[12:06] <howarth> Is anyone having any luck with installing the non-free nvidia drivers on Cosmic with a GTX 680?
[12:06] <howarth> Closest I have gotten is getting the stock nvidia-driver-390 to install but it still produces a black screen instead of the gdm
[12:07] <howarth> No obvious errors in the system log or X11.org.log
[12:08] <howarth> but I did notice that, unlike the System76 xenial nvidia installation, cosmis is loading both the nvidia and nouveau drivers
[12:09] <howarth> unless I am confused, cosmic uses nouveau for gdm but nvidia for the actual X11 session
[12:09] <howarth> which seems like it is just asking for trouble
[12:31] <gpunk> you need to uninstall nouveau/blacklist it
[12:32] <gpunk> buht it should be done by the nvidia installation
[13:21] <howarth> if you have the nvidia drivers installed successfully, do you have any blacklisting added by the the packages?
[13:21] <howarth> The System76 driver packages for xenial (they roll their own) use
[13:22] <howarth> blacklist nouveau
[13:22] <howarth> blacklist lbm-nouveau
[13:22] <howarth> blacklist nvidia-current
[13:22] <howarth> blacklist nvidia-173
[13:22] <howarth> blacklist nvidia-96
[13:22] <howarth> blacklist nvidia-current-updates
[13:23] <howarth> options nvidia_384_drm modeset=0
[13:24] <howarth> is used in modprobes.d on System76 but the current nvidia packages seem to install a nouveau drm instead
[13:26] <howarth> I was also puzzled by the fact that the current nvidia packaging installed for 390 by cosmic apparently hasn't seen an update since August
[13:27] <howarth> which makes you wonder how seriously it is really being worked on
[13:27] <gpunk> for me it works just fine, gtx860m
[13:28] <howarth> did you install from a ppa or from the Software Update control panel proprietary driver tab?
[13:29] <howarth> there seems to be several alternative sources for the graphics drivers
[13:29] <gpunk> manually with apt , from ubuntu repo
[13:29] <howarth> the ones installed from Software Update actually required a hack to fully install
[13:30] <gpunk> but bumblebee didnt work, for info
[13:30] <howarth> so ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa?
[13:31] <howarth> if so what does your blacklisting for using nvidia look like?
[13:31] <gpunk> not ppa , but ubuntu repo
[13:32] <howarth> so with 'sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall'?
[13:33] <howarth> It is really hard to pin down which approach is currently even viable to try to debug further
[13:33] <gpunk>  /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia-installer-disable-nouveau.conf:blacklist nouveau
[13:35] <howarth> and I assume you added no ppa's at all to install the nvidia drivers, right?
[13:35] <gpunk> yes
[13:36] <howarth> so what command did you use to install the working nvidia driver?
[13:38] <howarth> ie did you use the metapackage 'sudo apt-get install nvidia-driver-390'?
[13:39] <howarth> The Software Update control panel claims that the 390 driver is tested so I assume that is want I want to be debugging on cosmic
[13:40] <howarth> FYI, this on a 2008 MacPro with a EVGA FTX 680 flashed with the Mac ROMs.
[13:40] <howarth> Windows has no issue nor does nouveau under cosmic
[13:41] <gpunk> apt install nvidia-driver-390 nvidia-dkms-390
[13:41] <howarth> but so far every combo that I have tried goes to completely black screen (as in backlighting off) whenever it gets past the Ubuntu splash screen
[13:41] <howarth> so it appears to be puking on gdm
[13:41] <howarth> no crashes in the syslog though
[13:42] <howarth> okay, I'll try your recipe tonight
[13:42] <gpunk> and remember to blacklist nouveau
[13:43] <howarth> one thing I am a bit unclear on is when the blacklisting takes effect
[13:43] <howarth> the boot is done entirely from a kernel image file
[13:44] <howarth> so do that blacklisting inhibit the bundling of nouveau into the kernel image or just its loading?
[13:45] <gpunk> while loadig modules it skips it
[13:45] <gpunk> and modules dont get bounded into kernel
[13:46] <gpunk> some of them are put in the initramfs thingy
[13:47] <howarth> According to https://superuser.com/questions/577307/how-to-get-a-list-of-active-drivers-that-are-statically-built-into-the-linux-ker one can check for the bundled modules
[13:47] <howarth> it would be interesting to know if on your machine the built kernel even has nouveau
[13:48] <howarth> I was wondering if that could be part of my issues
[13:48] <gpunk> those are the drivers , loadable drivers are modules 
[13:48] <gpunk> no it doesnt , nouveau is a Module-driver not a driver-compiled-in-the-kernel
[13:49] <gpunk> you cannot have a driver compiled in AND loadable module
[13:50] <gpunk> for the same purpose
[13:50] <howarth> I haven't down kernel builds for awhile and ubuntu is pretty opaque on what it is doing
[13:51] <gpunk> well what i am telling you universal, nothing to do with ubuntu
[13:51] <gpunk> is*
[13:52] <howarth> okay, so the image only has a fbdev I guess until the boot load the actual modules from the system disk
[13:53] <howarth> I can't find the url at the moment but I swear I read somewhere a blurb about bionic/cosmic nvidia using nouveau for gdm
[13:54] <gpunk> nope dont worry :)
[13:56] <howarth> I've been trying stuff like https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-install-the-nvidia-drivers-on-ubuntu-18-10-cosmic-cuttlefish-linux
[13:57] <howarth> which is weird that they keep updating that page yet never mentioning blacklisting at all
[13:57] <howarth> and the page was updated yesterday
[13:58] <gpunk> yes, as i said before, it should be automatic, but your case, you already tryed "things"
[13:59] <gpunk> oh, in thzt page, i just read it, THEY mention disabling nouveau too
[14:00] <gpunk> when you do stuff manually
[14:01] <howarth> well this card has two DVIs, a display port and HDMI so I have suspected that nouveau is shifting the nvidia driver onto another display port
[14:01] <gpunk> niet
[14:05] <howarth> I probsbly should also try a clean install of cosmic to test this as I am using an apt-get upgraded version of cosmic from bionic