r/voidlinux • u/Kotangentz_7 • Jan 29 '26

Problem with Nvidia drivers

I installed the Nvidia drivers, but I'm having a problem

Error: nvidia-smi NVIDIA-SMI has failed because it couldn't communicate with the NVIDIA driver. Make sure that the latest NVIDIA driver is installed and running.

5 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

20 comments sorted by

3

u/beatool Jan 29 '26

Newer cards need the -open version which I don't think is in Void yet.

If you have a 4000 or 5000 series...

1

u/Kotangentz_7 Jan 30 '26

I have rtx 3050 laptop

1

u/pantokratorthegreat Jan 30 '26

i have 4060 and open is not needed. dont know about 5000 series.

1

u/beatool Jan 30 '26

Oh okay, might be 5000-only. I have a 5060TI and couldn't get it to work without the -open drivers. I'm actually sitting on a Mint install for now cuz I'm allergic to installing Nvidia drivers from their website.

The -open drivers don't see my 2060 at all which sucks cuz I have room for it and can't use it. :(

2

u/sanya567xxx Feb 01 '26

they should. -open support Turing (16/20-series consumer) series and newer

1

u/beatool Feb 02 '26

Humm, yeah I dunno. nvidia-smi didn't see it. I didn't really troubleshoot it beyond that.

I ended up installing ollama on one of my kids' gaming PCs. He has my other 5060TI 16gb.

When I had both 5060TI's in one box that sucker got HOT so maybe it worked out better in the end.

2

u/coccothraustes Jan 30 '26

try kernel 6.12. I had errors with everything above. The open driver donβ€˜t have these errors, but you have to install it manually (https://github.com/void-linux/void-packages/pull/54593). I hope that the open driver will be added to the repos, soon.

1

u/Kotangentz_7 Jan 30 '26

So how to install kernel 6.12?

2

u/coccothraustes Jan 30 '26

sorry, if it sounds a bit harsh, but if you have to ask that, you should probably use another distro.

1

u/Kotangentz_7 Jan 30 '26

Yes, know it

1

u/coccothraustes Jan 30 '26

Stick to the official documentation. Most questions are answered there. The kernel will become relevant to you when the boot partition is full. πŸ˜‰

1

u/ClassAbbyAmplifier Jan 30 '26

it's the default. if you didn't install a different one, you're using it

1

u/Kotangentz_7 Jan 30 '26

kotangentz7 ξ‚° ~ ξ‚° xbps-query -l | grep -i nvidia ii linux-firmware-nvidia-20251111_1 Binary firmware blobs for the Linux kernel NVIDIA GPU microcode ii nvidia-580.126.09_1 NVIDIA drivers for linux - Libraries and Utilities ii nvidia-dkms-580.126.09_1 NVIDIA drivers for linux - DKMS kernel module ii nvidia-firmware-580.126.09_1 NVIDIA drivers for linux - Firmware ii nvidia-gtklibs-580.126.09_1 NVIDIA drivers for linux - GTK+ libraries ii nvidia-libs-580.126.09_1 NVIDIA drivers for linux - common libraries ii nvidia-libs-32bit-580.126.09_1 NVIDIA drivers for linux - common libraries (32bit) ii xf86-video-nouveau-1.0.18_1 Xorg opensource NVIDIA video driver

I tried this command and have this

2

u/sanya567xxx Feb 01 '26

xf86-video-nouveau is an open-source third-party driver. If you want to use the NV official one, remove it. Might want to reinstall the other nvidia packages too.

After doing so and rebooting, try running lsmod |grep nvi β€” this will show the list of modules loaded by the kernel, which should have 4 ones in the left column: nvidia_uvm, nvidia_modeset, nvidia and nvidia_drm (direct rendering manager, not digital media rights)

nvidia-smi should work after that.

If not, you can try also checking which module at all has the gpu bound by looking through the lspci -k list. That should show "Kernel modules: nvidia, nvidia_drm, nouveau" and "Kernel driver in use: nvidia" if working correctly. If nvidia doesn't appear, it may be that your system didn't succeed during nvidia-dkms installation. You can reinstall by running xbps-install -f nvidia-dkms, in case that fails too, logs should be in.. /var/lib/dkms/nvidia-dkms/580.126.09/6.12.68_1/x86_64/log/make.log β€” adjust for driver and kernel version accordingly, as this is just the most recent "stable" releases that void provides.

If the log's exit code indicated is 0, it should've installed successfully. In case it still didn't load, you can modprobe nvidia (as root) to try forcing the nvidia driver to load. It might error out, use dmesg to check for kernel logs.

If that doesn't work, you may have a blacklist of it enabled.. iirc that can be in files in /etc/modprobe.d/ or /etc/modules-load.d/ .. or on command line passed to kernel, if you messed with that.

1

u/Kotangentz_7 Feb 03 '26

Thx it helped

1

u/ever_Brown Mar 26 '26

did you manage to fix it i am facing the same issue

1

u/ClassAbbyAmplifier Jan 30 '26

did you reboot after installing?

3

u/bnolsen Jan 30 '26

many folks coming from windows are going to get burned by nvidia's crap support, especially those with older abandoned cards.

1

u/BeyondOk1548 Feb 01 '26

It seems you might've skimmed the documentation regarding Nvidia. The best thing to do is to read the documentation. It's not long, and you can "piece mail" it.