23.04 won't finish normal boot with nVidia drivers

Installation
1

I originally asked this in Askubuntu, but ive since made a new discovery

I’ve tried installing the nVidia driver, originally 525, then when presented with a system freeze after the pcieport … messages in the console

I purged them and was able to get back in.

I then tried version 510, but this time I also used the nvidia-xconfig command after. This time, the entire system was completely unresponsive even in recovery mode, most keypresses werent evem detected in the console.

I managed to do the purge again after swithing to iGPU as the initial display in BIOS at which point the system was responsive again.

I could then still get into desktop using Intel integrated graphics, but when switching back to nVidia GPU in the BIOS, the problem returns.

i deleted the xorg.conf file that was created in the process, but theres no change.

Lastly, I tried installing nVidia 530 drivers from their website directly, but again there was no difference.

Today I tried reinstalling the whole thing (using the install proprietary software option, but I could swear I did the same with the original install), only to discover that the issue remains.

For some reason, I decided to use recovery boot, and then in the purple menu, select resume boot

This results in DE appearing succesfully. I’m not sure why the intel GPU is mentioned under NVidia drivers however…

DSC_0327
DSC_03275504×3096 1.84 MB

Normal boot still doesn’t work.

Anyone have a clue as to what’s going on? :confused:

2

I am not sure if this is going to be very helpful, but I remember similar issues when I was helping the opens use tumbleweed devs enable Optimus on a laptop with similar combination of GPUs.
The installer would just hang mid way through and there was no way to get the system to boot.

Eventually, I found a workaround and documented it on the Wiki. It involved forcing nomodeset to get the system to boot, upgrade the whole system, install drivers, remove the nomodeset boot parameter, and finally reboot. That helped me.

If you want to test it out though i strongly recommend you to backup all your data beforehand.
Also if you just upgraded and you want a safer test，you might want to stick to Nvidia 515 to start. I believe there are still a few xorg bugs on 525.

This is the wiki article that describes how I went around the frozen system on tumbleweed. I hope it helps.

https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:NVIDIA_SUSE_Prime

Please note that you should not copy paste commands used on tumbleweed, i provide the link mostly for general guidance.

3

So I managed to figure out what is going on. It turns out,the system doesn’t actually freeze at all, it switches the primary output to Intel.

Totally by chance, i plugged in my monitor into the iGPU port, and sure enough it had the login screen.

Do for now, what i can basically do is to login blindly, and the image will then appear on nVidia GPU after :slightly_smiling_face:

I have to say however, the experience now is much better than with the nouveau driver. The animations are completely smooth and my pointer never stutters anymore. Alsi, embedded background video on websites previously stuttered in Firefox (but not Brave interestingly enough), but that’s gone now.