Nvidia 304 driver install in 18.04

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.

I’m beginning to think you’ve got a faulty card. Buy a cheap GT710 2GB, they’re great cards. I ran one for ages when I first switched to Linux and was most impressed with it’s performance, I could even game on a cheap 17" 16:9 monitor.

Hey Bulletdust

Thanks for that suggestion. A search for that model brought up different brands and ram specifications ie: Zotac, Asus Nvidia, Msi, PNY, EVGA, ddr3 ddr5. Should I be looking for a specific brand name or is that irrelevant?

Any of those brands will work, although EVGA and MSI are my personal favorites. I’ve had (and still have, IIRC) Nvidia chipset cards marketed by all of those companies and haven’t had any trouble with any of them.

DDR3 vs DDR5 depends on what you’re doing and how much you want to spend. If you game a lot - and have the extra money - get DDR5: it’s faster.

Thanks for that excellent information grenouille, you have been very helpful.

I have an old dell e6400 laptop with docking station. I tried switching to the nvidia driver but has horrible problems with switching to active monitors.

Problems arise from that cause. If it does not do so properly, “the laptop lid is closed in the dock”, thus results the laptop going into standby. Also waking from standby has its problems. So i used the nvidia settings to force the dock monitor as default monitor. But i did not work.

I’m happily on the nouveau driver now, it works properly.

Just like to mention that my 16.04.4 installation has been running stable the last few days. Installation via the terminal commands that you suggested when I was trying to get 18.04 up and running did the trick here.

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

It actually found and installed the version of the driver that had worked when I was running 17.10, (Nvidia 304.137) while the additional drivers method only offered up the 304.135 version which wasn’t as stable as this one.

So big thanks to you bulletdust for that suggestion .

The only things now that aren’t working are the

  1. Nvidia settings tool… just doesn’t want to start…not sure what’s up.

  2. Marco software compositor is the only choice in the Windows Manager now, no Compiz etc…

Any ideas as to how to address these issues is greatly appreciated.

Have you tried installing 304.137 driver from the nvidia site?

No that is the only procedure I haven’t tried. I understand it is a bit more involved.

I wanted to give it a whirl but some one previously mentioned that it may not be installing due to the newer version of the Xorg server.

IT has been over a month and I have been very happy with my purchase. xfx amd radeon r5 220 2gb ddr3. 49 bucks Best Buy, no more screen tearing, no more proprietary software.

For testing purposes do you think it would be possible to to install 304.137 driver from Nvidia directly using a live usb session of 18.04?

Try to install v304 driver on Ubuntu and it will fail due to xorg version
try to downgrade to older version of xorg and will be more dependencies from that need attention

If really need to keep old GPU running, consider switching to Debian that still has this driver available

I have been happy using a GT730 for a while
Get a later card version with Kepler core GPU and can use latest v396 driver

With live usb i got a kernel error on trying to unload nouveau.
You can install Ubuntu to usb and test the driver on new system. This will be slower, but suitable for testing.
Yeah! Note what the driver requires a patch for work with 4.15 kernel .

Yes moving to Debian or upgrading gpu seem seem to be only viable solutions. These options have been suggested to me before…thank you for your input nikgnomic…greatly appreciated. Love the handle by the way…is the “g” silent? lol.

So no unloading nouveau in live usb session, that’s good to know. Seems like getting the 304.137 driver working in UM18.04 just won’t be happening.

So far the wisest course of action suggested to me is to either move to Debian or upgrade my gpu.
Everything else is sort of hit and miss and most likely more miss than hit in this case…

I thank you for all your help tepik…much appreciated.

doing some research into this myself, i came across what i believe to be the source of the issue… the only libgl (a thing xorg depends on) available in the 18.04 repos is the mesa one, which breaks the nvidia-304 driver… might try something on my own.
edit: reread some of the comments. install 17.10, enable the canonical partners repo add the graphics drivers repo to the sources list, sudo do-release-upgrade

Hi!

I have a pc with an old Geforce 6800 card and I have managed to successfully install the 32bit Nvidia 304.137 driver for it on Lubuntu 18.04; all thanks to a community patch. Here is the procedure.

Install build tools
$ sudo apt install gcc make build-essential gcc-multilib dkms mesa-utils

Download driver from https://www.nvidia.com/Download/driverResults.aspx/123708/en-us

Download patch from https://adufray.com/nvidia-304.137-bionic-18.04.patch

Extract archive, place patch into extracted folder and apply patch
$ ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-304.137.run -x
$ cd ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-304.137
$ patch -p1 < nvidia-304.137-bionic-18.04.patch

Disable nouveau driver and reboot
$ sudo -i
# cat << END > /etc/modprobe.d/disable-nouveau.conf
blacklist nouveau
blacklist vga16fb
blacklist rivafb
blacklist nvidiafb
blacklist rivatv
blacklist amd76_edac
options nouveau modeset=0
END
# update-initramfs -u
# reboot

Stop x-server
Logout
Bring up terminal with Ctrl-Alt-F1, login
$ sudo -i
# service lightdm stop
# init 3

Install NVidia driver
Ignore the first warning about preinstall failing, agree to driver recompilation on kernel update and to configuration files update. Reboot.
# ./nvidia-installer
# reboot

Driver should be working now. Check with the following:
$ lshw -c video 2>&1 | grep driver
Should output"configuration: driver=nvidia"

There is one small problem though. Apparently Nvidia driver installs it’s own version of libvdpau, which does not work with mplayer. That’s why we need to forcefully reinstall libvdpau (and possibly need to do this on kernel update, because driver will recompile and reinstall it’s own, non-functioning version for this library?)
$ sudo apt --reinstall install libvdpau1

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References: (placed in separate post because new users are allowed to only 2 links per post)
Compiling nVidia 304.137 on Ubuntu 18.04: https://adufray.com/blog/2018/06/02/nvidia-304-127-on-bionic
How to install NVIDIA.run?: https://askubuntu.com/questions/149206/how-to-install-nvidia-run

This worked.

We have an Compaq Presario V6200 (V6221EU) with nVidia Geforce Go 6150.

The issues described above indicating a faulty card is usually due to subtle driver bugs in the nouveau driver. These card are powered as nv40 by nouveau. The nouveau devs have gone through great lengths to get all these cards supported, but laptop drivers are especially difficult. Even on Windows Vista, which was provided with the laptop, I had to install ‘special vendor’ drivers to get them working.

Works perfect!! Thank you!!