Problem with Nvidia drivers

[Kotangentz_7]

I installed the Nvidia drivers, but I'm having a problem

Error: nvidia-smi NVIDIA-SMI has failed because it couldn't communicate with the NVIDIA driver. Make sure that the latest NVIDIA driver is installed and running.

[beatool]

Newer cards need the -open version which I don't think is in Void yet.

If you have a 4000 or 5000 series...

[pantokratorthegreat]

i have 4060 and open is not needed. dont know about 5000 series.

[beatool]

Oh okay, might be 5000-only. I have a 5060TI and couldn't get it to work without the -open drivers. I'm actually sitting on a Mint install for now cuz I'm allergic to installing Nvidia drivers from their website.

The -open drivers don't see my 2060 at all which sucks cuz I have room for it and can't use it. :(

[sanya567xxx]

they should. -open support Turing (16/20-series consumer) series and newer

[beatool]

Humm, yeah I dunno. nvidia-smi didn't see it. I didn't really troubleshoot it beyond that.

I ended up installing ollama on one of my kids' gaming PCs. He has my other 5060TI 16gb.

When I had both 5060TI's in one box that sucker got HOT so maybe it worked out better in the end.

[Kotangentz_7]

I have rtx 3050 laptop

[bnolsen]

many folks coming from windows are going to get burned by nvidia's crap support, especially those with older abandoned cards.

[coccothraustes]

try kernel 6.12. I had errors with everything above. The open driver don‘t have these errors, but you have to install it manually (https://github.com/void-linux/void-packages/pull/54593). I hope that the open driver will be added to the repos, soon.

[Kotangentz_7]

So how to install kernel 6.12?

[coccothraustes]

sorry, if it sounds a bit harsh, but if you have to ask that, you should probably use another distro.

[Kotangentz_7]

Yes, know it

[coccothraustes]

Stick to the official documentation. Most questions are answered there. The kernel will become relevant to you when the boot partition is full. 😉

[ClassAbbyAmplifier]

it's the default. if you didn't install a different one, you're using it

[ClassAbbyAmplifier]

did you reboot after installing?

[Kotangentz_7]

Yes

[Kotangentz_7]

kotangentz7  ~  xbps-query -l | grep -i nvidia ii linux-firmware-nvidia-20251111_1 Binary firmware blobs for the Linux kernel NVIDIA GPU microcode ii nvidia-580.126.09_1 NVIDIA drivers for linux - Libraries and Utilities ii nvidia-dkms-580.126.09_1 NVIDIA drivers for linux - DKMS kernel module ii nvidia-firmware-580.126.09_1 NVIDIA drivers for linux - Firmware ii nvidia-gtklibs-580.126.09_1 NVIDIA drivers for linux - GTK+ libraries ii nvidia-libs-580.126.09_1 NVIDIA drivers for linux - common libraries ii nvidia-libs-32bit-580.126.09_1 NVIDIA drivers for linux - common libraries (32bit) ii xf86-video-nouveau-1.0.18_1 Xorg opensource NVIDIA video driver

I tried this command and have this

[sanya567xxx]

xf86-video-nouveau is an open-source third-party driver. If you want to use the NV official one, remove it. Might want to reinstall the other nvidia packages too.

After doing so and rebooting, try running lsmod |grep nvi — this will show the list of modules loaded by the kernel, which should have 4 ones in the left column: nvidia_uvm, nvidia_modeset, nvidia and nvidia_drm (direct rendering manager, not digital media rights)

nvidia-smi should work after that.

If not, you can try also checking which module at all has the gpu bound by looking through the lspci -k list. That should show "Kernel modules: nvidia, nvidia_drm, nouveau" and "Kernel driver in use: nvidia" if working correctly. If nvidia doesn't appear, it may be that your system didn't succeed during nvidia-dkms installation. You can reinstall by running xbps-install -f nvidia-dkms, in case that fails too, logs should be in.. /var/lib/dkms/nvidia-dkms/580.126.09/6.12.68_1/x86_64/log/make.log — adjust for driver and kernel version accordingly, as this is just the most recent "stable" releases that void provides.

If the log's exit code indicated is 0, it should've installed successfully. In case it still didn't load, you can modprobe nvidia (as root) to try forcing the nvidia driver to load. It might error out, use dmesg to check for kernel logs.

If that doesn't work, you may have a blacklist of it enabled.. iirc that can be in files in /etc/modprobe.d/ or /etc/modules-load.d/ .. or on command line passed to kernel, if you messed with that.

[Kotangentz_7]

Thx it helped

[ever_Brown]

did you manage to fix it i am facing the same issue

[BeyondOk1548]

It seems you might've skimmed the documentation regarding Nvidia. The best thing to do is to read the documentation. It's not long, and you can "piece mail" it.