After installing Nvidia Driver, the screen starts flashing repeatedl [$15]

[yucefsourani]

I do not know if this is the correct place to report the problem,sorry for my english I am using Google Translate.

After installing Nvidia Driver, if I'm lock Pantheon Or if I left the PC for 15 minutes the screen starts flashing repeatedly and I get this error.

pam_kwallet.so PAM unable to dlopen(pam_kwallet5.so): /lib/security/pam_kwallet5.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

PAM adding faulty module: pam_kwallet5.so

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[Ikki-Dai]

after first time try to login, the screen starts flashing for 3~8 s,and then return to login screen again, right? and the second time login is success

[yucefsourani]

after first time try to login, the screen starts flashing for 3~8 s,and then return to login screen again, right? and the second time login is success

no the problem is different , the problem with NVIDIA Driver (nvidia-340) (optimus) when I a lock the session explicitly or automatically when the time limit in the power settings ends.

[kgrubb]

I'm getting something similar I believe. On an alienware m11x r2, using the proprietary nvidia-340 driver, as soon as the laptop goes into suspend, the screen begins blinking on and off repeatedly. I see a segfault in io.elementary.g, which i'm guessing is io.elementary.greeter? I'll post the syslog info later today.

[kgrubb]

Here's the segfault from a few days ago:

Nov  6 00:23:11 keli-M11x kernel: [15499.068478] io.elementary.g[4139]: segfault at 8 ip 00007fb17f93856e sp 00007fff04253298 error 4 in libxkbcommon.so.0.0.0[7fb17f91b000+3d000]

Here's some kind of trap I found later on in the log file (i don't think its related, but i'm including it just in case):

Nov  6 00:41:39 keli-M11x kernel: [16607.019795] traps: io.elementary.g[14439] general protection ip:7f581ff8a207 sp:7ffea6bab810 error:0 in libc-2.27.so[7f581fef3000+1e7000]

There's also an alarming amount of these in my syslog, posting every 3 seconds:

Nov  6 04:13:37 keli-M11x systemd[1]: Started Session c8701 of user lightdm.
Nov  6 04:13:40 keli-M11x systemd[1]: Started Session c8702 of user lightdm.
Nov  6 04:13:43 keli-M11x systemd[1]: Started Session c8703 of user lightdm.
Nov  6 04:13:46 keli-M11x systemd[1]: Started Session c8704 of user lightdm

[yellowgh0st]

@kgrubb @Ikki-Dai @yucefsourani Does this happen after wakeup? Are you using nvidia-340 from ubuntu repository?

[yellowgh0st]

I'm getting something similar I believe. On an alienware m11x r2, using the proprietary nvidia-340 driver, as soon as the laptop goes into suspend, the screen begins blinking on and off repeatedly. I see a segfault in io.elementary.g, which i'm guessing is io.elementary.greeter? I'll post the syslog info later today.

Ubuntu somehow patch the driver available in repos and it's buggy! This could be reason why you experience these problems. I noticed even other issues. I don't know which GPU do you have but I can confirm that on several GPU's the original nvidia's driver does work without these issues.

Install official driver manually using installer (latest release works without any patches)

Get driver for your GPU here: https://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us

If the DKMS option doesn't work for you then when there will be new kernel update you have to reinstall (build) the driver again, manually this way, so just be aware what are you updating and keep your driver on your hard drive.

or

If your GPU is supported only by nvidia-340 use this driver which is slightly patched and can be automatically build with DKMS on every update until kernel 4.18:

https://nvidia.if-not-true-then-false.com/NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-340.107-patched.run

1. You will need to disable and blacklist nouveau

sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-nouveau.conf

then paste this:

blacklist nouveau
blacklist lbm-nouveau
options nouveau modeset=0
alias nouveau off
alias lbm-nouveau off

2. Update initramfs and grub

sudo update-initramfs -u -k all sudo update-grub

3. Reboot into text mode

Before your computer starts hold ESC

then in GRUB on first entry hit E

and on a line which looks like this:

linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-24-generic root=UUID=dbd69ed2-530c-4409-8f5a-a3f1ea41fc67 ro quiet splash $vt_handoff

add number 3 on its end:

linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-24-generic root=UUID=dbd69ed2-530c-4409-8f5a-a3f1ea41fc67 ro quiet splash $vt_handoff 3

then hit F10 to boot

4. Make installer executable

cd /path/to/folder/with/installer sudo chmod +x NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-340.107.run

4. Install dependencies

sudo apt install dkms gcc make cmake

5. Run installer and install

sudo ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-340.107

Unfortunately nvidia-340 is an old legacy driver which doesn't receive new features so there are other problems known:

https://github.com/elementary/gala/issues/253

[kgrubb]

Does this happen after wakeup?

Yes this always happens after wakeup for me.

Are you using nvidia-340 from ubuntu repository?

Yeah, I went to the app center and downloaded the proprietary driver from there:

Out of curiosity, do you think this ppa's 340 driver would be any different than the one in the app store? https://launchpad.net/~graphics-drivers/+archive/ubuntu/ppa

I haven't tried the manual driver installation approach yet (thank you for posting a detailed writeup!) I'll give it a shot over the weekend and see if it resolves the issue for me.

As an aside, here's my graphics card info (try not to laugh too much at how old it is!): NVIDIA Corporation GT215M [GeForce GT 335M] (rev a2)

[yellowgh0st]

@kgrubb I really don't know if provider of that PPA patch it or not. You could just try it. If the issue will still persist use the one I have mentioned, which is quite stable and works without issue you described.

[yellowgh0st]

So I have tested nvidia-340 driver from PPP graphics-drivers and has same issues as the one from ubuntu repos.

[yellowgh0st]

You could try also this one which works good. It's only slightly patched so DKMS auto builds should work until kernel 4.18:

curl -o https://nvidia.if-not-true-then-false.com/NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-340.107-patched.run

[kgrubb]

Ok, so I finally got some time to play around with this. I ended up sticking with the same proprietary driver that's available in the app store's ui. After pulling down the latest changes on master, The login-of-doom is gone. I'm betting it was fixed in the gtk rewrite changes. However, there are still some issues I get with the new greeter that prevent a clean login.

After suspending/restoring, I'm faced with this (excuse my dirty screen :scream:):

No mouse shows up, and the new login card is not accessible.

For reference, I'm on this commit for testing: 7f36454d0a52328ef1dac9e8245e45326bb6276a

I'm going to take a look at the logs and see if I can find anything. On another note, I'm super new to Vala projects. I come from a js background. Is there something similar to console.log() that I could possibly use to help debug this issue? I feel bad only providing anecdotal info on what's not working.

[kgrubb]

Alright, I didn't see anything new in the logs, but I still wanted to give an update for posterity. 😆

Out of frustration with nvidia's proprietary drivers (:-1: boo), I ended up swapping back to the nouveau drivers. Now I get visual glitches here and there(these seem to be documented and handled in separate issues already), but greeter renders and works.

I have degraded performance when playing games, but I'd prefer that over being unable to login.