Solved FreeBSD 13.0 Won’t Boot After NVIDIA Drivers Installed

[animortis]

Good afternoon all:

I didn’t experience this problem in 12.2, but with 13.0 I can’t get FreeBSD to boot up after I install NVIDIA drivers. The boot process freezes at the frame buffer. See attached image for error message. It's an Nvidia 1080 Ti on a custom-built machine. No other OS gives me any errors like this. Additionally, I can't even get into single user mode to edit the file to remove it. So basically, the system is DOA until I reinstall. Any idea how I can get past this?

Here’s how I install NVIDIA drivers:

1. Install Nvidia.
   1. ‘pkg install nvidia-driver’
   2. ‘pkg install nvidia-xconfig nvidia-settings’
   3. Edit /etc/rc.conf (sudo vi /etc/rc.conf)
      1. Add a line, ‘kld_list="nvidia-modeset nvidia”’
   4. Edit /boot/loader.conf (even if it’s not there yet) (sudo vi /boot/loader.conf)
      1. 'nvidia_load="YES"'
      2. 'nvidia-modeset_load="YES"'
   5. ‘sudo nvidia-xconfig’
2. Reboot

 

[mer]

Take a look at this thread.

[SOLVED] how to install the NVIDIA proprietary driver

Sweet!! If your regular user is part of the video group it should just work. Enjoy!

forums.freebsd.org

Basically:
Don't put anything in loader.conf
Append nvidia-modeset and nvidia to /etc/rc.conf line with kld_list
Don't do nvidia-xconfig
create /usr/local/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/driver-nvidia.conf with the following:

Section "Device"
    Identifier "NVIDIA Card"
    VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation"
    Driver "nvidia"
EndSection

You may need to add a line for BusId.

 

[Jose]

This may help too:

efi_check_space: Unable to expand staging area

Hi all, after installing FreeBSD 13 everything went fine. Once I put nvidia_load="YES" into /boot/loader.conf I get efi_check_space: Unable to expand staging area and the machine stops booting (frozen). Any help would be much aprreciated. Thanks in advance

forums.freebsd.org

 

[animortis]

These worked -- thank you! Modified my install instructions to the following:

1. ‘pkg install nvidia-driver nvidia-settings’
2. ‘sysrc kld_list="nvidia-modeset nvidia”’
3. ‘vi /usr/local/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/driver-nvidia.conf’
4. Add the following lines to the file:
   1. Section "Device"
   2. (Tab) Identifier "NVIDIA Card"
   3. (Tab) VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation"
   4. (Tab) Driver "nvidia"
   5. EndSection
5. Reboot

 

[mer]

The sysrc line make sure that everything you want on the kld_list line is there.
a "+=" will append to the line, if you do "=" it will replace existing line (you don't want to lose anything).

Glad it worked. If you google/duckduckgo with the right terms you find a bunch of solutions leading back here to the forums (that's what I did) so most of what I'm saying is a repeat of what others have said in the past.

 

[mer]

This may help too:

efi_check_space: Unable to expand staging area

Hi all, after installing FreeBSD 13 everything went fine. Once I put nvidia_load="YES" into /boot/loader.conf I get efi_check_space: Unable to expand staging area and the machine stops booting (frozen). Any help would be much aprreciated. Thanks in advance

forums.freebsd.org

Thanks Jose The "solution" is basically "don't add the nvidia or drm_kmod stuff to loader.conf. Put it in /etc/rc.conf/kld_list"
(My systems aren't booting uefi so I miss this use case)

 

[Cath O'Deray]

… worked …

If you like, mark your post as Solved. Thanks.

 

[SirDice]

1. Edit /etc/rc.conf (sudo vi /etc/rc.conf)
   1. Add a line, ‘kld_list="nvidia-modeset nvidia”’
2. Edit /boot/loader.conf (even if it’s not there yet) (sudo vi /boot/loader.conf)
   1. 'nvidia_load="YES"'
   2. 'nvidia-modeset_load="YES"'

Use kld_list in rc.conf or load the modules in loader.conf. Don't do both. For the NVidia drivers I would recommend using kld_list. And you don't need to load nvidia if you already included nvidia-modeset.