Totally baffled by NVIDIA.
I am starting to question my own sanity when it comes to NVIDIA drivers. I have been running a SuSE 9.1 Pro system for a year and a half now. I have posted the method I have used to get the NVIDIA drivers working after install or kernel update to others having problems with this. In my hands using YAST to upgrade NVIDIA has never worked. What I do is to download the shar file from NVIDIA and do: sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-XXXX-pkg1.run (XXXX) being the driver version. sax2 nvidia -m 0=NVIDIA The version of the drivers that I am using is 6629 but that is not relevant to this comment as both 6629 and 5336 both work fine, WHEN THEY WORK. OK .. i have seen a situation when I am playing with some alpha version of some graphic game or something where the application will crash and take the NVIDIA drivers with it. The end result is that on boot I never get the splash NVIDIA screen nor ever get the login. I just get a video mess. Going to init=3 and doing the above shell script, sax2 thing has always fixed this. OK .. on to the story. About two months ago this happened and for some reason the above sh script / sax2 thing did not work. I tried both the 6629 drivers and the 5336 drivers with no luck. After a day of cursing I just gave up. The machine is used for two things. One is a mail router and the other is a MySQL server. OK, I don't really need a GUI for that. I can ssh in from another machine and do what I need to do. In fact, if I need to do something with a GUI, I can ssh -X in from another linux box or a OS X system and work with the given GUI app just fine. So for the past two months I have been using the machine this way. Now this machine is the only one I have that has 2 CDs on it. I use it when I burn music CDs for trade which is not that often. Today I brought up K3b on a remote machine and tried to burn a CD. For some reason K3b did not recognize my CD burner as a logical devise. OK, I have seen this before with K3b and I know it goes away after a reboot. So I reboot the machine. I have not tried to reboot it into init 5 for two months. When I gave up on the GUI, I just use init 3 run level. OK, when I reboot for the k3b issue, I forget to type in init 3 on the SuSE splash screen. Bang, NVIDIA loads and I have X Windows again on this machine. I don't belive in demons of ghosts, I don't think ?????? Any comments ? john
John N. Alegre wrote:
I am starting to question my own sanity when it comes to NVIDIA drivers.
I have been running a SuSE 9.1 Pro system for a year and a half now. I have posted the method I have used to get the NVIDIA drivers working after install or kernel update to others having problems with this. In my hands using YAST to upgrade NVIDIA has never worked.
What I do is to download the shar file from NVIDIA and do:
sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-XXXX-pkg1.run (XXXX) being the driver version. sax2 nvidia -m 0=NVIDIA
The version of the drivers that I am using is 6629 but that is not relevant to this comment as both 6629 and 5336 both work fine, WHEN THEY WORK.
OK .. i have seen a situation when I am playing with some alpha version of some graphic game or something where the application will crash and take the NVIDIA drivers with it. The end result is that on boot I never get the splash NVIDIA screen nor ever get the login. I just get a video mess. Going to init=3 and doing the above shell script, sax2 thing has always fixed this.
OK .. on to the story.
About two months ago this happened and for some reason the above sh script / sax2 thing did not work. I tried both the 6629 drivers and the 5336 drivers with no luck. After a day of cursing I just gave up. The machine is used for two things. One is a mail router and the other is a MySQL server. OK, I don't really need a GUI for that. I can ssh in from another machine and do what I need to do. In fact, if I need to do something with a GUI, I can ssh -X in from another linux box or a OS X system and work with the given GUI app just fine. So for the past two months I have been using the machine this way.
Now this machine is the only one I have that has 2 CDs on it. I use it when I burn music CDs for trade which is not that often. Today I brought up K3b on a remote machine and tried to burn a CD. For some reason K3b did not recognize my CD burner as a logical devise. OK, I have seen this before with K3b and I know it goes away after a reboot. So I reboot the machine. I have not tried to reboot it into init 5 for two months. When I gave up on the GUI, I just use init 3 run level. OK, when I reboot for the k3b issue, I forget to type in init 3 on the SuSE splash screen.
Bang, NVIDIA loads and I have X Windows again on this machine.
I don't belive in demons of ghosts, I don't think ??????
Any comments ? john
I had problems similar to yours with my Nvidia card. It would work fine in win me but when I started it in Suse 9.1 sometimes it would work fine and others it would just appear as a shaky jumbled mess. Rebooting would sometimes fix it and then again sometimes it would not. After trying for some time to get it fixed including installing new drivers. Finally I gave up and got another model of Nvidia card. I never had any more problems. Bob Rawlinson
Sounds like a possible firmware update problem? Or power? Or Heat? B-) On Tuesday 08 February 2005 10:11 am, Robert A. Rawlinson wrote:
John N. Alegre wrote:
I am starting to question my own sanity when it comes to NVIDIA drivers.
