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I am running 12.04 with 3.2.0-57-generic-pae kernel on a Lenovo w520 that has a nVidia card in it. I updated yesterday, (17,December, 2013), and the update included the following two nvidia updates:

nvidia-current-updates:i386 (304.88-0ubuntu0.0.3, 304.108-0ubuntu0.0.1)
nvidia-304-updates:i386 (304.88-0ubuntu0.0.3, 304.108-0ubuntu0.0.1)

The error message I see is the same as someone else posted on another forum:

[ 29.393] (II) NVIDIA(0): Creating default Display subsection in Screen section
        "Default Screen Section" for depth/fbbpp 24/32
[ 29.393] (==) NVIDIA(0): Depth 24, (==) framebuffer bpp 32
[ 29.393] (==) NVIDIA(0): RGB weight 888
[ 29.393] (==) NVIDIA(0): Default visual is TrueColor
[ 29.393] (==) NVIDIA(0): Using gamma correction (1.0, 1.0, 1.0)
[ 29.393] (**) NVIDIA(0): Enabling 2D acceleration
[ 29.402] (EE) NVIDIA(0): Failed to initialize the NVIDIA kernel module. Please see the
[ 29.402] (EE) NVIDIA(0): system's kernel log for additional error messages and
[ 29.402] (EE) NVIDIA(0): consult the NVIDIA README for details.
[ 29.402] (EE) NVIDIA(0): *** Aborting ***
[ 29.402] (EE) NVIDIA(0): Failing initialization of X screen 0
[ 29.402] (II) UnloadModule: "nvidia"

The answer given to them was to run the nvidia-config program and then restart the system. I do not have an nvidia-config utility on my system.

My question is how do I either back out these updates which caused the problem, is there another update currently available somewhere that will fix the problem, where can I get the nvidia-config utility to hopefully correct the problem, or what can I do to get back to where I can use the system with X functional?

Braiam
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Doug Beattie
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4 Answers4

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The simplest fix for this involves purging the offending 'nvidia-304*' installation adn re-installing which will rebuild the kernel driver and correct the problem.

sudo dpkg -l 'nvidia*'

look at the versions currently installed.

sudo apt-get purge 'nvidia-304*'

This will remove all 304 related installs such as nvidia-current and nvidia-304-settings etc. and will remove the driver from the kernel. You need to do this with other versions if you have installed them to try and fix the issue e.g. 319

sudo apt-get autoremove

This will clean out any left over files

sudo apt-get install nvidia-current

This will install the current 304 release and related files e.g. nvidia-304 nvidia-304-settings etc.

Once complete 

sudo reboot now

You should be good to go following a reboot.No removing of the ubunutu-desktop required.

Cheers Spart

Volker Siegel
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sparticle
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I had the same issue. I can't be sure exactly what situation caused the problem, but I have my suspicions that having nvidia-current and nvidia-current-updates may have caused it. I certainly saw more than one nvidia driver installed when I did:

dpkg -l nvidia*

Fully removing all drivers and then reinstalling fixed it. To do that, enter these commands:

sudo apt-get -y purge --auto-remove nvidia.*
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -y install nvidia-current-updates nvidia-settings-updates

HTH

james.ferguson
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First, I suggest you boot an older kernel from the grub menu.

Assuming the old kernel works, we can then debug your nvidia driver. But we need to know how you installed the nvidia driver (manually or from the software center?).

To configure nvidia, boot to recovery mode, start a root shell.

Remount the / partition rw

mount -o remount,rw /

then backup and re-run the nvidia configuration utility. It is a command line tool and I think it is called nvidia-xconfig, you can use tab completion

At the command line, type nvidia-TabTab and either the command will auto-complete or show a list of options.

cd /etc/X11
mv xorg.conf xorg.conf.backup
nvidia-xconfig

Then exit the root shell and continue a normal boot.

More likely then not, as the nvidia driver was working, reconfiguration is not going to help and you likely need to update your nvidia driver for the new kernel.

Panther
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After I removed the Nvidia drivers, I can get into X GUI. Although it is not a prefect solution, but it kind of works. Here are the commands to remove the drivers.

sudo apt-get remove --purge nvidia-*
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop
sudo rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf
echo 'nouveau' | sudo tee -a /etc/modules
chaos
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user227235
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