I'm trying to install nvidia 7 series drivers on an older x86_64 box running centos 6.3. Problem is that my nvidia's installer is failing to kill nouveau.

I booted into runlevel 3, and when I ran the nvidia installer it generated a blacklist nouveau modprobe but said modprobe was already running. I restarted and tried blacklisting nouveau in /boot/grub/menu.lst for my default kernel (0). After that, when I restarted I got a system warning saying a file was not found and I had to boot from an earlier kernel...

Any advice on why I'm getting that warning, or why Nouveau won't just go away? I gave up on trying to put nvidia drivers on my computer a while back, but I'm giving it a second whack now
as I really want to get my old computer set up as a HTPC.

You may need to uninstall the nouveau driver if it is installed. If not then you may recompile the kernel to exclude nouveau. Since you have proprietary nvidia module you may not need the nouveau anymore: deinstall it, don't modprobe it.

If you mean the 71.XX series drivers for Vanta/Riva/TNT/Geforce/Geforce3 cards then stop worring about it. 71.XX series drives will not work with centOS 6.3. I'm not aware of any distro with current support that will work with the 71.XX drivers.

Even if you did get the 71.XX series drivers installed, it will make no real difference to the video playback capabilities.

cascade9: I should clarify--drivers for a GeForce 7000 series. I believe the driver is 304.64 now.

malekmustaq: I'm going to pre-qualify this question by reminding you that this is a question in the rookie section. With that said, can I just uninstall the graphics driver and centos can still boot on runlevel 3? Or will that disable my adapter entirely? That would be nice since nvidia and and nouveau drivers won't play nice, and apparently cannot coexist.

Actually, as a matter of principle, you can always compile the kernel without that driver. But it appears that the issue has serious bearing with hardware limitation: I hold regard to 'Cascage's' post since it appears he has a better experience with nvidia. In my case I always 'demand' Intel for every buy since the time Intel opened up its driver sources for the FOSS coders. I don't buy anything Ati (where M$oft owned substantial stock) nor nvidia.) I must support those who support FOSS. This is a moral duty.

I really wanted to help but since you are not running Slackware my experience might not apply to your case.

Good luck.

304.64 is right.

some 7000 series stuff can have issues with newer nVida installers. I'm sure the problem has happened with the 7025/7050/7100/7150 onboard chipset, adn I'm pretty sure some of the lower level stuff has had issues as well. Probably part of why nVidia dropping the 6XXX and 7XXX series cards on ther next driver seires after 304.

The nVidia drivers might help a little, but it wont help that much. If you had a 8XXX series card or newer that supported VDPAU then it does make a huge diference in palyablity, at least for supported file types.

Try the advice here-

https://www.centos.org/modules/newbb...topic_id=39125

Gotta watch intel like that...some techncial documents have _never_ been released, even after people have asked repeartedly (i845 chipse in particular). not all intel video chips have had techncial documents released, as they outsourced the video chip to outside companies, particularly PowerVR. Those intel systems using PowerVR chips have Awful Linux Support, and intel keeps on doing it...the newest intel atom CPUs are PowerVR video.

ATI doesnt exists anymore. They got bought out by AMD...who have released quite a bit of documentation to help FOSS coders. There are even AMD empolyees working on the open source drivers.

Do you have anything apart from rumour about mircosoft owning 'substantial stock' of ATI? The did do business together, particularly with the Xbox 360. Someones probably just blown that out of proportion.

Intel arent saints, AMD arent evil......nVidia is pretty close to evil though.

for nvidia cards OLDER than the gforce2 ( the 96. driver ) and this includs the even OLDER 71 driver
they DO NOT work on CentOS6
x11 is TOO NEW


you CAN use the antique 71 driver on CentOS 5.8

but for that card and cent6
you are locked into the Nouveau driver
or
install CentOS5

I have an old Gforce2 box from 2001
running SL6.3

the 96 driver is DEAD on it
dose not work


now you could DOWNGRADE x11 to the older version in cent5 ???
but that will be a LOT of work and might not even be doable

Thanks again for the info.

John: This GeForce 7600 (from about 2006...). Old, but not GeForce2 old.

Cascade: it's not that I'm trying to optimize/tweak performance, but the Nouveau drivers have problems playing video, and inhibit some flash sites and some GUIs. Since I'm setting this up as an HTPC, that won't work.

I'm thinking that I might just want to abandon Centos in favor of Ubuntu for usability, and because I know plenty of people use it for HTPCs. I think Ubuntu will cover whatever limited networking abilities I might require (SSH and network controls, but not serving any web-content.) Thoughts?

