NVIDIA/Troubleshooting
Failure to start
System will not boot after driver was installed
If after installing the NVIDIA driver your system becomes stuck before reaching the display manager, try to disable kernel mode setting.
Xorg fails to load or Red Screen of Death
If you get a red screen and use GRUB, disable the GRUB framebuffer by editing /etc/default/grub
and uncomment GRUB_TERMINAL_OUTPUT=console
. For more information see GRUB/Tips and tricks#Disable framebuffer.
Black screen at X startup / Machine poweroff at X shutdown
If you have installed an update of NVIDIA and your screen stays black after launching Xorg, or if shutting down Xorg causes a machine poweroff, try the below workarounds:
- Prepend "xrandr --auto" to your xinitrc
- Use the
rcutree.gp_init_delay=1
kernel parameter. - You can also try to add the
nvidia
module directly to your mkinitcpio.conf. - If the screen still stays black with both the
rcutree.gp_init_delay=1
kernel parameter and thenvidia
module directly in the mkinitcpio.conf, try re-installing nvidia and nvidia-utils in that order, and finally reload the driver:
# modprobe nvidia
Screen(s) found, but none have a usable configuration
Sometimes NVIDIA and X have trouble finding the active screen. If your graphics card has multiple outputs try plugging your monitor into the other ones. On a laptop it may be because your graphics card has VGA/TV out. Xorg.0.log will provide more info.
Another thing to try is adding an invalid Option "ConnectedMonitor"
to Section "Device"
to force Xorg throw an error and show you how to correct it. See the documentation for more information about the ConnectedMonitor setting.
After re-run X see Xorg.0.log to get valid CRT-x,DFP-x,TV-x values.
nvidia-xconfig --query-gpu-info
could be helpful.
X fails with "Failing initialization of X screen"
If /var/log/Xorg.0.log
says X server fails to initialize screen
(EE) NVIDIA(G0): GPU screens are not yet supported by the NVIDIA driver (EE) NVIDIA(G0): Failing initialization of X screen
and nvidia-smi says No running processes found
The solution is at first reinstall latest nvidia-utils, and then copy /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-nvidia-drm-outputclass.conf
to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-nvidia-drm-outputclass.conf
, and then edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-nvidia-drm-outputclass.conf
and add the line Option "PrimaryGPU" "yes"
. Restart the computer. The problem will be fixed.
Xorg fails during boot, but otherwise starts fine
On very fast booting systems, systemd may attempt to start the display manager before the NVIDIA driver has fully initialized. You will see a message like the following in your logs only when Xorg runs during boot.
/var/log/Xorg.0.log
[ 1.807] (EE) NVIDIA(0): Failed to initialize the NVIDIA kernel module. Please see the [ 1.807] (EE) NVIDIA(0): system's kernel log for additional error messages and [ 1.808] (EE) NVIDIA(0): consult the NVIDIA README for details. [ 1.808] (EE) NVIDIA(0): *** Aborting ***
In this case you will need to establish an ordering dependency from the display manager to the DRI device. First create device units for DRI devices by creating a new udev rules file.
/etc/udev/rules.d/99-systemd-dri-devices.rules
ACTION=="add", KERNEL=="card*", SUBSYSTEM=="drm", TAG+="systemd"
Then create dependencies from the display manager to the device(s).
/etc/systemd/system/display-manager.service.d/10-wait-for-dri-devices.conf
[Unit] Wants=dev-dri-card0.device After=dev-dri-card0.device
If you have additional cards needed for the desktop then list them in Wants and After seperated by spaces.
Black screen on systems with integrated GPU
If you have a system with an integrated GPU (e.g. Intel HD 4000, VIA VX820 Chrome 9 or AMD Cezanne) and have installed the nvidia package, you may experience a black screen on boot, when changing virtual terminal, or when exiting an X session. This may be caused by a conflict between the graphics modules. This is solved by blacklisting the relevant GPU modules. Create the file /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
and prevent the relevant modules from loading on boot:
/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
install i915 /usr/bin/false install intel_agp /usr/bin/false install viafb /usr/bin/false install radeon /usr/bin/false install amdgpu /usr/bin/false
X fails with "no screens found" when using Multiple GPUs
In situations where you might have multiple GPUs on a system and X fails to start with:
[ 76.633] (EE) No devices detected. [ 76.633] Fatal server error: [ 76.633] no screens found
then you need to add your discrete card's BusID to your X configuration. This can happen on systems with an Intel CPU and an integrated GPU or if you have more than one NVIDIA card connected. Find your BusID:
# lspci | grep -E "VGA|3D controller"
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v2/3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller (rev 09) 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GK107 [GeForce GTX 650] (rev a1) 08:00.0 3D controller: NVIDIA Corporation GM108GLM [Quadro K620M / Quadro M500M] (rev a2)
Then you fix it by adding it to the card's Device section in your X configuration. In my case:
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-nvidia.conf
Section "Device" Identifier "Device0" Driver "nvidia" VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation" BusID "PCI:1:0:0" EndSection
In the example above 01:00.0
is stripped to be written as 1:0:0
, however some conversions can be more complicated. lspci
output is in hex format, but in configuration files the BusID's are in decimal format! This means that in cases where the BusID is greater than 9 you will need to convert it to decimal!
