got the console working.
Then:

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sudo ./nvidia-173.run

and the installation process started, but there was an error:

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The distribution-provided pre-install script failed! Continue anyway?
Yes             No

I hit

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yes

and got the ERROR:

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The nouveau kernel driver is currently in use by your system. This driver is incompatible with the NVIDIA driver, and must be disabled before proceeding.

I hit OK but Installation has failed.

After running

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sudo /etc/init.d/mdm start

I went back to the desktop, things seem fine.
What am I doing wrong?

[spynoodle]

When I installed the Nvidia proprietary drivers for my GT 545, I'm pretty sure that I just installed the package(s) from the Software Manager, and everything has worked fine for me. Is that bad? I'm a little new to Linux graphics drivers.

[yoramdavid]

I uninstalled the nouveau driver but that did nothing, it is still in use!
I followed this threat http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=191&t=82424 to disable it but I get the error of access denied even using sudo or gksudo.

[Otyugh]

I've a terrible doubt.
I'm gone in synpatic I think, saw there was a list of 4-5 choices of "use nouveau, proprietary or last-release but unstable driver NVIDIA, etc.", I just made a choice, and then my processor stopped working like hell to display cinammon and I was able tu launch 3D things without any lagg, so i guessed I had installed everything right.

But as I see here, maybe i haven't installed a driver that could use my card at his best... Isn't it ?

[ashfallen0]

I'm having the same problems as Jon who posted on page 1. I have a Sony Vaio SVS1511CFXB, which has the onboard intel 4000 and the Nvidia 640M LE gpu as discreet. The "bios" is from Insyde, which means it's basically useless. I have boot order only... the output of inxi:

$ inxi -SGx
System: Host: janette Kernel: 3.5.0-17-generic x86_64 (64 bit, gcc: 4.7.2) Desktop: Gnome Distro: Linux Mint 14 Nadia
Graphics: Card-1: Intel 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller bus-ID: 00:02.0
Card-2: NVIDIA Device 0fd3 bus-ID: 01:00.0
X.Org: 1.13.0 drivers: intel (unloaded: fbdev,vesa) Resolution: 1920x1080@59.9hz
GLX Renderer: Mesa DRI Intel Ivybridge Mobile GLX Version: 3.0 Mesa 9.0 Direct Rendering: Yes
I reinstalled about 5 times this weekend as removing all noveau drivers and installing the official nvidia 310 drivers. Same as a few on here, I'm in gnome fallback in 640x480 with nvidia settings telling me that there are no nvidia drivers installed. I'm trying to run Eve online through Wine, which works, but it reports the "Intel Ivybridge" as my graphics, which is telling me that it's not trying my nvidia even with the pre-installed version.

Please, please help, since searching this forum with "Sony Vaio" tells me that "my search terms are too common."

[zerozero]

ashfallen0
you have 2 gpu's so the only option is bumblebee

[Otyugh]

I've now the proprietary driver (shame on me).
Nothing to say on the 3D. However.
Playing a video I just noticied a problem. On 2d video actually, on VLC or wathever video viewer I use, I have some "grid as in chess withe&grey" that appear sometimes at the edge of "movement" on the videos.
Is that something known as problem ?

[matthewls]

It took a while, but I finally learned how to get the latest NV drivers installed working with the latest kernel. So, in case anyone else wants to do this, here's the trick. (the same driver installed well and works fine on k3.7.5). With the 3.7.6 kernel the nvidia installer fails.
The reason it fails is one line in the conftest.sh file. So, the solution:

download the 313.18 driver file
sudo su
extract the files: ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-313.18.run -x
cd NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-313.18.run/kernel
gedit conftest.sh
go to line 1703. It should read: -a -n "$SUBLEVEL" -a $SUBLEVEL -le 5
change the 5 to a 6
save the file
exit gedit
cd ..
./nvidia-installer

And voila, the latest driver and kernel play well together again.

[Napi2003]

Hello and thanks for the instructions.

