Blacklist breaks module with latest nvidia drivers

[willmcenaney]

Looks like nvidia may have changed their module config.
alias nvidia off no longer works in the blacklist

Similar to the below, but only started affecting us recently.
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1084829/modprobe-nvidia-throws-error-could-not-insert-off

[tseliot]

@willmcenaney do you mean that nvidia is loaded regardless?

[willmcenaney]

No, the 'could not insert 'off'' error happens and stops nvidia-smi from running correctly (unknown other effects)

[tseliot]

why is the driver blacklisted at all?

[willmcenaney]

prime-select intel adds the blacklist (hence me raising the issue here) - apologies I was a little sparse on detail i've pieced it together from a colleague

[tseliot]

@willmcenaney my question is why are you trying to load the nvidia module if you selected the "intel" profile?

[willmcenaney]

We're not - but because the blacklist errors it results in a broken nvidia-smi. Running modprobe nvidia just allows replication of the error (as nvidia-smi just tells you it can't communicate with the drivers).

Our end goal is to install nvidia drivers for parallel processing only. We are running prime-select intel to do so, however nvidia-smi outputs NVIDIA-SMI has failed because it couldn't communicate with the NVIDIA driver. Make sure that the latest NVIDIA driver is installed and running.

[tseliot]

Then "on-demand" mode is what you want, rather than "intel". The former doesn't blacklist the driver or use it to render the desktop.