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Fixing Nvidia issues on NixOS

7 min read

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In this article I will summarize my steps to solve nvidia issues on my nixos setup.

After Switching from Arch Linux to NixOS I focused my attention at fixing the hardware issues I had with Arch Linux. I have managed to solve the laptop-specific issues like non functional speakers and yet… I had trouble getting Nvidia to work.

A disclaimer - I am not that versed nor interested in hardware, so the nvidia and intel configurations went right over my head. Everyone says that working with nvidia on linux is a pain in the ass. Not only that I also chose to use wayland, which has it’s own problems with linux.

First attempts

I first began by looking at the NixOS hardware git repository, which contains pre-configured hardware configurations for a lot of systems. Sadly mine wasn’t on there, with the closest being Lenovo Yoga 7 14ARH7.

The next attempt came in copying alyraffauf’s NixOS config of my laptop, which can be found here. I appreciated the modularity and setup, however not everything worked as I wanted (but it did fix my audio issues) namely launching chromium I got an error MESA-LOADER: failed to open nvidia-drm

Solving the issues with Google Gemini

After going through the nix forums, github issues, etc. I have had enough. My knowledge is not that deep to understand the granular differences between Nvidia package versions - propriatery vs open, stable vs beta, drivers such as nvidia-vaapi-driver, etc.

Having access to Google Gemini’s Deep Research with 2.5 Pro I tried to research the ways to refactor all the files I had copied from alyraffauf’s setup and asked it to help me solve the MESA-LOADER issue.

Remarkably it:

  1. found the model and component versions of my laptop
  2. a way to determine PCI Bus IDs (Crucial for PRIME)
  3. reviewed the provided code and suggested modifications
  4. explained the options, what they meant, what values to set and why
  5. printed the whole configuration file as one
  6. showed all the 132 referenced websites

I then asked it to split it into multiple modules to separate the concerns. I chose four in total: user software, user hardware, laptop graphics hardware, laptop audio hardware

Fixing nvidia-drm driver has no member named ‘date’

Trying to nixos-rebuild the modules produced a very cryptic error

error: builder for '/nix/store/jp80rqnlfvf05ps3g7rnqyp3zaic3fck-nvidia-x11-565.77-6.14.drv' failed with exit code 2;
       last 25 log lines:
       >   CC [M]  nvidia-drm/nvidia-drm-modeset.o
       >   CC [M]  nvidia-drm/nvidia-drm-fence.o
       >   CC [M]  nvidia-drm/nvidia-drm-helper.o
       >   CC [M]  nvidia-drm/nv-kthread-q.o
       >   CC [M]  nvidia-drm/nv-pci-table.o
       >   CC [M]  nvidia-drm/nvidia-drm-gem-nvkms-memory.o
       >   CC [M]  nvidia-drm/nvidia-drm-gem-user-memory.o
       >   CC [M]  nvidia-drm/nvidia-drm-gem-dma-buf.o
       > nvidia-drm/nvidia-drm-drv.c:1907:6: error: 'struct drm_driver' has no member named 'date'
       >  1907 |     .date                   = "20160202",
       >       |      ^~~~
       > nvidia-drm/nvidia-drm-drv.c:1907:31: warning: initialization of 'unsigned int' from 'char *' makes integer from pointer without a cast []
       >  1907 |     .date                   = "20160202",
       >       |                               ^~~~~~~~~~
       > nvidia-drm/nvidia-drm-drv.c:1907:31: note: (near initialization for 'nv_drm_driver.driver_features')
       > nvidia-drm/nvidia-drm-drv.c:1907:31: error: initializer element is not computable at load time
       > nvidia-drm/nvidia-drm-drv.c:1907:31: note: (near initialization for 'nv_drm_driver.driver_features')
       > make[4]: *** [/nix/store/1wjcww3hgrf7ymfmss9zw2g13b03rg2k-linux-6.14-dev/lib/modules/6.14.0/source/scripts/Makefile.build:207: nvidia-drm/nvidia-drm-drv.o] Error 1
       > make[4]: *** Waiting for unfinished jobs....
       > make[3]: *** [/nix/store/1wjcww3hgrf7ymfmss9zw2g13b03rg2k-linux-6.14-dev/lib/modules/6.14.0/source/Makefile:1994: .] Error 2
       > make[2]: *** [/nix/store/1wjcww3hgrf7ymfmss9zw2g13b03rg2k-linux-6.14-dev/lib/modules/6.14.0/source/Makefile:251: __sub-make] Error 2
       > make[2]: Leaving directory '/build/NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-565.77/kernel'
       > make[1]: *** [Makefile:251: __sub-make] Error 2
       > make[1]: Leaving directory '/nix/store/1wjcww3hgrf7ymfmss9zw2g13b03rg2k-linux-6.14-dev/lib/modules/6.14.0/source'
       > make: *** [Makefile:115: modules] Error 2
       For full logs, run 'nix log /nix/store/jp80rqnlfvf05ps3g7rnqyp3zaic3fck-nvidia-x11-565.77-6.14.drv'.
error: 1 dependencies of derivation '/nix/store/f4kgcf10rqmi0gp5hzlsdrhzfz3p4v3c-etc.drv' failed to build
error: 1 dependencies of derivation '/nix/store/slg73j2qvlahk8dqggkhdz6xl14j1qa6-firmware.drv' failed to build
error: 1 dependencies of derivation '/nix/store/awv16bbx3nz7xylfwvayyz7y1l72cw48-system-path.drv' failed to build
error: 1 dependencies of derivation '/nix/store/svsx31a7yslb59fbrvzw08vwsbqdm46y-nixos-system-yoga-24.11.20250325.d02d88f.drv' failed to build

