[FIX] NVIDIA Driver Problem

This post is for self-reference in case the problem occurs again.

The problem in question is this:

NVIDIA-SMI has failed because it couldn't communicate with the NVIDIA driver. Make sure that the latest NVIDIA driver is installed and running.

I have an NVIDIA GeForce 920M GPU on my laptop, which isn’t great for training stuff, but works well for testing, prototyping and running certain github repos out-of-the-box.

I have CUDA-10.1 and cuDNN already installed, and NVIDIA-418 driver was working fine with it. Something updated (I don’t know what) and the NVIDIA driver stopped working. After hours of searching and trying out different methods, I finally found one that worked for me.

$ sudo apt purge nvidia-*
$ sudo ppa-purge ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
$ sudo apt autoremove
$ sudo apt auto-clean

Open /etc/modprobe.d/disable-nouveau.conf to blacklist nouveau.

$ sudo vim /etc/modprobe.d/disable-nouveau.conf

Paste the following content in it:

blacklist nouveau
blacklist vga16fb
blacklist rivafb
blacklist nvidiafb
blacklist rivatv
blacklist amd76_edac
alias nouveau off
alias lbm-nouveau off
options nouveau modeset=0

Then re-add the PPA and install the driver.

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
$ sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall

Reboot.

$ sudo reboot

After this, the NVIDIA driver was working fine.

Side notes:

To enable GUI from the virtual terminal, run:

$ sudo init 5

In case virtual terminal opens up directly on startup, switch to GUI and then run:

$ sudo systemctl set-default graphical.target