help with geforce 6200 OC AGP

I am using ubuntu 6.06 LTS (whatever the animal is called) and I recently got my hands on this inexpensive geforce 6200 OC. I've installed nivida drivers before without a problem but I am having a great deal of difficulty with this card.
It would seem that it does not recognize my card.

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "NVIDIA Corporation NV40? [Unknown nVidia Card]"
    Driver         "vesa"
EndSection

I have read multiple accounts of people using this card and at least searching google, no one with a similare problem. Am I forgetting somthing or is there a special operation that needs to be performed for setting up this card properly?

That unknown card thing is just a name, doesnt affect functionality. The important line is the driver line, which should say "nvidia" if you are using nvidia drivers.

If I were to change vesa to nvidia, on reboot X fails.

also note this

alan@alan-desktop:~$ glxinfo | grep rendering
Xlib:  extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0".
Xlib:  extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0".
Xlib:  extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0".
Error: couldn't find RGB GLX visual
Xlib:  extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0".
Xlib:  extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0".

What output does it give when it fails? And how did you install the nvidia drivers?

Originally Posted by AzrielMacKay What output does it give when it fails? And how did you install the nvidia drivers?

somthing along the lines of

FATAL: Module nvidia not found. NVIDIA(0): Failed to load the nvidia kernel module. NVIDIA(0)Aborting Screen(s) found, but none have a usuable configuration.

I configured the nvidia driver the usual nvidia-glx way through both the ubuntu mutliverse repositories and nvidia's website.

You have nvidia-glx installed but you dont have the kernel module. I think you can install nvidia-kernel-src and compile it in user source, or if you are using the original kernel you can install the kernel module for the kernel version you are using. Just apt-cache search nvidia-kernel to see your options.

Originally Posted by AzrielMacKay You have nvidia-glx installed but you dont have the kernel module. I think you can install nvidia-kernel-src and compile it in user source, or if you are using the original kernel you can install the kernel module for the kernel version you are using. Just apt-cache search nvidia-kernel to see your options.

Can you walk me through the compiling procedure? many thanks for your help

Well, I always do mine from src. So I:
apt-get install nvidia-kernel-src
cd /usr/src
tar jxvf nvidia* (prolly be nvidia-kernel-src.tar.bz2 if its a tar.gz use zxvf instead)
That will extract it into /usr/src/modules/nvidiasomethin or other. Go into that directory and ./configure
make
make install
If you have compiled your kernel before its much easier. Just go into you top level kernel directory and do make-kpkg modules-image. (thats assuming that you have the kernel-package program installed)
That will make a deb file in /usr/src which you install with dpkg -i packagename.
Then you can use modprobe nvidia to load the module.
Add a line in /etc/modules file that just says nvidia to make sure that it loads on startup.

Im not sure how clear that was ask more q's if it didnt make sense. If you haven't used make-kpkg before I highly recommend it. You can also use it when compiling kernels and it make a deb file out of them that you can easily install, and when you install the image it automatically puts it in your bootloader and reinstalls the bootloader so you dont have to do all that by hand.

I cant find the nvidia-kernel-src in any of my repositories.. could you possibly provide me with a link? thanks.

If you apt-cache search kernel-src you dont get any hits? If not I can get you those repositories later. I'm at work right now and they block 22 so no ssh ;(

that would be much appreciated. I dled somthing from some repository but when i uncompress it it gives me /usr/src/module/nvidia-kernel*/debian and alot of stuff, but no MAKE files and nothing ./configure able. see below-

alan@alan-desktop:/usr/src/modules/nvidia-kernel-1.0.2880/debian$ dir changelog devfs.conf genchanges.sh postinst control.template devfs.devices modules README.Debian copyright dirs.template override.template rules

This is what I got. And you should be in /usr/src/modules/nvidia-kernel/nv in order to build it by using make if you arent going the make-kpkg route.

Line commented out by installer because it failed to verify:
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ dapper main restricted
# Line commented out by installer because it failed to verify:
#deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ dapper main restricted

## Major bug fix updates produced after the final release of the
## distribution.
# Line commented out by installer because it failed to verify:
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ dapper-updates main restricted multiverse
# Line commented out by installer because it failed to verify:
#deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ dapper-updates main restricted

## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from the 'universe'
## repository.
## N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu
## team, and may not be under a free licence. Please satisfy yourself as to
## your rights to use the software. Also, please note that software in
## universe WILL NOT receive any review or updates from the Ubuntu security
## team.
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ dapper universe multiverse
# deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ dapper universe

## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from the 'backports'
## repository.
## N.B. software from this repository may not have been tested as
## extensively as that contained in the main release, although it includes
## newer versions of some applications which may provide useful features.
## Also, please note that software in backports WILL NOT receive any review
## or updates from the Ubuntu security team.
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ dapper-backports main restricted universe multiverse
# deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ dapper-backports main restricted universe multiverse

# Line commented out by installer because it failed to verify:
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-security main
# Line commented out by installer because it failed to verify:
#deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-security main
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-security universe
# deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-security universe

deb http://packages.freecontrib.org/ubuntu/plf/ dapper non-free free

deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org testing main
apt-cache search nvidia-kernel
linux-restricted-modules-2.6.15-23-386 - Non-free Linux 2.6.15 modules on 386
linux-restricted-modules-2.6.15-23-686 - Non-free Linux 2.6.15 modules on PPro/Celeron/PII/PIII/PIV
linux-restricted-modules-2.6.15-23-k7 - Non-free Linux 2.6.15 modules on AMD K7
nvidia-kernel-common - NVIDIA binary kernel module common files
nvidia-kernel-source - NVIDIA binary kernel module source
nvidia-legacy-kernel-source - NVIDIA binary 'legacy' kernel module source

I must sound stupid. I made a perfect copy of your sources.list and made made it my own. Even so, when I apt-cache search nvidia-kernel it still gives me the same old crap but not the nvidia-kernel-source option. ?

Did you do apt-get update first?