Hell of a time getting Nvidia drivers loaded under Fedora 28

DeaconFrost

DeaconFrost

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I'll post my system specs below, and I'll preface this by saying I'm no Linux expert. I'm attempting to set up a second tower to get more comfortable with Linux (even studying for my CompTIA Linux+ Exam). I'd rather use Ubuntu, but I'm hoping to stay with Fedora or CentOS since this is what's used for the test and what we use in my corporate environment.

That being said, no what set of steps or guides I try to follow, I end up with errors or booting to a blank, gray screen. I pulled the card and am using the onboard Intel graphics without an issue. I can always leave it this way, but then I'm missing out on figuring out what is wrong...and some Steam gaming.

My system specs are as follows:

Dell Optiplex 9010
Intel i7-3770
16 GB Corsair XMS
500 GB Samsung EVO 850

Thanks for any help or suggestions. Here's an example of a guide I've followed without any success. I did it with the GPU installed, though, so many that's my issue.
https://fedoramagazine.org/install-nvidia-gpu/
 
Have you tried disabling secure boot? Secure boot seems to be causing issues with Nvidia drivers lately.
 
If your using UEFI secure boot you will have to disable that.
Or you'll have to sign your kernel;
http://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/396.54/README/installdriver.html#modulesigning
I would say just disable UEFI .... as the nvidia driver is changing your kernel it needs to be signed. Having to sign it every time you change kernels is a bit annoying. Up to you more work but you can go either way.

Its also possible that you have to black list the open source driver nouveau. Red Hat doesn't bundle closed source stuff... so where other distros that do would take care of this step Fedora doesn't tend to do that.

I haven't used fedora in a long time myself... and when dealing with cent haven't really had to deal with NV. I have used Suse not too long ago... and with tumbleweed their rolling I did have to install the NV driver the ugly way. I would assume the same would work. Its only ugly in as far as you have to repeat the install whenever you update your kernel... as the distro packagers are not bolting on the NV code for you.

https://www.if-not-true-then-false.com/2015/fedora-nvidia-guide/
This seem like it may get you on the right path. Judging by the articles comment section it seems to work for most people.

Basically to break down what they are doing...
1) Make sure your system is up to date and using the latest kernel. (only because getting it working then updating your kernel 2 min later and having it not work would be annoying)
2) make sure you have the dependencies you require loaded.
kernel-devel kernel-headers gcc dkms acpid libglvnd-glx libglvnd-opengl libglvnd-devel pkgconfig
DKMS is the main one here (Dynamic Kernel Module Support) these packages ensure the nvidia driver install script will be able to bolt their code onto your kernel.
3) black list nouveau... the echo command is appending or creating a flag that tells systemd to not load the free driver (cause your going to load the NV one)
This guide goes further then I bothered with suse blacklisting it should be good enough... but ya why not just remove it.
4) Reboot to run mode 3 ... technically SystemD doesn't have a "runmode 3" anymore it calls it "multi-user.target" having said that...
if you reboot and have forgot to specificy the reboot to MUT.... you can also get into MUT mode by appending a 3 on your grub boot parameters;
When you see grub... hit E to edit the entry for your Fedora find
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT ="quite splash"
and append a 3
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT ="quite splash 3"
then hit F10 to boot with your change... and you will get to the text log in you want.
5) Run the NV script
6) reboot and you should be golden... if you used systemctl to set MUT mode, don't forget to use it again to set graphical.target or "run mode 5"

Hope it helps... I know it sounds a bit complicated. But its really not. your basically just using the DKMS system to bolt some non open code, Once you have done it a few times it will be pretty logical. With SUSE I always just kept a copy of the latest Nvidia install script in my /home and when ever the kernel was updated (which was often with rolling suse) I would just use grub to boot to run mode 3 (I found it easier then remembering to use systemctl) run the script, bolt the latest driver onto the latest kernel and reboot. When you update your kernel or the driver later obviously its less steps. You don't have to reblacklist the free driver or worry about depends ect.
 
I have secure boot disabled, but have been using UEFI. The Nvidia card is an eVGA 710 GT.
 
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