Help setting up Linux on an NVIDIA system

Siezed · 06-18-2016, 06:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by biosboy4

Look around the bios on that mobo for potential incompatabilities.

Quote:

Originally Posted by rnturn

If you have a boot CD somewhere that includes Memtest86, I'd boot into that and run the memory tests to see if shows anything that might be wrong with the memory.

I had a system that was of a similar vintage that began behaving weirdly and freezing at odd times. Memtest86 showed that memory test were failing but in different locations each time I ran the test.

What I eventually was able to determine was that I had a few bad capacitors on the motherboard. In the end I declared that it was a goner and -- after a brief, tasteful service -- it was pulled from the case and I bought and installed a replacement. Do a close visual inspection of the capacitors on the motherboard. If you see any whose metal tops aren't perfectly flat but seem to be bulging, you're liekly to be in the market for a new motherboard. And probably new memory as well. Anything you have plugged into PCI slots should be transferable onto the new M'board provided it has enough slots.

Hope this isn't the case but a system that old may be on it last legs. All because of a few poorly sourced components. If you find you need a new board, look for one that doesn't use the old-style, can-type electrolytic capacitors.

Good luck.

Thanks, I haven't ruled out hardware but all signs seem to be pointing to software incompatibility here. It is possible my graphics have simply gone bad somehow, but I kinda doubt it, I can actually run the open source driver on mint without many problems except noticeable poor performance on videos (which is what I intend to use this pc for mainly).

Siezed · 06-18-2016, 06:15 PM

Ok so I'm making progress, I think. Searching for NVIDIA drivers and crashes and stuff has led me to the "bumblebee project"
http://bumblebee-project.org/
has anyone heard of this? Supposedly it is software to allow hybrid sli motherboards (like mine) work, however its not clear if it actually makes the cards work, or simply makes the hybrid sli function work. I'm trying to install it but I'm getting different errors saying its not found and stuff, I'm in the process of another mint install and trying it again, I'll post the actual errors in a sec.

Ok I thought I could use Ubuntu install instructions for mint, is that not true?

Never mind, I guess I hadn't properly added the repository, learning new stuff every second with this, I like Linux I just dont like how stuff doesn't work with it

Siezed · 06-18-2016, 06:46 PM

Ok it installed but I got an error telling me noveeu or whatever that is is running, so I'm guessing I need to close the GUI to install? How?

Siezed · 06-18-2016, 06:58 PM

Oh my gawddd..... after all that it seems bumblebee is only for the laptop version of hybrid sli, not the desktop, what a pain in my arse this is arrrgggg, ok well on to different destros and drivers I guess, you guys can disregard my last couple posts if you want, gonna leave em just so people can see the process I'm going through with this, maybe make the Linux experience better for complete noobs trying to troubleshoot.

cwizardone · 06-18-2016, 09:50 PM

One of my boxes has a Asus-sli motherboard with a Nvidia chipset and has ran perfectly with both Nvidia GeForce 210 and GeForce GT-730 PCIe video cards.
To install the proprietary driver it is necessary to blacklist the open source nouveau driver and during the installation the proprietary driver routine will tell you this and offer to do it for you. Once done you have to reboot the computer and start the driver installation again.

The correct and most recent driver for that chipset and video combination is the 319.17.

http://www.geforce.com/drivers#start-search

BTW, anytime you change or upgrade your kernel or install a new version of xorg or mesa, you should re-install your Nvidia driver.

Siezed · 06-19-2016, 01:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cwizardone

One of my boxes has a Asus-sli motherboard with a Nvidia chipset and has ran perfectly with both Nvidia GeForce 210 and GeForce GT-730 PCIe video cards.
To install the proprietary driver it is necessary to blacklist the open source nouveau driver and during the installation the proprietary driver routine will tell you this and offer to do it for you. Once done you have to reboot the computer and start the driver installation again.

The correct and most recent driver for that chipset and video combination is the 319.17.

http://www.geforce.com/drivers#start-search

BTW, anytime you change or upgrade your kernel or install a new version of xorg or mesa, you should re-install your Nvidia driver.

Awesome thanks for the info, I may have stumbled upon a driver report bug then or something cause both Ubuntu and mint and at one point the NVIDIA tool all reported 340.96 as the recommended driver, but clearly it does not work, and now that I went back to the NVIDIA site its reporting 319.17. Its entirely possible I just selected the wrong os or card before though.

One question, what do you mean the proprietary driver routine? All I have found is 20 step command line instructions involving stopping x server and ctrl alt f2, is there a more noob friendly way to install this driver? When I follow basic instructions I've found and allow it to run as a program, then double click and run in terminal, I get an error saying it needs to be run as root, how do I do that when I'm opening a a.run file In a terminal?

Siezed · 06-19-2016, 03:14 AM

Arrg, ok well I got as far as you, got to where it told me it was going to disable nouveau, I followed the instructions and rebooted and ran the instructions again and it gave me the same message, that I need to disable nouveau. I guess I have to look up how to do that, getting tired so going to try this again later.

