Nvidia and Linux Opensuse

avalosdanielr · 08-23-2012, 03:56 AM

The reason for this post is to stress a rather overlooked point when updating and/or changing the nvidia drivers for OpenSUSE.
In
[http://www.suse.de/~sndirsch/nvidia-...er-HOWTO.html]
you can find a very clear guide for updating the drivers and it worked very well for me, except for one point: When you boot (or change) to runlevel 3 it is very important (at least it was in my case) to be sure you are booting to plain VGA, that is to say 640 x 480 pixel resolution. If not, when you apply the command "rmmod nvidia" the old drivers will NOT be removed completely from the kernel although the new drivers will install without a glitch. The result is that you end up with a (very) unstable install. My advise is then to be very certain that you have obliterated all traces of the previous nvidia driver in the kernel by using the lsmod and rmmod commands before installing the new drivers.

John VV · 08-24-2012, 05:45 AM

I have never had an issue using "the hard way"
( well minor ones when "nouveau" was FIRST USED as the DEFAULT installed )
http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:NVIDIA

http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:NVIDIA_the_hard_way

I have never been a "fan" of the "one click" install or of using yast

the .run is what i have been using for years, since 2005 .

Also the "blacklist" of the nouveau is done automatically now in the .run ( at least in the 290.??? and up)

rebuilding the boot image is still recommended for the FIRST install when switching TO the proprietary for the VERY FIRST time

/dev/random · 08-30-2012, 07:57 AM

I thought that the default resolution was 80 columns x 24 rows on terminals? Also using the VESA frame buffer for high resolution in terminals won't hinder the nvidia driver either as long as the nvidia driver is referenced in X11's configuration file and not VESA.

rnturn · 12-07-2012, 10:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by John VV

the .run is what i have been using for years, since 2005.

Also the "blacklist" of the nouveau is done automatically now in the .run ( at least in the 290.??? and up)

rebuilding the boot image is still recommended for the FIRST install when switching TO the proprietary for the VERY FIRST time

Same here and no problems until today. Can you help decipher the odd error I'm getting when I use the ".run" installer for a legacy card? (Driver version 96.43.23. Yeah, it's an old one.) The notes tell you to do the blacklisting and the mkinitrd build manually and those run OK (I suppose. At least there weren't any errors displayed.) When executing "sh blah-blah-version.run" I'm getting an error stating that the installer was unable to determine the name of the kernel. The log file the installer generated in /var/log is pretty useless in helping to figure out what is going on. Any ideas?

TIA

--
Rick