Ubuntu – Ubuntu 17.10 Nvidia Drivers, black screen loop

17.10bootdriversgrub2nvidia

Alrighty, so I have had to deal with a similar problem all throughout using Ubuntu with Nvidia. But with the new 17.10 update I have been getting a new recently discussed bug which results with my screen going into a black screen and looping "stopped user manager for uid (#)", this prevents me from going into recovery mode and accessing grub directly from the computer as holding the keys on startup doesn't do anything.

So as a workaround I SSH'd into the desktop and have tried some workarounds that I've heard around random forums.

Attempted:

  • uncommented "WaylandEnable=false" in (/etc/gdm3/custom.conf)
  • "nomodeset" in grub (/etc/default/grub)
  • reinstalling the drivers after and before

These attempts changed nothing in the outcome of the issue. The only thing that has helped was removing the Nvidia drivers which I've initially installed through the Software Update GUI, which rendered the device bootable.

Hopefully y'all can help me utilize good ol Nvidia drivers again ;-;

Best Answer

This sounds similar to an issue I was having, which I answered over in this thread

It seems that the Ubuntu update switched me to a low-latency kernel, which did not automatically update my kernel headers installation like other kernel upgrades have, and the nvidia binary packages require the kernel headers to be present. Try the following:

sudo apt purge 'nvidia-*'
sudo apt install linux-headers-$(uname -r)
sudo apt install nvidia-384

Note that I did prevent gdm from using Wayland prior to trying anything, and from what I understand Wayland won't currently work with the nvidia binaries, so I'd advise ensuring it's disabled in /etc/gdm3/custom.conf by uncommenting the line #WaylandEnable=false.

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