X Server Fails After Latest Update - Nvidia Driver

I’ve been totally happy in my new Manjaro wurld for the last 6 months or so, and I guess I got a little complacent, because I clicked through some Nvidia driver-related dependency warnings last night, just before letting Manjaro kick off another system update. Following that patch, X server won’t start. The system seems fine otherwise, and I tried a few things from an alternate TTY, including a rollback of some of the Nvidia packages. I also tried the fallback kernel from the boot menu, but this produces the same result. Let’s see…I also I also enabled and tested the Nouveau driver, but it failed with “unknown chipset: NV164,” which it might be possible to work around, but I’d really like to try getting back to a usable system with Nvidia.
I’m running this on slightly up-spec, overkill hardware, I realize, which is probably not helping. It’s a GeForce RTX 2060, driving a pair of BenQ 4K panels, but everything has been performing great until last night. I know this is probably just a matter of getting the kernel and / or driver packages back to supported versions or something similar, but at this point I’m slightly baffled. I’m fairly new at this sort of thing, and learning all the time.
Thanks very much for any input you may have, and if I can provide any additional info, please lmk. I really appreciate having access to a forum like this. Hopefully, someone else can benefit from this t-shoot. --cheers.

Oh…one other thing that might shed light on the broken dependency issue: Attempting to roll back this package produced an interesting output:

sudo pacman -U /var/cache/pacman/pkg/linux59-nvidia-460.67-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
loading packages...
resolving dependencies...
warning: cannot resolve "nvidia-utils=460.67", a dependency of "linux59-nvidia"
:: The following package cannot be upgraded due to unresolvable dependencies:
      linux59-nvidia

Additional, possibly useful information:

lspci output:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Device 9b43 (rev 05)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6th-9th Gen Core Processor PCIe Controller (x16) (rev 05)
00:08.0 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v5/v6 / E3-1500 v5 / 6th/7th/8th Gen Core Processor Gaussian Mixture Model
00:12.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Comet Lake PCH Thermal Controller
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Comet Lake USB 3.1 xHCI Host Controller
00:14.2 RAM memory: Intel Corporation Comet Lake PCH Shared SRAM
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Comet Lake HECI Controller
00:17.0 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Device 06d2
00:1b.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Comet Lake PCI Express Root Port #17 (rev f0)
00:1b.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Comet Lake PCI Express Root Port #21 (rev f0)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device 06b8 (rev f0)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device 06bc (rev f0)
00:1c.6 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device 06be (rev f0)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Device 0685
00:1f.3 Audio device: Intel Corporation Comet Lake PCH cAVS
00:1f.4 SMBus: Intel Corporation Comet Lake PCH SMBus Controller
00:1f.5 Serial bus controller [0c80]: Intel Corporation Comet Lake PCH SPI Controller
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation TU104 [GeForce RTX 2060] (rev a1)
01:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation TU104 HD Audio Controller (rev a1)
01:00.2 USB controller: NVIDIA Corporation TU104 USB 3.1 Host Controller (rev a1)
01:00.3 Serial bus controller [0c80]: NVIDIA Corporation TU104 USB Type-C UCSI Controller (rev a1)
02:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller: Sandisk Corp WD Black 2019/PC SN750 NVMe SSD
03:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller: Sandisk Corp WD Black 2019/PC SN750 NVMe SSD
05:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8125 2.5GbE Controller (rev 04)
06:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 06)

cat /home/blah/.local/share/xorg/Xorg.0.log | grep EE:

[ 10045.032] Current Operating System: Linux black-star 5.9.16-1-MANJARO #1 SMP PREEMPT Mon Dec 21 22:00:46 UTC 2020 x86_64
	(WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
[ 10045.044] (EE) NVIDIA: Failed to initialize the NVIDIA kernel module. Please see the
[ 10045.044] (EE) NVIDIA:     system's kernel log for additional error messages and
[ 10045.044] (EE) NVIDIA:     consult the NVIDIA README for details.
[ 10045.047] (EE) NVIDIA: Failed to initialize the NVIDIA kernel module. Please see the
[ 10045.047] (EE) NVIDIA:     system's kernel log for additional error messages and
[ 10045.047] (EE) NVIDIA:     consult the NVIDIA README for details.
[ 10045.049] (EE) NVIDIA: Failed to initialize the NVIDIA kernel module. Please see the
[ 10045.049] (EE) NVIDIA:     system's kernel log for additional error messages and
[ 10045.049] (EE) NVIDIA:     consult the NVIDIA README for details.
[ 10045.051] (EE) NVIDIA: Failed to initialize the NVIDIA kernel module. Please see the
[ 10045.051] (EE) NVIDIA:     system's kernel log for additional error messages and
[ 10045.051] (EE) NVIDIA:     consult the NVIDIA README for details.
[ 10045.053] (EE) NVIDIA: Failed to initialize the NVIDIA kernel module. Please see the
[ 10045.053] (EE) NVIDIA:     system's kernel log for additional error messages and
[ 10045.053] (EE) NVIDIA:     consult the NVIDIA README for details.
[ 10045.055] (EE) NVIDIA: Failed to initialize the NVIDIA kernel module. Please see the
[ 10045.055] (EE) NVIDIA:     system's kernel log for additional error messages and
[ 10045.055] (EE) NVIDIA:     consult the NVIDIA README for details.
[ 10045.058] (EE) NVIDIA: Failed to initialize the NVIDIA kernel module. Please see the
[ 10045.058] (EE) NVIDIA:     system's kernel log for additional error messages and
[ 10045.058] (EE) NVIDIA:     consult the NVIDIA README for details.
[ 10045.058] (EE) No devices detected.
[ 10045.058] (EE) 
[ 10045.058] (EE) no screens found(EE) 
[ 10045.058] (EE) 
[ 10045.058] (EE) Please also check the log file at "/home/blah/.local/share/xorg/Xorg.0.log" for additional information.
[ 10045.058] (EE) 
[ 10045.062] (EE) Server terminated with error (1). Closing log file.

