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Terrance
Asked: 2020-01-20 07:30:29 +0800 CST

Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS and NVIDIA card low resolution

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This is a Q&A for when you are using the Graphics Drivers PPA at greater than the 390 driver as well as 18.04.3 LTS.

I am running Ubuntu 18.04.3 and I have a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti. My video driver currently is nvidia-driver-440 that I installed from the Graphics Drivers PPA and I did not use the ubuntu-drivers autoinstall for the driver.

Recently my kernel updated to 5.3.0-26-generic and my video resolution is now stuck at 640x480. And it appears as though my video driver is installed, but did not load with the kernel.

Is there anyway to fix this?

nvidia kernel 18.04

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    NOTE: Recently after I originally posted this answer I ended up helping 2 others with similar issues, but both were using the nvidia-driver-390. It appears that the 390 driver is incompatible with the 5.3.xxxx kernel and should be removed first and a newer driver be installed.

    The new 5.3.0-26-generic kernel that is part of the HWE - Hardware Enablement Stack does not automatically build the NVIDIA driver module into the new kernel update. To fix this you need to get the driver version you have installed and the kernel version you are going to install it in to.

    See if you are booted to the 5.3.0-26-generic kernel by using uname -r:

    $ uname -r
5.3.0-26-generic

    If it is not installed, please install dkms to your system:

    sudo apt update
sudo apt install dkms

    Run the following command to show you the present driver and kernel:

    dkms status

    You should see output like the following:

    terrance@terrance-ubuntu:~$ dkms status
nvidia, 440.48.02, 5.0.0-37-generic, x86_64: installed
openrazer-driver, 2.7.0, 5.0.0-37-generic, x86_64: installed

    Since the 440.48.02 driver is already installed in my last kernel version from 18.04.2 using the 5.0.0-37-generic kernel, but the 5.3.0-26-generic kernel is not listed that is where we need to install the driver to.

    It is installed in the following format

    sudo dkms install nameofdriver/version -k kernelversion

    So, to install that driver into the kernel and have it activate at boot run the following line:

    sudo dkms install nvidia/440.48.02 -k 5.3.0-26-generic

    Or if booted to 5.3.0-26-generic you can run it as:

    sudo dkms install nvidia/440.48.02 -k $(uname -r)

    You can change the above line to match any driver that needs to be installed into the kernel. I also ran the install for my openrazer-driver for my keyboard.

    After running that line the output of dkms status should now be like:

    terrance@terrance-ubuntu:~$ dkms status
nvidia, 440.48.02, 5.0.0-37-generic, x86_64: installed
nvidia, 440.48.02, 5.3.0-26-generic, x86_64: installed
openrazer-driver, 2.7.0, 5.0.0-37-generic, x86_64: installed
openrazer-driver, 2.7.0, 5.3.0-26-generic, x86_64: installed

    Reboot your system and your video driver should now be loaded and you should be able to obtain your full resolutions.

    Hope this helps!

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  2. You probably have an older version of the nvidia driver package installed, like nvidia-driver-390. For this the automatic build of the kernel module fails (see files in /var/crash).

    Solution: install a newer driver, e.g. nvidia-driver-435

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