Amazon EC2 instances broken

[Henrik Holst]

I have installed nvidia-367 package because it is required by the Amazon Ec2 instance type g2.2xlarge. They are using an older Nvidia card (GRID K520) which is supported by nvidia-367 driver. This driver does now install nvidia-375. That driver does not support the g2.2xlarge instance card. I cannot use the gfx now on the g2 instances.

00:03.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GK104GL [GRID K520] (rev a1)

ii nvidia-367 375.39-0ubuntu0.16.04.1 amd64 Transitional package for nvidia-375
ii nvidia-375 375.39-0ubuntu0.16.04.1 amd64 NVIDIA binary driver - version 375.39

[ 1120.056] (WW) NVIDIA(0): The NVIDIA GRID K520 GPU installed in this system is supported
[ 1120.056] (WW) NVIDIA(0): through the NVIDIA 367.xx Legacy drivers. Please visit
[ 1120.056] (WW) NVIDIA(0): http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html for more
[ 1120.056] (WW) NVIDIA(0): information. The 375.39 NVIDIA driver will ignore this
[ 1120.056] (WW) NVIDIA(0): GPU. Continuing probe...

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Piergiorgio Niero (piergiorgio-niero)]

as a temporary workaround I installed the drivers manually
`
apt-get install build-essential -y
curl -O http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/367.57/NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-367.57.run
chmod +x ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-*.run
./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-*.run -q -a -n -X -s
`

for the full setup look here https://github.com/plumbee/nvidia-hw-accelerated-box

[Bryan Larsen (bryan-larsen)]

That workaround doesn't work for me because of https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/systemd/+bug/1655584, which loads the nvidia kernel module repeatedly.

[Trent Lloyd (lathiat)]

nvidia-367 was removed as part of the CVE-2016-8826 & CVE-2017-0318 fix in #1659586

nvidia-367 was considered no longer supported by NVIDIA, so nvidia-375 was uploaded and nvidia-367 replaced with a transitional package to upgrade.

The error message suggests that there is a 367 series of legacy driver, though the legacy driver page presently lists no such series (http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html). According to the README, the 367 series driver will in fact be maintained specially for GRID GPUs only.

====
Quote from:
http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/375.39/README/supportedchips.html
ftp://ftp.icm.edu.pl/packages/linux-nvidia/Linux-x86/375.10/README/README.txt

Below are the legacy GPUs that are no longer supported in the unified driver.
These GPUs will continue to be maintained through the special legacy NVIDIA
GPU driver releases.

The 367.xx driver supports the following set of GPUs:

NVIDIA GPU product Device PCI ID* VDPAU features
---------------------------------- --------------- ---------------
GRID K340 0FEF D
GRID K1 0FF2 D
GRID K520 118A D
GRID K2 11BF D
====

In terms of short-term workarounds, the nvidia-340 package also claims to support the K520. It may be a usable alternative until a nvidia-367 solution is available.

[James Tyrrell (3zgucpb1n-james)]

It would be good if the legacy drivers (nvidia-367) were reinstated and not made transitional. Maybe they should be named appropriately to reflect that they should only be used for grid GPUs or that they are legacy - `nvidia-grid`/`nvidia-grid-legacy`.