gdm not starting on bootup with nvidia driver

[jabba]

I am running Lucid 10.04 LTS x86_64 on a machine with NVIDIA GeForce 7025/nForce 630a integrated graphics/chipset. Before I installed the nvida-current driver from the repository, boot proceeded as normal, with the high resolution splash screen and subsequent login screen for gnome. After I install the nvidia-current driver, the bootup (splash) screen becomes low resolution and instead of initializing the login screen for gdm I get dumped to the terminal (tty1). I can still start the gdm by 'sudo gdm' and login with the graphics driver functioning normally. If I uninstall the driver, the problem goes away.

Can someone please help me find a fix for this?

[Dennis Cwik (dennis-cwik)]

I too am experiencing this. I've got an HP Pavilion Slimline PC, ubuntu 10.04 LTS desktop AMD64, with nVidia Corporation C61 [GeForce 6150SE nForce 430] (rev a2). I've installed the current nvidia drivers. The splash screens, when they do show up, are very low resolution. It seems like half of the time gdm will start, and the other half of the time, it will throw me to a console login screen. I'm using a widescreen VGA monitor with a resolution of 1440x900, which never seemed to show up with or without the nvidia drivers, so I've had to tweak my xorg.conf file slightly to get that working. Attached are the files I believe to be relevant, but as I'm still new to all this, I apologize if I've given too much information. I believe Xorg.0.log will hint at why this is happening.

[srjek (srjek)]

Having similar problems here. "sudo start gdm" at the terminal works without issues. I've noticed that the time stamp for "NVRM: loading NVIDIA..." in /var/log/messages is later then when the Xorg log fails to initialize the nVidia module, but don't know if this means anything.

I have a Dell Inspiron 531S, AMD Athlon 64 X2, Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Desktop AMD64, and a nVidia Corporation C61 [GeForce 6150SE nForce 430].

[Pablo Estigarribia (pablodav)]

In this forum http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=167422 I found some information that fix the problem, basic steps are:

1) Download the correct driver from nvidia web page (I couldn't get it fixed with Ubuntu driver at any way)
2)Purge nvidia packages: sudo apt-get purge nvidia-*
3) Create the file "/etc/modprobe.d/nvidia-graphics-drivers.conf" with the following contents:
blacklist vga16fb
blacklist nouveau
blacklist lbm-nouveau
blacklist nvidia-173
blacklist nvidia-96
blacklist nvidia-current
blacklist nvidiafb
4)create or adjust the /etx/X11/xorg.conf file to:
Section "Device"
    Identifier "Device0"
    Driver "nvidia"
    VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation"
EndSection
5) reboot (You can also unload nvidia modulos and the others that I put in blacklist with command "modprobe -r module", example: modprobe -r nouveau
6) If you restarted it will tell you that it can't start X ( low graphics mode ) , then choose a text based console login
(if it does start in X, just press ctrl-F1, log yourself in and call "sudo service gdm stop" or "sudo stop gdm"

7) run the nvidia installer and when it asks to run nvidia-x-config, answer yes
To run the nvidia installer, you should go to the folder with driver (ej: cd Downloads). Change the installer permissions to be executable (chmod +x fileoftheinstaller.sh), execute the installer (sudo ./fileoftheinstaller.sh)

8) Restart, it should start xorg automatically

[Pablo Estigarribia (pablodav)]

Another comment, in step 7 I had problems with the new xorg.conf created by nvidia-x-config, the previous xorg.conf worked better for my.

[jabba (diaz)]

Thank you much for your advice on this matter!
On the beta version of 10.04, I attempted to install the nvidia driver
with no knowledge of how to edit the xorg.conf file like you showed
below; I also guess that blacklisting the other drivers is a ncecessary
step because subsequent upgrades will try to default to these, right?
It's unfortunate, because now we're reduced to what windows users
usually do.

On 06/05/2010 09:45 AM, Pablo Estigarribia wrote:
> In this forum http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=167422 I
> found some information that fix the problem, basic steps are:
>
> 1) Download the correct driver from nvidia web page (I couldn't get it fixed with Ubuntu driver at any way)
> 2)Purge nvidia packages: sudo apt-get purge nvidia-*
> 3) Create the file "/etc/modprobe.d/nvidia-graphics-drivers.conf" with the following contents:
> blacklist vga16fb
> blacklist nouveau
> blacklist lbm-nouveau
> blacklist nvidia-173
> blacklist nvidia-96
> blacklist nvidia-current
> blacklist nvidiafb
> 4)create or adjust the /etx/X11/xorg.conf file to:
> Section "Device"
> Identifier "Device0"
> Driver "nvidia"
> VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation"
> EndSection
> 5) reboot (You can also unload nvidia modulos and the others that I put in blacklist with command "modprobe -r module", example: modprobe -r nouveau
> 6) If you restarted it will tell you that it can't start X ( low graphics mode ) , then choose a text based console login
> (if it does start in X, just press ctrl-F1, log yourself in and call "sudo service gdm stop" or "sudo stop gdm"
>
> 7) run the nvidia installer and when it asks to run nvidia-x-config, answer yes
> To run the nvidia installer, you should go to the folder with driver (ej: cd Downloads). Change the installer permissions to be executable (chmod +x fileoftheinstaller.sh), execute the installer (sudo ./fileoftheinstaller.sh)
>
> 8) Restart, it should start xorg automatically
>

[quequotion (quequotion)]

I've marked this as a duplicate of 532436 as it has the same symptoms and that report was earlier. This bug has not been resolved.