Geforce GTX 1650 - nvidia-settings 'ERROR: Unable to load info from any available system'

Question

I am trying to plug an external monitor to my laptop with a HDMI cable in order to have a dual screen.

When I do so, nothing happens, the external screen is not recognized at all. I think that's because the driver of my laptop's video card is not properly installed/enabled.

To install the drivers, all I did was

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa

and then used 'additional drivers' GUI to setup nvidia-driver-430 on my system.

I rebooted my machine and nothing changed, the external monitor is still not recognized...

When I try to launch nvidia-settings, I get this error :

ERROR: Unable to load info from any available system


(nvidia-settings:3585): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: 17:36:06.267: g_object_unref: assertion 'G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed
** Message: 17:36:06.271: PRIME: No offloading required. Abort
** Message: 17:36:06.271: PRIME: is it supported? no

Here's the output of nvidia-smi :

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 430.40       Driver Version: 430.40       CUDA Version: 10.1     |
|-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
| GPU  Name        Persistence-M| Bus-Id        Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan  Temp  Perf  Pwr:Usage/Cap|         Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
|===============================+======================+======================|
|   0  GeForce GTX 1650    Off  | 00000000:01:00.0 Off |                  N/A |
| N/A   39C    P8     1W /  N/A |      0MiB /  3911MiB |      0%      Default |
+-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes:                                                       GPU Memory |
|  GPU       PID   Type   Process name                             Usage      |
|=============================================================================|
|  No running processes found                                                 |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

I am running Xubuntu 19.04 with 5.0.0-20-generic kernel and I've disabled 'Secure boot' in the BIOS.

lsmod | grep -i nvidia :

nvidia_uvm            847872  0
nvidia_drm             45056  0
nvidia_modeset       1114112  1 nvidia_drm
nvidia              19025920  12 nvidia_uvm,nvidia_modeset
drm_kms_helper        180224  2 amdgpu,nvidia_drm
drm                   475136  9 gpu_sched,drm_kms_helper,amdgpu,nvidia_drm,ttm
ipmi_msghandler       102400  2 ipmi_devintf,nvidia

lspci | grep -i --color 'vga\|3d\|2d' :

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation Device 1f91 (rev a1)
05:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Picasso (rev c2)

sudo lspci -v -s 01:00.0 :

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation Device 1f91 (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
    Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 109f
    Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 68
    Memory at f6000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
    Memory at c0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
    Memory at d0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=32M]
    I/O ports at f000 [size=128]
    [virtual] Expansion ROM at f7000000 [disabled] [size=512K]
    Capabilities: [60] Power Management version 3
    Capabilities: [68] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
    Capabilities: [78] Express Legacy Endpoint, MSI 00
    Capabilities: [100] Virtual Channel
    Capabilities: [250] Latency Tolerance Reporting
    Capabilities: [258] L1 PM Substates
    Capabilities: [128] Power Budgeting <?>
    Capabilities: [420] Advanced Error Reporting
    Capabilities: [600] Vendor Specific Information: ID=0001 Rev=1 Len=024 <?>
    Capabilities: [900] #19
    Capabilities: [bb0] #15
    Kernel driver in use: nvidia
    Kernel modules: nvidiafb, nouveau, nvidia_drm, nvidia

This is really annoying... Anyone could help me out on this ? Thanks in advance

Answer 1

It looks like the Intel GPU is selected in your system (and disabled in BIOS) as the primary.

Run the followng command:

sudo nvidia-xconfig

Then run this command to select the Nvidia:

sudo prime-select nvidia

or, for Intel use the following command:

sudo prime-select intel

Answer 2

I finally found a solution to the problem.

1. Install drivers from PPA. There are many articles how to do that.
2. delete /etc/X11/xorg.conf.
3. switch to tty3 and shutdown Xorg: sudo systemctl stop gdm (for Ubuntu)
4. Make xorg.conf skeleton file from log: sudo Xorg -configure :0
5. Copy xorg.conf.new to etc: sudo cp /root/xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf

6. Change driver name in section "Device":

   Section "Device"
       ### Available Driver options are:-
       ### Values: <i>: integer, <f>: float, <bool>: "True"/"False",
       ### <string>: "String", <freq>: "<f> Hz/kHz/MHz",
       ### <percent>: "<f>%"
       ### [arg]: arg optional
       #Option     "SWcursor"              # [<bool>]
       #Option     "HWcursor"              # [<bool>]
       #Option     "NoAccel"               # [<bool>]
       #Option     "ShadowFB"              # [<bool>]
       #Option     "VideoKey"              # <i>
       #Option     "WrappedFB"             # [<bool>]
       #Option     "GLXVBlank"             # [<bool>]
       #Option     "ZaphodHeads"           # <str>
       #Option     "PageFlip"              # [<bool>]
       #Option     "SwapLimit"             # <i>
       #Option     "AsyncUTSDFS"           # [<bool>]
       #Option     "AccelMethod"           # <str>
       #Option     "DRI"                   # <i>
   Identifier     "Card1"
   Driver         "nvidia"
   BusID          "PCI:1:0:0"
   

7. Reboot

After that nvidia-settings will start properly.