Impossible to roll back from nvidia-open to nvidia

scot · 2025-12-23 08:17:09

This post is related to https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=311204, but I'm aslking a separate question because it is entirely independent of the problem I ask about there.

When I install the new open-source nvidia driver, say a part of a general system upgrade, I have terrible lag in the input from keyboard and mouse-click, so for the moment I want just to revert the whole system back to the proprietary driver. I **don't** want the new "legacy" package from the AUR; I want to REVERT back to a time when it worked.

But even if I choose to have my mirrorlist point to the archive on 9 Dec., like this

Server = https://archive.archlinux.org/repos/202 … o/os/$arch

and the perform a full upgrade via `pacman -Syyuu`, the list of packages that are to be installed includes:

....nss-3.119-1 nvidia-open-dkms-580.105.08-5 nvidia-settings-580.105.08-1 nvidia-utils-580.105.08-5 ....

I did not have the nvidia open source driver installed in my machine on Dec.15. I can even prove this: the package nvidia-open-dkms was released on Dec, 20! So i didn't have it on my system on Dec. 15.

Is this working as intended? And do i have no choice but to use the packages in /var/cache/pacman/pkgs mamially? Is there some pacmanlike object that I can point at the archive/cache on my laptop and have it do all the dependency nonsense?

Is the behavior that I'm seeing -- where i ask to rollback to a certain date and it seems to give me a mix of older and newer packages -- a bug that needs to be reported somewhere?

THank you

Last edited by scot (2025-12-23 08:19:04)

WorMzy · 2025-12-23 08:55:46

It's working as intended, Pacman's sysupgrade flag evaluates upgrade targets based on what is currently currently installed. Try including the nvidia-dkms package in the transaction if you want to go this route, however the 'new legacy driver' is the same as the 'old propriety driver', so I don't understand your reluctance to roll forward.

Btw nvidia-open-dkms has been in the repos since 2022.

scot · 2025-12-23 19:04:51

Thank you for your reply. Please help me better understand the meaning of:

>however the 'new legacy driver' is the same as the 'old propriety driver',

Question 1: do I understand this to mean that the "new legacy driver -- which i can now get from the AUR but not from the standard repos -- is the same as the "old proprietary driver"? So i can restore my system to what it actually was before the open drivers were made standard simply by (for example), doing the downgrade via pacman and the archive, and then installing the 580 legacy driver from the AUR. Then i will actually have the bad old proprietary driver installed.

>so I don't understand your reluctance to roll forward.

I'm not sure it's very important, but I don't understand how the information above relates to my reluctance to roll forward. The source of my reluctance to roll forward is very simple: upon installation of the new open driver, the input lag of all keyboard input and all mouse-clicks is unbearable. I never had this problem before. It's certainly possible that this is due to some misconfiguration on my part. Of COURSE I would rather roll forward and install the open-source driver via nvidia-open-dkms and then configure things correctly so i don't have the unusable input lag. But so far, after about 7 hours of continuous reading and trying, I just have absolutely no idea of how to do this (except that I now know that if i comment out the "PrimaryGPU" "yes" option of the nvidia driver, the lag goes away, but i have instead unbearable graphic tearing and other weirdness, which also i cannot figure out how to correct.

So for all this time, i was stuck with an upgraded system that doesn't work, and was unable to roll back via what i thought was a standard rollback mechanism. (Do i hear someone saying very quietly the words "restore your backup!" That is my bad, and I deserve the horrible situation, i'll just say in my defense that I did naively imagine that since i was "only" upgrading a video driver, surely it would take a minute to rollback the driver. THAT was my real mistake".

BTW, what scared me about using the driver in the AUR was that the language used to describe it was "this is for older cards...". My card is not older, it's a Turing card, but I'll hope that legacy driver in the AUR is truly the same as the old proprietary driver, so it shoujld work just fine.

Some day i'll fix the lag and can move on, i hope.

