Fatigue sometimes causes you to do foolish and irrational things. That's why last night, driven by the desire and need to find a solution to properly cool my graphics card under Linux, I started a perilous operation consisting in modifying the configuration script of Nvidia's proprietary drivers. Something I should have done with my head rested, so much the tiredness caused by a full week of work did not allow me to reason clearly. Despite a rather late hour (around 2am), I took the firm decision to put my hands in the dirt and thus solve this slight dilemma.
With great power comes great responsibility
My GTX1080 has served me well in the past and I am still fully satisfied with its performance. This one has nothing to be ashamed of with the new range of GPUs available on the market, the Pascal architecture clearly sending steak as long as you are not a Ray-Tracing aficionado. The fact is that this summer has exceptional temperatures putting my hardware to the test. So I had to find a way to regulate the temperature of my graphic card. One of these solutions is to set its fans to manual mode, while keeping an eye on the temperatures. However, I was faced with a slight problem since the GUI configuration panel, desperately remains in automatic mode.
"So Nvidia, fuck you !"
These words thus released in my head, while taking again the attitude of Linus Torvalds during this mythical scene, I resigned myself to undertake research on the forums of Manjaro, in the hope of finding a manipulation which will be salutary for me. Indeed, I will have to go through the good old bash and insert a very particular command line that could unblock the situation.
sudo nvidia-xconfig --cool-bits=5
nvidia-settings -a “[gpu:0]/GPUFanControlState=1” -a "[fan:0]/GPUTargetFanSpeed=80"
So far, nothing serious or complicated. Until...
"Fuuuuuuuuu!!!!"
I rant and rave at my screen. I can't get these fucking fans to run the way I want them to. In the course of a new discussion, I discover that it's possible to make an automation in the drivers config script. So I decide to perform this task with an edit via nano, while passing root and rebooting my system... And that's the drama !
When they tell you that you have access to everything on Linux...
With my eyes wide open, I can only conclude that this was not the right way to proceed. My screen remains black, without any visible reaction or display. Worried at first, I then went into a dark rage. That's when I discovered that I had some mastery of the Quebec joual.
"Osti de cris de tabarnak de Nvidia de marde !"
Yes, I found myself screaming such nonsense while banging my fist on my desk. Without a doubt, it is the fact that I am talking a little too much with our Quebec members here. Still, in the end, I could only blame myself. It's three o'clock in the morning and I just fucked up my X.org server...
But in my misfortune, a glimmer of hope suddenly appears when I saw in the distance my USB key including a live version of my favorite distro. Not one, not two I insert it in the usb port of my tower and restart my machine completely. The screens lit up and it was with great relief that I could go to my home partition to remove the few extra lines of scripts I had added. I could finally sleep easy, I fixed my bullshit !