Arch Linux

NominalSum

Member

Registered: 2025-12-02

Posts: 58

Update killed my arch

I did an update this morning and it asked if I wanted to switch for nvidia-dkms to nvidia-open-dkms. I did the switch. Black screen on boot. Can someone help me understand what went wrong or how to get to where I can make the changes I need.

Thank you

Scimmia

Fellow

Registered: 2012-09-01

Posts: 13,724

Re: Update killed my arch

I see in another thread that you had downgraded the driver. This would have updated them, were you holding back the other updates like nvidia-utils?

Wozzeck56

Member

Registered: 2025-07-31

Posts: 5

Re: Update killed my arch

nvdia-open driver is only meant to be used with recent RTX nvidia cards, it is not compatible with older nvidia card as GTX 950M (mine)

Theses older cards were only supported by the full proprietary nvidia driver

Please refer to the home page of this site, there is a feed.
Reading regularly the home page should always be THE FIRST THING TO DO before posting a message, and when dealing with rolling release, this is essential to refer at less once a week to this home page which relates big moves in Arch...

Having previously encountered an issue  with openSUSE Tumbleweed regarding theses same drivers, Arch officially confirms now what I had guessed, Nvidia drops support of theses older architectures from driver 590xx, this means than for people like me, the driver is definitively frozen to 580xx

This is the reason why Arch swapped from nvidia-dkms (strictly proprietary driver) to nvidia-open-dkms (partially open driver).

Either you are in the same case than me (you run an older card) you must switch to the AUR repo packages below
(if your nvidia chipset is supported by nvidia-open-driver this means your are missing some dependencies)

nvidia-580xx-utils (a kind of meta package that installs several dependencies as opencl-nvidia-580xx)
nvidia-580xx-dkms
nvidia-580xx-settings
libxnvctrl-580xx (if not already installed automatically as dependencies)

Unfortunately we know what will happen. Dropping support could mean that in a next major kernel release, theses drivers may break.
Usually some people maintains theses drivers as they can to make (or try to make) them build with newer kernels, but this doesn't last forever, perhaps in 2/5 years this driver may definitively break this will depend on kernel evolutions that would require a deep driver modification that could not be anymore taken in charge by a generous maintainer, given that theses drivers are closed source.

At this moment, we will have to switch to nouveau, with possibly a additional kernel firmware (there is already an additional firmware for very old nvidia 340xx  under package nouveau-fx, nvidia-340xx being definitively broken since moths).

I have already made some tests with nouveau, the open retro engineered driver. It's working but not at the same level than proprietary driver. For office job this suffices, for game.... forget it.

nouveau supports "offload mode" for those with nvidia discrete GPU like le, this is a good news, and this the way nouveau should be used, so use preferably Intel integrated graphic as primary video card and Nouveau on per use offload (DRI_PRIME=1)

We can only hope that a further nouveau-fw specific firmware for 580xx appears later to recover some of the accelerations functions included with proprietary driver, but nouveau will never compare to the original, except if nouveau makes a major breakthrough in the retro-engineering process.

This is the problem with nvidia.... closed source driver that doesn't authorize a third party reprocess.

NominalSum

Member

Registered: 2025-12-02

Posts: 58

Re: Update killed my arch

I see in another thread that you had downgraded the driver. This would have updated them, were you holding back the other updates like nvidia-utils?

I had issues with that and didnt end up doing it. I had even updated the driver a few days ago to the newest when it released. But I do think it has to do with clicking to switch to open-dkms. I just have no idea how to go about fixing the issue.

Scimmia

Fellow

Registered: 2012-09-01

Posts: 13,724

Re: Update killed my arch

Can you switch to a different tty? If not, start by adding nomodeset to the kernel command line. Most of the time,that will get you to the tty, might have to switch to tty2 if you have a DM starting at boot. This mode won't let you use a graphical system, it's just for diagnostics and repair. From there, use journalctl's '-b' option to select a boot that didn't work and see what it says happened.

If nomodeset doesn't work, you might need the ISO on a flash drive.

Last edited by Scimmia (2025-12-22 21:43:00)

Scimmia

Fellow

Registered: 2012-09-01

Posts: 13,724

Re: Update killed my arch

nvdia-open driver is only meant to be used with recent RTX nvidia cards, it is not compatible with older nvidia card as GTX 950M (mine)

Quite a huge post with a lot of information without actually asking what card they have. FTR, they've said in another post it's an RTX4070.

NominalSum

Member

Registered: 2025-12-02

Posts: 58

Re: Update killed my arch

Can you switch to a different tty? If not, start by adding nomodeset to the kernel command line. Most of the time,that will get you to the tty, might have to switch to tty2 if you have a DM starting at boot. This mode won't let you use a graphical system, it's just for diagnostics and repair. From there, use journalctl's '-b' option to select a boot that didn't work and see what it says happened.

If nomodeset doesn't work, you might need the ISO on a flash drive.

I dont know how to do any of that but would like to learn. Its actually why Im asking here instead of doing a new install. I have heard of chrooting in from a disk image, but I just started poking around to find out how, but have not been successful at getting anything done properly fix wise in the past. Really want to fix it myself this time, but am kinda dumb when it comes to this stuff for now.

So, my question right now is, can I still rollback to an older driver or is the new arch update stuff gonna throw that out for me?

NominalSum

Member

Registered: 2025-12-02

Posts: 58

Re: Update killed my arch

4070 laptop card, since model was mentioned

Scimmia

Fellow

Registered: 2012-09-01

Posts: 13,724

Re: Update killed my arch

https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debi … l_consoles
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Kernel_parameters

As for chrooting from a disk image, that's what I was referring to with the ISO. It's the same thing you did when installing Arch.

tethys

Member

Registered: 2019-08-13

Posts: 170

Re: Update killed my arch

I dont know how to do any of that but would like to learn.

You can switch to another tty, depending on your graphic environment with Ctrl+Alt+F1-6 and back with Ctrl+Alt+F7 - but this depends, as I said, on the environment.

As for the chroot here are the steps:
1. Boot from an Arch Linux live USB.
2. Open a terminal.
3. Mount your root partition:
   mount /dev/sdXn /mnt
   Replace `/dev/sdXn` with your root partition.
4. If you have a separate boot partition, mount it as well:
   mount /dev/sdXn /mnt/boot
5. Chroot into your installed system:
   arch-chroot /mnt
6. Now you can use for example `pacman` to install packages:
   pacman -S package_name
   journalctl -b
7. Exit chroot and reboot:
   exit
   reboot                       

Hope this helps.