NVIDIA on Lenovo P50 and Fedora 28

NVIDIAonLenovoP50andFedora 28.txt

I have a Lenovo P50 ThinkPad that I am issued at work.  I run the latest Fedora on my primary laptop for years but
have avoided running the NVIDA graphics drivers because installation was manual and could break with kernel updates.

I updated my personal Dell XPS 15 to use the new NVIDIA drivers that are now supported in Fedora 28 I think these were suppose to come from rpm-fusion but it looks like they are in Fedora 28 tree, I could be wrong.  The install was as easy as just installing the nvidia-driver package and reboot.  This worked without any issues.  I could launch nvidia-settings and glxgears without any issues.

The purpose of this Gist post is to document how I got the NVIDIA drivers from Fedora 28 on the P50.  It was not as easy as installing nvidia-driver and rebooting.  

For starters, here are the specs for the P50:

  [root@kwr50p kurtis] # inxi -SG
  System:    Host: kwr50p.rchland.ibm.com Kernel: 4.17.14-202.fc28.x86_64 x86_64 bits: 64 Desktop: Gnome 2.32.0 
             Distro: Fedora release 28 (Twenty Eight) 
  Graphics:  Card-1: NVIDIA GM107GLM [Quadro M1000M] driver: nvidia v: 396.45 
             Display: server: Fedora Project X.org 1.19.6 driver: nvidia unloaded: modesetting 
             resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz, 1920x1080~60Hz, 1920x1080~60Hz 
             OpenGL: renderer: Quadro M1000M/PCIe/SSE2 v: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 396.45 
  [root@kwr50p kurtis] # inxi -SGMC
  System:    Host: kwr50p.rchland.ibm.com Kernel: 4.17.14-202.fc28.x86_64 x86_64 bits: 64 Desktop: Gnome 2.32.0 
             Distro: Fedora release 28 (Twenty Eight) 
  Machine:   Type: Laptop System: LENOVO product: 20EQS3B400 v: ThinkPad P50 serial: PC0QBLBK 
             Mobo: LENOVO model: 20EQS3B400 v: SDK0J40697 WIN serial: L1HF79C00M6 UEFI [Legacy]: LENOVO 
             v: N1EET71W (1.44 ) date: 08/31/2017 
  CPU:       Topology: Quad Core model: Intel Core i7-6820HQ bits: 64 type: MT MCP L2 cache: 8192 KiB 
             Speed: 800 MHz min/max: 800/3600 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 800 2: 800 3: 800 4: 800 5: 800 6: 801 
             7: 800 8: 800 
  Graphics:  Card-1: NVIDIA GM107GLM [Quadro M1000M] driver: nvidia v: 396.45 
             Display: server: Fedora Project X.org 1.19.6 driver: nvidia unloaded: modesetting 
             resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz, 1920x1080~60Hz, 1920x1080~60Hz 
             OpenGL: renderer: Quadro M1000M/PCIe/SSE2 v: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 396.45 
             
I followed the following the steps in the following post:
  https://www.reddit.com/r/LinuxOnThinkpads/comments/8s4s54/lenovo_t480_mx150_using_nvidia_drivers_on_fedora/

  # Disable Secure Boot in BIOS because I don't know how to sign the nvidia drivers and they don't get along.
  
  sudo dnf check-update
  sudo dnf update 
  sudo reboot
  
  # Enable third party repositories in Software App (gnome-software)
  # REF: https://fedoramagazine.org/third-party-repositories-fedora
  # Alternative: sudo dnf install fedora-workstation-repositories
  
  sudo dnf install nvidia-driver nvidia-xconfig glmark2
  sudo dnf remove xorg-x11-drv-nouveau
  sudo echo "blacklist nouveau" >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
  sudo dracut /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img $(uname -r) --force
  sudo reboot
  
After the reboot, I could tell a different video driver was being used.  I have LUKS enabled per company policy so instead of a nice fullscreen interface for the LUKS password, I got a console interface and prompt.  I can live with this.  

Here are some commands that showed the NVIDIA driver was loaded:

  [root@kwr50p kurtis] # lsmod | grep nvidia
  nvidia_drm             45056  2
  nvidia_modeset       1093632  3 nvidia_drm
  nvidia_uvm            925696  0
  nvidia              14061568  85 nvidia_uvm,nvidia_modeset
  drm_kms_helper        196608  1 nvidia_drm
  drm                   458752  5 drm_kms_helper,nvidia_drm
  ipmi_msghandler        57344  2 ipmi_devintf,nvidia

  [root@kwr50p kurtis] # grep glx /var/log/Xorg.0.log
  [    24.919] (II) LoadModule: "glx"
  [    24.920] (II) Loading /usr/lib64/nvidia/xorg/libglx.so
  [    24.962] (II) Module glx: vendor="NVIDIA Corporation"

When I tried to run the NVIDIA X Server Settings app (nvidia-settings) no GUI showed up.  Running it from the command line I got this error:

  ERROR: Unable to load info from any available system.
  
glxinfo and glxgears would also fail.

I spent a lot of time Googling but the solution to get nvidia-settings, glxinfo and glxgears to work as relatively simple.

  sudo dnf install nvidia-modprobe nvidia-query-resource-opengl-lib nvidia-texture-tools nvidia-xconfig glmark2
  sudo nvidia-xconfig 
  sudo reboot
  
Running nvidia-xconfig backed up /etc/X11/Xorg.conf file and created a new one.  I specifically did NOT have an Xorg.conf file but creating one with this command was the magic.
  
I have a USB-C port expander with an addtional HDMI port so I can run 2x displays with the laptop lid closed.  This messed up the script that sets up the displays using xrandr.  A small matter to change the device names.

I now have an operational Lenovo P50 ThinkPad laptop.