ie: 5e:00.0
from lspci becomes PCI:94:0:0
.
Modprobe Error: "Could not insert 'nvidia': No such device" on linux >=4.8
With linux 4.8, one can get the following errors when trying to use the discrete card:
$ modprobe nvidia -vv
modprobe: INFO: custom logging function 0x409c10 registered modprobe: INFO: Failed to insert module '/lib/modules/4.8.6-1-ARCH/extramodules/nvidia.ko.gz': No such device modprobe: ERROR: could not insert 'nvidia': No such device modprobe: INFO: context 0x24481e0 released insmod /lib/modules/4.8.6-1-ARCH/extramodules/nvidia.ko.gz
# dmesg
... NVRM: The NVIDIA GPU 0000:01:00.0 (PCI ID: 10de:139b) NVRM: installed in this system is not supported by the 370.28 NVRM: NVIDIA Linux driver release. Please see 'Appendix NVRM: A - Supported NVIDIA GPU Products' in this release's NVRM: README, available on the Linux driver download page NVRM: at www.nvidia.com. ...
This problem is caused by bad commits pertaining to PCIe power management in the Linux Kernel (as documented in this NVIDIA DevTalk thread).
The workaround is to add pcie_port_pm=off
to your kernel parameters. Note that this disables PCIe power management for all devices.
System does not return from suspend
What you see in the log:
kernel: nvidia-modeset: ERROR: GPU:0: Failed detecting connected display devices kernel: nvidia-modeset: ERROR: GPU:0: Failed detecting connected display devices kernel: nvidia-modeset: WARNING: GPU:0: Failure processing EDID for display device DELL U2412M (DP-0). kernel: nvidia-modeset: WARNING: GPU:0: Unable to read EDID for display device DELL U2412M (DP-0) kernel: nvidia-modeset: ERROR: GPU:0: Failure reading maximum pixel clock value for display device DELL U2412M (DP-0).
A possible solution based on [1]:
Run this command to get the version
string:
# strings /sys/firmware/acpi/tables/DSDT | grep -i 'windows ' | sort | tail -1
Add the acpi_osi=! "acpi_osi=version"
kernel parameter to your boot loader configuration.
Another possible cause to the issue could be the use of the nvidia-open package, as described here:
- https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=2047692
- https://github.com/NVIDIA/open-gpu-kernel-modules/issues/450
- https://github.com/NVIDIA/open-gpu-kernel-modules/issues/223
- https://github.com/NVIDIA/open-gpu-kernel-modules/issues/94
Black screen returning from suspend
If experiencing black screen issues and logs containing:
archlinux kernel: NVRM: GPU at PCI:0000:08:00: GPU-926ecdb0-adb1-6ee9-2fad-52e7214c5011 archlinux kernel: NVRM: Xid (PCI:0000:08:00): 13, pid='<unknown>', name=<unknown>, Graphi> archlinux kernel: NVRM: Xid (PCI:0000:08:00): 13, pid='<unknown>', name=<unknown>, Graphi> archlinux kernel: NVRM: Xid (PCI:0000:08:00): 13, pid='<unknown>', name=<unknown>, Graphi> archlinux kernel: NVRM: Xid (PCI:0000:08:00): 13, pid='<unknown>', name=<unknown>, Graphi> archlinux kernel: NVRM: Xid (PCI:0000:08:00): 13, pid='<unknown>', name=<unknown>, Graphi>
You need to enable the NVIDIA suspend, hibernate and sleep services as explained in NVIDIA/Tips and tricks#Preserve video memory after suspend.
