Load nouveau at boot for secondary gpu

tl;dr
How do I load a kernel module at boot? Preferably after the Nvidia modules so that they are still used correctly.

I have a 2080ti as my primary gpu, working correctly with bazzite-nvidia-open. I also have a 1070 installed that is not compatible with the nvidia driver version used by bazzite-nvidia-open.

When I 'sudo modprobe nouveau' the 1070 springs to life and I am able to use the monitors attached to it. lspci -v reports the 2080ti using the nvidia driver and the 1070 using the nouveau driver. Perfect!

I've tried creating nouveau.conf in /etc/modules-load.d/ , but I suspect this didn't work because of the read-only nature of bazzite's root fs (somehow).

What is the correct way to load the nouveau module at boot?

EDIT: A similar question was asked earlier this month, I'll keep an eye on that one as well. https://discordapp.com/channels/1072614816579063828/1377988986009817148

Solution

You can't do this

Jump to solution

CheckYourFax•5/31/25, 5:35 PM

add nouveaunouveau to a .conf file: /etc/modules-load.d/*.conf/etc/modules-load.d/*.conf

CheckYourFax•5/31/25, 5:35 PM

this will cause nouveau to load at boot

CheckYourFax•5/31/25, 5:35 PM

it doesn't handle PCI binding though, but since you told me that it automatically works after you modprobe nouveau, then it should do the trick

CheckYourFax•5/31/25, 5:36 PM

if the folder doesn't exist, you can create it, its a part of systemd

targetawOP•5/31/25, 5:36 PM

Good morning. I have created nouveau.conf in /etc/modules-load.d and so far nouveau doesn't load at boot

targetawOP•5/31/25, 5:37 PM

The contents of nouveau.conf is simply 'nouveau'. I tried nouveau.ko also

CheckYourFax•5/31/25, 5:41 PM

Try making a systemd service

CheckYourFax•5/31/25, 5:43 PM

[Unit]
Description=Load nouveau driver
After=graphical.target

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/sbin/modprobe nouveau

CheckYourFax•5/31/25, 5:43 PM

this for example

targetawOP•5/31/25, 5:43 PM

I have what might be a stupid question

Ttargetaw I have what might be a stupid question

CheckYourFax•5/31/25, 5:44 PM

no such thing as stupid questions

targetawOP•5/31/25, 5:44 PM

I thought about just creating a cron job to run modprobe nouveau for me. Is creating a systemd service a less jankey way to do basically the same thing?

targetawOP•5/31/25, 5:44 PM

Or is it more involved than that?

targetawOP•5/31/25, 5:45 PM

It seems like the systemd service specifically calls out WHEN to load the module, which seems better than just whenever cron runs, which maybe is after boot is complete?

targetawOP•5/31/25, 5:59 PM

Creating nouveau.service and running 'systemctl start nouveau.service' does load the module correctly, but this doesn't happen on it's own at boot. systemctl enable nouveau.service compalins that the service doesn't have any installation config and thus isn't meat to be enabled or disabled with systemctl. I'll keep working on how to correct that.

targetawOP•5/31/25, 6:13 PM

Adding an [Install] section to nouveau.service that contains WantedBy=multi-user.target allowed me to run systemctl enable nouveau.conf, but the module still isn't being loaded at boot. I'll keep working on it

targetawOP•5/31/25, 6:25 PM

Changing WantedBy to default.target and re-enabling (and deleting the old symlink from multi-user.target.wants) and now the module is loaded at boot. BUT there is a lot of instability now that I don't believe was present when I ran the command manually. I'm going to keep testing to confirm.

targetawOP•5/31/25, 6:29 PM

Confirmed. I'm going to look into a way to run nouveau.service after login.

Solution

Kyle Gospo•5/31/25, 6:35 PM

You can't do this

Kyle Gospo•5/31/25, 6:36 PM

They will conflict

Kyle Gospo•5/31/25, 6:36 PM

The other card would also be locked at 2D clock speeds even with nouveau present

Kyle Gospo•5/31/25, 6:36 PM

So it's worthless to you

targetawOP•5/31/25, 6:36 PM

Ahh ok, so even though it 'looks' like it's working there's something very wrong about it that I can't see

Kyle Gospo•5/31/25, 6:36 PM

Maybe consider a pass through GPU VM instead

Kyle Gospo•5/31/25, 6:37 PM

Really the only way this could be anything more than a brick

targetawOP•5/31/25, 6:38 PM

Understood. I'm going to stress test how I'm doing it now out of curiosity to see how it breaks, but ultimately I'll plan on either passing the second GPU to a VM or just buying another non-nvidia card

targetawOP•5/31/25, 7:43 PM

Figured out that having two active NVIDIA gpu's can cause org.mozilla.firefox to not launch with the following error: [GFX1-]: More than 1 GPU from same vendor detected via PCI, cannot deduce device

I imagine this is just one of the many problems this cofig would cause.

targetawOP•5/31/25, 7:48 PM

Thank you CheckYourFax and Kyle for your help!

Load nouveau at boot for secondary gpu

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