Ubuntu – How to ensure nvidia_current module loads during boot

12.10nvidia

I am running Ubuntu 12.10 on an Asus G75V laptop with nvidia gforce GTX 660M. I first run 12.04 on this machine and was able to install nvidia_current drivers from swat ppa:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nvidia-current 

This worked in 12.04 and after rebooting the machine my graphics where working properly. After upgrade to 12.10 however, the machine boots into a low resolution desktop which I can not really interact with. I suspect this is due to the driver not being loaded properly. To fix this, I have to switch to ctrl+alt+F1 session and manually load the nvidia_current module and restart the desktop manager:

sudo modprobe nvidia_current
sudo service lightdm restart

Now everything works fine again. However, I would like not to have to do this every time I reboot the machine. I also dont want to hack an script to do this on load. Basically, if things are setup currectly, the nvidia_current driver which is installed should load. How can I make sure nvidia_current driver module loads properly when system starts?

Edit: I tried removing the ppa and installing nvidia-current-update as was suggested in the comments. However, I still face the same problem. The only difference is that now when I restart I come back to desktop with this distorted image:

enter image description here

It appears that nvidia module is not being loaded properly when system boots, even though working drivers are installed.

Again, to work around this issue I can switch to ctrl+alt+F1 session and login. Then I can run this code to get the driver loaded and the desktop back:

sudo modprobe nvidia_current_updates
sudo service lightdm restart

I thought it may be that nvidia_current_updates is somehow being blacklisted somewhere or that nouveau driver is not being blacklisted. So I went into /etc/modprobe.d directory and take a look around. I could not find any evidence of that. Here is the content of nvidia-graphic-drivers.conf which seems relevant:

:/etc/modprobe.d$ cat nvidia-graphics-drivers.conf 
# This file was installed by nvidia-current-updates
# Do not edit this file manually

blacklist nouveau
blacklist lbm-nouveau
blacklist nvidia-173
blacklist nvidia-96
blacklist nvidia-current
blacklist nvidia-173-updates
blacklist nvidia-96-updates
alias nvidia nvidia_current_updates
alias nouveau off
alias lbm-nouveau off

Best Answer

Since the ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates PPA currently doesn't have any packages for Quantal, I'd suggest removing it.

sudo apt-get install ppa-purge

sudo ppa-purge ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates

Then install the recommended or experimental Nvidia driver. You can make sure the module loads by adding it to /etc/modules.