After updating and rebooting, the NVIDIA driver failed to load

[Q.Singularity]

My System Info

• Kernel 6.6.63-1 LTS
• KDE Plasma 6.2.4
• AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D
• X11

After updating and rebooting, the NVIDIA driver failed to load. I reinstalled the driver via the terminal and got the KDE log screen to load:

sudo mhwd -r pci video-nvidia
sudo mhwd -i pci video-nvidia

After rebooting, I got my usual login screen and proceeded to log into my account and everything was slow until it became fully unresponsive.

I forced rebooted the computer and switch from X11 to Wayland. Using Wayland I was able to get KDE up and running.

While checking the logs I noticed there’s a mismatched between the NVIDIA drives and the kernel module.

Driver version is 550.135 while the kernel module is 550.120.

[36356.158477] NVRM: API mismatch: the client has the version 550.135, but
               NVRM: this kernel module has the version 550.120.  Please
               NVRM: make sure that this kernel module and all NVIDIA driver
               NVRM: components have the same version.

 # modinfo nvidia                                                                                                                                         

filename:       /lib/modules/6.6.54-2-MANJARO/extramodules/nvidia.ko.xz
alias:          char-major-195-*
version:        550.120
supported:      external
license:        NVIDIA
firmware:       nvidia/550.120/gsp_tu10x.bin
firmware:       nvidia/550.120/gsp_ga10x.bin
srcversion:     7E8999DB9AD1F16F0BED033
alias:          pci:v000010DEd*sv*sd*bc06sc80i00*
alias:          pci:v000010DEd*sv*sd*bc03sc02i00*
alias:          pci:v000010DEd*sv*sd*bc03sc00i00*
depends:        
retpoline:      Y
name:           nvidia
vermagic:       6.6.54-2-MANJARO SMP preempt mod_unload 

# pacman -Qikk nvidia
Name            : linux66-nvidia
Version         : 550.135-2
Description     : NVIDIA drivers for linux
Architecture    : x86_64
URL             : http://www.nvidia.com/
Licenses        : custom
Groups          : linux66-extramodules
Provides        : nvidia=550.135  NVIDIA-MODULE
Depends On      : linux66  nvidia-utils=550.135
Optional Deps   : None
Required By     : None
Optional For    : None
Conflicts With  : None
Replaces        : None
Installed Size  : 51.02 MiB
Packager        : Philip Mueller <philm@manjaro.org>
Build Date      : sáb 23 nov 2024 20:03:36
Install Date    : dom 01 dic 2024 08:12:33
Install Reason  : Explicitly installed
Install Script  : No
Validated By    : Signature

linux66-nvidia: 14 total files, 0 altered files

X11 does not properly work after the update while running Kernel 6.6 LTS.

[Q.Singularity]

Solved, it was an issue specific to my system.

I have a left over boot partition from a previous installation with the same UUID as the current Manjaro setup. Both boot partition had the Kernel 6.6 LTS.

sblk -f | grep c5f6a03b-8181-48ff-8c31-0db089b89c2b                                                                                                    ✔ 
├─sdc2      ext4   1.0            c5f6a03b-8181-48ff-8c31-0db089b89c2b                
├─nvme0n1p2 ext4   1.0            c5f6a03b-8181-48ff-8c31-0db089b89c2b   

The update correctly place the NVIDIA 550.135 module on the new boot partition on the NVMe device but the system was using the kernel from the old partition on the SDC drive.

As quick solution, I mounted the old partition and update the kernel by rsync the the /boot directory on the NVMe device into it and rebooted. Now the correct version of the NVIDIA Kernel Module is loading:

sudo dmesg | grep NVR                                                                                                                                  
[   14.824489] NVRM: loading NVIDIA UNIX x86_64 Kernel Module  550.135  Thu Nov 14 00:09:29 UTC 2024

I will remove the sdc2 partition from the old Manjaro installation to avoid having this issue in a future update.