I have been running a SuSE 9.1 Pro system for a year and a half now. I have posted the method I have used to get the NVIDIA drivers working after install or kernel update to others having problems with this. In my hands using YAST to upgrade NVIDIA has never worked.
What I do is to download the shar file from NVIDIA and do:
sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-XXXX-pkg1.run (XXXX) being the driver version. sax2 nvidia -m 0=NVIDIA
The version of the drivers that I am using is 6629 but that is not relevant to this comment as both 6629 and 5336 both work fine, WHEN THEY WORK.
OK .. i have seen a situation when I am playing with some alpha version of some graphic game or something where the application will crash and take the NVIDIA drivers with it. The end result is that on boot I never get the splash NVIDIA screen nor ever get the login. I just get a video mess. Going to init=3 and doing the above shell script, sax2 thing has always fixed this.
OK .. on to the story.
About two months ago this happened and for some reason the above sh script / sax2 thing did not work. I tried both the 6629 drivers and the 5336 drivers with no luck. After a day of cursing I just gave up. The machine is used for two things. One is a mail router and the other is a MySQL server. OK, I don't really need a GUI for that. I can ssh in from another machine and do what I need to do. In fact, if I need to do something with a GUI, I can ssh -X in from another linux box or a OS X system and work with the given GUI app just fine. So for the past two months I have been using the machine this way.
Now this machine is the only one I have that has 2 CDs on it. I use it when I burn music CDs for trade which is not that often. Today I brought up K3b on a remote machine and tried to burn a CD. For some reason K3b did not recognize my CD burner as a logical devise. OK, I have seen this before with K3b and I know it goes away after a reboot. So I reboot the machine. I have not tried to reboot it into init 5 for two months. When I gave up on the GUI, I just use init 3 run level. OK, when I reboot for the k3b issue, I forget to type in init 3 on the SuSE splash screen.
Bang, NVIDIA loads and I have X Windows again on this machine.
I don't belive in demons of ghosts, I don't think ??????
Any comments ? john
I had problems similar to yours with my Nvidia card. It would work fine in win me but when I started it in Suse 9.1 sometimes it would work fine and others it would just appear as a shaky jumbled mess. Rebooting would sometimes fix it and then again sometimes it would not. After trying for some time to get it fixed including installing new drivers. Finally I gave up and got another model of Nvidia card. I never had any more problems. Bob Rawlinson
John N. Alegre wrote:
I am starting to question my own sanity when it comes to NVIDIA drivers.
You are not the first one! I've encountered two problems with Suse: - it only works if you update when actually logged in as root. A normal user who enters the root password for YAST is no good. - check your XF86Config file in /etc/X11 and make sure it says the following: Section "InputDevice" Driver "kbd" Identifier "Keyboard[0]" Suse 9.2 put Driver "keybord" into my file and my system displayed exactly the problems you mentioned. Changing "keyboard" to "kbd" did the trick!!! hth ingo
On Tuesday 08 February 2005 18:19, blabla wrote:
John N. Alegre wrote:
I am starting to question my own sanity when it comes to NVIDIA drivers.
You are not the first one!
I've encountered two problems with Suse:
- it only works if you update when actually logged in as root. A normal user who enters the root password for YAST is no good.
- check your XF86Config file in /etc/X11 and make sure it says the following:
Section "InputDevice" Driver "kbd" Identifier "Keyboard[0]"
Suse 9.2 put Driver "keybord" into my file and my system displayed exactly the problems you mentioned. Changing "keyboard" to "kbd" did the trick!!!
BTW, I had the same issue when I installed the new ATI drivers in an x86_64 system. The driver won't run if Input device is at the default setting of "Keyboard". It must be "kbd". Also "UseInternalAGPGART" must be set to "no" in the XF86Config-4 / xorg.conf file. Jeff
On Tuesday 08 February 2005 17:52, Jeffrey Laramie wrote:
BTW, I had the same issue when I installed the new ATI drivers in an x86_64 system. The driver won't run if Input device is at the default setting of "Keyboard". It must be "kbd". Also "UseInternalAGPGART" must be set to "no" in the XF86Config-4 / xorg.conf file.
What file are these setting in? Thanks john
On Wednesday 09 February 2005 10:03, John N. Alegre wrote:
On Tuesday 08 February 2005 17:52, Jeffrey Laramie wrote:
BTW, I had the same issue when I installed the new ATI drivers in an x86_64 system. The driver won't run if Input device is at the default setting of "Keyboard". It must be "kbd". Also "UseInternalAGPGART" must be set to "no" in the XF86Config-4 / xorg.conf file.
What file are these setting in?