Btw, in mint driver manager, why is there two copies of the legacy driver, NVIDIA-304 and NVIDIA-304-updates? One can be updated? If so how do you just update? And can I just use driver manager to install my downloaded 319.17 driver?

cwizardone · 06-19-2016, 09:52 AM

As I don't use Mint or ubuntu I don't know the installation procedure for those distributions.
As a matter of personal choice I prefer to boot to the command line and from there sign on and, depending on what I want to do, launch the desktop/GUI or stay at the command line.
To install the video driver I sign on as root, go the the directory where the Nvidia driver is stored and launch the installation routine as so,

sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-whatever-version-number.run

It first presents a disclaimer. If you agree it starts building the kernel module. The 64-bit version will pause and ask if you want to also install the 32-bit drivers. You answer, yes or no, and from there it installs the modules (drivers).
It will then ask if you would like it to modify your xorg.conf file. You answer, yes or no, and it will then say the installation is complete.

Some say it isn't necessary, but I've always thought it is a good practice to uninstall the Nvidia driver (module) before upgrading it or re-installing it due to a change in the kernel, xorg, or mesa files.
To un-install the driver, again sign on as root, and run,

sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-whatever-version-number.run --uninstall

Good luck.

Siezed · 06-19-2016, 11:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cwizardone

As I don't use Mint or ubuntu I don't know the installation procedure for those distributions.
As a matter of personal choice I prefer to boot to the command line and from there sign on and, depending on what I want to do, launch the desktop/GUI or stay at the command line.
To install the video driver I sign on as root, go the the directory where the Nvidia is stored and launch the installation routine as so,

sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-whatever-version-number.run

It first presents a disclaimer. If you agree it starts building the kernel module. The 64-bit version will pause and ask if you want to also install the 32-bit drivers. You answer, yes or no, and from there it installs the modules (drivers).
It will then ask if you would like it to modify your xorg.conf file. You answer, yes or no, and it will then say the installation is complete.

Some say it isn't necessary, but I've always thought it is a good practice to uninstall the Nvidia driver (module) before upgrading it or re-installing it due to a change in the kernel, xorg, or mesa files.
To un-install the driver, again sign on as root, and run,

sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-whatever-version-number.run --uninstall

Good luck.

Yea I followed these instructions did basically the same thing, http://www.wikihow.com/Get-Your-Nvid...rking-on-Linux to be specific, I got different errors though during the install, saying it failed and something about a bad kernel, I took some pictures I'll attach em here;

What distribution do you use? I would like to try and get Ubuntu or mint working cause I like the way they're set up, I like how they're supported and popular too, I feel like using a popular version is more beneficial to the whole Linux idea, seems if Linux is to gain any ground with OEM or the general population there needs to be a widely used version with lots of support and wide compatibility. The arts nice and they don't feel like a computer from 1994 either lol, but anything that will allow me to run Hulu and flash video smoothly I'm fine with.

cwizardone · 06-19-2016, 11:29 AM

Did you read the log referred to in the error message?
As it says under my user name, I use Slackware64.
Mint is very popular, as is Zorin, with former ms-windows users, as they are, usually, easy to setup and the learning curve is almost nonexistent.
PCLinuxOS is another popular Linux distribution. OpenSUSE seems to be popular with the "corporate" types.
Over at distrowatch.com, at the top of the page, is a link entitled, "Major Distributions." You might like to take a look through that.

Siezed · 06-19-2016, 12:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cwizardone

Did you read the log referred to in the error message?
As it says under my user name, I use Slackware64.
Mint is very popular, as is Zorin, with former ms-windows users, as they are, usually, easy to setup and the learning curve is almost nonexistent.
PCLinuxOS is another popular Linux distribution. OpenSUSE seems to be popular with the "corporate" types.
Over at distrowatch.com, at the top of the page, is a link entitled, "Major Distributions." You might like to take a look through that.

No I didn't read the log because it left my computer unusable, when I tried to restart it said it couldn't start x, so I decided to just clean install again, installing mint updates right now, I'm gonna try and install the driver without installing an older beta driver first this time, that might be what messed it up.

Yea I was looking at distrowatch, that's where I found mint and I also found an android emulator, I liked it except the fact nothing worked lol, every time I opened a browser or an app it would just crash, too bad cause I would have liked to just run android. Oh well, quest continues.

And yea, these distributions are all very intuitive tbh, up until something doesn't work :/

Siezed · 06-19-2016, 01:22 PM

Actually I have a 15 year old Intel Celeron pc sitting in a corner somewhere, I think I might drag that out and see if it works better lol

Tim Abracadabra · 06-29-2016, 05:22 AM

Just to add, I have running a 15 year old Pentium 4 with and AGP Radeon HD 4670 and get driver issues when there are shared IRQ's for the HDMI. Blacklisting the HDMI sound helped me some keep the system stable (debian 7.11).

Not sure but if you do not need HDMI based sound and can use the mobo sound?

Good enough for me (The integrated mobo sound) Maybe that is something to try. On this old system YouTube videos play OK but sometimes I need to knock back the resolution to 720p HD.

Your system is newer and more powerful than this one I have in my heap so it should be even more capable to play videos, IMO.

Hope that helps with perspective,
Tim

Emerson · 06-29-2016, 05:59 AM

What you say about SLI made me curious, is there more than one graphics chip? Can you post lspci output?

Siezed · 06-29-2016, 06:30 AM

Right now no just the one integrated graphics chip, its just that its capable of hybrid sli which itself causes issues so I've read. sli is actually disabled in bios. what is lspci? Ive since put this on hold and been using my windows tablet with an hdmi and extended display, its ok but my tablet is not really fast enough to be streaming video on and extended display. I may try putting a dgpu in, I have a 9800gtx+ but I didn't want to use it, its loud its hot and it eats power. Since I watch videos for hours at a time while in my office/build room I was trying to avoid it.