Please Help - NVIDIA Driver installation on RedHat 7.3 | ThinkPad P51
Trying to evaluate Red Hat Enterprise Workstation, but got stuck at the very beginning - external monitor is not working via bundled driver, and I'm unable to install NVIDIA driver. Have tried to follow:
https://access.redhat.com/solutions/1155663
and ELRepo:
https://www.centos.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=61162&sid=b4864e4432040e23aa746d10bba7c50a
on 7.3 and 7.4 beta, but the result is still the same - boot hangs somewhere around:
[OK] Started GNOME Display Manager
[OK] Started Visualization daemon
[OK] Started Postfix mail transport agent
HW is fine, Mint XFCE (second SSD) is working flawlessly using NVIDIA Driver.
Conf:
ThinkPad P51 Quadro Workstation
Xeon E3-1535M v6
NVIDIA Quadro M2200
RAM 64GB ECC
Any ideas?
Responses
Hi !
First remove every NVIDIA software you currently have installed and reboot the system afterwards.
Then add the RPM Fusion repositories to the software sources and switch to a non-graphical login :
(Important note : EPEL repository has to be enabled - before you enable RPM Fusion repositories !)
sudo rpm -ivh https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpmsudo rpm -ivh https://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/el/rpmfusion-free-release-7.noarch.rpmsudo rpm -ivh https://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/el/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-7.noarch.rpm
sudo systemctl set-default multi-user.targetsudo reboot
Once you access the non-graphical login, install the NVIDIA drivers and the prerequisites :
Execute sudo yum install kernel-devel and then sudo yum install akmod-nvidia
Even though it seems the second command has finished, it has not - wait a few minutes ...
Then reboot the operating system in order to activate the drivers, execute : sudo reboot
Switch back to a graphical login and use the system :sudo systemctl set-default graphical.targetsudo reboot
Cheers :)
Christian
Minor item here : a fresh install of RHEL 7.4 Workstation does not include a compiler and it may be necessary to "yum install kernel-devel gcc". Even so this won't work ( at least today ) because :
# date
Tue Dec 5 18:40:13 GMT 2017
# yum install akmod-nvidia
Loaded plugins: langpacks, product-id, search-disabled-repos, subscription-manager
Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
.
.
.
--> Finished Dependency Resolution
Error: Package: 2:xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs-384.98-1.el7.x86_64 (rpmfusion-nonfree-updates)
Requires: vulkan-filesystem
**********************************************************************
yum can be configured to try to resolve such errors by temporarily enabling
disabled repos and searching for missing dependencies.
To enable this functionality please set 'notify_only=0' in /etc/yum/pluginconf.d/search-disabled-repos.conf
**********************************************************************
Error: Package: 2:xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs-384.98-1.el7.x86_64 (rpmfusion-nonfree-updates)
Requires: vulkan-filesystem
You could try using --skip-broken to work around the problem
You could try running: rpm -Va --nofiles --nodigest
#
So that is broken.
Hi !
I didn't mention to add EPEL, because you said that you tried the drivers from that repo in your post and that is also the reason why I didn't mention to install the kernel-devel packages as a prerequisite. I assumed that you already installed them. I updated my answer accordingly - and the errors seem to be a connection issue on RPM Fusion side.
Cheers :)
Christian
Hi Peter,
If you did not install the kernel-devel packages prior to the drivers installation, then this could be the reason why it did not work properly, so yes - a clean installation of the system would be the best option to succeed in having a perfectly running operating system, but you can try if reinstallation of the NVIDIA drivers is sufficient of course.
Good luck,
Christian :)
You probably have two graphics devices, Intel and Nvidia? If unsure, you can easily find that out by installing the nvidia-detect package from ELRepo and run it. If your laptop indeed has the NVIDIA Optimus graphics, then try and see if you can disable the Intel one through the BIOS.
If this is not possible, you may want to use the bumblebee package from ELRepo.
I have a feeling that something went wrong during the system installation process. Generally the pre-installed open source nouveau drivers work flawlessly out-of-the-box and should detect the external monitor - but when you say, the proprietary NVIDIA drivers also don't work as expected, you may want to consider restarting over from scratch.
Hi Peter,
I've thought about the whole situation and which alternative solution might succeed and work properly for you. Of course you can try to install the NVIDIA drivers the way it has been described and suggested by Jan Gerrit, but you may run into several (other) problems, right as many users before. I support users who are having trouble to get the proprietary NVIDIA drivers properly working on various different Linux systems successfully for many years, most of them have a GEFORCE GTX GPU and maybe this special Quadro M2200M GPU is the culprit, but I can't imagine that it'll not be possible to get it working with an external monitor - so, I'm providing you with two additional suggestions.
First suggestion :
You said earlier that you have disabled the intel graphics in BIOS, please re-enable it and install the system without the NVIDIA drivers. The hardware is designed to work with a hybrid graphics solution and the open source nouveau drivers support this NVIDIA Optimus technology perfectly, which is something that most users don't know. No need to install anything like bumblebee (an outdated and not maintained software) additionally. The only valid reason to install the NVIDIA drivers is when the demand for high performance graphics comes in - such as high performance gaming tasks, which I think is not the main approach when you want to work with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, right ?
Second suggestion :
Keep both graphics enabled - install the system and NVIDIA drivers again, this time with nouveau drivers disabled.
Start the notebook and select the RHEL entry in the GRUB boot menu ... then press the E key.
Add nouveau.modeset=0 at the end of the linux line. Press the F10 key to boot the system.
Do not miss to set a space between the last letter in the linux line and nouveau.modeset=0.
Use this method until the NVIDIA drivers are successfully installed, afterwards you don't have to add the parameter anymore. By the way, the fact that you can install the system - even though the intel graphics are disabled - shows that the nouveau drivers are working, because otherwise you wouldn't be able to see the anaconda installer at all.
Cheers :)
Christian
Hi Peter,
I am used to download the self extracting shell script installer from the nVidia website. This requires you to start the server or laptop in runlevel 3. This can be done by interrupting the boot sequence at the grub screen. add the number 3 at the end of the linux16 line CRTL+X to continue booting If you get a login screen, you can continue from there. You will have to download the driver from the website http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us and choose the Graphics card NVIDIA Quadro M2200M, select all operating systems, for Linux 64-bits is not in the preferred list. Finally you will get to the download page. You will need a scp client on Windows to upload the driver installer to the Laptop.
sh ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-375.66.run and answer the questions the installer asks. I tested it on RHEL 6.9 server and it works fine for me, after blacklisting the noveau driver. I did this both on a Dell Laptop as on a Lenovo thinkstation workstation.
The drivers provided with the ELrepo and EPEL rpm's I did not get to work either.
Regards,
Jan Gerrit
Hi Peter,
Now that you have provided these additional usage details, I strongly recommend to install fedora workstation instead. The final of the new edition 26 is planned for release in a few days. I am using fedora 25 as my daily driver and tested the installation of the latest NVIDIA drivers some days ago.
Everything went flawlessly without any issues, install the NVIDIA drivers exactly how I explained it in my first post, just replace yum with dnf in the commands. You know, fedora is the 'lab' of what later becomes RHEL, fedora and GNOME are sponsored by Red Hat. Expect to get the 'latest and greatest' software, which lets you run everything smoothly and fast and fedora 25 is one of the best operating systems I have ever used, it is not as stable as RHEL of course - but I did not experience any problem.
Cheers :)
Christian
Welcome! Check out the Getting Started with Red Hat page for quick tours and guides for common tasks.
