Bad Cache Aliasing -> NVIDIA driver failure -> Blank screen when X should start

tnandy · 09-12-2006, 06:56 AM

I'm trying to build a dual boot win95/RH9 box to play old games. I'm using RH9 on this Pentium class computer because it has an ISA sound card. I've updated everything from FedoraLegacy.org. I started the thread below on the nVidia forums to diagnose my problem, but now that I know what's failing, I'm not sure what to do about it.

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=74980

This is the error: /var/log/messages:
Jul 12 18:40:52 GAMER95 kernel: NVRM: loading NVIDIA Linux x86 Kernel Module 1.0-7182 Wed Apr 19 12:56:13 PDT 2006
Jul 12 18:40:52 GAMER95 kernel: NVRM: CPU does not support the PAT, falling back to MTRRs.
Jul 12 19:16:28 GAMER95 kernel: NVRM: bad caching on address 0xcb8be000: actual 0x63 != expected 0x73
Jul 12 19:21:08 GAMER95 kernel: NVRM: bad caching on address 0xcb8c0000: actual 0x63 != expected 0x73
Jul 13 09:49:14 GAMER95 kernel: NVRM: bad caching on address 0xcb894000: actual 0x63 != expected 0x73
Jul 13 16:29:59 GAMER95 kernel: NVRM: bad caching on address 0xcb8a7000: actual 0x63 != expected 0x73
Jul 23 20:56:45 GAMER95 kernel: NVRM: bad caching on address 0xcb8a0000: actual 0x63 != expected 0x73
Jul 23 20:56:45 GAMER95 kernel: NVRM: please see the README section on Cache Aliasing for more information

The diagnosis is that there's a problem with cache aliasing (whatever that is) in the RH9 2.4 kernel I'm using. According to the README, the normal cure is to update to the latest kernel for the distro or to a kernel >= 2.6.14. I could be wrong, but I don't think there are any kernels for RH9 later than version 2.4.20-46.9.legacy.

I've got a pretty strong feeling I won't be able to update RH9 to a 2.6 kernel, right? So what do I do now?

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

tnandy · 09-20-2006, 09:12 AM

Bump.

Sugarat · 09-20-2006, 09:21 AM

This is why I prefer distro's like Slackware, cause I just download and compile the latest kernel and have it fixed in minutes.

Not very familiar with RH, but even with that, can you not just compile your own kernel?

tnandy · 09-20-2006, 09:30 AM

Well, I haven't had the pleasure of (successfully) compiling anything yet, but I'm sure it's high time. On the other hand, simply recompiling the kernel without fixing the cache aliasing bug--whatever it is--wouldn't do me much good either.

tnandy · 09-26-2006, 08:41 AM

Bump. Bump. Bump.