Upgrade to 19.3 MATE from 19.2 went smooth but the drivers for the NVIDIA GP106 does not work when booting from the normal Grub menu (the result ion is set really low). In the driver mgr the Nvidia-driver-435 is recommended and is also chosen, but when the system starts the resolution is really low and in the monitor preferences the monitor cannot be identified. I have noticed that if I restart and choose system settings instead of the Mint version 19.3 in the boot menu the system stops, restarts, and a question is raised if I want to modify the system settings (BIOS?). One option here is to continue, and if I choose that all is well. So I need to enter system settings and confirm continue and all works. What is wrong here?

Do you know what the system settings it wants to modify?

Hello boho999...

There are numerous threads here at LQ.org about just the issue you're having. Probably when you upgraded your Mint, the kernel was also upgraded. Unfortunately, Nvidia has been a bit slow about updating their drivers to accommodate newer kernels. The chances are that the Nvidia drivers in the Mint Repos are NOT the newest/updated ones. You can compare the Nvidia driver version that Mint is installing with the one recommended at the Nvidia driver search page. You'll probably find that the Nvidia site has a newer version available. I'm sure Mint will have that never version in their repos soon.

Also, what is the model of your Nvidia card. The GP106 is the model of the Graphics Processing Unit on the card, but you'll need to search for driver using the Vid card model#... example: GeForce GTX550, etc.

Luck!

Hi.

colorpurple21859 : In the system setup menu it is enough just to choose continue without changing any of the settings. Entering system setup seems to reboot the pc.

vtel57 : I checked the Nvidia driver search page and it recommends version 440.44 for the GeForce GTX 1060 card. and installed it according to the instructions at https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-insta...-on-linux-mint. I did do one mistake though and forgot to disable the default nouveau Nvidia driver before installing the driver. I did this step, did a reboot, and trying to shut down the display server using $ sudo telinit 3. This worked on my first attempt, but fails now that I have disabled the nouveau Nvidia driver, instead of stopping the display server a small Mint icon is displayed and the system hangs. The problem is still there. Did I mess up the installation? I tried to check the installed version using sudo lspci, and it displays the following:

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GP106 [GeForce GTX 1060 3GB] (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company GP106 [GeForce GTX 1060 3GB]
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 131
Memory at de000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
Memory at c0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
Memory at d0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=32M]
I/O ports at e000 [size=128]
[virtual] Expansion ROM at 000c0000 [disabled] [size=128K]
Capabilities: [60] Power Management version 3
Capabilities: [68] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
Capabilities: [78] Express Legacy Endpoint, MSI 00
Capabilities: [100] Virtual Channel
Capabilities: [250] Latency Tolerance Reporting
Capabilities: [128] Power Budgeting <?>
Capabilities: [420] Advanced Error Reporting
Capabilities: [600] Vendor Specific Information: ID=0001 Rev=1 Len=024 <?>
Capabilities: [900] #19
Kernel driver in use: nvidia
Kernel modules: nvidiafb, nouveau, nvidia_drm, nvidia

I am assuming that I am using the nvidia driver but unsure of the version?

How did you install the drivers? If you did it via the Mint repos, as you should have, you probably don't have the newest version yet because they may not be in the repos; which was what caused all this trouble in the first place.

If you installed them manually (using that method from the link you posted above), then use their method to check:

From the website posted above:

Once the installation is concluded, reboot your system and you are done. Confirm that correctness of Nvidia VGA drivers installation:

I see this in your posted output from lspci above:

The question is, which Nvidia? The one you downloaded or the one that was in the Mint repos? Run this in your terminal and post here, please:

Do you have secure boot enabled? I don't think unsigned modules will work with secure boot.

Hi,

vtel57 :
The output from dkms status:
nvidia, 435.21, 4.15.0-72-generic, x86_64: installed
nvidia, 435.21, 4.15.0-74-generic, x86_64: installed
nvidia, 435.21, 4.15.0-76-generic, x86_64: installed (WARNING! Diff between built and installed module!) (WARNING! Diff between built and installed module!) (WARNING! Diff between built and installed module!)
nvidia, 435.21, 5.0.0-32-generic, x86_64: installed
nvidia, 435.21, 5.0.0-37-generic, x86_64: installed
nvidia, 435.21, 5.3.0-26-generic, x86_64: built
nvidia, 440.44, 4.15.0-76-generic, x86_64: built
nvidia, 440.44, 5.3.0-26-generic, x86_64: installed

Is the warning message serious?

You have two different versions of Nvidia installed. You need to get rid of one of them, preferably the older version.

vtel57 : Did get rid of the old driver and is now using the most recent. Noticed that the text in the boot window is really messed up with very low resolution, but when I choose to boot in Linux the resolution is fine. I am not sure what changed this since previously the low resolution remained even after booting into Linux (even when I had 2 installed drivers).

It would be great if I could understand why the boot menu is displayed with the low resolution but absolutely not critical. Thanx for your help.

colorpurple21859 : I tried to figure out if secure boot is enabled or not. In bios I did receive a warning message about changing the settings for secure boot so I exited but I guess this indicates that secure boot is activated. Since it is now only the boot menu that looks weird I guess I am ok with it. Thanx for your help.

Er... sorry. I should have read that output a little more closely.

What it's saying above is that you have the 440 Nvidia drivers BUILT with one kernel but installed on another different kernel.

This is not good and may be causing confusion.You'll need to rectify this situation by uninstalling ALL Nvidia and then reinstalling the newer one again.

How exactly did you install these two different Nvidia drivers?

- the older one via your software manager in Mint?

and

- the newer one via a manual download and installation?

Or how?