Crashes and hangs
Crashing in general
- Try disabling
RenderAccel
in xorg.conf. - If Xorg outputs an error about
"conflicting memory type"
or"failed to allocate primary buffer: out of memory"
, or crashes with a "Signal 11" while using nvidia-96xx drivers, addnopat
to your kernel parameters. - If the NVIDIA compiler complains about different versions of GCC between the current one and the one used for compiling the kernel, add in
/etc/profile
:
export IGNORE_CC_MISMATCH=1
- If fullscreen applications are freezing or crashing, try enabling
Display Compositing
andDirect fullscreen rendering
options in your desktop environment's settings.
Visual glitches, hangs and errors in OpenGL applications
If you are using a recent CPU (Intel Sandy Bridge (2011) and later or AMD Zen (2017) and later) it has a micro operations cache. Using a micro op cache can lead to problems with NVIDIA's driver in OpenGL due to Cache Aliasing [2]. You usually are able to disable the micro op cache in your systems BIOS, but this comes at the cost of performance [3]. Disabling the micro op cache also helps with the most severe graphical glitches in Xwayland applications, although it does not solve the problem fully [4].
Kernel panic when updating and/or rebooting the system
This is a known bug that is present in the NVIDIA 550 series drivers. [5] As of yet the cause is unknown however it only appears to affect laptops. See BBS#293400 for more details.
To workaround this issue, switch to nvidia-open-dkms if supported by the hardware, otherwise use nvidia-535xx-dkmsAUR instead.
Visual issues
Avoid screen tearing
- This has been reported to reduce the performance of some OpenGL applications and may produce issues in WebGL. It also drastically increases the time the driver needs to clock down after load (NVIDIA Support Thread).
ForceFullCompositionPipeline
is known to break some games using Vulkan under Proton with NVIDIA driver 535.
Tearing can be avoided by forcing a full composition pipeline, regardless of the compositor you are using. To test whether this option will work, run:
$ nvidia-settings --assign CurrentMetaMode="nvidia-auto-select +0+0 { ForceFullCompositionPipeline = On }"
Or click on the Advanced button that is available on the X Server Display Configuration menu option. Select either Force Composition Pipeline or Force Full Composition Pipeline and click on Apply.
In order to make the change permanent, it must be added to the "Screen"
section of the Xorg configuration file. When making this change, TripleBuffering
should be enabled and AllowIndirectGLXProtocol
should be disabled in the driver configuration as well. See example configuration below:
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-nvidia.conf
Section "Device" Identifier "NVIDIA Card" Driver "nvidia" VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation" BoardName "GeForce GTX 1050 Ti" EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "Screen0" Device "Device0" Monitor "Monitor0" Option "ForceFullCompositionPipeline" "on" Option "AllowIndirectGLXProtocol" "off" Option "TripleBuffer" "on" EndSection
If you do not have an Xorg configuration file, you can create one for your present hardware using nvidia-xconfig
(see NVIDIA#Automatic configuration) and move it from /etc/X11/xorg.conf
to the preferred location /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-nvidia.conf
.
20-nvidia.conf
by using nvidia-xconfig
are set automatically by the driver and are not needed. To only use this file for enabling composition pipeline, only the section "Screen"
containing lines with values for Identifier
and Option
are necessary. Other sections may be removed from this file.Multi-monitor
For multi-monitor setup you will need to specify ForceCompositionPipeline=On
for each display. For example:
$ nvidia-settings --assign CurrentMetaMode="DP-2: nvidia-auto-select +0+0 {ForceCompositionPipeline=On}, DP-4: nvidia-auto-select +3840+0 {ForceCompositionPipeline=On}"
Without doing this, the nvidia-settings
command will disable your secondary display.
You can get the current screen names and offsets using --query
:
$ nvidia-settings --query CurrentMetaMode
The above line is for two 3840x2160 monitors connected to DP-2 and DP-4. You will need to read the correct CurrentMetaMode
by exporting xorg.conf
and append ForceCompositionPipeline
to each of your displays. Setting ForceCompositionPipeline
only affects the targeted display.
~/.nvidia-settings-rc
as 0/XVideoSyncToDisplayID=
or by installing nvidia-settings and using the graphical configuration options.Screen corruption after resuming from suspend or hibernation
This also applies if an external monitor does not wake up after suspend or hibernation.
See NVIDIA/Tips and tricks#Preserve video memory after suspend
A corruption after suspend bug when using GDM service was solved as of driver version 515.43.04 [6].
Corrupted screen: "Six screens" Problem
For some users, using GeForce GT 100M's, the screen gets corrupted after X starts, divided into 6 sections with a resolution limited to 640x480. The same problem has been reported with Quadro 2000 and hi-res displays.
