Nvidia 304 driver install in 18.04

Support & Help Requests
#8

Hi grenouille,

Did a fresh install of 18.04 over the weekend and no need so far to install the Nvidia 304 proprietary driver as the Nouveau driver seems to be doing just fine so far.

Prior attempts to install the 18.04 Beta with the Nouveau driver had produced numerous faults and screen gibberish rendering the system unusable, that is no longer the case. I did notice a few Nouveau driver fault entries in the Kernlog but no instability issues relating to them.

So it looks like the Nouveau driver has improved support for these older Nvidia GPU’s since the 18.04 beta release…which is great news!..so I’ll cross my fingers and keep riding with this one.

Thank you again for all your help and suggestions…greatly appreciated.

#9

No problem, that’s what everybody’s here for. Glad it’s working out for you.

#10

Hi grenouille,

Well it was good while it lasted…problem resurfaced this morning 4 days after a clean install. Nouveau driver faults creating a distorted screen, jagged diagonal lines.
Will try the ppa solution you proposed…

#11

Hi grenouille

1- Followed the procedure for adding the ppa.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
sudo apt-get update

2- Ran driver update and the 304.137 driver shows up in the list.

3 -Select the 304 by clicking the radio button and then click apply changes.

Problem:

  • After clicking “Apply Changes” the check mark next to the 304 driver jumps back to the Nouveau driver option, can’t make it stick.

  • Tried changing the server to main from the Canadian…same thing happens.

Any insight into how to make this selection stick?

External Monitor Resolution - Driver Issue
#12

Installing Nvidia drivers using the PPA method is vastly easier than installing Nvidia drivers under Windows or via the GUI avaliable under Ubuntu MATE. Also, forget the .sh method of installing Nvidia drivers, it’s an outdated nightmare of a process.

Open a terminal window using [ctrl]+[alt]+[T] and copy/paste the following:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
sudo apt update
sudo apt install nvidia-304
sudo apt install nvidia-settings

Once this is done, reboot.
Once the system has rebooted open the Nvidia X-Server Settings in the Ubuntu MATE Control Center and make sure you’re running the correct drivers.

#13

Hi Bulletdust

Thanks for those instructions. Gave it a few attempts but was not able to get it installed. After the third instruction “sudo apt install nvidia-304” received this message:

Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information… Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
nvidia-304 : Depends: xorg-video-abi-11 but it is not installable or
xorg-video-abi-12 but it is not installable or
xorg-video-abi-13 but it is not installable or
xorg-video-abi-14 but it is not installable or
xorg-video-abi-15 but it is not installable or
xorg-video-abi-18 but it is not installable or
xorg-video-abi-19 but it is not installable or
xorg-video-abi-20 but it is not installable or
xorg-video-abi-23
Depends: xserver-xorg-core but it is not going to be installed
Recommends: nvidia-settings (>= 331.20) but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

Not sure what all this means…maybe you have an idea of what might be going on…thanks for any insight.

#14

Looks like there’s a bug filed on it: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nvidia-graphics-drivers-304/+bug/1763648. Posts #5 and #6 have some other suggestions. Wish I had an easy answer for you.

#15

Thanks just the same…I appreciate all the help. Nothing really to do it seems…looks like support for 304 has been dumped by 18.04 all together. Unmet dependencies…probably means it has no way to communicate with the display server.

Was looking good for a while there. Don’t usually like giving up on things like this…but this one feels pretty much baked into the cake with the dependencies thing.

I guess I’ll be installing16.10 in the interum…did the 17.10 thing and it’s reaching it’s end of life so figuring I can squeeze a few more months out of 16.10 before it’s dropped…then probably off to some other distro.

Thanks again.
LoRider

#16

This is one of the reasons I refuse to update from 16.04 to 18.04 LTS until the first point release. Having said that I am running a 980Ti so I’m running the latest Nvidia drivers.

Have you tried:

Sudo apt-get install -f

To repair dependamcy issues?

#17

A wise decision to stick with the true and tested. Thanks for that suggestion I’ll give that sudo command a try.

I’m thinking in my case things worked in 17.10 so what has changed in terms of the video driver installation issue. The only thing I can think of is that from a display server stand point 17.10 was running on Wayland and the new LTS employs Xorg.

When executing the “sudo apt install nvidia-304” command most of the error messages that returned were in referring to the xorg video abi.

Could that be the issue? and if so is there a way to switch back to Wayland?

#18

The Nvidia drivers don’t support Wayland, Nvidia drivers support Xorg only. Are you sure that the 304 driver supports your card?

#19

Yes I’m sure the 304 is the right driver for the card (Geforce 6150). I was able to install the 304 driver under 17.10 which I believe uses Wayland by default.

The 304 driver showed up when I ran additional drivers accessing the Canadian server.

I had to cycle through the selection process about 3 or 4 times before the nouveau driver was replaced by the 304.

Once installed the system worked flawlessly and the Nvidia X-server settings that you mention became available.

With 18.04 I had to add the ppa before it showed up in additional drivers and every time I selected it, it defaulted back to the nouveau driver.

The command line installation method returns error messages with reference to xorg.

So just a hunch that it could be something to do with the display server change between 17.10 and 18.04.

#20

Just an update to the 304/Nouveau driver saga. Nouveau driver finally crashed my recent installation of 18.04.

Had experienced numerous smaller crashes over the last ten days but was able to get it stable and running with a few reboots.

