🟡 Medium   ⏱ 5–30 min  Last verified: 19 May 2026

📖 ~1 min read

Table of contents
  1. Symptom & Impact
  2. Environment & Reproduction
  3. Root Cause Analysis
  4. Quick Triage
  5. Step-by-Step Diagnosis
  6. Solution – Primary Fix
  7. Solution – Alternative Approaches
  8. Verification & Acceptance Criteria
  9. Rollback Plan
  10. Prevention & Hardening
  11. Related Errors & Cross-Refs
  12. References & Further Reading

Symptom & Impact

NVIDIA driver fails after kernel update, causing low resolution, no CUDA, or fallback to nouveau.

Environment & Reproduction

Ubuntu 24.04 desktop with proprietary NVIDIA drivers. Issue appears after apt full-upgrade and reboot.

Root Cause Analysis

DKMS module build failed due to missing linux-headers, Secure Boot signing mismatch, or unsupported driver branch.

Quick Triage

Check current GPU state with nvidia-smi and verify kernel with uname -r. Inspect module presence using lsmod | grep nvidia.

Step-by-Step Diagnosis

Review sudo journalctl -b -p err and /var/lib/dkms/*/build/make.log. Confirm installed headers match running kernel exactly.

Illustrative mockup for ubuntu-24-04-lts — ubuntu2404_b01_p03_diagnose
Review DKMS and kernel module build failures in logs — Illustrative mockup — Progressive Robot

Solution – Primary Fix

Install matching headers, purge bad driver packages, and reinstall recommended driver via ubuntu-drivers autoinstall; then reboot.

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Illustrative mockup for ubuntu-24-04-lts — ubuntu2404_b01_p03_fix
Reinstall correct NVIDIA driver and headers — Illustrative mockup — Progressive Robot

Solution – Alternative Approaches

Temporarily switch to nouveau for recovery, then pin a stable NVIDIA branch compatible with your GPU.

Verification & Acceptance Criteria

nvidia-smi returns device details, Xorg/Wayland starts normally, and CUDA workloads execute.

Rollback Plan

Boot previous kernel from GRUB Advanced options and restore prior driver package set.

Prevention & Hardening

Avoid force-installing unsupported branches; test kernel updates on staging before production rollout.

DKMS build failed, modprobe: FATAL: Module nvidia not found, Secure Boot module verification failure.

Related tutorial: View the step-by-step tutorial for Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.

View all Ubuntu 24.04 LTS tutorials on the Tutorials Hub →

Browse all common problems & solutions on the Tutorials Hub.

References & Further Reading

Ubuntu NVIDIA documentation, DKMS manual, and Secure Boot MOK enrollment guidance.

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