Infinite Login Loop (not permissions issue) - proprietary NVIDIA driver install gone wrong

Question

I've got an infinite login loop issue that I need help with.

Let me start at the beginning.

I followed instructions from here: Ubuntu 14.04 install NVIDIA driver

Result of my lspci | grep VGA is:

03:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GF100 [GeForce GTX 465] (rev a3)

I followed the more upvoted answer (the second one).

First I used wget to download the drivers from here: http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/75019/en-us

Then:

sudo apt-get remove nvidia* && sudo apt-get autoremove

This went well, no errors. Then I added

    blacklist nouveau
    blacklist lbm-nouveau
    options nouveau modeset=0
    alias nouveau off
    alias lbm-nouveau off

To a new file, /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-nouveau.conf

At this point I rebooted.

I logged into tty1, and continued to follow the instructions.

I ran:

sudo stop lightdm

This resulted in the expected "lightdm stopped/waiting" output.

Then I ran

sudo bash NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-331.67.run

This same hardware has previously used the 331 drivers from apt-get with this version of Ubuntu without issue - so I have good reason to believe 331 is the right driver version.

The script ran, it mentioned a pre-install script failed to run - I assumed this was its failure to install proper dependencies. I continued with the install even though there was a pre-install error.

It completed successfully, and as the instructions indicated, I ran

sudo apt-get install dkms fakeroot build-essential linux-headers-generic

since I assumed this was what the pre-install error was about.

During the install I did opt for it to make the xorg configuration files for me (nivida-xconfig).

I rebooted, and it didn't even get to the login screen - seemingly eternal maroon, followed by a hung terminal: a black screen with an idle _

I logged back into tty1 to fish around, I removed the blacklist and ran the install script with the --uninstall parameter. It set the config file back and claimed to successfully uninstall.

I figured I could just try

sudo apt-get install nvidia-331 nvidia-331-updates 

Just as I had before (since this proprietary driver install failed).

This however failed - apparently in conflict with two packages: nvidia-persistenced and something like xorg-driver-... something (memory is failing me here).

So far so good, I reboot. I get the normal login screen - things are looking up. I login, and the screen goes black for a second (seemingly normal - I expect the desktop to load now), but install it starts up another login screen. This happens over and over without change.

Again, I login at tty1. .Xauthority is owned by my user - that's not the issue as I read when others have had this problem.

I tried reinstalling xorg at this point:

sudo apt-get install --reinstall xorg

No luck though.

UPDATE:

Running

sudo apt-get install nvidia-331

separate from trying to install nvidia-331-updates succeeds in the install.

Now the login occurs - but without any of the normal gnome stuff ... I have terminal open at startup (lucky in this case), and I can open Firefox and browser - but there is no window management, no top bar to close windows or turn off the computer - no left bar to switch between apps... just my background and top-bar-less windows... :O

I am thinking this has to do with Unity versus gnome xsessions - but looking in the /usr/share/xsessions directory I only see ubuntu.desktop (which I think is Unity?)

I suspect NVIDIA install script did this... but I don't yet know how to recover from it.

What do you guys think it is?

Many thanks for spending time reading about my problem. If you know someone who might know the answer - please forward this to them.

Much obliged,

Brandon

Answer 1

You may need to run:

sudo apt-get build-dep nvidia-331

or similar, before installation. I'm on my phone right now but you can run

apt-get --help

If you get command not found. This should install the dependencies needed to execute the build.