Yeah this is kind of a confusing mess. xorg uses the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file, but in SuSE 9.2 this is just a link to /etc/X11/XF86Config. If you run the ATI fglrxconfig utility it will save it's configuration to /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 by default (even though ATI presumably knows that 9.2 doesn't use that file). If you use the fglrxconfig utility I recommend you override the default setting and save to /etc/X11/XF86Config which is where SuSE expects to find it. Jeff
Jeff, On Wednesday 09 February 2005 09:17, Jeffrey Laramie wrote:
Yeah this is kind of a confusing mess. xorg uses the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file, but in SuSE 9.2 this is just a link to /etc/X11/XF86Config. If you run the ATI fglrxconfig utility it will save it's configuration to /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 by default (even though ATI presumably knows that 9.2 doesn't use that file). If you use the fglrxconfig utility I recommend you override the default setting and save to /etc/X11/XF86Config which is where SuSE expects to find it.
Thanks for the continued help. So if I make the changes directly in /etc/X11/XF86Config I should be ok, correct? john
On Wednesday 09 February 2005 10:27, John N. Alegre wrote:
Jeff,
On Wednesday 09 February 2005 09:17, Jeffrey Laramie wrote:
Yeah this is kind of a confusing mess. xorg uses the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file, but in SuSE 9.2 this is just a link to /etc/X11/XF86Config. If you run the ATI fglrxconfig utility it will save it's configuration to /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 by default (even though ATI presumably knows that 9.2 doesn't use that file). If you use the fglrxconfig utility I recommend you override the default setting and save to /etc/X11/XF86Config which is where SuSE expects to find it.
Thanks for the continued help.
So if I make the changes directly in /etc/X11/XF86Config I should be ok, correct?
Correct. Of course save the original file in case the changes don't work. In runlevel 5 the xserver restarts when you go to the login screen so you don't need to reboot to try the changes. You can also restart the xserver from the login screen using the menu. If for some reason it doesn't work and you can't get back to the command line, you can reboot using "runlevel 3" as a boot option and replace the config file from the command line. Jeff
On Wednesday 09 February 2005 09:17, Jeffrey Laramie wrote:
Yeah this is kind of a confusing mess. xorg uses the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file, but in SuSE 9.2 this is just a link to /etc/X11/XF86Config. If you run the ATI fglrxconfig utility it will save it's configuration to /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 by default (even though ATI presumably knows that 9.2 doesn't use that file). If you use the fglrxconfig utility I recommend you override the default setting and save to /etc/X11/XF86Config which is where SuSE expects to find it.
I am using 9.1 Pro. There is no /tc/X11/xorg.conf file. I made the changes directly with vim to /etc/X11/XF86Config. Is there anything else I have to do? Thanks for your help. john
On Thursday 10 February 2005 08:28, John N. Alegre wrote:
On Wednesday 09 February 2005 09:17, Jeffrey Laramie wrote:
Yeah this is kind of a confusing mess. xorg uses the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file, but in SuSE 9.2 this is just a link to /etc/X11/XF86Config. If you run the ATI fglrxconfig utility it will save it's configuration to /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 by default (even though ATI presumably knows that 9.2 doesn't use that file). If you use the fglrxconfig utility I recommend you override the default setting and save to /etc/X11/XF86Config which is where SuSE expects to find it.
I am using 9.1 Pro.
There is no /tc/X11/xorg.conf file.
I made the changes directly with vim to /etc/X11/XF86Config. Is there anything else I have to do?
For some reason I thought you were using 9.2 so I've given you a bunch of info that's irrelevant. Sorry. Yes, in 9.1 XF86Config is the correct file. If you've saved your changes just restart the X server as I described from the login screen or using startx if you're already at the command line. Jeff
Ah, hth On Tuesday 08 February 2005 17:19, blabla wrote:
Section "InputDevice" Driver "kbd" Identifier "Keyboard[0]"
Suse 9.2 put Driver "keybord" into my file and my system displayed exactly the problems you mentioned. Changing "keyboard" to "kbd" did the trick!!!
Yes mine was Section "InputDevice" Driver "Keyboard" Identifier "Keyboard[0]" Option "Protocol" "Standard" Option "XkbLayout" "us" Option "XkbModel" "pc104" Option "XkbRules" "xfree86" EndSection I changed it to Section "InputDevice" Driver "kbd" Identifier "Keyboard[0]" Option "Protocol" "Standard" Option "XkbLayout" "us" Option "XkbModel" "pc104" Option "XkbRules" "xfree86" EndSection Note that my original was "Keyboard" not "keyboard" as you mention. Is "kbd" correct on the character case (caps vs lower case)? Naturally I am not about to reboot to try any of this until I have to. As stated in the earlier post this machine routes mail and serves MySQL so is online all the time. I only reboot when it is absolutely necessary. Thanks john
On Wednesday 09 February 2005 10:12, John N. Alegre wrote:
Ah, hth
On Tuesday 08 February 2005 17:19, blabla wrote:
Section "InputDevice" Driver "kbd" Identifier "Keyboard[0]"
Suse 9.2 put Driver "keybord" into my file and my system displayed exactly the problems you mentioned. Changing "keyboard" to "kbd" did the trick!!!
