nvidia-driver 510.73 stuck at login screen / xorg segfault 0x0 (workaround)

Support Driver and Hardware
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Hello all,
when updating nvidia-driver from 470 to 510.73.08 it seems there is a problem with the new driver. I discovered some stuff that I couldn’t find on the forums here so will include this, hopefully it is helpful. (everything else in Parrot works great, this is just the spot i get problems with). This was on a desktop model, not a laptop.

In my case, it works fine on the login screen then when the user session tries to start it crashes. /var/log/Xorg.1.log reports: “Segmentation fault at 0x0” with backtrace to OsLookupColor.

I got it working by going back to the older version driver after cleaning out the packages and rebooting a few times.

Workaround: The older driver that is working is nvidia-tesla-470-driver. All of these are on parrot/non-free. Also nvidia-tesla-470-kernel-dkms should be included.

I tried removing all the nvidia drivers and installing the 515 .run proprietary one and same result with segfault. In the process I noticed that unlike most of the other nvidia packages which are at 510.73, nvidia-persistenced is still at 470.103.

Note If nvidia-persistenced is still running as a service then the kernel extensions stay actively loaded and you cannot run the .run proprietary driver installer.
service nvidia-persistenced stop
This service apparently exists to reduce startup time for sessions. it has an option nvidia-persistenced --no-persistence-mode to seemingly suppress it launching.
Check: lsof /dev/nvidia* tells if something is still running.

Likewise you probably need to shudown lightdm service as well. And use init 3 to leave the graphic interface runlevel. or systemctl isolate multi-user.target does this pretty slowly, but use checks to see if it has really worked.

to check the kernel: use lsmod | grep nvidia
modprobe -r nvidia
modprobe -r nvidia_drm
modprobe -r nvidia_modset

To clean out the packages:
dpkg -P $(dpkg -l | grep nvidia | awk '{print $2}')
(note ‘nvidia’ may be too broad a selection but it worked for me)
then:
apt remove nvidia-installer-cleanup nvidia-alternative nvidia-support nvidia-legacy-check and apt autoremove

Other misc things: Apart from that everything seems to work out, possibly use dpkg-reconfigure lightdm, check for missing ~/.Xauthority files, backup the /etc/X11/xorg.conf ,

What is really the problem? I am hardly sure but i may have found it in a linux mint thread. . It may involve xorg-server or marco issue related to MATE (link) - also Ubuntu MATE report similar problems w Nvidia 495 and 510.

Purportedly a bug in marco or xorg which can be patched this way. Something called “compositor uses present extension” (bug thread here

I seem to have xserver-xorg-core 1.20.11-1+deb11u1 and the mint people think this issue is fixed in xorg 21.1.3 . Or possibly per here fixed in marco - 1.26.0-3ubuntu0 . currently I have marco 1.24.1-3.

Seems like i should use timeshift to snapshot to rollback from this stuff.

  • Parrot version in use 5.0 Electric Ara

  • Kernel version 5.18.0-1parrot1-amd64

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I’m afraid new kernel 5.18 changed something in their API so not only core nvidia driver but the drivers for older devices could have critical bugs.

We noticed that as well. But segment fault doesn’t look like that problem (unless i didn’t remember). I helped an user to fix it by disable macro in the recovery mode. It’s not the best way because he got some other problems when system is running.

For now we are focusing on our milestones to release next version. This nvidia and macro problem is 1 of our major point. I can’t make a promise but we are doing our best.

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I also run into these issue today running the lasted version of Parrot OS 5.1 w/ MATE desktop.
Kernel version 6.0.0-2parrot1-amd64
nvidia-driver version 510.85.02-5parrot1
xserver-xorg 2:1.20.11-1+deb11u2

The bug does not affect all desktop environments, openbox for example works for me.

The workaround from the linked Github issue solves the problem for me using MATE:
gsettings set org.mate.Marco.general compositing-manager false

The underlying issue in xorg-server is fixed upstream (present: Check for NULL to prevent crash (22d58188) · Commits · xorg / xserver · GitLab)
and Parrot devs should ship this patch or update xorg-server to 21.1.4 (the Debian bookworm version of the package).

@dmknght do the devs need any further information?

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Yeah it’s only Mate Marco afaik

We have told this solution for users. Well maybe we forgot it on here (or it is in the other topics)

I have to tell Palinuro about it but he’s kinda overloading the work. Let me note it somewhere so i can remind him.

That’s perfect. Thank you for the comment. We are going to update the nvidia-driver as well because some devices (Nvidia) don’t work with the kernel 6.0 (include mine LoL). So I hope there won’t be any new issues

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Thanks so much for this @lebrinkma . I was able to get nvidia driver 510 running on Linux 6 . Finally back in action this week!

Everyone else please note this gsettings set is specific to the user you are logging in as. It is not a systemwide setting - so if you apply gsettings as root user it does not go to the other users. (Glad I realized this - was not familiar with gsettings but it makes sense I suppose)

Also thank you palinuro and @dmknght for managing all these questions and device driver issues.

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