black screen switching from nvidia to nouveau

kro

Hi, I'm sorry, I know the subject has been discussed many times, but I'm struggling to find some precise info.

Nvidia just have abandoned its proprietary driver for my graphic card, so I have switched to nouveau installing xorg-driver-video-nouveau.
Hence its name, does this driver works with wayland ?

I run into a black screen with cursor trying to run ~~GNOME~~ budgie after logging from lightdm (somewhat classical it seems ?).

I still have access to the system thru SSH, and can launch everything adding a nomodeset flag thanks to clr-boot-manager.

sure enough the resolution is the worst : old school SVGA time...
otherwise everything seems to be ok.

Is it possible to adjust the resolution keeping modeset off ?
Or should I try another path ? switching from wayland to xorg e.g. ? or trying to set or reset anything ?

Thanks for any help !

kro@tour-noire ~ $ inxi -G
Graphics:
  Device-1: NVIDIA GF119 [GeForce GT 520] driver: N/A
  Display: x11 server: X.org v: 1.21.1.18 with: Xwayland v: 24.1.8 driver: X: loaded: nouveau
    unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa dri: nouveau gpu: N/A tty: 283x65
  API: EGL v: 1.5 drivers: swrast platforms: surfaceless,device
  API: OpenGL v: 4.5 vendor: mesa v: 25.1.4 note: console (EGL sourced) renderer: llvmpipe
    (LLVM 19.1.6 256 bits)
  Info: Tools: api: eglinfo,glxinfo x11: xdpyinfo, xprop, xrandr

Staudey

kro Nvidia just have abandoned its proprietary driver for my graphic card

By "just" you mean two-and-a-half years ago? How did this work before for you? Solus has removed the 390 driver a long time ago. Did you completely remove the old driver packages (and which ones did you have installed until now)?

The Linux 390.* legacy driver series is the last to support GF1xx ("Fermi") GPUs. Support for new Linux kernels and X servers, as well as fixes for critical bugs, will be included in 390.* legacy releases through the end of 2022.

(^from https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3142)

kro I run into a black screen with cursor trying to run GNOME after logging from lightdm (somewhat classical it seems ?).

I'm not sure lightdm properly supports GNOME (or vice versa). The default for GNOME is gdm. Also, in case you've only recently switched display managers, I've found that sometimes manually running sudo usysconf run -f is necessary for the switch to properly apply (though in those cases the symptom was a black screen on boot, not after login)

Testing the Xorg session is also a good idea, probably.

kro

Staudey I've found that sometimes manually running sudo usysconf run -f is necessary

I've tried this, had only a small error about apparmor, tried to reboot without nomodeset, and had the same black screen. thank you anyway !

kro

my bad : it's a budgie desktop, not GNOME (it's not my computer and since it didn't boot I've mistaken).

for the same reason I can't really tell what was the driver used until now. I thought it was the 390 proprietary driver, but I've run updates on this computer each month or so, and it was correctly working until now and last update.

I can't find how to switch back to X.org anyway I don't find this solution to be future-proof enough.

Do you know if it's possible to change the resolution while still using nomodeset or should I remove the flag and try a different approach ?

stocc

kro I can't find how to switch back to X.org anyway

Currently, Budgie uses xorg. It doesn't yet support Wayland. That is due in the next release of Budgie.

Staudey

kro I can't find how to switch back to X.org anyway I don't find this solution to be future-proof enough.