One point that keeps popping everywhere and I assume has the failure rate at installing the NVIDIA propietary drivers is the following:

There are no clear / working instructions on how to get rid or even disable the odious "Nouveau" drivers that are deeply rooted on Nadia's (Mint 14.1) distro. Period.

If you can't disable said drivers, all the following steps are totally moot.

1. You can attempt at STOPping the service, and everytime you reboot the system, it will load the GUI, waiting to be "disabled" again and again.

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sudo service mdm stop
sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop
sudo /etc/init.d/mdm stop

2. Not even an apt-get -remove --PURGE command will do the trick. It will always reinstall and reload each time you reboot the OS.

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sudo apt-get remove --purge nouveau*

3. the NVIDIA installer won't acknowledge your override command that stops checking for nouveau drivers (--no-nouveau-check, --disable-nouveau)

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sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-310.32.run --disable-nouveau 
sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-310.32.run --no-nouveau-check

4. The NVIDIA driver installer adds the "nvidia-installer-disable-nouveau.conf" in /etc/modprobe.d with these lines:

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# generated by nvidia-installer
blacklist nouveau
options nouveau modeset=0

Guess what? That doesn't work either. Something as stubborn as this driver should legally be called a virus: It does no good and also refuses to move out.

What is needed is definitive instructions on how oliberate the oudious Nouevau drivers.

The NVIDIA installer acknowledges that it previously added some "trick file" to unload the drivers, but at this point it directs you to read some non-existent (or very well hidden) "README" file or consult your "distro manual" so you can wrestle it yourself at some machine code level.

This thing is starting to feel as hopeless and a total waste of time as ATI equally half-baked propietary drivers. The message is clear: Go back to Windows and forget this nightmare.

Anybody, please help. Thank you.

[moriarty]

Hello and thanks for the instructions.

One point that keeps popping everywhere and I assume has the failure rate at installing the NVIDIA propietary drivers is the following:

There are no clear / working instructions on how to get rid or even disable the odious "Nouveau" drivers that are deeply rooted on Nadia's (Mint 14.1) distro. Period.

If you can't disable said drivers, all the following steps are totally moot.

1. You can attempt at STOPping the service, and everytime you reboot the system, it will load the GUI, waiting to be "disabled" again and again.

Code: Select all

sudo service mdm stop
sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop
sudo /etc/init.d/mdm stop

2. Not even an apt-get -remove --PURGE command will do the trick. It will always reinstall and reload each time you reboot the OS.

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get remove --purge nouveau*

3. the NVIDIA installer won't acknowledge your override command that stops checking for nouveau drivers (--no-nouveau-check, --disable-nouveau)

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sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-310.32.run --disable-nouveau 
sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-310.32.run --no-nouveau-check

4. The NVIDIA driver installer adds the "nvidia-installer-disable-nouveau.conf" in /etc/modprobe.d with these lines:

Code: Select all

# generated by nvidia-installer
blacklist nouveau
options nouveau modeset=0

Guess what? That doesn't work either. Something as stubborn as this driver should legally be called a virus: It does no good and also refuses to move out.

What is needed is definitive instructions on how oliberate the oudious Nouevau drivers.

The NVIDIA installer acknowledges that it previously added some "trick file" to unload the drivers, but at this point it directs you to read some non-existent (or very well hidden) "README" file or consult your "distro manual" so you can wrestle it yourself at some machine code level.

This thing is starting to feel as hopeless and a total waste of time as ATI equally half-baked propietary drivers. The message is clear: Go back to Windows and forget this nightmare.

Anybody, please help. Thank you.

Napi2003 I completely agree! I have tried pretty much all thinkable tutorials on this, and still couldn't get the driver to work. Linux mint was the first distro that actually made me say "hey linux CAN actually be quite nice", but the sheer horror of countless OS reinstalls, following countless guides - where super-user linux know-how is needed to actually follow the guides - and to no avail makes me frustrated beyond comprehension. I just want to install a freaking display-driver without having to follow long complicated guides including rebooting several time, shifting to the textbased terminal, blacklisting stuff, editing config files, only to find out it didn't work.