Nvidia drivers are marked as "auto" at installation and thus removed by `apt autoremove`

Workaround: Install the Nvidia package manually, for example `apt install nvidia-384` (or whichever version works best for your hardware).

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. It seems that your bug report is not filed about a specific source package though, rather it is just filed against Ubuntu in general. It is important that bug reports be filed about source packages so that people interested in the package can find the bugs about it. You can find some hints about determining what package your bug might be about at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage. You might also ask for help in the #ubuntu-bugs irc channel on Freenode.

To change the source package that this bug is filed about visit https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1955047/+editstatus and add the package name in the text box next to the word Package.

[This is an automated message. I apologize if it reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]

this is going to require follow-up handling in ubuntu-release-upgrader to fix the state on upgrade to 22.04.

Please attach the contents of /var/log/installer from the affected system.

I tested an installation of Focal using the Ubuntu 20.04.3 installation media (and choosing to install restricted software) and while I didn't have nvidia hardware some packages were suggested for auto-removal - chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra, gstreamer1.0-vaapi, libgstreamer-plugins-bad1.0-0 and libva-wayland2. These were also in the autoremove list for the reporter.

Attached is /var/log/installer/syslog

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

Testing this again today I discovered that "ubuntu-restricted-addons" was not installed on the resultant system and that by installing it nothing was autoremovable anymore.

I tested a daily install of Ubuntu 20.04 from 20220131 and no packages are suggested for autoremoval and ubuntu-restricted-addons was installed after the reboot. However, I didn't test with nvidia hardware so its possible the bug in the original description still exists.

Additionally, Steve's point about this needing fixing in ubuntu-release-upgrader might still apply in that systems that install from Ubuntu 20.04.3 media may have had packages autoremoved that should not have been.

I installed a new Focal desktop on a machine with a NVidia discrete GPU yesterday using a daily ISO, and the resulting system didn't have any package marked to autoremove. The nvidia-driver-510 package was marked as manually installed, but its dependencies were correctly marked as auto-installed.

MP to fix the issue at upgrade time: https://code.launchpad.net/~schopin/ubuntu-release-upgrader/+git/ubuntu-release-upgrader/+merge/427718

An upload of ubuntu-release-upgrader to jammy-proposed has been rejected from the upload queue for the following reason: "Contains Python cache detritus".

Hello quazgar, or anyone else affected,

Accepted ubuntu-release-upgrader into jammy-proposed. The package will build now and be available at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-release-upgrader/1:22.04.13 in a few hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation on how to enable and use -proposed. Your feedback will aid us getting this update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please add a comment to this bug, mentioning the version of the package you tested, what testing has been performed on the package and change the tag from verification-needed-jammy to verification-done-jammy. If it does not fix the bug for you, please add a comment stating that, and change the tag to verification-failed-jammy. In either case, without details of your testing we will not be able to proceed.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification . Thank you in advance for helping!

N.B. The updated package will be released to -updates after the bug(s) fixed by this package have been verified and the package has been in -proposed for a minimum of 7 days.

I verified by following the steps detailed above, as well as trying out some other upgrade scenarios to watch for regressions.

This only affects the upgrade path from Focal to Jammy so fixing it in Kinetic is unnecessary. Although maybe we should still have this safety check in place as it doesn't hurt anything.

This bug was fixed in the package ubuntu-release-upgrader - 1:22.04.13

---------------
ubuntu-release-upgrader (1:22.04.13) jammy; urgency=medium

  [ Simon Chopin ]
  * Add a quirk to resolve an issue where the nvidia driver would get
    suggested for autoremoval. (LP: #1955047)

  [ Steve Langasek ]
  * On upgrade to 22.04, detect the presence of pam_tally* in /etc/pam.d and
    block the upgrade early, to avoid an abort from libpam-modules in the
    middle of the apt upgrade. LP: #1977493.
  * Run pre-build.sh: updating mirrors and translations.

 -- Steve Langasek <email address hidden> Tue, 02 Aug 2022 17:15:07 -0700

The verification of the Stable Release Update for ubuntu-release-upgrader has completed successfully and the package is now being released to -updates. Subsequently, the Ubuntu Stable Release Updates Team is being unsubscribed and will not receive messages about this bug report. In the event that you encounter a regression using the package from -updates please report a new bug using ubuntu-bug and tag the bug report regression-update so we can easily find any regressions.