Good morning Ladies and Gentlelords,

I'm running Debian Trixie on a Lenovo ThinkStation S30. The Graphics
Card is new (GeForce GT 1030, nothing fancy, no gaming monster), it is supported by all drivers, I checked that with "nvidia-detect".

Adding contrib non-free non-free-firmware to sources.list is always the
first thing I do after the Distro installation is finished.

Now: This morning Xserver didn't start at boot. I had installed the nvidia-driver package (proprietary "flavour") the day before yesterday,
and now the screen read "failed to load systemd-modules-load.services"
(quoting from memory).

So after some trial and error I removed the driver withÿ

# apt remove --purge nvidia-*

and reinstalled the package, this time following the installation
instructions given in the Debian Wiki to the latter, starting with the appropriate Linux headers. The usual reboot was required because of the conflict with Nouveau, no surprises here.

After that, I prompted

# dkms status |grep nvidia

which returned

nvidia-current/550.163.01, 6.12.94+deb13-amd64, x86_64: installed nvidia-current/550.163.01, 6.12.95+deb13-amd64, x86_64: installed

so everything looked fine so far.

Then I prompted

# nvidia-settings

and the GUI popped up as it is supposed to, but the terminal also
returned the following message:


"error: XDG_RUNTIME_DIR is invalid or not set in the environment.

(nvidia-settings:1499): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **:09:03:58.532:ÿ
g_object_unref: assertion 'G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed
error: XDG_RUNTIME_DIR is invalid or not set in the environment."


I have to admit that I haven't got a clue about the latter. Would
anybody be so kind as to enlighten me? And perhaps tell me whether I'm
likely to run into another fatal ERROR which will prevent the Xserver
from starting, and if so, what can be done to avoid that?

Thank you very much for your attention.

Sincerely,ÿ
Frank


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Aw, SNAP! Of course it's got to be

"Nvidia-SETTINGS returns Error message"

Sorry about that, slip of the keys.

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On Tue, Jul 07, 2026 at 10:42:55 +0200, Frank Fricke wrote:

Now: This morning Xserver didn't start at boot. I had installed the nvidia-driver package (proprietary "flavour") the day before yesterday,
and now the screen read "failed to load systemd-modules-load.services" (quoting from memory).

I can't help with the underlying problem, but...

(with nouveau:)

# nvidia-settings

and the GUI popped up as it is supposed to, but the terminal also
returned the following message:

"error: XDG_RUNTIME_DIR is invalid or not set in the environment.

(nvidia-settings:1499): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **:09:03:58.532:? g_object_unref: assertion 'G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed
error: XDG_RUNTIME_DIR is invalid or not set in the environment."

This message is completely harmless. You can safely ignore it, and focus
on the actual problem (X won't start with the proprietary nvidia driver).

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Thank you, that's quite a relief.

I suspect that initially, I did an inappropriate installation of the nvidia-driver package by just promting apt-get install nvidia-driver
the day before yesterday.

Shortly after that came an update with a new kernel, and I assume the
nvidia implementation wasn't properly updated despite a complete
sources.list.

That's why I stressed the fact that I followed the Debian instructions
for installing the nvidia-driver package to the latter when I
reinstalled it. I hope all parameters required for the driver to work
will now be updated.

Well, fingers crossed...!

Cheers,
Frank


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On 7/7/26 3:42 AM, Frank Fricke wrote:

Now: This morning Xserver didn't start at boot

I've been bit by this multiple times, I eventually learned this was a
result of my installing

sudo apt install linux-headers-$(uname -r)

Thus, upon me running apt upgrade after another kernel update was
released my system would always break in the same way again. Installing
kernel headers without specifying version like so:

sudo apt install linux-headers-amd64

fixed this and makes it update the linux headers with the kernel update.



--- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Thank you for confirming what I suspected to be the case with my
initial driver install. As I said, I followed the Debian instructions
when I reinstalled the driver, and in the process the installer
notified me it would choose "linux-headers-amd64" instead of the header
for the current kernel. Neat, innit. Now I'm really curious about the
next kernel update...ÿ


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The anxiously anticipated kernel update came and went and everything is
A-Ok, so I'd consider this issue solved.

Thanks again for your attention everybody.

Cheers,

Frank

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