Both display managers (gdm and kdm) do not load after installing nvidia closed-source drivers

[Christopher Yee Mon]

Binary package hint: nvidia-glx-177

Summary: Upgraded from Kubuntu 8.04 to 8.10 64-bit and the install was successful. Installed the closed-source binary drivers and kdm didn't load. It would go through the startup then go back to tty1. This was retested with a clean install of Kubuntu 32-bit and 64-bit as well as a clean install of Ubuntu 32-bit and 64-bit. In all cases it was tested with both the 173 and 177 drivers. All produced the same behaviour.

Environment
Kubuntu 8.10 64-bit
Pair of Nvidia 7600 GTs in dual SLI

Steps
1. Upgrade a running Kubuntu 8.04 system to Kubuntu 8.10
2. Install the Nvidia 177 Closed Drivers.
3. Reboot

Expected Results:
Kubuntu should load successfully

Actual Results:
Kubuntu did not load successfully. It just brought up a command line prompt in tty1

This was retested with clean installs of Kubuntu 8.10 64-bit, Kubuntu 8.10 32-bit, Ubuntu 8.10 32-bit, Ubuntu 8.10 64-bit with the 177 and 173 drivers, all producing the same results.

This bug is very similar to bug # 282328, except the supplied workaround in that description did not work when attempted.
This bug is also very similar to bug # 294405, except the same behaviour was observed in clean installs as well as the upgrade.
This bug is also similar to bug # 275379 except the behaviour was consistent

[Alberto Milone (albertomilone)]

Can you reproduce the problem if you keep only 1 Nvidia card plugged in?

[Christopher Yee Mon (christopher-yeemon)]

I took one of the graphics cards out and it worked on the existing ubuntu 32-bit install.

I suspect that it may be that one of the cards is bad, because when I took one out it did not always boot. when i replaced that card with the other one it worked perfectly.

I am going to do a reinstall of kubuntu 32-bit with the working card in it, reenable the driver, then reinstall the other card and see if it continues to work. If it destabilises again, then it may be because of the particular graphics card.

[Christopher Yee Mon (christopher-yeemon)]

correction: I don't think the graphics card is bad since the machine where I'm getting this error is dual booting on windows, and the windows nvidia driver is completely stable with this card.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

[This is an automated message]

Hi christopher-yeemon,

Please attach the output of `lspci -vvnn`, and attach your /var/log/Xorg.0.log file from after reproducing this issue. If you've made any customizations to your /etc/X11/xorg.conf please attach that as well.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

We're closing this bug since it is has been some time with no response from the original reporter. However, if the issue still exists please feel free to reopen with the requested information. Also, if you could, please test against the latest development version of Ubuntu, since this confirms the bug is one we may be able to pass upstream for help.