nvidia-440 installation issues need to be resolved and the package marked as 'tested'

[Jack Howarth]

The nvidia-graphics-drivers-340 is essential to many users. For example, on my MacPro 3,1 equipped with an EVGA GTX-680 Mac version graphic card, the nvidia 360, 390 and 396 drivers all fail due to issues with the new nvidia_drm module resulting in no video output on DVI and HDMI.

https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/1042691/linux/black-screen-with-mac-version-of-gtx-680/1

Similiar issues exist for a number of PC users as well...

https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/1037997/xid-61-black-screen-on-startup-ubuntu-18-04-gtx-1060-mobile/

of which only some have been resolved. The nvidia-340 drivers are the recommended fall back according to the Nvidia linux developers.

Unfortunately, the installation of the current nvidia-340 340.107-0ubuntu2 packaging is in really bad shape. The first error one sees while attempting to install it are dpkg-divert errors like those described in https://askubuntu.com/questions/419304/dpkg-divert-error-rename-involves-overwriting-usr-lib-xorg-protocol-txt-wit but for the files...

/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libEGL.so.1.distrib
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libGLESv1_CM.so.1.distrib
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libGLESv2.so.2.distrib.
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libGL.so.1.distrib

Currently one has to manually move these aside under a .bak suffix to get past these post-removal script errors. I believe these issues may be already addressed in the current nvidia-340 packaging residing on the ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa repo.

The second installation issue that occurs is the same as that described in https://askubuntu.com/questions/969352/uninstalling-and-then-reinstalling-nvidia-384-kills-colord where currently the fix is the same. One has to edit the installed nvidia-340.postinst file and change

NEWEST_KERNEL=$(get_newest_kernel "$(KERNEL")

to
NEWEST_KERNEL=$(get_newest_kernel "$CURRENT_KERNEL")

following executing

sudo dpkg-reconfigure nvidia-340

to allow the installation to cleanly complete. Lastly, there seems to be a missing dependency on the nvidia-340-dev that prevents akmods from building the kernel modules which should be fixed.

The nvidia-340 drivers are supported until the end of 2019 by which time hopefully Nvidia will finally clean up their current issues with the newer drivers on problematic hardware.

https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3142

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.10
Package: nvidia-340 340.107-0ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.18.0-10.11-generic 4.18.12
Uname: Linux 4.18.0-10-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: wl nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.20.10-0ubuntu13
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Sun Oct 14 12:41:21 2018
InstallationDate: Installed on 2018-04-26 (170 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 18.04 LTS "Bionic Beaver" - Release amd64 (20180425.1)
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm-256color
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: nvidia-graphics-drivers-340
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to cosmic on 2018-09-30 (14 days ago)

[Jack Howarth (jwhowarth)]

I believe that I have identified why the newer nvidia drivers which depend on the new nvidia_drm kernel module fail on Mac hardware. That new module depends on the ipmi modules. On Mac hardware, unsurprisingly, the ipmi_si module fails to load and the ipmi device is not created. Motherboards with issues supporting on the PC probably explain the similar errors reported at...

https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/1037997/xid-61-black-screen-on-startup-ubuntu-18-04-gtx-1060-mobile/

So Ubuntu should definitely hold onto the nvidia-340 package as long as possible to support that hardware.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Jack Howarth (jwhowarth)]

I can confirm, on a 2008 MacPro with Apple ROMed GTX680, that the nvidia 440 drivers bundled with the 20.04 beta release show the same behavior. The Apple Cinema HD display LED comes on (indicating that the driver loses contact with the display) as nvidia drivers are loaded and nvidia-modeset executes.

Apr 4 14:35:03 howarth-MacPro kernel: [ 57.436235] nvidia-modeset: WARNING: GPU:0: Lost display notification (0:0x00000000); continuing.

[Jack Howarth (jwhowarth)]

I can also confirm that the nvidia-340 package in 20.04 builds usable kernel modules and works fine on the same 2008 MacPro with Mac rom'd GTX680.