[Solved] Nvidia RTX 3070 Card not being used and driver not loading

ArchNewbieMoot · 2022-06-14 06:59:18

Hi

I have a MSI laptop with a Nvidia 3070 GPU. I recently did a complete install of arch and then installed KDE Plasma with Wayland. Following the steps here (https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NVIDIA), I did the following:

1. As I knew the card is recent, I installed the 'nvidia' package using pacman
2. The Archwiki mentions that the kernel 5.18 (which we are on now) doesn't boot Nvidia unless a certain workaround of disabling IBT is done, which I did my adding "ibt=off "kernel parameter to /etc/boot/grub and doing a grub-mkconfig again
3. Confirmed from the boot menu in GRUB that this parameter is added by typing e on the Arch Linux option
4. Rebooted the system

However the nvidia-smi says:

NVIDIA-SMI has failed because it couldn't communicate with the NVIDIA driver. Make sure that the latest NVIDIA driver is installed and running.

And lspci -k also just returns available drivers without showing any being used by kernel as shown below:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 10th Gen Core Processor Host Bridge/DRAM Registers (rev 02)
        DeviceName: Onboard - Other
        Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. [MSI] Device 12ed
        Kernel driver in use: skl_uncore
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6th-10th Gen Core Processor PCIe Controller (x16) (rev 02)
        Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. [MSI] Device 12ed
        Kernel driver in use: pcieport
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation CometLake-H GT2 [UHD Graphics] (rev 05)
        DeviceName: Onboard - Video
        Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. [MSI] Device 12ed
        Kernel driver in use: i915
        Kernel modules: i915
00:04.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v5/E3-1500 v5/6th Gen Core Processor Thermal Subsystem (rev 02)
        DeviceName: Onboard - Other
        Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. [MSI] Device 12ed
        Kernel driver in use: proc_thermal
        Kernel modules: processor_thermal_device_pci_legacy
00:12.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Comet Lake PCH Thermal Controller
        DeviceName: Onboard - Other
        Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. [MSI] Device 12ed
        Kernel driver in use: intel_pch_thermal
        Kernel modules: intel_pch_thermal
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Comet Lake USB 3.1 xHCI Host Controller
        DeviceName: Onboard - Other
        Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. [MSI] Device 12ed
        Kernel driver in use: xhci_hcd
        Kernel modules: xhci_pci
00:14.2 RAM memory: Intel Corporation Comet Lake PCH Shared SRAM
        DeviceName: Onboard - Other
        Subsystem: Intel Corporation Device 7270
00:15.0 Serial bus controller: Intel Corporation Comet Lake PCH Serial IO I2C Controller #0
        DeviceName: Onboard - Other
        Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. [MSI] Device 12ed
        Kernel driver in use: intel-lpss
        Kernel modules: intel_lpss_pci
00:15.2 Serial bus controller: Intel Corporation Comet Lake PCH Serial IO I2C Controller #2
        DeviceName: Onboard - Other
        Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. [MSI] Device 12ed
        Kernel driver in use: intel-lpss
        Kernel modules: intel_lpss_pci
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Comet Lake HECI Controller
        DeviceName: Onboard - Other
        Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. [MSI] Device 12ed
        Kernel driver in use: mei_me
        Kernel modules: mei_me
00:1b.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Comet Lake PCI Express Root Port #17 (rev f0)
        Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. [MSI] Device 12ed
        Kernel driver in use: pcieport
00:1b.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Comet Lake PCI Express Root Port #21 (rev f0)
        Subsystem: Intel Corporation Device 7270
        Kernel driver in use: pcieport
00:1d.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Comet Lake PCI Express Root Port #9 (rev f0)
        Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. [MSI] Device 12ed
        Kernel driver in use: pcieport
00:1d.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device 06b5 (rev f0)
        Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. [MSI] Device 12ed
        Kernel driver in use: pcieport
00:1d.6 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device 06b6 (rev f0)
        Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. [MSI] Device 12ed
        Kernel driver in use: pcieport
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Comet Lake LPC Controller
        DeviceName: Onboard - Other
        Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. [MSI] Device 12ed
00:1f.3 Audio device: Intel Corporation Comet Lake PCH cAVS
        DeviceName: Onboard - Sound
        Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. [MSI] Device 12ed
        Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel
        Kernel modules: snd_hda_intel, snd_soc_skl, snd_sof_pci_intel_cnl
00:1f.4 SMBus: Intel Corporation Comet Lake PCH SMBus Controller
        DeviceName: Onboard - Other
        Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. [MSI] Device 12ed
        Kernel driver in use: i801_smbus
        Kernel modules: i2c_i801
00:1f.5 Serial bus controller: Intel Corporation Comet Lake PCH SPI Controller
        DeviceName: Onboard - Other
        Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. [MSI] Device 12ed
        Kernel driver in use: intel-spi
        Kernel modules: spi_intel_pci
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GA104M [GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile / Max-Q] (rev a1)
        Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. [MSI] Device 12ed
        Kernel modules: nouveau, nvidia_drm, nvidia
01:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation GA104 High Definition Audio Controller (rev a1)
        Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. [MSI] Device 12ed
        Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel
        Kernel modules: snd_hda_intel
02:00.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation JHL7540 Thunderbolt 3 Bridge [Titan Ridge 2C 2018] (rev 06)
        Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. [MSI] Device 12ed
        Kernel driver in use: pcieport
03:00.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation JHL7540 Thunderbolt 3 Bridge [Titan Ridge 2C 2018] (rev 06)
        Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. [MSI] Device 12ed
        Kernel driver in use: pcieport
03:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation JHL7540 Thunderbolt 3 Bridge [Titan Ridge 2C 2018] (rev 06)
        Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. [MSI] Device 12ed
        Kernel driver in use: pcieport
03:02.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation JHL7540 Thunderbolt 3 Bridge [Titan Ridge 2C 2018] (rev 06)
        Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. [MSI] Device 12ed
        Kernel driver in use: pcieport
04:00.0 System peripheral: Intel Corporation JHL7540 Thunderbolt 3 NHI [Titan Ridge 2C 2018] (rev 06)
        Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. [MSI] Device 12ed
        Kernel driver in use: thunderbolt
        Kernel modules: thunderbolt
3a:00.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation JHL7540 Thunderbolt 3 USB Controller [Titan Ridge 2C 2018] (rev 06)
        Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. [MSI] Device 12ed
        Kernel driver in use: xhci_hcd
        Kernel modules: xhci_pci
3b:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd NVMe SSD Controller 980
        Subsystem: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd Device a801
        Kernel driver in use: nvme
        Kernel modules: nvme
3c:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller: Sandisk Corp WD Black 2018/SN750 / PC SN720 NVMe SSD
        Subsystem: Sandisk Corp WD Black 2018/SN750 / PC SN720 NVMe SSD
        Kernel driver in use: nvme
        Kernel modules: nvme
3d:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Wi-Fi 6 AX210/AX211/AX411 160MHz (rev 1a)
        Subsystem: Intel Corporation Wi-Fi 6 AX210 160MHz
        Kernel driver in use: iwlwifi
        Kernel modules: iwlwifi
3e:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation Device 3101 (rev 03)
        Subsystem: Intel Corporation Device 0000
        Kernel driver in use: igc
        Kernel modules: igc

