Ubuntu

Dell Latitude E6500 - NVIDIA Dual Head fails after update

Asked by John C Fowler

Good Day,

I have a Dell Latitude E6500 with a docking station with two Dell Monitors E2213H running 1920x1080. The ubuntu system is running on 4.13.0-21-generic running LXDE.

So far, four different times I have run the software update program only to find out that I lose access to my dual displays. Each time to recover I found I have to boot into single user mode and reinstall NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-304.137-no-compat32.run

The default ubuntu drivers fail to see both displays, so I seem to be stuck using the older NVIDIA drivers. True this is an older laptop, but it is still going strong.

This morning after running the software update last night the syslog reported:
                                                                                       nvidia: loading out-of-tree module taints kernel.
Dec 28 09:41:44 E6500 kernel: [ 78.043658] nvidia: module license 'NVIDIA' taints kernel.
Dec 28 09:41:44 E6500 kernel: [ 78.043659] Disabling lock debugging due to kernel taint
Dec 28 09:41:44 E6500 kernel: [ 78.056783] nvidia: module verification failed: signature and/or required key missing - tainting kernel
Dec 28 09:41:44 E6500 kernel: [ 78.063204] nvidia 0000:01:00.0: vgaarb: changed VGA decodes: olddecodes=io+mem,decodes=none:owns=io+mem
Dec 28 09:41:44 E6500 kernel: [ 78.063448] [drm] Initialized nvidia-drm 0.0.0 20150116 for 0000:01:00.0 on minor 0
Dec 28 09:41:44 E6500 kernel: [ 78.063455] NVRM: loading NVIDIA UNIX x86_64 Kernel Module 304.137 Thu Sep 14 13:51:03 PDT 2017
Dec 28 09:41:44 E6500 kernel: [ 78.785971] dcdbas dcdbas: Dell Systems Management Base Driver (version 5.6.0-3.2)
Dec 28 09:41:44 E6500 kernel: [ 78.801446] dell_wmi: Detected Dell WMI interface version 1
Dec 28 09:41:44 E6500 kernel: [ 78.801451] dell_wmi: firmware scancode 0x200 maps to unrecognized keycode 0xffff

This morning after the software update last night LXDE failed to load the panel properly and only would display on the laptop screen. At which point I booted into single user mode and reinstalled the nvidia driver. After the reboot all returned to normal.

Has anyone seen anything like this?

TIA

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#1

Yes, you aren't using the packaged Nvidia drivers for Ubuntu which add a depmod script to the system. This rebuilds the kernel module for the Nvidia drivers if and when a new kernel is installed. Using the installer from the Nvidia site just builds it for the running kernel.

If your current kernel is running your hardware then I suggest you use apt pinning to make the kernel not upgrade and you'll have fewer issues. Alternatively you can install the Nvidia-current package and use the drivers from the repository.

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John C Fowler (jcfowlerca) said : 		#2

I will give this some consideration. As much as I like staying current, I may not be able to with this old laptop. The Nvidia-Current package does not work with this old Quadro NVS 160M graphics processor. When I upgraded to Artful, the upgrade includes Nvidia drivers and I could not get the two DVI ports to display at the same time. So I reached out to Nivida and they informed me that I needed the legacy driver version of 304.137 to leverage the NVS 160M and the dual DVI ports.

I was hoping to move away from running the legacy drivers, but if I must stay... I will start thinking about replacing the laptop.

Thank you for the response.

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