NixOS 22.05 with Nvidia 1000M

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1

Hello, I have a Lenovo W520 laptop with the Nvidia 1000M chipset. It works fine with NixOS 21.11 but I can’t make it work with 22.05. Apparently it needs the legacy 390 drivers. I tried copying my working configuration from the 21.11 installation but it shows a message at boot about needing the legacy drivers, and it drives just the laptop display, not the displays plugged into the docking station.

What next please?

2

Firstly, both 21.11 and 22.05 are past EOL at this point. If you’re upgrading, go for 22.11.

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The manual explains how to use legacy drivers: NixOS 23.11 manual | Nix & NixOS

You can also try the nouveau driver (default if you don’t set a driver), I believe its performance is much closer to proprietary for legacy cards, and it’s not like you’ll be playing graphically intensive games on a 12 year old mobile gpu.

Edit: Hrm, maybe still not, power management is the big bugbear that they still haven’t cracked (yours is NVC0): FeatureMatrix · freedesktop.org. Oh well, hopefully with the new open source drivers.

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4

I am now thanks. My reply below is based on testing with 22.11.

5

The manual says to define services.xserver.videoDrivers but nixos-rebuild says that since 19.03, the correct name is hardware.nvidia.package.

With this configuration, when sddm starts, the two external screens do momentarily receive a signal, but nevertheless the login screen appears on the built-in laptop screen only.

{ config, pkgs, lib, ... }:

{
	hardware.nvidia.package = [ "nvidiaLegacy390" ];

	# For nvidia
	nixpkgs.config.allowUnfree = true;

	hardware.nvidia.prime = {
		# offload.enable = true;
		sync.enable = true;

		# Bus ID of the NVIDIA GPU. You can find it using lspci, either under 3D or VGA
		nvidiaBusId = "PCI:1:0:0";

		# Bus ID of the Intel GPU. You can find it using lspci, either under 3D or VGA
		intelBusId = "PCI:0:2:0";
	};
}

That hardware.nvidia.prime block is copied from my working 21.11 laptop (I have two W520s) and the momentary driving of the external displays occurs if it is removed. I also tried offload.enable = true; with the same results.

6

If you use hardware.nvidia.package you need to set an actual package, rather than a string:

{ config, pkgs, lib, ... }:

{
    services.xserver.videoDrivers = ["nvidia"];
	hardware.nvidia.package = config.boot.kernelPackages.nvidiaPackages.legacy_390;

	# For nvidia
	nixpkgs.config.allowUnfree = true;

	hardware.nvidia.prime = {
		# offload.enable = true;
		sync.enable = true;

		# Bus ID of the NVIDIA GPU. You can find it using lspci, either under 3D or VGA
		nvidiaBusId = "PCI:1:0:0";

		# Bus ID of the Intel GPU. You can find it using lspci, either under 3D or VGA
		intelBusId = "PCI:0:2:0";
	};
}
7

Nope, no change, regrettably. I tried offload.enable = true; as well, just in case, and although it’s not the NixOS way, I rebooted, to ensure that the selected kernel modules were loaded.

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That you should absolutely do when prodding kernel things :wink: At least unless you know for certain you can hot reload without a hitch.

Have you tried lsmod to see if the correct kernel modules are loaded? Checked the nvidia settings menu to see connected displays? Played with xrandr?

9

I don’t know what’s changed, but it is working now, so thank you tlater and tejing for your help.

[later] Nope, I had to revert to my other laptop running 21.11.

  1. One screen briefly flashes every five seconds or so.
  2. The JRE is sucking about 30% CPU doing nothing, so the machine runs slowly and hot

NixOS may have the greatest software distribution system ever, but it’s still the same software behind it all.

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10

If you find a solution, can you post your configuration.nix settings here ?

I think I was also able to activate my old 4200M GPU, but the mouse is very slow… and nvidia-settings can’t detect any display…

11

Sorry to disappoint but I managed to get Nouveau working adequately. As I see it, the Nouveau driver chain is only going to improve and the official Nvidia drivers are going to be harder and harder to deploy. My configuration is here – I hope it helps you.
Nouveau is by no means perfect for me and one particular defect is that if I undock my laptop and take it to another docking station with a different screen setup, it won’t adapt to the new layout, frequently leaving one screen showing ‘noise’. I have to log out and in again to fix that.

12

Thanks for your repply, nouveau work also for me, but my problem is with the HDMI sound output. I got no sound with it and got sound with nvidia legacy.
Maybe I can fix the sound problem with nouveau (if I look at the feature matrix for NVC0, which is my chipset, it should be ok) ?

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I really couldn’t say. I know that sound does work for me with the Nouveau drivers, so there’s no definition correlation of Nouveau with no-sound.