Nvidia 304 driver install in 18.04

Support & Help Requests
#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.

#28

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.

#29

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?

#30

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.

#31

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

#32

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.

#33

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.

#34

Have you tried installing 304.137 driver from the nvidia site?

#35

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.

#36

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.

#37

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?

#38

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

#39

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 .

#40

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.