Well, if it's Budgie then it's already X.org, because Budgie Wayland wasn't released yet.

kro

ah ok thanks for the info !
I thought the xwayland part was the meaningful one.

kro

Here is the list of the packages that were removed by the update that failed the computer :

lmdb lshw efibootmgr alsa-ucm-conf polly llvm-libs python-pyudev qt6-base-gui glslang llvm-32bit-libs qt5-quickcontrols2 openh264 qt6-speech spirv-tools-32bit rasqal redland maliit-framework libpinyin anthy libchewing maliit-keyboard python2-setuptools python-cairo mimalloc font-noto-emoji python-pycryptodome linux-firmware-amdgpu linux-firmware-mlxsw-spectrum appstream-catalog linux-firmware-intel-graphics libplatform python-webencodings linux-firmware-qcom linux-firmware-libertas python-pylast steam-devices python-tinycss2 blake3 libomp ada nodejs-20

Weirdly enough I can't find anything related to nouveau nor nvidia.
Maybe I'm completely mistaken...

Unfortunately I can't rollback :

Downloading 10 / 674
System error. Program terminated.
Repo item ldb not found

From eopkg history it seems both nvidia 470 et nvidia 390 were installed at some point !?

    * nvidia-470-glx-driver-modaliases 470.141.03-7-1-x86_64 is installed.
    * nvidia-390-glx-driver-modaliases is upgraded from 390.154-135-1-x86_64 to 390.154-137-1-x86_64 with delta.
    * nvidia-glx-driver-modaliases is upgraded from 515.65.01-431-1-x86_64 to 515.65.01-433-1-x86_64 with delta.

Then I guess lately I was using 470 ? except I've just tried to reinstall them and got this (and no gui at all,no X, not even lightdm) :

root@tour-noire ~ # journalctl -p 3 -xb
juil. 05 05:08:17 solus kernel: x86/cpu: VMX (outside TXT) disabled by BIOS
juil. 05 05:08:17 solus kernel: NVRM: The NVIDIA GeForce GT 520 GPU installed in this system is
                                NVRM:  supported through the NVIDIA 390.xx Legacy drivers. Please
                                NVRM:  visit http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html for more
                                NVRM:  information.  The 470.256.02 NVIDIA driver will ignore
                                NVRM:  this GPU.  Continuing probe...
juil. 05 05:08:18 solus kernel: NVRM: The NVIDIA GeForce GT 520 GPU installed in this system is
                                NVRM:  supported through the NVIDIA 390.xx Legacy drivers. Please
                                NVRM:  visit http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html for more
                                NVRM:  information.  The 470.256.02 NVIDIA driver will ignore
                                NVRM:  this GPU.  Continuing probe...
juil. 05 05:08:17 solus kernel: x86/cpu: VMX (outside TXT) disabled by BIOS
juil. 05 05:08:17 solus kernel: NVRM: The NVIDIA GeForce GT 520 GPU installed in this system is
                                NVRM:  supported through the NVIDIA 390.xx Legacy drivers. Please
                                NVRM:  visit http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html for more
                                NVRM:  information.  The 470.256.02 NVIDIA driver will ignore
                                NVRM:  this GPU.  Continuing probe...
juil. 05 05:08:18 solus kernel: NVRM: The NVIDIA GeForce GT 520 GPU installed in this system is
                                NVRM:  supported through the NVIDIA 390.xx Legacy drivers. Please
                                NVRM:  visit http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html for more
                                NVRM:  information.  The 470.256.02 NVIDIA driver will ignore
                                NVRM:  this GPU.  Continuing probe...
juil. 05 05:08:29 tour-noire systemd-udevd[471]: /usr/lib64/udev/rules.d/90-alsa-restore.rules:16 GOTO="alsa_restore_std" has no matching label, ignoring.
juil. 05 05:08:29 tour-noire systemd-udevd[471]: /usr/lib64/udev/rules.d/90-alsa-restore.rules:20 GOTO="alsa_restore_std" has no matching label, ignoring.
juil. 05 05:08:30 tour-noire kernel: NVRM: The NVIDIA GeForce GT 520 GPU installed in this system is
                                     NVRM:  supported through the NVIDIA 390.xx Legacy drivers. Please
                                     NVRM:  visit http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html for more
                                     NVRM:  information.  The 470.256.02 NVIDIA driver will ignore
                                     NVRM:  this GPU.  Continuing probe...
juil. 05 05:08:30 tour-noire kernel: NVRM: The NVIDIA GeForce GT 520 GPU installed in this system is
                                     NVRM:  supported through the NVIDIA 390.xx Legacy drivers. Please
                                     NVRM:  visit http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html for more
                                     NVRM:  information.  The 470.256.02 NVIDIA driver will ignore
                                     NVRM:  this GPU.  Continuing probe...
juil. 05 05:08:30 tour-noire systemd[1]: Failed to start aa-lsm-hook.service - Load AppArmor profiles.