everything “nvidia” from pacman pkg cache:

 35M -rw-r--r-- 1 root root  35M Nov 17  2020 lib32-nvidia-455xx-utils-455.45.01-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
 24M -rw-r--r-- 1 root root  24M Feb 25 09:15 lib32-nvidia-utils-460.56-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
 24M -rw-r--r-- 1 root root  24M Mar 18 22:54 lib32-nvidia-utils-460.67-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
 36M -rw-r--r-- 1 root root  36M Apr 23 05:45 lib32-nvidia-utils-460.73.01-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
 36M -rw-r--r-- 1 root root  36M May 13 01:04 lib32-nvidia-utils-460.80-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
 21M -rw-r--r-- 1 root root  21M Nov 24  2020 linux59-nvidia-455xx-455.45.01-4-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
 26M -rw-r--r-- 1 root root  26M Feb 25 09:15 linux59-nvidia-460.56-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
 26M -rw-r--r-- 1 root root  26M Mar 18 22:54 linux59-nvidia-460.67-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
 26M -rw-r--r-- 1 root root  26M Apr 23 05:45 linux59-nvidia-460.73.01-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
4.0K -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3.0K Dec 20 11:22 mhwd-nvidia-390xx-390.138-1-any.pkg.tar.zst
8.0K -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5.2K Jan  7 11:04 mhwd-nvidia-390xx-390.141-1-any.pkg.tar.zst
8.0K -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 7.3K Apr 20 12:58 mhwd-nvidia-390xx-390.143-1-any.pkg.tar.zst
8.0K -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5.0K Mar 16 08:33 mhwd-nvidia-460.56-2-any.pkg.tar.zst
8.0K -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5.2K Mar 18 22:54 mhwd-nvidia-460.67-1-any.pkg.tar.zst
 20K -rw-r--r-- 1 root root  19K Apr 23 05:45 mhwd-nvidia-460.73.01-1-any.pkg.tar.zst
 20K -rw-r--r-- 1 root root  19K May 13 01:04 mhwd-nvidia-460.80-1-any.pkg.tar.zst
 94M -rw-r--r-- 1 root root  94M Nov 17  2020 nvidia-455xx-utils-455.45.01-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
 84M -rw-r--r-- 1 root root  84M Mar 16 08:33 nvidia-utils-460.56-2-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
 84M -rw-r--r-- 1 root root  84M Mar 18 22:54 nvidia-utils-460.67-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
111M -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 111M Apr 23 05:45 nvidia-utils-460.73.01-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
111M -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 111M May 13 01:04 nvidia-utils-460.80-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst

That kernel is EOL = end of life for quite some time now. Please install another kernel from TTY
sudo mhwd-kernel -i linux510
for example
then boot into it and remove the 5.9 kernel
sudo mhwd-kernel -r linux59

then proceed with normal boot and see if you have to reinstall video-nvidia again trough mhwd.

Great! Thanks very much for the reply. I’ll give this a shot later.

I had the same problem. After I installed the 510 kernel as describte above, updated linux510-nvidia and everythinh started working again.

SWEET! The new kernel fixed everything! Thanks very much bogdancovaciu! Marking this solved.

heh…actually, there’s a complication. I ran the command to install 510, and pacman.log confirms. But then I just issued ‘sudo reboot’ and the system came back up with X and my DE as normal–cool. But…

So, the first command did in fact trigger a kernel build and deployment, at least that’s what pacman.log seems to indicate. But apparently, that’s not sufficient to make 5.10 the default on the next boot–there must be another step. In any case, simply triggering the 510 build appears to have rescued the system somehow.
Naturally, at this point since I have my system back, I want to tread lightly. Manjaro sez the system is up to date, but of course still on 5.9. I suppose I could boot into the Grub menu and explicitly opt for 510, which I’m assuming will present itself as an option. I don’t know …what do you think? Thanks!

UPDATE: OK, All good. The step of upgrading Linux510-nvidia was the last blocker. Thanks TONS, Lain! Now the systems boots into 5.10.

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