Nvidia Drivers Working till Shutdown

I have installed Ubuntu 5.04, I then installed the drivers from NVIDIA since when I tried using the Linux Restricted modules and installing the pre-compiled Nvidia driver, I would just get a black screen and the laptop would be frozen.

After installing the Nvidia drivers from the Nvidia site the PC will bootup, you get the Nvidia splash screen and the PC will work fine with video acceleration.

My problem comes when I then decide to shutdown or restart or go to a terminal using Ctrl-Alt-F2, then I get a blank screen and the laptop freezes and the only way to shutdown is to do a hard shutdown, holding the power key. When using the "nv" driver everything is fine.

Has anybody experienced this, I have searched the forum but couldn't find anything along these lines.

To me it's a mystery since there is no problem till I shutdown or want to go to a tty.

I have a Dell 2650 Inspiron laptop with a GeForce2Go video card.

I'm not familiar with Ubuntu, but I suspect that like most other modern distibutions they include framebuffer support in the kernel and provide some splashy graphical display at bootup and shutdown. The framebuffer and the nVIDIA drivers conflict in the alternate consoles and at shutdown. I have a SuSE 9.3 box that had no consoles and a scrambled display at shutdown. Come to think of it, it did that with SuSE 9.2, too.

I resolved my consoles and shutdown issues by replacing the vga=791 in my
/boot/grub/menu.lst (grub.conf on some distros) with vga=normal.
I don't have pretty GUI splash screens on bootup or shutdown anymore, but all the consoles work, including a 2nd users X session under <ctrl><alt><F8>.

Well I have checked and Ubuntu doesn't have the splash screen option.

I can't find what is causing the problem, I will get the NVIDIA splash screen and there will be no problem till I logout of GNOME then the screen turns black and the hard drive just stops.

Does anybody have any other ideas, I might try removing the MESAGL libraires and see if this changes anything.

Well I finally have this working, took some research through the Ubuntu forums, LQ and Nvidia to get this fixed.

First off I decided to compile the Nvidia drivers from the Nvidia website so I had to use Synaptic and download and install the following files.

linux-kernel-headers (this had to match my running kernel)
linux-source-2.6.10
gcc

Then I went to a terminal after logging out of Gnome and ran the following command:

sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop

Once completed I went to the directory where I had downloaded the drivers and ran:

sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7664-pkg1.run

Then I went and edited my /etc/X11/xorg.conf file, you have to use sudo, commenting out load dri and changed the video driver the following way:

Section "Device"
        Identifier      "NVIDIA Corporation NV11 [GeForce2 Go]"
        Driver          "nvidia"
        BusID           "PCI:1:0:0"
        Option          "NvAGP"  "3"
EndSection

I saved my changes then I edited the file /etc/modules adding this behind nvidia in the file:

nvidia NVreg_Mobile=2

Then the last file I edited was /etc/hotplug/blacklist adding the following to the end of the file:

#Remove intel agp driver, conflicts with Nvidia drivers
intel_agp

Once all the changes were completed I then rebooted, I got the Nvidia splash screen, also excellent color. I am not able to get to a console by using Ctrl-Alt-F2 but I believe this is because of the 7664 drivers and the new Nvidia drivers are suppose to fix this, I tried downloading 7667 driver to try it and see if it does repair that function, however the download times out.

I am getting on average around 400 FPS when using glxgears.

HTH, by the way the Nvidia card is a Geforce2Go, 16 MB.

Let us know if these steps work for other people.

Originally posted by JayCnrs Well I finally have this working, took some research through the Ubuntu forums, LQ and Nvidia to get this fixed. First off I decided to compile the Nvidia drivers from the Nvidia website so I had to use Synaptic and download and install the following files. linux-kernel-headers (this had to match my running kernel) linux-source-2.6.10 gcc Then I went to a terminal after logging out of Gnome and ran the following command: sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop Once completed I went to the directory where I had downloaded the drivers and ran: sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7664-pkg1.run Then I went and edited my /etc/X11/xorg.conf file, you have to use sudo, commenting out load dri and changed the video driver the following way: Section "Device" Identifier "NVIDIA Corporation NV11 [GeForce2 Go]" Driver "nvidia" BusID "PCI:1:0:0" Option "NvAGP" "3" Option "DigitalVibrance" "255" EndSection I saved my changes then I edited the file /etc/modules adding this behind nvidia in the file: nvidia NVreg_Mobile=2 Then the last file I edited was /etc/hotplug/blacklist adding the following to the end of the file: #Remove intel agp driver, conflicts with Nvidia drivers intel_agp Once all the changes were completed I then rebooted, I got the Nvidia splash screen, also excellent color. I am not able to get to a console by using Ctrl-Alt-F2 but I believe this is because of the 7664 drivers and the new Nvidia drivers are suppose to fix this, I tried downloading 7667 driver to try it and see if it does repair that function, however the download times out. I am getting on average around 400 FPS when using glxgears. HTH, by the way the Nvidia card is a Geforce2Go, 16 MB. Let us know if these steps work for other people.

I've a very similar problem except for the fact that I have a scrambled screen and not a black one.
By the way I've proved your steps but they didn't fix the problem.
Suggestions?
Xwang

Would you be able to post your xorg.conf file? May be a setting in there that needs to be changed.

Originally posted by JayCnrs Would you be able to post your xorg.conf file? May be a setting in there that needs to be changed.

I don't know way but I can't post attachments.
Can I post the link to another forum in which I've posted mine xorg.conf file?
Xwang

One thing I found was that changing my bios to simul crt/lcd I can now get to a console while X is running. Maybe try making that change in your bios if possible.

Originally posted by JayCnrs One thing I found was that changing my bios to simul crt/lcd I can now get to a console while X is running. Maybe try making that change in your bios if possible.

I don't have that option in my bios and since this problem did never occour when I used suse 9.2, I think it is a problem related with ubuntu settings which, perhaps, conflict with the nvidia driver on my machine.
Xwang