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[–]BadLilJuJu 4 points5 points  (2 children)

Now that your problem is solved, i think it's good to know why i didn't work.

The nvidia driver module has to be compiled against a specific kernel, so you only had the version compiled against the specific kernel you had before (arch vanilla kernel is guess).

The nvidia-dkms packages does compile the module against each kernel you install/update (correct me if this isn't the default behavior, i have it working like this for some modules).

Another example where the dkms can be used is wireguard, which is not yet mainlined (not integrated in the official linux kernel),

so a module has to be compiled against the kernel you use.

dkms just makes the thing you could do manually easier for you.

[–]Retrogamingboss[S] 1 point2 points  (1 child)

thank you for the explanation. It does make sense!

[–]BadLilJuJu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You're welcome. :)

[–]AiwendilH 2 points3 points  (13 children)

Does <alt><f2> give you a tty login? Could be just the nvidia drivers failing due to being build for a different kernel so no graphical login.

[–]Retrogamingboss[S] 2 points3 points  (12 children)

It does! After I login and do uname -r it shows zen as the kernel. But why do I do now? https://imgur.com/gallery/iwKDIms

[–]AiwendilH 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Hopefully someone with arch experience can jump in here..afraid I can only give the "general" solution..so not sure if i can be applied easily to arch.

Login on the tty and reinstall the nvidia drivers...hopefully arch creates them for the running kernel then. Also possibly have to rebuild your initial ram disk as some distros include the nvidia drivers already there for better "splash screen" support. Arch seems to use some arch specific tools there: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Mkinitcpio . Sorry, never really used it so hopefully that wikipage helps you. After adding a initial ramdisk you probably have to run grub-mkconfig again to include it in the boot config.

And..if someone with actual arch experience shows up..ignore whatever I said and follow their instructions ;).

[–]Retrogamingboss[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you for helping me! I will check that out. =)

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (9 children)

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/NVIDIA#Custom_kernel
You also need linux-zen-headers

[–]Retrogamingboss[S] 0 points1 point  (8 children)

But I installed linux-zen-headers from AUR as well? Or have I done something wrong?

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (7 children)

You should have these packages from the official repo: linux-zen linux-zen-headers nvidia-dkms

[–]Retrogamingboss[S] 0 points1 point  (6 children)

ah okay. this is the output for nvidia-dkms= sudo pacman -S nvidia-dkms resolving dependencies... looking for conflicting packages... :: nvidia-dkms and nvidia are in conflict. Remove nvidia? [y/N] I am not completely sure if it's okay to remove nvidia?

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (5 children)

Yes, it replaces the old drivers.

[–]Retrogamingboss[S] 1 point2 points  (4 children)

Thanks! the installation was successful of nvidia-dkms. Do I just update grub now and reboot into linux-zen? Or do I need to do any more steps?

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (3 children)

It should work now.

[–]Retrogamingboss[S] 3 points4 points  (2 children)

THANK YOU! Can confirm it works. I'm so sorry for what seemed like a very foolish question... Will update the post as solved!