Black screen with underscore after attempting to install Nvidia drivers

[aquasome]

Hello, I recently installed openmamba on my laptop which has both an integrated AMD GPU and an RTX 3060.

I was trying to connect the laptop with my monitor, however the monitor was not detected. I assumed this was because it was relying on the integrated GPU and not the RTX 3060, so I tried installing proprietary Nvidia drivers using sudo dnf install xorg-drv-video-nvidia. It seemed to work, but when I restart I get the dreaded Linux black screen with an underscore. I cannot seem to switch back to the AMD GPU and am considering reinstalling openmamba.

Is there anything I can do? And is there a different method I could use to install proprietary Nvidia drivers?

Thanks in advance for any help

[Silvan]

Hello,
since the installation I think you should have received at least one kernel update, so you might want to try booting with another kernel by selecting “Advanced” boot options in the Grub menu, then going down three choices should point you to the previous kernel.

Once you are able to boot openmamba without reinstalling we can further investigate the problem, but the first thing to see would be checking if dkms has built the nvidia driver for the last kernel releases. This can be checked with the following command line command:
sudo dkms status

[aquasome]

Thanks for the quick reply, I’ve booted into the 6.1.63 kernel and am able to access the command line but not the DE.

I’ve run the command and got this: nvidia/535.113.01, 6.6.10-1mamba-x86_64, x86_64: installed

[Silvan]

The nvidia driver might be missing in the latest kernel initramfs so I would suggest to try:
sudo /usr/sbini/mkinitrd -H -f /boot/initramfs-6.6.10-1mamba-x86_64.img 6.6.10-1mamba-x86_64

if network is available this shorter command might also work:
sudo dnf reinstall kernel-mamba-x86_64-6.6.10

[aquasome]

Hello Silvan, I have run the shorter command you provided and am pleased to say that all is working well! I have been running openmamba as my daily OS on my laptop for a bit.

It works perfectly with the laptop connected to my monitor, I am able to use it at 1080p @ 144hz with proprietary Nvidia drivers.

However, I am no longer able to use the laptop’s actual screen as it does not seem like it is possible to switch between the integrated AMD GPU and the Nvidia GPU from what I see. This is not an issue for me as I plan to use this laptop exclusively with my monitor.

Thank you for all the work, I am loving openmamba!

[Silvan]

Hello,
the nVidia driver will soon be updated to major version 550 after successful tests, I hope the upgrade will be smooth for you too.

As for the dual GPU + display support, I don’t know how to provide a out-of-the-box solution working with proprietary drivers and every situation. By the way documentation on configuring Optimus and PRIME support might be helpful. openmamba provides packages like bumblebee and envycontrol which might be helpful. I see now there is a tool called optimus-manager which maight be worth packaging.

References:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PRIME

https://github.com/Askannz/optimus-manager

[Author]

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