Yes mine was Section "InputDevice" Driver "Keyboard" Identifier "Keyboard[0]" Option "Protocol" "Standard" Option "XkbLayout" "us" Option "XkbModel" "pc104" Option "XkbRules" "xfree86" EndSection
I changed it to
Section "InputDevice" Driver "kbd" Identifier "Keyboard[0]" Option "Protocol" "Standard" Option "XkbLayout" "us" Option "XkbModel" "pc104" Option "XkbRules" "xfree86" EndSection
Note that my original was "Keyboard" not "keyboard" as you mention. Is "kbd" correct on the character case (caps vs lower case)?
Yes. Also note that the "UseInternalAGPGART" option I mentioned is specific to the ATI driver and I doubt it will be in your config file. I only mentioned it as an FYI. Jeff
The Tuesday 2005-02-08 at 10:53 -0600, John N. Alegre wrote:
I am starting to question my own sanity when it comes to NVIDIA drivers.
Heh, heh :-)
About two months ago this happened and for some reason the above sh script / sax2 thing did not work. I tried both the 6629 drivers and the 5336 drivers with no luck. After a day of cursing I just gave up. The machine is used for two things. One is a mail router and the other is a MySQL server.
Ah, so you don't use it for 3d playing? :-P In that case, I would simply use the standar "open" driver: ie, 'nv' instead of 'nvidia'. Not so many features, but it works, and no updates issues at all: Section "Device" # ---- open driver, GPL --- Identifier "Device[0]" BoardName "GeForce2 MX/MX 400" BusID "1:0:0" Driver "nv" <====================== VendorName "NVidia" EndSection -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson
On Tue, Feb 08, 2005 at 10:53:34AM -0600, John N. Alegre wrote:
I am starting to question my own sanity when it comes to NVIDIA drivers.
I have been running a SuSE 9.1 Pro system for a year and a half now.
Wow, you must have done some real smooth talking to get 9.1 that long ago.
I have posted the method I have used to get the NVIDIA drivers working after install or kernel update to others having problems with this. In my hands using YAST to upgrade NVIDIA has never worked.
What I do is to download the shar file from NVIDIA and do:
sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-XXXX-pkg1.run (XXXX) being the driver version. sax2 nvidia -m 0=NVIDIA
The version of the drivers that I am using is 6629 but that is not relevant to this comment as both 6629 and 5336 both work fine, WHEN THEY WORK.
OK .. i have seen a situation when I am playing with some alpha version of some graphic game or something where the application will crash and take the NVIDIA drivers with it. The end result is that on boot I never get the splash NVIDIA screen nor ever get the login. I just get a video mess. Going to init=3 and doing the above shell script, sax2 thing has always fixed this.
Alpha software crashing and taking the system too?? Hmmm, guess it's not that hard to believe, it is Alpha.
OK .. on to the story.
About two months ago this happened and for some reason the above sh script / sax2 thing did not work. I tried both the 6629 drivers and the 5336 drivers with no luck. After a day of cursing I just gave up. The machine is used for two things. One is a mail router and the other is a MySQL server. OK, I don't really need a GUI for that. I can ssh in from another machine and do what I need to do. In fact, if I need to do something with a GUI, I can ssh -X in from another linux box or a OS X system and work with the given GUI app just fine. So for the past two months I have been using the machine this way.
Uhhhh, I always though you just downloaded the driver and typed sh NVIDIA* and waited for it to ask you somethin... Why add more options? When it's done installing just type Sax...
Now this machine is the only one I have that has 2 CDs on it. I use it when I burn music CDs for trade which is not that often. Today I brought up K3b on a remote machine and tried to burn a CD. For some reason K3b did not recognize my CD burner as a logical devise. OK, I have seen this before with K3b and I know it goes away after a reboot. So I reboot the machine. I have not tried to reboot it into init 5 for two months. When I gave up on the GUI, I just use init 3 run level. OK, when I reboot for the k3b issue, I forget to type in init 3 on the SuSE splash screen.
Bang, NVIDIA loads and I have X Windows again on this machine.
I don't belive in demons of ghosts, I don't think ??????
Any comments ? john
Uh oh.... You found out, now they must kill you...
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participants (7)
-
Allen -
blabla -
Brad Bourn -
Carlos E. R. -
Jeffrey Laramie -
John N. Alegre -
Robert A. Rawlinson