I went and disabled all the stuff I had tried (commented the stuff out) and then tried it all again, boots fine now. Not sure what was going on. I am perplexed and happy :p

thanks for your link
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=194100
otish1000c

2) And my old video card was a shocker, so I was rather proud of my glxgears until I read that I am supposed to post it only when running in full mode.....not sure if resolution is an issue but in 1024 x 768 it drops to 159 FPS ....shucks so much for a fx5200 heh heh and yes not worried as I do not play serious games on pc

3) not sure where I read it but for those yet to see it heres a nice link with pictures on installing nv driver
http://www.mandrake.tips.4.free.fr/nvidiainst.html

4) altho the info on the net is fine for NvAGP I have not understood the extra stuff on mknod.....however I had 2 /dev/ entries but one of the posters has created 6 entries.

5) I am also testing the x86 Mdk but I have a AMD 64 so I may see if running a version more suited to this lovely processor is viable.

I hope I have not offended anyone in posts.

Thanks to jfi. At last, I made my PC [Athlon XP 2700+, MSI KT6V, nVidia GeForce FX 5200LE, Mandrake 10.1] boot correctly in runlevel 5 with the trick proposed by him (version of the nVidia driver = 5336, 'nvidia' in '/etc/modprobe.preload' after the agp line), but I only achieve that putting the 'mknod' lines in the script '/etc/rc.sysinit' (cause' in '/etc/rc.local' it simply didn't work), just after the 'if-fi' statement that calls '/etc/init.d/mandrake_everytime'.

Someone knows why that lines solve the problem? Why they have these names? (nvidia0 & nvidiactl).

On the other hand, the use of Xorg instead XFree86 is quite dark, hostile and an unespected shift. Moreover, Mandrake 10.1 is very incomplete and lacks a lot of useful packages present in previous versions of that distribution.

The best reference I found for "mknod" was http://www.rengels.de/computer/linux/linux-nvidia.html in which there are some explanations and a more complete script.

It is true that "/etc/rc.d/rc.local" is not the best place for the script of the above reference because it is not executed with the right permission.

Otherwise afters hours of trials and errors I couldn't solve an additional stability problems: the computer was freezing after 5 to 30 minuts of use, even using the "nv" driver, so I swiched to Fedora Core 3 which works like a charm....

I have installed my PC few days ago, so I haven't used it intensively. However, it seems to run as stable as it can be, even running Quake III Arena (and unloading it, a problematic issue with the ATI Mobility Radeon accelerated driver that I have configured in my laptop (P-IV 3 GHz, 1 GB RAM), over Mandrake 10.0). However, my complaints about the last Mandrake release (10.1) are growing as I look for the missing applications from elder versions (such as Mandrake 10.0 or 9.2). How they arrange themselves to spend the space of 3 CDs and exclude that amount of software?

A little off base for this thread, but directed to hfranco.........
Just curious, what applications do you feel are missing in 10.1 that you enjoyed in previous releases?

jfi's solution with hfranco's improvement was exactly the answer for me. My 10.1 is running great now! Thanks guys! :cool:

Nvidia install
 

I have no problems at all to install nvidia drivers on mandrake 9.X to 10.X

The way it worked for me:

- installing the kernel sources for the running kernel
- getting the latest version of the nvidia drivers from nvidia.com
- go to runlevel 3 by doing a init 3
- checking if x-server really stopped
- chmod a+x Nvidia-drivers name
- execute the it, in bash like go to the directory and do a ./NVIDIAdriver name
- following the instructions displayed on the screen
- after it is done, changing the XF86config file as supplied in the readme or on nvidia.com
- and go to init 5

And it works great.... bzflag is very nice to play.... cube too.

The most recent driver I was able to install was 5336. All the others gave errors during the installation, so I kept going back until I hit on 5336.

If anyone could offer advice on newer ones, that would be great.

I am no expert but the forum below is useful
www.nvnews.net

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=14

which you can join as long as you have a no-hotmail/yahoo email.

2) the other traps are downloading the non-ia32 nv driver.....if you are using mdk 10.1 you are highly likely to need this one and not the one for say amd64?

3) and b4 installing convert your /etc/XF86config back to nv or vesa?

4) running in a teminal you should get an error message and then see the readme on what the likely cause may be?

good luck or feel free to post your outputs if the posts an nvnews is of no help

Yes, maybe we should start a new thread... however I'll mention some of the missing software: Lyx, KDevelop, wxWidgets (former wxWindows) libraries, etc.

The games/multimedia packages seem to be untouched, but the most useful applications don't come with the 'official' release.

hfranco,
Oh, I see what you mean, most all those appz are now on cd #4. Absent for those downloading the three cd public version. That still is not so bad, as long as people are aware they should go to easyurpmi and set up their sources. When I disable all cd's in media manager, I have access to all the appz you listed through the "main" download source. Except for a part of the wx group.

Curiosity satisfied, Thanks.