Arch Linux

rockzombie2

Member

Registered: 2018-10-19

Posts: 29

[SOLVED] Unable to startx and Nvidia dkms fails to build

For context, I use ZFS on Linux and normally keep the following in my pacman.conf:

IgnorePkg = linux linux-headers
IgnorePkg = nvidia-dkms nvidia-utils lib32-nvidia-utils

A few days ago, I checked the release page of ZFS on Linux to see that it supported version 6.12, so I commented those lines from my pacman.conf and ran pacman -Syu. I then uncommented those lines again.

Fast forward to today and I go to reboot my PC only to find I can't startx all of a sudden. It fails with "Fatal server error: (EE) no screens found (EE)".

I tried doing a pacman -Syu again but it still failed.

Upon investigating, I find modprobe nvidia fails with "modprobe: FATAL: Module nvidia not found in directory /lib/modules/6.12.9-arch1-1".

I opened /var/lib/dkms/Nvidia/535.171.04/build/make.log to see that it's failing with Error 2.

I'm not sure at this point if I need to roll back some of my packages. I already tried rolling back my system using ZFS but the issue was still occurring so I didn't want to roll it back further than today.

How do I rollback the Linux and Nvidia modules to a working point, if that is the issue? If not, what other troubleshooting steps can I take? Sorry for the poor formatting, I'm typing this on my phone. I believe I can email output from the console to myself if you need a log file or something, otherwise I'm just gonna type it out.

Last edited by rockzombie2 (2025-01-13 23:03:12)

mackin_cheese

Member

Registered: 2025-01-07

Posts: 146

Re: [SOLVED] Unable to startx and Nvidia dkms fails to build

What's the exact zfs package from aur that you updated?

rockzombie2

Member

Registered: 2018-10-19

Posts: 29

Re: [SOLVED] Unable to startx and Nvidia dkms fails to build

zfs-dkms 2.2.7-1

rockzombie2

Member

Registered: 2018-10-19

Posts: 29

Re: [SOLVED] Unable to startx and Nvidia dkms fails to build

I realize I hadn't done yay -Syu so doing that I had some packages to update, including:

lib32-nvidia-535xx-utils
libxnvctrl-535xx
nvidia-535xx-dkms
nvidia-535xx-settings
nvidia-535xx-utils

Attempting to install them failed with "error: failed to prepare transactions (could not satisfy dependencies) :: installing nvidia-535-utils (535.216.01-3) breaks dependency 'nvidia-utils=535.171.04' required by nvidia-535xx-settings".

I don't know if this is the issue, yay -Syu tells me nvidia-535-dkms is being upgraded from
535.171.04-1 -> 535.216.01-3
While nvidia-535xx-settings is being upgraded from
535.171.04-1 -> 535.216.01-1.

Last edited by rockzombie2 (2025-01-12 21:46:20)

mackin_cheese

Member

Registered: 2025-01-07

Posts: 146

Re: [SOLVED] Unable to startx and Nvidia dkms fails to build

What is the exact model of your GPU?

Last edited by mackin_cheese (2025-01-13 02:01:57)

rockzombie2

Member

Registered: 2018-10-19

Posts: 29

Re: [SOLVED] Unable to startx and Nvidia dkms fails to build

I have an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti.

mackin_cheese

Member

Registered: 2025-01-07

Posts: 146

Re: [SOLVED] Unable to startx and Nvidia dkms fails to build

Alright, so the nvidia driver you are using is not officially supported by Arch Linux (the one you downloaded from the AUR).

You should try switching over to either nvidia, nvidia-dkms nvidia-open, nvidia-dkms or nvidia-lts (must be linux LTS kernel) from the official repos (pacman).

Last edited by mackin_cheese (2025-01-13 02:35:43)

WorMzy

Administrator

From: Scotland

Registered: 2010-06-16

Posts: 12,577

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Unable to startx and Nvidia dkms fails to build

Mod note: moving to AUR Issues

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Making lemonade from lemons since 2015.

rockzombie2

Member

Registered: 2018-10-19

Posts: 29

Re: [SOLVED] Unable to startx and Nvidia dkms fails to build

Awesome, thanks for the help. I don't know how it happened but my nvidia packages were using 535xx versions when I was pretty sure it was running nvidia-dkms. Running:

pacman -S nvidia-dkms nvidia-settings lib32-nvidia-utils

Fixed it.