[SOLVED] Arch stuck on boot screen after reinstalling Nvidia drivers

Baldemoto · 2021-07-29 19:00:46

I'm trying to boot into my DE after attempting to delete and reinstall my Nvidia drivers, but my computer's stuck at

/dev/sda3: clean, xxxxx/xxxxx files, xxxxxxx/xxxxxxx blocks

What I've tried

I've tried Ctrl + alt + f4 and have attempted to use pacman to check if my Nvidia drivers are installed, but I get this error

error:failed to unit transaction (unable to lock database)
error: could not lock database: File exists
if you're sure a package manager is not already running, you can remove /var/lib/pacman/db

Such file doesn't exist in my directory, so I thought it might be a connection issue. I pinged google.com and came up with

ping: google.com: temporary failure in name resolution

I tried connecting via iwctl but the command wasn't found. Keep in mind I have NetworkManager installed and should be running.

Removing 'quiet' from the boot parameters doesn't seem to show anything out of the ordinary, as all have the [ OK ] on them, apart from NetworkManager which had a line that said something along the lines of "a start job is running for network manager" for a few seconds.

Any idea how to fix this or if this is fixable?

Last edited by Baldemoto (2021-07-29 21:37:19)

seth · 2021-07-29 20:31:04

What is you DE?
Do you use a DM or startx?
How did you try to check that? I don't think that "pacman -Q nvidia" has to lock the database (though even out of context the error is concerning).
Since you're not logging into a GUI session, do you use wifi (seems likely because of "iwctl") or wired ethernet? In case of wifi, do you have a global connection configured, https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Networ … et_on_boot ?
Otherwise you'll have to establish a connection, eg. w/ nmcli.

If you're using lightdm, see https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/LightD … TTY_output
Otherwise and in general https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NVIDIA … de_setting - both the kernel parameter as well as adding the modules to the initramfs.

Baldemoto · 2021-07-29 21:37:00

seth wrote:

What is you DE?
Do you use a DM or startx?
How did you try to check that? I don't think that "pacman -Q nvidia" has to lock the database (though even out of context the error is concerning).
Since you're not logging into a GUI session, do you use wifi (seems likely because of "iwctl") or wired ethernet? In case of wifi, do you have a global connection configured, https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Networ … et_on_boot ?
Otherwise you'll have to establish a connection, eg. w/ nmcli.
If you're using lightdm, see https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/LightD … TTY_output
Otherwise and in general https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NVIDIA … de_setting - both the kernel parameter as well as adding the modules to the initramfs.

These suggestions worked!

I connected to WiFi successfully using nmcli, and fixed pacman by using

rm /var/lib/pacman/db

I attempted to add the NVIDIA modules to the mkinitcpio.conf file but was unsuccessful as it said they were not found when I regenerated the presets.

To /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-nvidia.conf I added the following:

Section "OutputClass"
Identifier "nvidia"
MatchDriver "nvidia-drm"
Driver "nvidia"
Option "AllowEmptyInitialConfiguration"
Option "PrimaryGPU" "yes"
ModulePath "/usr/lib/nvidia/xorg"
ModulePath "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
EndSection

And to the end of my GRUB Linux parameters I added

nvidia-drm.modeset=1

Thanks for the help Seth! I'm going to attempt to figure out how to add the parameter to my default GRUB parameters, but the issue should be fixed now. I will post here again if I find any other issues related to this.

For the record - I was using a DM and KDE Plasma as my DE.

Last edited by Baldemoto (2021-07-29 21:38:15)

Arch Linux

#1 2021-07-29 19:00:46

[SOLVED] Arch stuck on boot screen after reinstalling Nvidia drivers

#2 2021-07-29 20:31:04

Re: [SOLVED] Arch stuck on boot screen after reinstalling Nvidia drivers

#3 2021-07-29 21:37:00

Re: [SOLVED] Arch stuck on boot screen after reinstalling Nvidia drivers

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