Boot problem after (Kernel) upgrade, more info

[Grizzly]

As mentioned I all was well with 20.04.3 (5.8.0-59) the I ran dist-upgrade, and 
did not reboot (apparently) when I did boot again it would not work

AFAICT it was an nvidia driver (or my first guess) various attempts later (all 
yesterday on slow internet) got me to a point where even 5.8.0-59 would not 
boot, in an effort to get back to (at least) 5.8.0-59 I went thru

Advanced-recovery-drop to root shell then to try to fix (fix dkpg had not 
helped)

~$ apt install -f
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree      
Reading state information... Done
0 to upgrade, 0 to newly install, 0 to remove and 0 not to upgrade.
1 not fully installed or removed.
After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.
Setting up nvidia-340 (340.108-0ubuntu5.20.04.2) ...
dpkg: error: version '-' has bad syntax: revision number is empty
dpkg: error: version '-' has bad syntax: revision number is empty
dpkg: error: version '-' has bad syntax: revision number is empty
update-initramfs: deferring update (trigger activated)
INFO:Enable nvidia-340
DEBUG:Parsing /usr/share/ubuntu-drivers-common/quirks/lenovo_thinkpad
DEBUG:Parsing /usr/share/ubuntu-drivers-common/quirks/put_your_quirks_here
DEBUG:Parsing /usr/share/ubuntu-drivers-common/quirks/dell_latitude
Removing old nvidia-340-340.108 DKMS files...

-------- Uninstall Beginning --------
Module:  nvidia-340
Version: 340.108
Kernel:  5.8.0-59-generic (x86_64)
-------------------------------------

Status: Before uninstall, this module version was ACTIVE on this kernel.

nvidia.ko:
 - Uninstallation
   - Deleting from: /lib/modules/5.8.0-59-generic/updates/dkms/
 - Original module
   - No original module was found for this module on this kernel.
   - Use the dkms install command to reinstall any previous module version.


nvidia_uvm.ko:
 - Uninstallation
   - Deleting from: /lib/modules/5.8.0-59-generic/updates/dkms/
 - Original module
   - No original module was found for this module on this kernel.
   - Use the dkms install command to reinstall any previous module version.

depmod........

DKMS: uninstall completed.

------------------------------
Deleting module version: 340.108
completely from the DKMS tree.
------------------------------
Done.
Loading new nvidia-340-340.108 DKMS files...
Building for 5.8.0-59-generic 5.11.0-34-generic
Building for architecture x86_64
Building initial module for 5.8.0-59-generic
Done.

nvidia.ko:
Running module version sanity check.
 - Original module
   - No original module exists within this kernel
 - Installation
   - Installing to /lib/modules/5.8.0-59-generic/updates/dkms/

nvidia_uvm.ko:
Running module version sanity check.
 - Original module
   - No original module exists within this kernel
 - Installation
   - Installing to /lib/modules/5.8.0-59-generic/updates/dkms/

depmod....

DKMS: install completed.
Building initial module for 5.11.0-34-generic
ERROR: Cannot create report: [Errno 17] File exists: 
'/var/crash/nvidia-340.0.crash'
Error! Bad return status for module build on kernel: 5.11.0-34-generic (x86_64)
Consult /var/lib/dkms/nvidia-340/340.108/build/make.log for more information.
dpkg: error processing package nvidia-340 (--configure):
 installed nvidia-340 package post-installation script subprocess returned 
error exit status 10
Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.31-0ubuntu9.2) ...
Processing triggers for initramfs-tools (0.136ubuntu6.6) ...
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-5.11.0-34-generic
Errors were encountered while processing:
 nvidia-340
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

after that I could boot to 5.8.0-59 again, but not 5.11.0-34, trying the same 
process via 5.11.0-34 recovery I got a similar (almost identical response but 
for a failur to write to "nvidia crash report") but after that I could not boot 
to 5.11.0-34 or 5.8.0-59

I repeated the first try and have 5.8.0-59 back

To my mind it seems that 5.11.0-34 (and 5.11.0-27 before it) broke nvidia 
driver or are themselves broken as far as nvida driver is concerned

any ideas, for now I'll stay on old(er) kernel