A 7000 card dose not use the antique 71 driver
the 71 driver was for
http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux-d...15-driver.html
gf3 ,tnt,riva

a GF 7600 will use the current 304
BUT there is a bug in the 300 & 304 dealing with keeping a custom GAMA setting


use the Kmod-nvidia driver in the Cent6 repos

that will grab the needed code like the kernel headers/ source
and will auto blacklist the nouvaue
and will rebuild the boot image MANDATORY AND 100% REQUIRED !!!! when switching from the open to the closed driver

and NO f-ing around with running
and installing the .run
( and gcc,autotools, and the kernel source)
and MANUALLY rebuilding the boot image

Excuse me: I did not say ALL, check what I said: "since the time Intel opened up its driver sources" The variable "ALL" only exists from illogical inference.

By the way for information: I run my new Atom from intel open source here.


Yes I know that fact since 2007.


Documentation is not source code either. The FSF pushes for opening source code as this is the only way our coders are able to meet every type of need arising from FOSS community. Documentation, yes, ends up to download that nvidia-xxxxx.sh which often fails to work in some of their chips. I had a bad experience with that, as well as the radeon --it was the time though before AMD acquired it.


Good names yea last year Michel Dänzer and Christian König. But it is the open sourcery policy that AMD needs to amend. Afterall FOSS buyers pay equal price what the proprietary OS users pay them.

I said 'owned' "where M$oft owned substantial stock" Past tense, not Present tense. It was a matter of public knowledge that time, not a rumour, and there was a brief time FSF boycotted ATI.

We do not judge between evil and not evil for such things belong to pneumatic world.

What made Unix a superior system is its superior philosophy. In the social aspect of computing life the same principle holds true: That a good social philosophy over software can offer good computing life to the world. Read it from here.

Hope that helps.

Good luck.

Illogical inference? Hardly.

Notice that there is no GMA 500 'Poulsbo' or other PowerVR video chip drivers in there? They have closed source proprietary drivers.

So AMD is bad because the drivers have 'lesser support' compared to windows. O.K. then, why isnt intel just as guilty when they also have video chips with different support levels for windows and linux/BSD.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_G...chips_on_Linux

I've never seen any hard facts about that, just rumour. Ancient history in tech terms anyway.

We? Speak for yourself. Obviously I do judge between good and evil, and I was only semi-joking about nVidia being evil.

Thanks John VV--I'll give that a shot tomorrow. Glad to know that this is a known issue (bug for 300 and 304 drivers, and better yet, that it's easily fixed.

Now, the bickering about ATI, AMD, nVidia and Intel---how does that help solve my problem?

:P

Ugh. un-blacklisted nouveau drivers, and removed modprobe the installer put in, but I'm still getting an error 15. I had to reboot from an older, backup build, and couldn't figure out why I'm getting that error.

I'm sure there's a way to fix it, but it's definitely beyond my skill. Thanks all for the advice, but I'm giving up and moving to Ubuntu, and I just ordered a GeForce 8000 for the VDPAU . I've come to terms with the fact that I'm not yet knowledgeable enough to fix the myriad of problems that keep popping up, so it makes more sense to take the reliable path more frequently taken.

Thanks again to everyone for helping me out though!

squimby

what exactly is it you are doing
the above stats
are you REINSTATING nouveau AS the 3d driver

you only remove the black list if you are switching BACK to the nouveau from using the nvidia.run
and then you would also HAVE to rebuild the boot image to use the nouveau driver instead of the nvidia driver

from the top
this is a 7000 card ? right
nvidia just but out a bug fix "310" ??? i do not know ( am not using it yet)
but the 7000 cards are supported by the kmod-nvidia in the CentOS "ELrepo" repos
-- to install the elrepo see:
http://wiki.centos.org/AdditionalResources/Repositories

and using the kmod-nvidia there is NO NEED to mess around with any blacklisting
no need to edit modeprobe
no need to manually rebuild the boot image
the rpm takes care of this
after the elrepo is installed run
( there is also an incompatible version on ATrpm , hence only turn on elrepo)
then reboot

PS.
-- this is why using the nvidia.run driver is known as " the hard way" even though it is not all that hard

I'd use xubuntu over ubuntu for a HTPC. If find unity annoying though, maybe you wont.

Hopefully you got a 8XXX card which supports VDPAU (not all the 8XXX cards do). I would have got something newer, the 'better' 8XXX cards are hard to find now, the 8400 GS is horrible.

Just for your information, the 7XXX and 6XXX cards are not supported by the new 310.XX series drivers.