Since it seems I can't make budgie to work with nouveau without nomodeset,
if it's not possible to change resolution while using nomodeset I will try to install another graphic card, or get another computer completely.

Staudey

kro Then I guess lately I was using 470 ?

No, those are just modaliases packages used for hardware detection, not actual driver packages. They can be found on every system (well, except the 390 one, which no longer exists). Remove the actual driver packages you installed again, they will only cause issues with an unsupported GPU.

kro Here is the list of the packages that were removed by the update that failed the computer :

That's a very concerning list. Can you post the full eopkg history output of this operation, plus two or so before it? (and after, if there are any).

alsa-ucm-conffor example is a dependency of alsa-lib, which is a pretty foundational library and shouldn't be removed. llvm-libs is a dependency of mesalib, which is even more important, especially when it comes to graphics. So your system is all sorts of borked now.

Staudey

kro Unfortunately I can't rollback :
Downloading 10 / 674
System error. Program terminated.
Repo item ldb not found

Yeah, unfortunately ldb was deprecated from the repository just last week. (https://github.com/getsolus/packages/commit/9074e8267b981c8bc604c7a6c3a171d991b741d7)
I guess installing https://packages.getsol.us/shannon/l/ldb/ldb-2.8.2-31-1-x86_64.eopkg directly and then trying a rollback won't work, that would be too easy, and I think the method using a local repository no longer works (and was much more complicated anyway.

kro

thanks a lot @Staudey for your feedback,
sorry I've just saw your message.

Yesterday before giving up and go with another graphic card I tried one last thing :
I gave a go removing every packages related to both nvidia and nouveau.
nvidia-470-glx-driver* nvidia-glx-driver* and xorg-driver-video-nouveau

Very surprisingly (to me at least) the system just went working perfectly !
even glxgears result is decent !

kro@tour-noire ~ $ inxi -G
Graphics:
  Device-1: NVIDIA GF119 [GeForce GT 520] driver: nouveau v: kernel
  Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 21.1.18 with: Xwayland v: 24.1.8 driver: X:
    loaded: nouveau unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa dri: nouveau gpu: nouveau
    resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz
  API: EGL v: 1.5 drivers: nouveau,swrast
    platforms: gbm,x11,surfaceless,device
  API: OpenGL v: 4.5 compat-v: 4.3 vendor: mesa v: 25.1.4 renderer: NVD9
  Info: Tools: api: eglinfo,glxinfo x11: xdpyinfo, xprop, xrandr

So from my understanding, nouveau must be directly integrated in the kernel ?
or might come from a package I can't find searching nouveau with eopkg...

@Staudey eopkg history output is pretty big.
It was 3 months since the last upgrade.

Sorry I was totally wrong about the supposedly removed packages list !
This packages were not removed by the upgrade, they would have been removed by the rollback :

root@tour-noire ~ # eopkg history -t 747
...
Following packages will be removed:
lmdb lshw efibootmgr alsa-ucm-conf polly ...

So it was actually just the opposite ! from eopkg history I can see these packages were installed by the upgrade :

Operation #749: upgrade
Date: 2025-07-01 22:36
...
* alsa-ucm-conf 1.2.13-1-1-x86_64 is installed. 
* llvm-libs 19.1.6-130-1-x86_64 is installed.
...

So everything is fine for now, thanks again !