Kernel refuses to load nvidia driver

Rocky Linux Tech Help
1

I followed all the installation steps posted on this forum and several other online resources. All the installation steps go to completion and showed success. After I boot up I can run this command: dmesg | grep nvidia
and I get this output:
nvidia: loading out-of-tree module taints kernel.
nvidia: module license ‘NVIDIA’ taints kernel.
nvidia: module verification failed: signature and/or required key missing - tainting kernel

I’ve seen information that indicates this is related to secure boot but I don’t have secure boot enabled.

2

Tainting the kernel is expected, thus the message. I suppose the nvidia driver is working fine for you. (?)

3

No it’s not. Didn’t you read the title of my post?? Right now I don’t have the graphics capabilities of my video card except what I get from the framebuffer driver. If I can’t get this fixed I guess the only other options would be going back to the nouveau driver – or abandoning Rocky Linux altogether and going nack to Suse.

4

The lines you posted don’t show the module being blocked, it just changes the state of the kernel to tainted.

If you look at lsmod output, can you see the module loaded? If not then there’s likely more lines in the dmesg output that is relevant but may not mention the module by name.

5

I’ve closely examined the output from lsmod - there is no nvidia driver being loaded. Here is some more lines from dmesg ouput dealing with this driver:

nvidia-nvlink: Nvlink Core is being initialized, major device number 235
NVRM: The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti GPU installed in this system is
NVRM: supported through the NVIDIA 390.xx Legacy drivers. Please
NVRM: visit Unix Drivers | NVIDIA for more
NVRM: information. The 560.35.03 NVIDIA driver will ignore
NVRM: this GPU. Continuing probe…
NVRM: No NVIDIA GPU found.

This is telling me the driver from the Linux repos won’t work with my GPU and that I need the 390 from Nvidia.

6

What packages did you install? If the card needs the 390 driver, and you have elrepo enabled, then you can install this:

dnf install kmod-nvidia-390xx

if you don’t have elrepo enabled:

dnf install elrepo-release

from what I see above you have the wrong driver installed 560.35.03 so no wonder it doesn’t work if your card is not supported by that version.

Also, the driver I mentioned above is for Rocky 8, you failed to mention if you have Rocky 8 or 9 installed? That said, rpmfusion repository should have the 390 driver available - at least I use that under Fedora and should work for Rocky 9.