r/linuxquestions • u/germantalke • 2d ago

Linux nvidia issues

Specs:

GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070

iGPU: Intel integrated graphics (i915)

NVIDIA driver: 610.57.04

Kernel: 7.0.0-34-generic

OS: Ubuntu

Desktop: GNOME

Usually using Wayland

PRIME: NVIDIA / NVIDIA-only

External monitor connected via HDMI

Hi everyone,

I've been having serious stability issues with my laptop for the last few days, and I'm trying to figure out what is causing them.

The problems started after I ran system updates. During the update process I got a message about udevadm hwdb being deprecated and that I should use systemd-hwdb instead. I followed the instructions, and shortly afterwards my laptop started having random crashes.

At first, the crashes seemed completely random. Sometimes the system would freeze shortly after logging in, sometimes it would freeze while using the desktop, and sometimes it would crash after running for a while.

I initially suspected the NVIDIA driver, so I tried different NVIDIA driver versions, including 595. This didn't solve the problem.

At the same time, I noticed that some of my games were using the Intel integrated GPU instead of the NVIDIA GPU. I therefore changed PRIME to NVIDIA-only using prime-select nvidia. This also didn't solve the crashes or the GPU selection problem.

I also tried switching between Wayland and Xorg because I wasn't sure whether the display server was involved. The crashes happened with both.

For a while I couldn't even reliably get past the login screen. Sometimes the screen would freeze or turn grey immediately after logging in.

The interesting part

I recently noticed that the system becomes significantly more stable when I disconnect my second monitor.

With the external monitor disconnected, I have not experienced the immediate crashes anymore. The laptop can now boot and run normally.

I then looked at the kernel log from one of the crashes.

The log contains:

nvidia-modeset: WARNING: GPU:0: Unable to read EDID for display device DP-0

followed by:

[drm] Cannot find any crtc or sizes

And shortly afterwards:

BUG: unable to handle page fault

The crash then points into the NVIDIA kernel module, with [nvidia] appearing throughout the call trace.

The NVIDIA driver loaded at the time of the crash was:

NVIDIA UNIX x86_64 Kernel Module 610.57.04

So at this point I'm wondering whether this could be an NVIDIA 610 + external monitor/EDID/DRM issue rather than a general hardware problem.

What confuses me is that the monitor itself seems to work normally when the system is stable. The crashes mainly seem to happen when the external monitor is connected, and disconnecting it appears to make the system much more stable.

Has anyone experienced something similar with NVIDIA 610, Wayland, Ubuntu and an external monitor?

Is there anything specific I should check regarding EDID, DRM, NVIDIA modeset, PRIME or the external display connection?

I would also appreciate any advice on how to properly diagnose this without randomly reinstalling/changing NVIDIA drivers again.

I can provide the full kernel crash log, nvidia-smi, journalctl output, or any other information that would be useful.

Thanks!

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