GUI not starting in Ubuntu 17.10

Solution 1:

I felt foolish after having similar issues and finding the solution, but since my errors are similar to yours, down to the module not found message, I thought I'd share in case it helps:

After reinstalling the nvidia-384 package for the third time, I noticed that it mentioned it was skipping building the modules for the new "low-latency" kernel because the headers couldn't be found. After following these steps, I was good to go:

sudo apt purge 'nvidia-*'
sudo apt install linux-headers-$(uname -r)
sudo apt install nvidia-384

Note that I did prevent gdm from using Wayland prior to trying anything, and from what I understand Wayland won't currently work with the nvidia binaries, so I'd advise ensuring it's disabled in /etc/gdm3/custom.conf by uncommenting the line #WaylandEnable=false.

Solution 2:

I had the same issue. Here is how I solved it.

1. I booted in the safe mode, selected TTY 4 (whatever) by pressing Ctrl + F4, logged in and removed all nvidia drivers using sudo apt remove --purge nvidia-*. It switched to the login screen.
2. I entered the Gnome desktop. Then I added a repo with the latest drivers using sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa.
3. Then I executed repo update sudo apt update.
4. I opened the Software & Updates > Additional Drivers and selected the newest driver (there were a few of them, and at the time of wtiting this text the newest was 387.12). The other versions just failed.