[SOLVED] Display signal lost after starting X

The_Only_Phantom · 2024-07-01 21:08:42

When I start X via a display manager or xinit/startx, my display signal is lost. This started after I was trying to switch to nouveau from the proprietary nvidia driver while testing a package. After trying to remove nouveau and blacklisting it again in modprobe, this issue started. I THINK I have tried everything that the forums and wiki recommend. That or I'm terrible at searching. I'll list everything that I've tried and hope someone has some guidance because at this point, I think I'm breaking more things than I'm fixing.

System Info:
Kernel: linux-lts
GPU: Nvidia RTX 4070 (nvidia-lts, nvidia-utils, lib32-nvidia-utils)
Display: Epson Projector via HDMI
Display Manager/DE: LightDM/xfce
Bootloader: GRUB booting to a LUKS encrypted lvm group. Boot is outside of the lvm group and not encrypted.

Things I have tried:
Reinstalling nvidia drivers - same result

Using nvidia-xconfig to recreate xorg.conf - no change but I did notice that my display details were not populated properly. Previously this file listed my projectors details properly

Checking modprobe for nouveau blacklisting - confirmed

Checking mkinitcpio.conf for nouveau and manually adding the nvidia modules before running "mkinitcpio -P" - just resulted in the display disconnecting before I could get through my encryption prompt

pacman -Syu (of course) - no change

Verified that my kernel parameters included nvidia_drm.modeset=1 and nvidia_drm.fbdev=1 in gru b and ran grub-mkconfig again.

Complete removal of xorg/nvidia/lightdm/xfce and their configurations and reinstallation following their respective wiki pages. - same result

Removing nvidia drivers and reinstalling the nouveau drivers - allowed lightdm to display and xfce to load as well. Though my display settings were limited as if my GPU was not properly detecting what was connected to it. So I suspect that the nouveau driver was not loading properly either.

I tried looking at /var/log/Xorg.* and there were warnings about nouveau , and vesa not being found before using nvidia when nvidia drivers were installed, but if they were not installed X would give an error reporting that no display was found. Which I thought was to be expected.

Modprobe nvidia -v shows no errors with loading the module

Journalctl gave a strange message about the nvidia module license being tainted, but I don't know what that means and googling didn't clear that up much in the context of my issue.

I also tried some other obscure things that didn't seem to be important when I was throwing hail marys to try to fix this thing, so I might have done something else that you all might recommend.

Given all I have tried, I only know for sure that the issue is triggered by starting X when the nvidia closed source drivers are installed. I don't know what else to do other than wipe the disk and start from zero.

I can provide logs if needed but I struggle to find what's important so I don't know which are relevant to do so in advance. Just let me know if I can give more info.

Thanks for reading my issue and taking the time to answer if you choose to do so.

Last edited by The_Only_Phantom (2024-07-02 05:05:35)

jmsgentoo · 2024-07-01 21:13:29

if you try using proprietary nvdia driver with nvidia-driver 555.58
try with the previous one , 555.58 seems to be buggy

The_Only_Phantom · 2024-07-02 04:00:18

jmsgentoo wrote:

if you try using proprietary nvdia driver with nvidia-driver 555.58
try with the previous one , 555.58 seems to be buggy

I downgraded to 550.90 and ran mkinitcpio -P and now the nvidia modules seem to not be loading at all even after reboot.

Xorg.0.log error says "Failed to initialize the nvidia kernel module" after running startx or trying to start lightdm

Modprobe nvidia -v now says "FATAL: Module not found in directory /lib/modules/6.6.36-1-lts

The_Only_Phantom · 2024-07-02 05:04:25

I thought that the module might be present in a previous kernel versions directory so I downgraded the kernel to 6.6.32 and now everything seems to be working again. I guess this is on me for assuming that I made a mistake and broke something while switching drivers.

Thanks jmsgentoo!

seth · 2024-07-02 06:37:53

nvidia is an out-of-tree (OOT) module, you've to up/downgrade it and the kernel in lockstep.
An alternative is a dkms package which will build the module for whatever kernel (and kernel headers! eg. linux-lts-headers) you've installed.

Arch Linux

#1 2024-07-01 21:08:42

[SOLVED] Display signal lost after starting X

#2 2024-07-01 21:13:29

Re: [SOLVED] Display signal lost after starting X

#3 2024-07-02 04:00:18

Re: [SOLVED] Display signal lost after starting X

#4 2024-07-02 05:04:25

Re: [SOLVED] Display signal lost after starting X

#5 2024-07-02 06:37:53

Re: [SOLVED] Display signal lost after starting X

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