I have recently installed Fedora 9 in my computer which is having a dual booting system with Windows XP. I was trying to install nvidia driver with yum. Since “sudo yum install kmod-nvidia” is not working because of some missing dependencies I used “sudo yum install akmod-nvidia” and it installed the driver successfully. Now before rebooting I ran “sudo /usr/sbin/akmods –kernel 2.6.25-14.fc9.i686” and it built the kmod successfully. Then I rebooted the system. But sadly after loading it flickers for few moments and then come to text mode. I then logged in and tried “startx”, but it is coming back to text mode after giving some error message . When I checked the log file (Xorg.0.log) there I found that last few lines says : “The NVIDIA RIVA TNT2 Model 64/Model 64 Pro GPU installed in this system is system is supported through the NVIDIA 71.86.xx Legacy drivers. Please visit http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html for more information. The 173.14.15 NVIDIA driver will ignore this GPU. Continues probing…

No devices detected.
Fatal server error.
No screens found.”

Now I am in a hopeless situation. I am also not very conversant in the text mode. I don’t even know how to connect my xDSL internet connection from linux in text mode.

Please help me out.
-SKD

If x was running before and you have a backup of your previous xorg.conf file usually listed as xorg.conf.backup the old configuration can be implemented by simply renaming the backup file to xorg.conf
if you do not have a backup of xorg.conf i would suggest using xorgconfig from your command prompt hope this helps

oh (I forgot) try typing mc in your command line for a useful file manager

Certainly I try out your suggestions immediately after returning back from my institute. But xorg.conf.backup is not existent in the /etc/X11/ directory in my case. Instead there is file named "xorg.conf.livna-config-backup". Will it work out after renaming. Actually I tried it to cp it as xorg.conf after keeping xorg.conf as a separate file. But it didn't work.
-SKD

have you tried using either the setup or xorgconfig commands from your shell yet?
That would be the next step.

Could not fix the problem yet. xorgconfig is not working. I tried X -configure. It made a new file xorg.conf.new in my home directory. But when I tested it some screen is coming, but nothing more. Perhaps my graphics card is not supported by the nvidia version that has been installed. Could not figure it out. I now just want to get back my old X. But don't know how to do that.
-SKD

Have you tried the suggestion the log file gave you. It means that you need to install the 71.86.xx Legacy driver which is supported by your card.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_d..._71.86.06.html

Visit the link above for installation instruction.


BTW, you can get the X server back by using the vesa driver. You can use this vesa driver until you fix the other problem. The only drawback to vesa is limited screen resolution and no 3D rendering.
But at least you'll get the GUI back.

Edit the /etc/X11/xorg.conf and scroll down until you see something like this:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Card0"
Driver "nvidia"
VendorName "All"
BoardName "All"
EndSection

Replace nvidia, in this example, to vesa. It should look like this now.

Section "Device"
Identifier "Card0"
Driver "vesa"
VendorName "All"
BoardName "All"
EndSection

Save the file and run startx.

-Cheers

You do realize that the TNT2 64 is around 10 years old and the most recent nvidia drivers will not support it. Try uninstalling the Driver and run your x -configure again. I just did the same thing to myself somewhere decemberish and ended up reinstalling my distro due to frustration, or erm laziness. Of course before I did the reinstall I made some hardware upgrades from the lil TNT2 64 to a newer GE-Force 5500.
You may also be able to reset to your default x by booting from your install disc and using some of the installer's configuration options.

You're welcome N3rding.

BTW, I agree with you that dnskdas's video card is way too dated.
I sugggest that s/he upgrade to the Geforce FX series or better if s/he has the funds to do so.

I might have to upgrade my card in the near future. Any nvidia driver above version 173-xx-xx will not work with my nvidia Geforce FX 5200 card. When I installed the 177 version, it broke the X server. So, I had to roll back to version 173.14.12-2. This was easy with the pacman manager.

- Cheers

Sorry I could not post my reply yesterday. Yes, I already downloaded nvidia 71.86.06 driver and installed it and got back the my X. I have not got time to explore it more. In my xorg.conf I found the lines:
Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "nv"
EndSection
I also have yum removed akmod-nvidia 173* version. There are some warning messages coming during start up like no kmod found. I want to avoid those lines. Yes, I know my video card is old and to get flavour of KDE 4 I should get some new drivers. But my motherboard is also old enough(intel 845WN). So I am a bit sceptical about whether those Geforce cards will fit in it or not since it does not have PCI express slot. The present card is AGP card slot. Also I have seen that some ATI cards (Radeon 7000 through X850) and some intel cards (i810, i830, i945 etc.) are supported by the inherent drivers supplied with fedora 9. I will enquire about those from the vendors.
Thanks for your valuable suggestions.
-SKD

I'm happy you got X back, but it it still using the nv driver as listed above. It should say Driver "nvidia". You need to tell X that you want to use the nvidia driver.

Note: Setting it to nvidia will utilize the features of the driver like 3D rendering, higher screen resolutions, higher color depth and more.

Some distros will add it for you after installing nvidia, but some don't. Replace the nv with nvidia. Don't woory, it will not break anything. If X fails to start after changing it, just change it back to
nv, or If you prefer, you can run this command as root

Below is how I configured my nvidia card for the X server.

First, I backup the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file. Yes, nvidia will do this, but I did it myself just in case.

As root, I typed

This will add nvidia's composite and glx rendering and it will set the video card to use 24 bit color depth.

Give it a try. If it doesn't work, just rename the backup file back to xorg.conf

- Cheers