Fedora update switched my Nvidia driver back to Noveau

It happened again with today’s system update. After installing Fedora 36 two days ago I had a black screen on the main monitor. I troubleshooted the issue and determined that the fedora default video driver was the problem. Why Fedora doesn’t allow the Nvidia driver to be an install option is beyond me. So I installed the nvidia-driver 510 and when I rebooted I could put the monitor back to its standard refresh rate.

But today, after installing Fedora’s system update and rebooting, my Nvidia driver was no longer active and I’ve been switch back to lousy Noveau. I checked and the Nvidia driver is still installed.

I want to say that Fedora needs stop messing with the video driver installs. I saw nothing in the list of software updates that should have done this. This isn’t the first time this sort of thing has happened before.

Does anyone have an idea how to activate the Nvidia driver again?

I resolved my own issue by removing the nvidia-driver and reinstalling it. Why did I need to do this?

But my questions remain:

  1. Why doesn’t Fedora give us the option to install the nvidia drivers at the first installation?
  2. Why does Fedora frequently break installations when releasing updates that appear to have nothing to do with the video drivers?

How are you installing the Nvidia driver? Each time a kernel is updated, the driver needs to be re-built for the new kernel. If you install the driver from RPM Fusion following these instructions, the packages do that for you:

https://rpmfusion.org/Howto/NVIDIA

Because Fedora is a FOSS Linux distribution and does not ship proprietary software. The Nvidia driver is not FOSS, it is proprietary.

It does not. So we need to see where your specific issue is coming from.

Also, have a look to the first paragraph here on rpmfusion’s common bugs:
https://rpmfusion.org/CommonBugs

From where and using what procedure did you install the nvidia drivers?

If you installed them from rpmfusion as shown here then you should have no issues.

If instead you installed the driver from some other repo or directly from the nvidia site using the .run file then you will need to reinstall every time there is a kernel update. The driver modules need to match the kernel version to function.

The akmod-nvidia package from rpmfusion ensures the driver is rebuilt every time the kernel is updated. Other installation methods don’t do that.

Using CLI:

dnf install nvidia-driver

That installs it from the rpmfusion-nonfree-nvidia. I agree I shouldn’t have any issues but I did.

I see that. I didn’t use dnf CLI to update - it was the Software app. Is that the same? Either way if there is a common bug it would be helpful to users if Fedora would communicate that in the release notes.

So we Nvidia users must run depmod -ae at every update?

Ankur,

I get nvidia drivers are proprietary and I didn’t suggest Fedora “ships” with them. But if we are connected to the internet during the install then I feel we should be asked if we want the correct drivers installed then. I don’t see a difference between installing them from the internet during the install versus installing them right after.

But I’m going to disagree with you on your last point. I personally have more issues with Fedora updates than any other distro. If it isn’t the video drivers messing up my monitor config, it’s been wayland vs X11.

I wonder if the way you installed it
dnf install nvidia-driver
actually installs the akmod-nvidia package (and the kernel-devel package). I have never tried that method and I use dnf install akmod-nvidia. It always has followed through with the build of the driver module and updates always rebuild the module.

I have never used (or needed to use) depmod to build the drivers. I have used the nvidia drivers for over 10 years from rpmfusion with the drivers rebuilding automatically with every update.

Could you please check if you have the akmod-nvidia package installed and functional. Please post the output of dnf list installed *nvidia* and dnf repolist

BTW, if you happen to have the kmod-nvidia package installed from rpmfusion (will not show the kernel version) and also the one built by akmod (does show the kernel version) then there may be a conflict that interferes with proper driver performance.

There’s the all important step of the user explicitly adding or enabling the repository that provides the drivers—they cannot be enabled “by default”. In Gnome, one can now enable a select set of third party repositories that then allows users to install the driver. In other settings, users must manually install the RPM Fusion repositories because Fedora cannot ship them.

Sure, but the keyword is “personally” :slight_smile:

If you file topics for your issues, community members can help look into them and file bugs where necessary.

As others have noted, this is not required. The whole reason for the akmods is that it automatically does its thing when new kernels are installed. So we need to see why this isn’t working for your installation. I have a system with Nvidia drivers from RPM Fusion happily ticking away and updating—no issues yet.

Could you please provide the requested information so folks can look into what’s going on here, and then if there’s a bug somewhere it can be filed and a fix thought of?

@ Jeff V

dnf list installed *nvidia*
Installed Packages
akmod-nvidia.x86_64                       3:510.68.02-1.fc36 @rpmfusion-nonfree-nvidia-driver
kmod-nvidia-5.17.7-300.fc36.x86_64.x86_64 3:510.68.02-1.fc36 @@commandline      
nvidia-persistenced.x86_64                3:510.68.02-1.fc36 @rpmfusion-nonfree-nvidia-driver
nvidia-settings.x86_64                    3:510.68.02-1.fc36 @rpmfusion-nonfree-nvidia-driver
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia.x86_64                3:510.68.02-1.fc36 @rpmfusion-nonfree-nvidia-driver
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-cuda.x86_64           3:510.68.02-1.fc36 @rpmfusion-nonfree-nvidia-driver
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-cuda-libs.x86_64      3:510.68.02-1.fc36 @rpmfusion-nonfree-nvidia-driver
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-kmodsrc.x86_64        3:510.68.02-1.fc36 @rpmfusion-nonfree-nvidia-driver
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs.x86_64           3:510.68.02-1.fc36 @rpmfusion-nonfree-nvidia-driver
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-power.x86_64          3:510.68.02-1.fc36 @rpmfusion-nonfree-nvidia-driver

dnf repolist
repo id                                               repo name
fedora                                                Fedora 36 - x86_64
fedora-cisco-openh264                                 Fedora 36 openh264 (From Cisco) - x86_64
fedora-modular                                        Fedora Modular 36 - x86_64
google-chrome                                         google-chrome
phracek-PyCharm                                       Copr repo for PyCharm owned by phracek
rpmfusion-nonfree-nvidia-driver                       RPM Fusion for Fedora 36 - Nonfree - NVIDIA Driver
rpmfusion-nonfree-steam                               RPM Fusion for Fedora 36 - Nonfree - Steam
updates                                               Fedora 36 - x86_64 - Updates
updates-modular                                       Fedora Modular 36 - x86_64 - Updates
virtualbox                                            Fedora  -  - VirtualBox