I have a HTPC desktop machine running NVIDIA RTX 3070. I have run Endeavour OS on this before but have been distrohopping in recent times trying Fedora, Mint among others. Eventually, decided that I like EndeavourOS the best especially the rolling release nature of staying up-to-date. So, I just re-formatted and installed eOS fresh on my desktop. Live media booted and installed fine. The trouble begins when I install the NVIDIA drivers. Everytime NVIDIA drivers are installed (using nvidia-inst), the system no longer boots graphical and I just never seem to be able to get systemd to put me into runlevel 3, so I just keep going back to reformatting and reinstalling and trying something slightly different to try to get the drivers to work. My trials so far:
Online version of the install with GNOME DE - failed to boot after installing nvidia via nvidia-inst
Offline version of the install with KDE - same failure
Trying the online version of the install with KDE at the moment.
I am looking for some help in figuring out 2 main things:
How to consistently install NVIDIA drivers?
If that fails, how to get to non-graphical target in systemd so that I can actually look into further debugging/providing logs, uninstall what didn’t work, try something else without having to start over every time?
My apologies if the information here is insufficient or similar to other such posts. I was on Mint earlier and that did handle the NVIDIA install a whole lot better but that is probably the only positive I would state for Mint over eOS. Please help! Thanks.
While starting to install, you can select the menu entry that provides Nvidia’s proprietary driver. But looks like you selected the open source driver instead?
Could you show the installed packages related to Nvidia:
pacman -Qs nvidia
Edit: by the way, if you install packages with nvidia-instand get a boot problem after reboot, you can uninstall them quite easily by using the USB installer and
command arch-chroot to access your installed system. Then no reinstall is needed.
See more info about this in our discovery (wiki).
If I select the NVIDIA entry instead of the UEFI default, the live system doesn’t boot for me. That’s why I always start with the open source driver and then install NVIDIA once the system is installed and booted.
Edit: I have used arch-chroot a couple of times but to be honest, I always try to search for the text mode way to get to a login where I can uninstall nvidia and fail! I have to remember to use the chroot the next time this happens. But I am hoping for a process where it doesn’t happen.
OK, currently the proprietary drivers are not installed, like you mentioned.
Is the inxi output above from the installed system, or from the USB installer?
Did you install in the offline mode?
This output is from the installed and booted system - not the live USB. All packages are up-to-date. This latest attempt was the online install with KDE.
After running a command, copy the output to a file, e.g. ~/nvidia.txt so that you are able to uninstall what the command installed.
Then reboot.
If boot fails, uninstall those packages (in TTY or with USB installer & arch-chroot), and try the next command.
how to get to TTY? I tried an “s” at the end of the systemd-boot command line but that didn’t work. I also recall trying some other options for this but was never successful.
You should have used the nvidia option on install. It will install the latest nvidia drivers. If you use the default menu it installs with open source nouveau drivers.
First: log out. On that login screen you’ll see (e.g. on some edge, that depends on the desktop) a selection of wayland or x11 session. Then select the x11 session and login again.
Simply press keys Ctrl-Alt-F3 at the same time (maybe first keep Ctrl and Alt pressed, then press F3). Note that F3 may not be the only key that works.
Then you should reach a big black command prompt screen where normal terminal commands can be run.
Basically to get back from TTY to desktop press Ctrl-Alt-F2 (or Ctrl-Alt-F1).
Or reboot.
Thanks @ricklinux. I would have liked to use the nvidia option on the live USB but that doesn’t work for me - same type of graphics failure as after the nvidia installation!
Thanks for that. It sounds like whining but I have to say X11 change made it very difficult to do anything on the desktop. Since I am on a display that is a 4K TV that is about 10 feet away, font scaling on the system scaling is not working too well on X11 and making it extremely difficult to work with it.
I have tried the Ctrl-Alt-F3/F4, etc for TTY when the desktop doesn’t load but I was never even getting any display back (my display is directed through a AV receiver and it is clearly not getting any signal from my desktop once this failed nvidia load happens. So, unless something miraculous happens on this attempt, I am likely to revert to chroot method.
Either way, I will try to collect the info on the packages installed for options 2 and 3 suggested for nvidia-inst. Option 1 output would be the same as in the “–test” attempt.
I’m not familiar with the HTPC. Did you build it yourself or it’s purchased complete? Just wondering what the motherboard is and hardware besides the nvidia graphics.
For what’s it worth, I’m using a 4K TV too, with Nvidia 1030 GPU. It all works OK with x11, but wayland causes issues with some apps (e.g. kaffeine).
Just for reference, I have the following Nvidia related packages (not all are required):
Built it myself. It’s running an AMD Ryzen 9 5900X processor on an Asus X570 motherboard with the NVIDIA RTX 3070 GPU and 32 gigs of memory. It used to be a Windows dual boot but I messed up something during one of my distrohopping exercises and end up clearing out the EFI entries and then Windows installer kept failing to reinstall probably because of the TPM or the secure boot setting that I gave up and made this machine as linux workstation only. I was practically never using that windows anyway, so it made sense.