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From: Conor_D_Wynne@Dell.com
To: ilug@linux.ie
Subject: RE: [ILUG] NVIDIA and Debian Woody
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X-Original-Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2002 04:05:38 -0600
Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2002 04:05:38 -0600

Hi there,

Now this is probably of no use to you whatsoever, but...

Not a deb-head, but I also have a problem regards NVidia. I've two machines,
pretty much the same hardware. 
athlon 1700XP's, both have NVidia cards, one Gforce3 Ti and a Gforce2MX,
both use the same driver module. 

Both have same kernel version albeit it compiled for their particular
hardware.

One works perfectly, the other fails to load. When I check with lsmod, I can
see the NVdriver is loaded, but not used ;--(
Thus when I startx, it bombs out. 

IU still have X with the default nv driver and crappy accelleration -->
650fps with glxgears [should be over 2000fps]
Its not a hardware issue with the cards as I swapped them over and get the
same symptoms. 

I reckon my mobo is cack, I've tried swapping slots around, reserving
resources etc all to no avail. 
Should there be an interrupt for the nv card? I haven't checked the other
box yet.

Regards,
CW

-------------------
On Tue, 03 Dec 2002, Mark Page wrote:

> Was running Debian Woody perfectly well until I installed the NVIDIA 3D 
> tar packages.

You probably stil are ;)

> Both the kernel and GLX packages installed with no problem and I then 
> amended the XFree config file appropriately (according to all 
> instructions). Neither GDM nor KDM will now fire up returning me to the 
> console screen. 

ie X is broken. 

> Running startx I isolated the problem to a failure to load the nvidia
> kernel module - By cd'ing to the kernel module file and re-running 'make
> install' I can get a workable xserver 

so you fixed X.

> minus the preferences you would get from either gdm or kdm and to be
> honest the GUI is horrible.

If X is working and you get a brief Nvidia splash screen then this is
likely nothing to do with the driver itself.  You should be able to use kdm
or gdm with the nvidia Xserver.  What exactly did you change in your
XF86Config?  Will gdm/kdm not start?

> I followed the nvidia suggestion of 'make install 
> SYSINCLUDE=/path/to/kernel/headers' and whilst this appears to install 
> ok upon reboot I am back to the same console login and having to go 
> through the same reinstall of the kernel module. I have tried rewriting 
> the XF config file to it's original state with no success.

Well, this sounds like the NVIDIA kernel module isn't loading on boot.
When it *is* working do a quick 

/sbin/lsmod

and look for the module name (something like 'NVDriver').  Then put this on
a new line in 

/etc/modules

in order that linux will load it on boot.  You can just do

modprobe nvdriver

to load it by hand.  Your make install did this as well as reinstalling the
driver in /lib etc.  You should also get a message saying loading the
nvidia driver taints your kernel (which it does, in the sense that it's not
open source).

> Is this a problem anyone else has encountered and what is the best 
> solution? Can I rid myself of the tar file installations and find some 
> specific .deb packages?

The nvidia driver source is in the Woody tree.

http://packages.debian.org/stable/x11/nvidia-kernel-src.html

so you can do

apt-get install nvidia-kernel-src

and then compile, although I've always gone the route you're doing now.

Ideally the nvidia driver would be a part of the kernel from day 1.
However, nvidia have not open sourced it (most of the above source is
pre-compiled object code), but in order for it to work with your specific
kernel you must compile against your kernel headers (as you did).  As
debian has lots of potential kernels they can't have one nvdriver package
and have chosen instead to provide the source.  Actually I don't know if
they're permitted to distribute binaries by nvidia's license anyway.

Gavin

-- 
Irish Linux Users' Group: ilug@linux.ie
http://www.linux.ie/mailman/listinfo/ilug for (un)subscription information.
List maintainer: listmaster@linux.ie

-- 
Irish Linux Users' Group: ilug@linux.ie
http://www.linux.ie/mailman/listinfo/ilug for (un)subscription information.
List maintainer: listmaster@linux.ie


