[gentoo-user] Nvidia kernel module API version mismatch

[Aleksander Okonski]

Hey,

I have run into a strange problem with my nvidia drivers and gentoo. I am
currently running kernel 4.14.14 and I upgraded my
x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers to 390.42 from 390.25. Once the new drivers were
installed I rebooted my laptop. Once rebooted I was unable to start the
xorg server using startx and was greeted with errors. The
/var/logs/xorg.0.log said that the problem was with the kernel module.
Looking at dmesg I see that I am getting the error:

NVRM: API mismatch: the client has the version 390.42, but this kernel
module has version 390.25. please make sure that this kernel module and all
NVIDIA driver components have the same version.

I therefor thought that maybe I forgot to "emerge @module-rebuild" so I ran
that and rebooted to make sure that everything was ok. However I am still
getting the same problem.

Looking at /usr/src/linux it is pointing to the correct kernel of 4.14.14
and running "modinfo nvidia" it shows that "filename:
/lib/modules/4/14/14-gentoo/video/nvidia.ko" and that version is 390.42.
The other nvidia modules (nvidia-drm, nvidia-modeset, and nvidia-uvm) show
that they are built for the correct kernel and that they are also version
390.42.

I have tried to debug this issue however all the recourse that I was able
to find mostly said to reboot or perform rmmod nvidia then modprobe nvidia.
However when I try to rmmod nvidia it is dependent on nvidia-modeset and
nvidia-drm. Trying to rmmod nvidia-drm will not work as I get the error
"rmmod error: module nvidia_drm in in use".

I therefor cannot understand why and where the error is coming from as it
seems like the kernel has the correct nvidia modules loaded. Any ideas on
how to fix it or any other suggestions?

Thanks,
Aleks