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Dov
Asked: 2019-07-12 05:24:47 +0800 CST

Any explanation for why X fails every couple of weeks ? Ubuntu 18.10

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I am running Ubuntu 18.10 on an i7-8 with 32Gb RAM and an NVIDIA RX-2080. We installed and x failed after a while. I had installed NVIDIA drivers. It seemed like the nouveau driver started running, no idea why. A couple of weeks later the resolution suddenly went to hell one morning, and the machine is barely responding.

Now it happened again. We blacklisted the nouveau driver, still didn't work, re-installed NVIDIA. Now that the machine works again, can anyone explain why this happens, and whether blacklisting is likely to solve this problem? Is there anything else I can do?

nvidia blacklist nouveau

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    If your graphics driver is not getting updated with your kernel, it will stop working after a kernel upgrade and your system will revert to the nouveau or frame buffer drivers to run your video hardware.

    This happened to me when I installed drivers by downloading them from the NVIDIA website. To solve the problem I added the Graphics Drivers PPA and installed the NVIDIA drivers through ubuntu-drivers command.

    Start by uninstalling your old NVIDIA driver,

    sudo apt-get purge nvidia-*

    and then follow these steps:

    1. Add the PPA

    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
sudo apt-get update

    2. Install Video Drivers For Your Card

    Now as posted in this answer, you need to install the recommended driver for your card.

    sudo ubuntu-drivers devices

    This will output something similar to this:

    == /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:01:00.0 ==

vendor   : NVIDIA Corporation
modalias : pci:v000010DEd00000DDAsv000017AAsd000021D1bc03sc00i00
model    : GF106GLM [Quadro 2000M]
driver   : xserver-xorg-video-nouveau - distro free builtin
driver   : nvidia-304-updates - distro non-free
driver   : nvidia-304 - distro non-free
driver   : nvidia-331 - distro non-free **recommended**
driver   : nvidia-331-updates - distro non-free

    Then just install the driver labeled "recommended", so in this example it would be:

    sudo apt-get install nvidia-331

    Once this is done reboot and you should be good to go. Next time your kernel gets updated, your video driver will get updated with it.

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