I then also tried re-initializing the boot initramfs using mkinitcpio just to be safe but it made no difference (it was successful but Nvidia driver is still not used)
Despite following wiki steps and reboots etc. it seems that the kernel doesn't want to load the driver. Could anyone please help me out to see where I am going wrong?

Last edited by ArchNewbieMoot (2022-06-14 07:36:30)

V1del · 2022-06-14 07:26:00

Check/post your dmesg/system journal to find out why nvidia isn't loading.

Since this is looking like a PRIME setup, then PRIME setups in general don't really work fully on Wayland yet in which case you'd have to opt for xorg and read: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PRIME# … er_offload

Last edited by V1del (2022-06-14 07:27:31)

ArchNewbieMoot · 2022-06-14 07:31:50

Thanks I checked the journal and found the issue related to Nvidia device being allocated to wrong region, an MSI bug apparently as per this link - which has resolved the issue - Nvidia Forums

The solution was by booting with kernel parameter pci=realloc

Arch Linux

#1 2022-06-14 06:59:18

[Solved] Nvidia RTX 3070 Card not being used and driver not loading

#2 2022-06-14 07:26:00

Re: [Solved] Nvidia RTX 3070 Card not being used and driver not loading

#3 2022-06-14 07:31:50

Re: [Solved] Nvidia RTX 3070 Card not being used and driver not loading

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