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

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

2 Answers

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

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.