It would hold for a few days then act up again. This time the reboot did not work, grub screen pops and I could have spent the time trying to learn how to get up and running again but decided to get away from 18.04 and give 16.04.4 a try.

So far so good. I will try to hold off from installing the Nvidia 304 driver for now which by the way was instantly available from the additional drivers (really nice! wish 18.04 could have done this).

Anyway I’ll be running the Nouveau driver for a while to see if it misbehaves on this version of UM…just for curiosities sake.

Did notice some nouveau faults in the kernlog but no inconsistencies system wise except for some uneven movement as I’m typing this post at the moment and using the arrow keys …just noticing it now…guess I’ll be moving to the 304 sooner than I thought…

#21

I’m a bit confused as to your reference to Wayland and am wondering if you’re somehow trying to force Wayland which is causing your issue? Having said that, I’m not too sure forcing Wayland is even possible under Ubuntu MATE.

The MATE DM does not support Wayland at all, as far as I’m aware Wayland support would involve almost a complete rewrite of the DM and is in no way viable at this point in time. Furthermore, as stated, the Nvidia binary drivers do not support Wayland, at all.

Make sure you’re running Xorg and Xorg only under Ubuntu MATE and Nvidia binary drivers, running any form of Wayland will result in the issues you’re seeing.

#22

No wasn’t trying to force Wayland in any way. The error messages that I received when I tried to install the Nvidia 304 as per your instructions. using the terminal, referenced xorg video abi.

I naturally suspected that it might be connected to the xorg display server in some way… So was just entertaining the idea of replacing xorg with wayland to see if that would fix the issue.

Can’t really understand why 18.04 refuses the Nvidia 304 while they are still available and installable in both 17.10 and 16.04.

Any way my 18.04 installation experienced numerous minor crashes over the last ten days and a major crash yesterday due to the nouveau driver, reboot didn’t help this time.

References in the kernlog show nouveau mmio faults while trying to write to what looks like a memory address. I ran a memory test prior to installation but it came out clean…so not sure what’s up…

Have since installed 16.04.4 running the Nvidia 304.135 driver. Will be monitoring the stability of the system for the next few days…hopefully it holds.

#23

I broke down and bought xfx amd radeon r5 220 2gb ddr3. 49 bucks Best Buy, screw nvidia! screw proprietary software. Just plug it in and go!

1 Like
#24

Can’t really blame Nvidia for dropping support for a 20 year old chipset. Granted, they should make the info available to devs so that nouveau could be made to work properly on at least their EOL equipment.

Personally, I’ve had so many bad experiences over the years with Radeon that I’ll gladly deal with Nvidia’s eccentricities.

#25

With all the problems I have experienced recently using the nouveau driver, I none the less take my hat off to devs.

Due to the lack of cooperation from Nvidia, they are put in a position of having to back engineer drivers for the Nvide line…not an easy task to say the least, so they must be commended for their efforts.

I’m currently running 16.04.4 and have encountered a few issues running with the nouveau as well as the 304.135 drivers.

1- Under both drivers had a mouse and keyboard freeze requiring reboot.

2- Experience cursor lag when typing and moving through the text using the arrow keys. This is occurring at the moment as I’m writing this post.

and the latest one…

3- Switched to Compiz to give it a try. After a while Images and text went garbled for lack of better terms while I was surfing…fuzzy like.
Was able to get to the shut down button and hit restart. Upon reboot I’m greeted with the grub menu.

Click on Ubuntu to get up an running and all this text starts running down the screen before the login screen comes up. Not sure what that signifies and why the normal boot up process doesn’t occur any more.

4- Now when I check the windows manager the only compositor that shows up is the Marco software compositor no other choice, no Compiz, no Marco GPU compsitor etc…just disappeared.

I thought of entering the bios to see if I could find any inconsistencies with the video adapter setting. Noticed it was set to PCI so changed it back to onboard setting. Whether that solves any thing is any ones guess…but did find that rather strange.

All that said still experiencing cursor lag though while moving around through this text with the arrow keys.

  1. So any ideas as to how to get compositor choices back, compiz etc…?
  2. Any ideas why the cursor may be lagging when moving around with the arrow keys?

Thanks for all your help and insight grenouille…I appreciate it.

#26

That thought has ran through my mind as well. Just get a 50 buck card and be done with it…if that would actually fix the problem . I’m not a gamer so low would be good enough.

But then other questions arise. Which card? Will it be fully compatible with UM? Are there other issues that may be causing my problems that I haven’t accounted for?

I guess we all reach our breaking point eventually…if everything we try fails and if throwing a few bucks at the problem fixes it, hey then yes that is the best solution.

Thanks for the reply Rylan I appreciate the input.

#27

Just an update to my last post:

  • Switched back to the nouveau driver while testing some things and the window manager now shows up with all the compositor choices.

  • Boot up back to normal

Possible causes:

  • Buggy installation: The 304 driver installation was via additional drivers and not terminal commands. Also the Nvidia X-server settings did not detect anything. Entries were missing which might indicate a less than pristine installation.

Cursor lag is still an issue how ever, noticing while posting to this forum. Will have to test it else where ie: email etc…

No frozen mouse or keyboard issue as of yet. Hoping that the bios changes from pci to on board graphics solved that problem.

I’ll keep running the nouveau driver for a while to see what happens. If an instability occurs I will re-install the 304 driver and the Nvidia X-Server settings via the terminal.

…this cursor lag problem however is starting to test my patience.