I still can't install the nVidia drivers because of this bloody rivafb thing. I'm having a real mare with this now. If I were to reinstall MDK10.1 is there anyway of doing it without the rivafb being added the the kernel?

Thanks in advance again

Steve

Im in the same boat. Are you sure riva is loaded cuz when i tried installing the nVidia drivers I got the message rivafb drivers will conflict blah blah but I dont have the riva module loaded anymore and I keep getting that same message. Have you done lsmod? I am also getting a seg fault at the end of the Nvidia instal, are you gettting that also? I know your frustrated, as am I, but Just some advice, try not to use such strong language in your thread titles.

How about recompiling the kernel without rivafb in it. It's only one option you have to uncheck. It's not that hard just don't touch anything else if you don't know what it is.

how do I recompile and how do I uncheck rivafb? Sorry, I'm a major newbie when it come to this kind of stuff!

Run a search on the hardware forum + the forum for your distro - plenty of probs with riva all round and several answers on this

Edit: search for "rivafb" at top level of forums gets lots of threads on this. Good luck.

http://www.digitalhermit.com/linux/K...ild-HOWTO.html

Somewhere in the videocard section riva should be checked just delete it. I don't know if you can run x now but between a kernel compilation and installing the drivers you probably can't run x. So be prepared and know which steps you have to do to install the driver in the command line.

If rivafb is compiled as a module instead being builtin to the kernel, the nvidia module will work fine. It always says that rivafb will blah, blah, blah for me in Mandrake and in Slackware using 2.4.26 kernel. I forgot to enable it when I compiled the 2.6.10 kernel. Just ignore it if rivafb is compiled as a module. If you really want to make sure rivafb is not loaded, add it to the hotplug blacklist. It will not load it up. I do not suggest removing rivafb from the module directory.

What is the big deal? Just install the nvidia module.

The nVidia installation fails in Mandrake 10.1 because of this rivafb. First it warns me of the conflict, I ignore this and continue as many people suggest but I then get some kind of failure message.

Further help still needed please! It's a real shame 'cause MDK10.1 is superb appart from this problem.

If you are using a framebuffer to make your console look pretty like displaying the Linux logo, then I'm sorry that is your problem. If you need to compile the nvidia module, make sure you have kernel source, kernel headers, and gcc compiler installed. I or some else can not help you if you did not post the error message. Also telling us the steps in detail will help too.

When I used Mandrake 10, I did not have this problem. The installer still warn me about it. I took off Mandrake 10 because it has some compiling issues for programs and I want try a more hardcore Linux distribution like Slackware.

if your talking about a seg fault after it builds the modules, but before it installs the gl libs, try to disable the ncurses interface:

sh NVIDIA*.bin --ui=none

thats what ive had to do ( still haven't been able to actually use the newest driver, and I'm lazy and don't want to patch and rebuild so I stick with the 6111 version of the driver).

Are you sure that its rivafb thats causing your error. When I tried to install the nvidia drivers I got the warning about rivafb but the error I got had nothing to do with rivafb it was caused by the thread local storage mechanism. The nvidia driver is compiled with one of two different tls'. Find out what version of glibc you have and if its glibc2.2 or older try
sh NVIDIA*.run --force-tls='classic'

or if its glibc2.3 or higher try
sh NVIDIA*.run --force-tls='new'

Hope this helps