unattended-upgrade killed nvidia setup

[auquicu]

On 2022-02-09 /usr/bin/unattended-upgrade upgraded all nvidia-related packages, like libnvidia-common-450-server and libnvidia-compute-450-server and nvidia-driver-440-server.
Probably because of https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-5276-1: "It was discovered that the NVIDIA graphics drivers incorrectly handled permissions in the kernel mode layer. A local attacker could use this issue to write to protected memory and cause a denial of service".

After this upgrade the system was broken. Programs using X that worked the day before now fail with
  X Error of failed request: BadValue (integer parameter out of range for operation)
  Major opcode of failed request: 151 (GLX)
  Minor opcode of failed request: 3 (X_GLXCreateContext)

The kernel reports
$ dmesg | tail
[7333810.263547] NVRM: API mismatch: the client has the version 450.172.01, but
                 NVRM: this kernel module has the version 450.156.00. Please
                 NVRM: make sure that this kernel module and all NVIDIA driver
                 NVRM: components have the same version.

$ uname -a
Linux if 5.4.0-90-generic #101-Ubuntu SMP Fri Oct 15 20:00:55 UTC 2021 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

$ lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS
Release: 20.04

An attempt to repair failed:

$ sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall
dpkg: warning: version 'unsigned-5.3.0-050300' has bad syntax: version number does not start with digit

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 nvidia-driver-510 : Depends: libnvidia-gl-510 (= 510.47.03-0ubuntu0.20.04.1) but it is not going to be installed
                     Depends: nvidia-compute-utils-510 (= 510.47.03-0ubuntu0.20.04.1) but it is not going to be installed
                     Depends: libnvidia-decode-510 (= 510.47.03-0ubuntu0.20.04.1) but it is not going to be installed
                     Depends: libnvidia-encode-510 (= 510.47.03-0ubuntu0.20.04.1) but it is not going to be installed
                     Depends: nvidia-utils-510 (= 510.47.03-0ubuntu0.20.04.1) but it is not going to be installed
                     Depends: xserver-xorg-video-nvidia-510 (= 510.47.03-0ubuntu0.20.04.1) but it is not going to be installed
                     Depends: libnvidia-fbc1-510 (= 510.47.03-0ubuntu0.20.04.1) but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

$ apt-cache policy nvidia-driver-510
nvidia-driver-510:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: 510.47.03-0ubuntu0.20.04.1
  Version table:
     510.47.03-0ubuntu0.20.04.1 500
        500 http://nl.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-updates/restricted amd64 Packages
        500 http://nl.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-security/restricted amd64 Packages
$ apt-cache policy nvidia-driver-450-server
nvidia-driver-450-server:
  Installed: 450.172.01-0ubuntu0.20.04.1
  Candidate: 450.172.01-0ubuntu0.20.04.1
  Version table:
 *** 450.172.01-0ubuntu0.20.04.1 500
        500 http://nl.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-updates/restricted amd64 Packages
        500 http://nl.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-security/restricted amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

(so perhaps I should have filed this bug under nvidia-driver-450-server)

[Rolf Leggewie (r0lf)]

It seems that this is a regression introduced via the fix for bug 1957790.

[auquicu (aebsbkrs)]

I had some long-running computations, so could not reboot. In the meantime these have finished, and a reboot fixed the problem. (A mismatch between kernel module and nvidia driver versions?)