Arch Linux

sh4dowgod2020

Member

Registered: 2019-01-15

Posts: 2

The strange circle of Nvidia | Nvidia drivers issue

It didn't take long for me to realise Linux doesn't really like Nvidia drivers all that much.
Ever since I installed my first distro my gtx970 has given me more headache than anything else Linux related.

And now it strikes again.

I've had my fair share of gnome and wanted to configure a window manager that consumes less memory.
That is where i3 came in.

I decided to disable the gdm.service and log in through the zsh shell.
No grub problems, even got the "Welcome to Arch linux" message on boot. No errors. And then...nothing. Infinite blackness.
I've tried to get to any of the tty-s using the "ctl + alt + F*" keys to no avail.

So I removed everything from the gnome group including the gdm.
Still nothing.

Then I remembered who could be the culprit.
Removing the nvidia and nvidia-settings package did the trick.

I could finally log in with the console and run "startx" to start i3.
But then the screen tearing started happening when using my browser and monitor placement was off (I have two monitors plugged into the same card) and I occasionally play games over steam.

Now, here's the catch. I can have nvidia and it's settings installed and it boots If I have the "Gnome display manager" service enabled and run i3 from the log-in screen cog-wheel.
The thing is, I really don't like gdm and would rather start the X-server with the "startx" command. I have configurations that are inside of ~/.xinitrc that I would like to run and I presume that gdm doesn't read through it on startup. If it did, I would not have to set my i3 config to run "setxkbmap hr" every time it starts.

So the main question is:
Has anyone else had this problem with the nvidia drivers and not being able to boot to any of the tty-s ?

Edit: Removed the second question.

Last edited by sh4dowgod2020 (2019-01-15 17:20:02)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,376

Re: The strange circle of Nvidia | Nvidia drivers issue

Please post separate topics for separate issues.

For your nvidia  tty  problem, the kernel wants to enable modesetting on the console and it is disabled by default on nvidia, reinstall the nvidia packages and add nvidia-drm.modeset=1 to your kernel parameters or a relevant file in /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia.conf

options nvidia-drm modeset=1

Last edited by V1del (2019-01-15 16:50:59)

Ropid

Member

Registered: 2015-03-09

Posts: 1,069

Re: The strange circle of Nvidia | Nvidia drivers issue

Maybe there's another file that sets the keyboard layout and it's overwriting your file? Try searching like this:

grep -r Xkb /etc/X11

You shouldn't do things to files in /usr. Pacman doesn't expect the files there to change. Settings done in /etc will usually overwrite the defaults from /usr.

sh4dowgod2020

Member

Registered: 2019-01-15

Posts: 2

Re: The strange circle of Nvidia | Nvidia drivers issue

Please post separate topics for separate issues.

Sorry, my bad.

It worked like a charm, thank you V1del !
Is there a wiki section that this is documented in ?

Thanks for the suggestion, Ropid.
I was able to start X from the terminal now and upon exiting the session I get the following error:

Unsupported high keycode 372 for name <1372> ignored; X11 cannot support keycodes above 255.

I am going to follow that lead.
If I am unable to find the solution I will start a new topic since I have removed the second question.