I am running gentoo on my dell D800 (just finished install). I emerged, the nvidia drivers, X and kde and everything completed fine. The thing is, now when I try and run X I get an error that says "failed to initialize NVIDIA kernel module". I can't seem to figure out what the problem is though, because I have installed the nvidia drivers. I also can't seem to find any nvidia kernel modules. Do I need to install a module in addition to the driver? Anyway I didn't do to much searching because I am in links and it difficult to navigate for help in links so sorry if this is answered somewhere else. Anyway help you guys could provide would be great: my card is the geforce ti4200 Go 64MB. Thanks in advance

It would be my guess that the kernel module failed to build for some reason. check the log and figure out what went wrong. Perhaps kernel-header problems caused it to not buld correctly. but the log will give you a nice starting point. you *may* want to grab the driver from nvidia.com and just build the kernel module only.

hope that helps a bit

You did load the module right? Try this:

Then try starting X again. Note, rebooting unloads that thing in case you are new to this stuff. You also have to be root to load it. To make it load when booting, it needs to be added to /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6 file or 2.4 if you are using a 2.4 kernel.

Hope that helps.

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/nvidia-guide.xml

nvidia drivers are in two bits - glx and kernel.
there is also a load of other stuff you gotta do to make it all work.

most people just modprobe nvidia and the open /etc/X11/xorg.conf and in the video section make sure that Driver "nvidia" and not "nv" that's all.

Alright I thinks I figured it out, well at least to some extent. I found nvidia.ko - and it recognizes the module, but it doesnt recognize that I have a "device" associated with it: modprobe nvidia gives me: "Error inserting nvidia (...nvidia.ko): no such device" but when I run lspci "vga compatible controller : NV28 [Geforce4 Ti4200 Go AGP 8x]" shows up. Any ideas?

Have you edited xorg.conf as fatblueduck suggested?

If you follow that guide that Simon linked to, it should work. The Gentoo documentation is very good and well tested in my opinion. Just follow that thing to the letter. I have been known to copy and paste the commands. It works very well.

You can type in the command lsmod and it should tell you if it has loaded the module or not. Should look something like this:

You can disregard the w83* and i2c* stuff on mine. It should have nvidia in yours though if it is loaded. You may have other things in their though which is fine.

If you are still having trouble, try to post as much info as you can if you get a error. We'll try to help all we can. You may also want to search around the Gentoo forums. Faster to search and find the answer than to ask then wait on someone to reply.

Hope this helps a little bit.

shamgar03: You are getting lots of suggestions which are assuming things about your setup and what you have done that need not apply. Unless they have guessed correctly, you can end up tying yourself in more and more confused knots. (Only you know if they have or not - but you may not discover this 'till too late.)

The link I gave you does not make assumptions. Follow that and you will also learn how to troubleshoot other similar issues. I urge you to do this.

CoolChEEzE; fatblueduck: This is not to take anything away from you guys. Keep up the good work. BTW: Can you think of any reason the gentoo instructions wouldn't help in this case?

dalek thanks.

I don't know much about Gentoo, but I know that if the rivafb is compiled into the kernel and enabled, the nvidia module won't load (or even compile). If you have the option when building the Gentoo kernel, exclude (or modularize) rivafb support.
It MIGHT work. It's all I can think of, at this moment. well, it worked for me, anyway!