I have a Dell Precision 5820 Tower with an Nvidia NVIDIA GP107GL [Quadro P400] card (3 DisplayPorts) and two iiyama monitors in portrait mode. I run kernel 6.12.90+deb13.1-amd64.
For a long-forgotten reason, this machine boots into run level 3 (multi-user).
It was suffficient to type telinit 5 to get to the graphical interface.
When I installed Debian 13, the nouveau driver was not able to handle the two monitors, so I worked with one only. Finally I got tired of this and loaded nvidia-detect which told me that the meta package nvidia-driver would support my
card.
So I installed nvidia-driver (66 packages including g++). I then rebooted into run level 3 and saw the nvidia driver:
root@titan ~ inxi -v8 | grep -A2 Graphics:
Graphics:
Device-1: NVIDIA GP107GL [Quadro P400] driver: N/A alternate: nvidia
non-free: 550-570.xx+ status: current (as of 2025-04; EOL~2026-12-xx)
I typed telinit 5 and nothing happened - still in run level 3. I tried systemctl
isolate graphical.target but nothing happened, I was still in run level 3. Command systemctl get-default says "multi-user" so I ran systemctl set-default graphical.target and rebooted.
Still in runlevel 3. so I tried to enable graphical.target and got:
root@titan ~ systemctl enable graphical.target
The unit files have no installation config (WantedBy=, RequiredBy=, UpheldBy=, Also=, or Alias= settings in the [Install] section, and DefaultInstance= for template units). This means they are not meant to be enabled or disabled using systemctl.
Possible reasons for having these kinds of units are:
\u2022 A unit may be statically enabled by being symlinked from another unit's
.wants/, .requires/, or .upholds/ directory.
\u2022 A unit's purpose may be to act as a helper for some other unit which has
a requirement dependency on it.
\u2022 A unit may be started when needed via activation (socket, path, timer,
D-Bus, udev, scripted systemctl call, ...).
\u2022 In case of template units, the unit is meant to be enabled with some
instance name specified.
Here is /usr/lib/systemd/system/graphical.target :
[Unit]
Description=Graphical Interface
Documentation=man:systemd.special(7)
Requires=multi-user.target
Wants=display-manager.service
Conflicts=rescue.service rescue.target
After=multi-user.target rescue.service rescue.target display-manager.service
AllowIsolate=yes
Systemd's graphical.target is loaded and active?:
root@titan ~ systemctl status graphical.target
\u25cf graphical.target - Graphical Interface
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/graphical.target; indirect;
preset: enabled)
Active: active since Thu 2026-06-18 10:55:44 CEST; 6h ago
Invocation: 5e9208bc4b264e78b56e3f2489e16903
Docs: man:systemd.special(7)
This output has colour code green. Does this mean that the graphical interface
is running somewhere, or merely available to run??
Any suggestion or hint to get out of run level 3 would be very welcome, Roger


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.17
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Sat, 20 Jun 2026, john doe wrote:

On 6/20/26 10:52 AM, Roger Price wrote:

I typed telinit 5 and nothing happened - still in run level 3. I tried ...

You need to look in the logs to see what's going on..

I re-booted. Nothing in dmesg, but
journalctl -b | grep -i -e "multi-user" -e "graphical" -e "nvidia"
gives 70 lines. Here are the first 8?:
Jun 20 10:43:51 titan systemd[1]: Queued start job for default target
graphical.target.
Jun 20 10:43:51 titan systemd-modules-load[410]: Error running install command
'modprobe nvidia-modeset ; modprobe -i nvidia-current-drm ' for module
nvidia_drm: retcode 1
Jun 20 10:43:51 titan systemd-modules-load[410]: Failed to insert module
'nvidia_drm': Invalid argument
Jun 20 10:43:51 titan systemd-modules-load[439]: modprobe: FATAL: Module
nvidia-current not found in directory /lib/modules/6.12.90+deb13.1-amd64
Jun 20 10:43:51 titan systemd-modules-load[437]: modprobe: ERROR: Error running
install command 'modprobe -i nvidia-current ' for module nvidia: retcode 1 Jun 20 10:43:51 titan systemd-modules-load[437]: modprobe: ERROR: could not
insert 'nvidia': Invalid argument
Jun 20 10:43:51 titan systemd-modules-load[440]: modprobe: FATAL: Module
nvidia-current-modeset not found in directory
/lib/modules/6.12.90+deb13.1-amd64
Jun 20 10:43:51 titan systemd-modules-load[435]: modprobe: ERROR: Error running
install command 'modprobe nvidia ; modprobe -i nvidia-current-modeset ' for
module nvidia_modeset: retcode 1
Roger


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.17
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Sat, 20 Jun 2026, john doe wrote:

I typed telinit 5 and nothing happened - still in run level 3. I tried

I'd try https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/cant-get-nvidia-driver-to-work-on-deabian-13-rt-laptop/353618.

Thanks for the link, I can reproduce the first error messages in that
thread. Roger

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.17
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)