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twfox

Member

Registered: 2025-07-07

Posts: 11

[SOLVED] Can't load nvidia with standard user after disk reformat

Hello,

I recently reformatted my / and /boot disk.

I created a backup, reformat the disk, copy it back, changed fstab, reinstalled grub and rebooted.

Everything works fine except for nvidia driver, which is causing my xorg to start with glitches (the screen does not refresh correctly).

I know the module is working correctly and the driver is being loaded.

When I tried to run nvidia-smi with my standard user I noticed it does not work:

NVIDIA-SMI has failed because it couldn't communicate with the NVIDIA driver

The only way I could make it work is if I run a xorg server first with user root, afterwards it all works again.

I suspect I lost some permissions to certain files when I made the backup (I had to fix sudo binary, it was missing setuid) but I can't identify which one.

Last edited by twfox (2026-01-17 21:52:19)

twfox

Member

Registered: 2025-07-07

Posts: 11

Re: [SOLVED] Can't load nvidia with standard user after disk reformat

Found it...

nvidia-persistenced.service was failing to start, its now running. /usr/bin/nvidia-modprobe was missing setuid.

Now I wonder if there is a way to use pacman and review any other setuids for binaries that I have installed...

twfox

Member

Registered: 2025-07-07

Posts: 11

Re: [SOLVED] Can't load nvidia with standard user after disk reformat

Quite the mess I made here. I used pacman's check flag -kk and it gave me the hints I needed:

pacman -Qkk 2>&1 | grep -E "(Permissions mismatch|GID mismatch)" | grep -v "Modification time"

A quick reinstall of one them fixed the permissions, so I just reinstalled all the rest pacman was complaining about.

Hopefully that will be all!