After gemini researched a bit, it suggested some options, first of which was to change boot.kernelPackages = pkgs.linuxPackages_latest; to a lower version such as linuxPackages_6_12. Another alternative was to change hardware.nvidia.package = config.boot.kernelPackages.nvidiaPackages.stable; to a different version.

Lowering the linux version to 6.12 fixed the issue for me.

Fixing libva error: /run/opengl-driver/lib/dri/nvidia_drv_video.so init failed

From one error to another. Launching chromium now produced a different error

libva error: /run/opengl-driver/lib/dri/nvidia_drv_video.so init failed

Gemini told me that the env variable $LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME should not be set, but after printing the variable it was indeed set to “nvidia”. After searching a little I have found that in my hyprland config I have included the line env = LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME,nvidia which I had to remove.

Verifying that everything works

As a last thing I asked Gemini how to check that everything works as expected. The response was as follows:

Here’s a breakdown of how you can verify that the key parts of your setup are working correctly and how to generally check for errors:

1. Verify Your Current Setup:

  • Kernel Version: Confirm you are indeed running the kernel you switched to.
uname -r

(This should output a version starting with 6.12.x)

  • Nvidia Driver and GPU Status: Check if the Nvidia driver is loaded and recognizes your GPU.
nvidia-smi

(This should show details about your Nvidia GPU, the driver version (likely 565.77), and ideally low power usage/no running processes if nothing demanding is running)  

  • PRIME Render Offload: Verify that OpenGL rendering defaults to the Intel GPU but can be offloaded to Nvidia.
# Check default renderer (should be Intel)
glxinfo -B | grep "OpenGL renderer string"
 
# Check offloaded renderer (should be Nvidia)
nvidia-offload glxinfo -B | grep "OpenGL renderer string"

(You might need to install mesa-utils via environment.systemPackages if glxinfo isn’t found)  

  • Video Acceleration (VA-API): Check if both Intel and Nvidia VA-API drivers are recognized correctly.
# Check default VA-API (should show Intel iHD driver)
vainfo
    
# Check offloaded VA-API (should show Nvidia driver)
nvidia-offload vainfo

(This tests if the system can correctly select the VA-API driver based on whether nvidia-offload is used. The libva error:... init failed should be gone now when running applications like Chromium normally. You need libva-utils installed for vainfo)

  • Speaker Fix: Play some audio and confirm the bass speakers are working. You can also check the status of the systemd service:
systemctl status yoga-speaker-fix.service
journalctl -u yoga-speaker-fix.service

(Look for successful execution messages in the journal)  

  • Power Profiles Daemon: Check if the power management service is active.
systemctl status power-profiles-daemon.service

(This should show “active (running)“. The UPower errors in Chromium might disappear if this service is running correctly, as it’s the modern replacement)

  • Hyprland Environment Variables: (Optional) You can check if the environment variables set in your NixOS config are active within your Hyprland session:
echo $GBM_BACKEND
echo $NIXOS_OZONE_WL

(These should reflect the values set in graphics.nix)

Conclusion

In the end I have managed to successfully configure Nvidia (or at least I hope I did). The good thing is that this being NixOS I can easily reproduce it next time. But to tell the truth I have no idea what I just configured and I will just hope that it works in the future. Happy hacking.

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