I just bought a new notebook, Compaq Presario R3000. Cheesy, it weighs about 10lb, but inexpensive and quite powerful.

Anyway, I installed Slackware 10.0 on it. Then the first thing I did was to update the kernel to 2.6.7 (from the 2nd installation CD). I installed all the available kernel packages, but I forgot the headers by mistake - that'll come later.

After getting connected to the internet, I updated everything with swaret. Then I downloaded the NVIDIA driver packaged form the nvidia website. I can't get the damn thing installed correctly though. I was in run-level 3 and when I issued the command :

# sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-5336-pkg1.run

Everything looked ok, then the installer tried to download a kernel interface from the ftp site (I clicked OK), but couldn't find one, then it said it was going to compile a kernel interface (I clicked OK), it said it was compiling, got to 100 % (done), then the computer totally froze. I couldn't even get to a virtual console and had to reboot by turning the power off.

Then I remembered that I might have neglected to install the kernel headers, so I went back and did that (off the cd again) and checked to make sure I had installed binutils also (it was installed).

After that I tried the NVIDIA installation again, with the same depressing results.

I haven't a clue as to what's going on, I'd appreciate any help I can get on this one as I can't even boot into X properly - I'm running gnome, it takes an age to load and then I can't open any applications except for a console window from within there. I don't know if this is related to my video card driver not being installed, or whether it's related to something else. The xorg logfile shows several warnings, but no errors. Obviously I want to get my video driver installed correctly before I start hacking away at xorg.config.

Sorry if all this is a bit jumbled, but I suppose I'm very confused and have no idea where these problems might lie - This is my first linux installation on a laptop.

My video card is nvidia geforce4 440

If you need to view logfiles, config files, computer hardware, or anything, I'd be happy to post them, but it may take a while as I can't use any internet browsers on my install yet! I'll try and get a browser up and running through fluxbox later, when I get home from work.

Cheers, and thanks for any help!

Hello,

I had this problem myself ages ago.

I seem to remember that it was a problem with the NVIDIA driver rather than the linux kernel - as installing the headers has no effect.

I got a patched version of the driver and it runs okay.....

have a quick look at this:

http://librenix.com/?inode=3945
http://madpenguin.org/cms/?m=show&id=882

Which confirms what I say - I downloaded a modified version.

However, it does state that the newest driver should work....

When did you download it?

Do you have /var/log/nvidia-installer.log file ? If yes, what are the logged errors ?

I downloaded the driver package just yesterday, from the nvidia website.
This suggests to me that there's a problem with support for the hardware - even though it says in the README that there is support for geforce4 (presumably this means it should work with geforce4 440). That doesn't sound very reasonable though.

I also tried to install the driver package using the 2.4.26 kernel, which I had retained and added to lilo in case of problems with 2.6.7, and that installation too was unsuccessful (same problem as with 2.6.7).

I'll check out the installer log file (if I have it) later.

Thanks for the links, which I'll check out in depth later too.

I have a geforce4 440 working with the 6629 nvidia driver and kernel 2.6.9
Try this driver if you can

do you have the kernel sources for 2.6.7 and 2.4.26 and have them configured properly? ( for 2.4.26 all you should need is the kernel-source package, cd into /usr/src/linux-2.4.26, and run "make dep". then retry the nvidia kernel build)

the 5336 driver doesn't work with 2.6 the 6629 should work you can get more help at www.nvnews.net forums.

OK, I'll try out the 6629 driver later when I get home from work.

In answer to the question about kernel configuration, no I didn't configure the 2.6.7 kernel after installation, or the 2.4.26 kernel. All cards on the table, I don't have a clue what I'm doing in terms of kernel configuration, so if someone can point me in the right direction, that'd be just sweet.

I do have the kernel source packages installed for both kernels, however.

Thanks for all the input, it looks like I'm much closer to resolving this little issue.

Well, the installation of the nvidia driver 6629 went like a charm. There was a conflict with the rivafb module which I put in the hotplug blacklist just to be sure, I edited xorg.conf very crudely to include the nvidia driver, now when I start X, the Nvidia logo comes up which I'm very happy about.

I still have a BIG problem with X, which I'll post seperately about.
Thanks again!