Possible mangled driver after kernel update

[Little Girl]

Hey there.

I seem to have made a mistake that could bite me when I boot the
computer the next time, so I thought I'd run it past all of you in
case someone out there knows what I ought to do next.

I grabbed my latest updates (in Kubuntu 22.04 LTS) as usual today.

I did this command to get a list of them so you can see what I got:

$cat /var/log/apt/history.log

The output is here: https://bpa.st/RAJQ

I used this command to check how many kernels I had after grabbing
the updates, since I had just gotten a new kernel:

$ apt list --installed | grep "linux-image"

The output is here: https://bpa.st/CIEA

There were three, and since the oldest one said "auto-removable" next
to it, I thought I could go ahead and clean it up, so I ran this
command:

sudo apt-get autoremove

The output is here: https://bpa.st/FKHA

The output contained this message that worries me: "Before uninstall,
this module version was ACTIVE on this kernel."

As a result, I ran this command to check if my video driver is gone:

apt list --installed | grep "nvidia"

The output is here: https://bpa.st/UEJA

Even though several packages are listed, I'm not sure whether what it
says is good or bad news since I haven't rebooted yet and it may
still be reporting what's still there since last boot, but only until
I reboot. Also, I don't really know what I'm looking at and it may be
showing me a partial driver or remnants of a driver rather than an
actual driver.

I went into IRC and asked for some guidance as to what my next steps
should be to figure out if everything is still okay and/or how to
make it okay again, with okay meaning to make sure I have an NVIDIA
driver installed without that extra third kernel having to be put
back. The only response I got was from one person who said, "You may
need to reinstall your NVidia binary drivers." Other than that, he
only said that he thinks everything will be fine.

I went to the official Ubuntu drivers page here (I know it says it's
for servers, but the community page, which isn't, redirects there
now): https://ubuntu.com/server/docs/nvidia-drivers-installation

That page gave me a command to check the version of my
currently-running driver and, once again, I'm not sure if its output
is good news or bad news since it may still be reporting on the
driver that was already loaded before I did all of this and which may
not exist when I shut down and start back up again. Here's the
command and its output:

$ cat /proc/driver/nvidia/version
NVRM version: NVIDIA UNIX x86_64 Kernel Module  535.183.01  Sun May
12 19:39:15 UTC 2024 GCC version:  gcc version 11.4.0 (Ubuntu
11.4.0-1ubuntu1~22.04) 

That page also gave me this command to check which drivers are
available, so I figured I'd run that, too, under the assumption that
it would only list ones that I don't currently have installed:

$ sudo ubuntu-drivers list

The output is here: https://bpa.st/SENQ

That page also gave me this command as a sort of generic way to
install a driver and I'm tempted to try it, but am not sure if it's
the correct next step, so I haven't run it yet:

sudo ubuntu-drivers install

For the sake of completion, I also noticed lots of references to
using a dkms command in the big output in the third paste-bin above. I
found this page:

https://askubuntu.com/questions/53364/command-to-rebuild-all-dkms-modules-for-all-installed-kernels

It gives me this dkms command that I might be able to use, but I also
haven't run it yet:

ls /boot/initrd.img-* | cut -d- -f2- | \
    sudo xargs -n1 /usr/lib/dkms/dkms_autoinstaller start

I have no idea whether it would be a good idea to run either of those
commands or if I should do some other sleuthing first. Hopefully one
of you will know.

If I haven't gotten any replies by bed-time, I'm going to roll some
dice and choose between (1) doing nothing and booting up in the
morning or (2) doing the installation command or (3) doing the
dkms command. For the moment, though, it's time for spaghetti.

For anyone who made it this far down in this message, you get two
brownie points for your patience.

-- 
Little Girl

There is no spoon.