To solve this problem, enable the Validation Mode NoTotalSizeCheck
in section Device
:
Section "Device" ... Option "ModeValidation" "NoTotalSizeCheck" ... EndSection
Invisible text and icons with nvidia-470
An update of GTK4 brought an issue for users relying on the nvidia-470 driver for legacy cards. After the update text and icons randomly disappear and re-appear only after hovering with the mouse over the windows.[7]
See the forum for work-arounds.
Fix graphical corruption in GNOME Shell when resuming from sleep
If you are facing strange fonts and/or having weird graphical glitches in GNOME Shell when resuming from sleep, try setting the following kernel parameter to enable power management:
nvidia.NVreg_DynamicPowerManagement=0x02
More info: https://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/560.35.03/README/dynamicpowermanagement.html
Performance issues
Bad performance after installing a new driver version
If FPS have dropped in comparison with older drivers, check if direct rendering is enabled (glxinfo
is included in mesa-utils):
$ glxinfo | grep direct
If the command prints:
direct rendering: No
A possible solution could be to regress to the previously installed driver version and rebooting afterwards.
Extreme lag on Xorg
A common issue with Mutter is that animations, video playback and gaming cause extreme desktop lag on Xorg.
See NVIDIA/Tips and tricks#Preserve video memory after suspend.
This should resolve this issue, however if it did not, you are most likely out of luck. One way you can remedy this issue is by adding these options:
/etc/environment
CLUTTER_DEFAULT_FPS=YOUR_MAIN_DISPLAY_REFRESHRATE __GL_SYNC_DISPLAY_DEVICE=YOUR_MAIN_DISPLAY_OUTPUT_NAME
turning Sync to VBlank
and Allow flipping
off within NVIDIA Settings, and configuring NVIDIA Settings to launch on startup using the flag --load-config-only
.
This will still result in a laggy desktop behavior, in particular on an eventual second (or third) monitor, but it should be much better.
CPU spikes with 400 series cards
If you are experiencing intermittent CPU spikes with a 400 series card, it may be caused by PowerMizer constantly changing the GPU's clock frequency. Switching PowerMizer's setting from Adaptive to Performance, add the following to the Device
section of your Xorg configuration:
Option "RegistryDwords" "PowerMizerEnable=0x1; PerfLevelSrc=0x3322; PowerMizerDefaultAC=0x1"
Other issues
Vulkan error on applications start
On executing an application that require Vulkan acceleration, if you get this error
Vulkan call failed: -4
try to delete the ~/.nv
or ~/.cache/nvidia
directory.
No audio over HDMI
Sometimes NVIDIA HDMI audio devices are not shown when you do
$ aplay -l
On some new machines, the audio chip on the NVIDIA GPU is disabled at boot. Read more on NVIDIA's website and a forum post.
You need to reload the NVIDIA device with audio enabled. In order to do that make sure that your GPU is on (in case of laptops/Bumblebee) and that you are not running X on it, because it is going to reset:
# setpci -s 01:00.0 0x488.l=0x2000000:0x2000000 # rmmod nvidia-drm nvidia-modeset nvidia # echo 1 > /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:01:00.0/remove # echo 1 > /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:00:01.0/rescan # modprobe nvidia-drm # xinit -- -retro
If you are running your TTY on NVIDIA, put the lines in a script so you do not end up with no screen.
Backlight is not turning off in some occasions
By default, DPMS should turn off backlight with the timeouts set or by running xset. However, probably due to a bug in the proprietary NVIDIA drivers the result is a blank screen with no powersaving whatsoever. To workaround it, until the bug has been fixed you can use the vbetool
as root.
Install the vbetool package.
Turn off your screen on demand and then by pressing a random key backlight turns on again:
vbetool dpms off && read -n1; vbetool dpms on
Alternatively, xrandr is able to disable and re-enable monitor outputs without requiring root.
xrandr --output DP-1 --off; read -n1; xrandr --output DP-1 --auto
HardDPMS
Proprietary driver 415 includes a new feature called HardDPMS. This is reported by some users to solve the issues with suspending monitors connected over DisplayPort.
