GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 787207
gdm & nvidia with modeset=1 causes loop, does not launch greeter
Last modified: 2018-05-24 11:40:17 UTC
Created attachment 359016 [details] syslog reproduced on two Thinkpad laptops with bios set to Discrete graphics. In this mode, the integrated Intel graphics is bypassed by a hardware mux and the machines appears to have only Nvidia graphics. Environment is Ubuntu 17.10 development version, pre-release packages One laptop has Quadro 1000M, the other Quadro M1000M. Both cards are supported by the latest Nvidia drivers. Nvidia driver 375 or 384 (as packaged by Ubuntu) /etc/modprobe.d/zz-nvidia.conf has options nvidia_384_drm modeset=1 and after that setting sudo update-initramfs -u This problem does not occur when lightdm is used in instead of gdm3 or modeset=1 is not deployed. The session attempted to launch is either gnome or the new "ubuntu" desktop session, which is gnome The boot process fails.Sometimes there is just black screen (and high CPU activity driving the fans) and sometimes there is a message about NVIDIA persistence daemon starting and stopping, as well as gdm messages. I mounted the filesystem after a crash, and I attach syslog. In the attached syslog, search for persistenced to see messages like this Sep 2 12:42:15 tim-ThinkPad-W520 org.gnome.Shell.desktop[1206]: Window manager warning: Failed to create renderer: Failed to initialize renderer: Missing extension for GBM renderer: EGL_KHR_platform_gbm, Failed to find matching EGLDeviceEXT Sep 2 12:42:15 tim-ThinkPad-W520 gnome-shell[1206]: Failed to create backend: Failed to create MetaRenderer Sep 2 12:42:15 tim-ThinkPad-W520 systemd[1]: Starting NVIDIA Persistence Daemon... Sep 2 12:42:15 tim-ThinkPad-W520 nvidia-persistenced: Verbose syslog connection opened Sep 2 12:42:15 tim-ThinkPad-W520 nvidia-persistenced: Now running with user ID 123 and group ID 131 Sep 2 12:42:15 tim-ThinkPad-W520 systemd[1]: Started NVIDIA Persistence Daemon. Sep 2 12:42:15 tim-ThinkPad-W520 nvidia-persistenced: Started (1237) Sep 2 12:42:15 tim-ThinkPad-W520 gnome-session[1196]: gnome-session-binary[1196]: WARNING: App 'org.gnome.Shell.desktop' exited with code 1 Sep 2 12:42:15 tim-ThinkPad-W520 gnome-session-binary[1196]: WARNING: App 'org.gnome.Shell.desktop' exited with code 1 Sep 2 12:42:15 tim-ThinkPad-W520 gnome-session-binary[1196]: Unrecoverable failure in required component org.gnome.Shell. desktop Sep 2 12:42:15 tim-ThinkPad-W520 systemd-networkd-wait-online[536]: ignoring: lo Sep 2 12:42:15 tim-ThinkPad-W520 systemd[1]: Stopping NVIDIA Persistence Daemon... Sep 2 12:42:15 tim-ThinkPad-W520 nvidia-persistenced: Received signal 15 Sep 2 12:42:15 tim-ThinkPad-W520 nvidia-persistenced: PID file unlocked. Sep 2 12:42:15 tim-ThinkPad-W520 nvidia-persistenced: PID file closed. Sep 2 12:42:15 tim-ThinkPad-W520 nvidia-persistenced: The daemon no longer has permission to remove its runtime data directory /var/run/nvidia-persistenced Sep 2 12:42:15 tim-ThinkPad-W520 nvidia-persistenced: Shutdown (1237)
Much water has passed under the bridge, but it still doesn't work, although the failures have become less dramatic. Another ubuntu user was more persistent them me and modified the ubuntu 17.10 gdm.service file to fix this. His changes are very minor [Service] ExecStartPre=/usr/share/gdm/generate-config becomes [Service] ExecStartPre=/usr/bin/xinit /usr/share/gdm/generate-config although this is in the context of the Ubuntu service file which is richer than Fedora's for example. Full details are here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-shell/+bug/1716857 I hope this information is useful. It works for me, when nothing else has.
Clarification. This fix solves the problem in both hybrid mode and discrete (nvidia-only) mode.
-- GitLab Migration Automatic Message -- This bug has been migrated to GNOME's GitLab instance and has been closed from further activity. You can subscribe and participate further through the new bug through this link to our GitLab instance: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gdm/issues/332.