Running Beryl restarts X Windows on Fedora Core 6

tron_thomas · 05-15-2007, 11:50 PM

I'm running Fedora Core 6 on an Intel Core2 Duo system. Linux detects my video card as nVidia GeForce 7600 GT.

I've installed Beryl and whenever I try to run the Beryl Manager, Beryl fails to start, and Linux restarts the X Windows server.

What can I do to get Beryl running successfully on my system?

macemoneta · 05-16-2007, 12:09 AM

If X is restarting, then the GLX library is probably no longer correctly linked. This may have happened as a result of an update to the Xorg server. Re-run the Nvidia software installer to correct the GLX library references.

tron_thomas · 05-16-2007, 09:37 AM

I never explicitly ran any installation program for my video card. I just installed Fedora off of a DVD.

How do I go about rerunning the nVidia software installer?

macemoneta · 05-16-2007, 09:49 AM

If you're running the DVD software, then you are using the open source nv driver. This driver doesn't support 3D, which is required by Beryl. You can download the Nvidia driver here. Installation instructions are on the same page.

tron_thomas · 05-16-2007, 11:53 PM

When I was running Fedora on my older system which also had an nVidia graphics card, I did not have install the drivers from nVidias web site to have 3D acceleration.

I think I had an additional YUM repository enabled that would get some open source drivers that provided the acceleration. This prevents me from having to constantly re-install the driver if I update the kernel, which is also something I was having problems with anyway. Once I started using the YUM repository I didn't have to worry about that when I performed an update.

I think the repository was called livna or something like that. I'm not sure what I need to set it up.

Where can I find information about how to set up this repository?

macemoneta · 05-17-2007, 12:15 AM

You can set up the Livna repository, and use the Nvidia drivers from there. However, that may not resolve all the problems that can result.

When the kernel is updated, the kernel update will simply not be applied until the matching Nvidia update is available (You may not be happy with this delay).

I'm not sure how the Livna driver handles the GLX symlinks when modular Xorg is updated. This was not a problem in earlier versions of Fedora, because Xorg was not modular; now it is. There have been about a half dozen Xorg updates that have caused driver issues for Nvidia, requiring re-installs. I haven't found a good discussion of this issue.

If you run into a problem with the driver and want to report it at Nvidia's Linux forum, you'll likely need to recreate the problem with the official driver.

If you want to use the Livna driver anyway, you can install it with:

Code:

rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-6.rpm
rpm --import http://rpm.livna.org/RPM-LIVNA-GPG-KEY
yum install kmod-nvidia

tron_thomas · 05-17-2007, 12:23 AM

I did a Google search for livna YUM and found information that allow me setup the livna.

After doing this I was able to successfully get Beryl to run.

So, it looks like I'm all set for now.