It is enabled by default since 440.26. If you are using an older driver, the HardDPMS
option can be set in the Device
or Screen
sections. For example:
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-nvidia.conf
Section "Device" ... Option "HardDPMS" "true" ... EndSection Section "Screen" ... Option "HardDPMS" "true" ... EndSection
HardDPMS
will trigger on screensaver settings like BlankTime
. The following ServerFlags
will set your monitor(s) to suspend after 10 minutes of inactivity:
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-nvidia.conf
Section "ServerFlags" Option "BlankTime" "10" EndSection
xrandr BadMatch
If you are trying to configure a WQHD monitor such as DELL U2515H using xrandr and xrandr --addmode
gives you the error X Error of failed request: BadMatch
, it might be because the proprietary NVIDIA driver clips the pixel clock maximum frequency of HDMI output to 225 MHz or lower. To set the monitor to maximum resolution you have to install nouveau drivers. You can force nouveau to use a specific pixel clock frequency by setting nouveau.hdmimhz=297
(or 330
) in your Kernel parameters.
Alternatively, it may be that your monitor's EDID is incorrect. See #Override EDID.
Another reason could be that by default current NVIDIA drivers will only allow modes explicitly reported by EDID, but sometimes refresh rates and/or resolutions are desired which are not reported by the monitor (although the EDID information is correct; it is just that current NVIDIA drivers are too restrictive).
If this happens, you may want to add an option to xorg.conf
to allow non-EDID modes:
Section "Device" Identifier "Device0" Driver "nvidia" VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation" ... Option "ModeValidation" "AllowNonEdidModes" ... EndSection
This can be set per-output. See README - Appendix B. X Config Options for more information.
Override EDID
See Kernel mode setting#Forcing modes and EDID, Xrandr#Troubleshooting and Qnix QX2710#Fixing X11 with Nvidia.
Overclocking with nvidia-settings GUI not working
Workaround is to use nvidia-settings CLI to query and set certain variables after enabling overclocking (as explained in NVIDIA/Tips and tricks#Enabling overclocking, see nvidia-settings(1) for more information).
Example to query all variables:
nvidia-settings -q all
Example to set PowerMizerMode to prefer performance mode:
nvidia-settings -a [gpu:0]/GPUPowerMizerMode=1
Example to set fan speed to fixed 21%:
nvidia-settings -a [gpu:0]/GPUFanControlState=1 -a [fan:0]/GPUTargetFanSpeed=21
Example to set multiple variables at once (overclock GPU by 50MHz, overclock video memory by 50MHz, increase GPU voltage by 100mV):
nvidia-settings -a GPUGraphicsClockOffsetAllPerformanceLevels=50 -a GPUMemoryTransferRateOffsetGPUGraphicsClockOffsetAllPerformanceLevels=50 -a GPUOverVoltageOffset=100
Overclocking not working with Unknown Error
If you are running Xorg as a non-root user and trying to overclock your NVIDIA GPU, you will get an error similar to this one:
$ nvidia-settings -a "[gpu:0]/GPUGraphicsClockOffset[3]=10"
ERROR: Error assigning value 10 to attribute 'GPUGraphicsClockOffset' (trinity-zero:1[gpu:0]) as specified in assignment '[gpu:0]/GPUGraphicsClockOffset[3]=10' (Unknown Error).
To avoid this issue, Xorg has to be run as the root user. See Xorg#Rootless Xorg for details.
Power draw
Check driver usage:
# lsof /dev/nvidia*
kwin_wayl 867 user 17u CHR 195,0 0t0 418 /dev/nvidia kwin_wayl 867 user 18u CHR 195,0 0t0 418 /dev/nvidiactl
If power save is configured on the kernel module:
$ grep . /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:01:00.0/power/*
/sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:01:00.0/power/control:auto /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:01:00.0/power/runtime_active_time:445933 /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:01:00.0/power/runtime_status:active /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:01:00.0/power/runtime_suspended_time:1266 /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:01:00.0/power/wakeup:disabled
# rmmod nvidia_drm
$ grep . /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:01:00.0/power/*
/sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:01:00.0/power/control:auto /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:01:00.0/power/runtime_active_time:461023 /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:01:00.0/power/runtime_status:suspended /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:01:00.0/power/runtime_suspended_time:1064192 /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:01:00.0/power/wakeup:disabled
Test software GL
The binary NVIDIA driver will not adhere to the Mesa environment variable LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1
but you can direct libglvnd and EGL to use Mesa by setting the following environment variables:
__GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME=mesa __EGL_VENDOR_LIBRARY_FILENAMES=/usr/share/glvnd/egl_vendor.d/50_mesa.json
which will result in the Mesa libgl being used for GLX and EGL and result in software GL to see whether a bug is related to the NVIDIA GL library.