Thank you for correcting any mistakes in the above.

WorMzy · 2025-12-23 21:23:58

Yes, what was 'nvidia-dkms' in the [extra] repo is now available as 'nvidia-580xx-dkms' in the AUR. You shouldn't need to 'downgrade' anything. Just replace 'nvidia-open' (or 'nvidia-open-dkms') with 'nvidia-580xx-dkms', and 'nvidia-utils' with 'nvidia-580xx-utils'. You may also need 'lib32-nvidia-580xx-utils' if you run Steam (or any other graphical 32-bit software).

I suppose the description of the AUR package is to highlight that it supports older (Maxwell, Pascal, etc.) cards, while the -open driver does not. AFAIK nvidia didn't drop support for newer cards from the 580xx series driver with the advent of 590xx series driver, so your hardware should continue to work as well as it did previously once you install 'nvidia-580xx-dkms' (and related packages mentioned above).

Wozzeck56 · 2025-12-23 22:08:26

1) If pacman full update command offers spontaneously to reinstall the removed package nvidia-open-dkms, this means there is still a dependency requiring nvidia-open-dkms installed on your system

There is NO reason for pacman update to install nvidia-dkms, or nvidia-open-dkms spontaneously
If all was clean as you said, nvidia-dkms should be installled MANUALLY and ONLY manually

So in fact if you do "pacman sync nvidia-dkms", the system will automatically detect incompatible dependencies and offers you to replace or remove them

2) Managing rollback with old Pacman archive is not the good process, in most of case it creates a lot of confusion

Don't be scared for nothing
AUR package IS STRICTLY the NVIDIA proprietary driver formerly included in the official Arch Repo

Just read the thread on the home page,

https://archlinux.org/

THIS IS THE FIRST THING TO DO ! And dealing with a rolling release you should do that once a week

Until AND including 580xxx, this was the UNIQUE NVIDIA proprietary driver for ALL SUPPORTED CARD AT ITS TIME OF PUBLISHING (including the most recent and some older)

Starting from 590xx, NVIDIA removes support for Pascal architecture and older

NVIDIA publishes unified driver only. A given driver applies to ALL SUPPORTED CARD at a given date, for older cards the thing is to find what is the family driver to use in order to get the latest driver. A new archived nvidia family driver branch is open in Linux repo whenever NVIDIA decides to drop support on some architecture on the following release (because Linux repo won't archives all intermediate versions).

I am using a GTX 950M, let's say nvidia driver from 4xx (I don't know exactly this can be also something like 380xxx) to 580xx will work, so not 4xxx- and not 590+

So install temporarily the AUR packages just like I did

nvidia-utils-580xxx (install several dependencies as opencl)
nvidia-dkms-580xxx
nvidia-settings-580xxx (optional)

Last edited by Wozzeck56 (2025-12-23 22:18:00)

johnspack · 2025-12-23 23:24:06

I just went through this on 2 machines, both using maxwell. Don't forget the aur 580 version of libxnvctrl. And the lib32 equivalents. Watch for burps in the install, you may need to reinstall at least 2 of them for it all to work. For me it was libxnvctrl and settings.
Make sure to use only aur packages, so nvidia drivers will no longer be updated by pacman or pamac.

Last edited by johnspack (2025-12-23 23:26:17)

Arch Linux

#1 2025-12-23 08:17:09

Impossible to roll back from nvidia-open to nvidia

#2 2025-12-23 08:55:46

Re: Impossible to roll back from nvidia-open to nvidia

#3 2025-12-23 19:04:51

Re: Impossible to roll back from nvidia-open to nvidia

#4 2025-12-23 21:23:58

Re: Impossible to roll back from nvidia-open to nvidia

#5 2025-12-23 22:08:26

Re: Impossible to roll back from nvidia-open to nvidia

#6 2025-12-23 23:24:06

Re: Impossible to roll back from nvidia-open to nvidia

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