Kernel change - Build Nvidia drivers - Fail to boot

General system Newbie
1

Problem description:

Hello everyone :waving_hand: ,

I’ve been a user of EndeavourOS for the last 3 months as my first Arch experience. I’m quite new to Linux, as I mained Fedora before that for only 6 months.

For curiosity reasons, I wanted to try out the CachyOS kernel on my EndeavourOS system, which I am aware uses the default Arch Linux one.

I was only interested in the CachyOS kernel, not its custom settings or its optimised packages.

After a bit of reading and commands, I managed to change and reboot into the CachyOS kernel.

After that, I learned I needed to rebuild my Nvidia drivers (my config is listed below).

Again, after a bit of reading and commands I rebooted, but this time, it doesn’t seem to boot and i get stuck on a process (details below).

If I understand correctly, I would now have to boot from a Live USB, which I am able to do, but then, it goes well beyond my capabilities, and I can’t find anything applicable online.

Thanks in advance for the help :+1:.

Step-by-step breakdown:

All of this is from memory, so it might miss a lot of details, but I’ll do my best.

Installation of the CachyOS kernel:

  • Added the Chaotic-AUR repo to pacman.

  • Installed the CachyOS kernel from the added repo.

  • Installed Ananicy rules.

  • Rebooted.

  • uname -r gave me the correct kernel and the correct rules were implemented.

Build the Nvidia drivers:

This is the part where I was a bit over my head as I was learning about stuff like dkms, dracut, mkinitcpio, and initramfs. Plus, honestly, I find GPU drivers a bit difficult to understand for now.

  • Tried building them with dracut (or whatever).

  • Issues with them still not working.

  • Tried something about the CachyOS kernel headers, so I removed the previous default Linux kernel, which was, I thought at the time, interfering with the build process.

  • Tried using pre-compiled kernel-specific packages by adding the CachyOS repo.

  • Thought I had it worked out, rebooted, and now I get the following (mb for the quality):

Image1
Image11073×844 252 KB

image2
image2934×438 97.8 KB

image3
image31381×622 163 KB

Computer config:

Computer:

  • Manufacturer: ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC.
  • Model: G814JIR
  • Form Factor: Laptop

Processor Information:

  • CPU Vendor: GenuineIntel
  • CPU Brand: Intel(R) Core™ i9-14900HX
  • CPU Family: 0x6
  • CPU Model: 0xb7
  • Speed: 5600 MHz
  • 32 logical processors
  • 24 physical processors

Video Card:

  • Driver: NVIDIA Corporation NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop GPU/PCIe/SSE2

Memory:

  • RAM: 31698 Mb
2

If you use the live USB you can chroot (CHange root) to reinstall the Endeavour kernel. This link maps out the process well https://discovery.endeavouros.com/system-rescue/arch-chroot/2022/12/

Someone far smarter than me can advise how you can maintain the Cacky Kernel and get past the black screen.

3

You can probably switch tty by pressing “ctrl+alt+f3”, then you will get a login console where you can login. Which nvidia packages do you have installed, can you share the output of pacman -Qs nvidia?

4

Thanks for the answer,

when pressing ctrl+alt+f3 i can indeed change kernel and it gives me 3 options:

normal/fallback/bios

The 2 first run into the same issue as mentioned above.

I can access the bios but nothing else, so i can’t do a pacman -Qs nvidia

I think a Chroot is necessary, as said by JBM

5

I’ll try that, thx for the help. I’ll get back when i succeed or have another issue :+1:

6

Looking at your screenshot your system should already be at the point where you everything is loaded, where you should be able to op another console which Ctrl+alt+f3 does. Not being able to load the graphics drivers shouldn’t prevent you from being able to do that.

7

Well, I don’t seem to be able to.

If I press Ctrl+Alt+F3 before the whole “[ OK ]” lines start, it gives me options to change the kernel, but that don’t work.

And if I do Ctrl+Alt+F3 when the processes start blocking, as shown in the pictures, nothing happens. Tried a lot of different shortcut combinations and also nothing.

Haven’t got the time to do it, but I’ll try the whole live USB thing after I post this.

8

Why do you want to use the cachyos kernel ? It’s not like it’s speeding up things or something.

9

Alright, after more than 3h of some black magic copy-pasting commands from the Arch Wiki, I did it, I booted.

Used chroot to pretty much reinstall the kernel, drivers, … until it worked, and also had big issues with dracut, config files, … (which is my fault, just not experienced enough).

Thanks for the help everyone :+1:

10

Mainly curiosity,

Everything kinda worked on my distro, so I was bored, I guess.

I wanted to know how to change kernels, I’d never done that before.

I also wanted to see if I could see some differences in very demanding games (especially 1% low fps), or if their way of presenting their modifications was pure propaganda to switch to Cachy :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:.