Xorg Will Not Start!? Failed to load "shm"

Avieth · 04-17-2006, 05:49 PM

Today I booted up my gentoo box and xorg didn't start. I killed the init script and ran startx, the error was:

Code:

(EE) Failed to load module "shm" (module does not exist, 0) 

Backtrace: 
0: X(xf86SigHandler+0x94) 
1: /lib/libc.so.6 
2: /usr/lib64/drivers/nvidia_drv.so

How do I fix this?

b0uncer · 04-18-2006, 02:16 PM

two choises, either check/get the module shm or remove it from your Xorg's config file so it doesn't try to load it (if it's not needed, I don't know).

Avieth · 04-18-2006, 09:41 PM

I tried removing the line, xorg doesn't report an error, but it doesn't start either. As for getting the module, how do I do that? I tried reinstalling (yes i formatted and reinstalled) but I still get the error!

EDIT: Ok, so I decided to try changing the driver from nvidia to nv, and now it starts... Any ideas on how to get nvidia working again?

b0uncer · 04-20-2006, 06:26 AM

hmm..I suppose that "nvidia" driver is the one that you get from the nvidia website? If that is the case, I suggest you download the .run file, and use it to recompile the needed modules for your kernel (if the .run installer can't find a precompiled driver for your kernel, then it asks you if you wish to compile a new one).

After a kernel update you'll probably need to re-install that package again. The "nv" driver is, if I'm not mistaken, a free driver that comes with the distribution, and the "nvidia" is the one you need to install separately from nVidia's website. I have ATI card nowadays (I miss nVidia), but I recall installing nVidia graphics drivers was quite smooth thing..

Try downloading and installing the driver from nVidia, and if you happen to run into problems, feel free to ask for help - or if you like, IM me (if you have Messenger or ICQ).

drkstr · 04-20-2006, 08:25 AM

You will not get hardware acceleration to work with 'nv' driver. I would suggest reinstalling the 'nvidia' driver from their website as previously mentioned.

regards,
...drkstr

Avieth · 04-20-2006, 01:51 PM

Yes, that's what I've been using for the past few years. I run gentoo, so I just emerge nvidia-kernel and nvidia-glx packages. nvidia-kernel installs fine, no problems at all, and up until now it's given me no errors. So I think it might be a problem with the card, since I can't find much help from google, or the gentoo forums.

Can anybody confirm that this is a hardware problem?

ioerror · 04-20-2006, 02:29 PM

shm makes me think of /dev/shm. Make sure you have tmpfs mounted on /dev/shm (Linux implements shared memory as a virtual filesystem).

I was filing to get DRI working on my Radeon so I straced an opengl app and found that it was trying to open a file in /dev/shm (i.e. shared memory) and was failing as I didn't have tmpfs mounted. Once I mounted it up, everything worked OK.

Not sure if this is related to your problem, I could be way off base here, but worth checking.

Avieth · 04-20-2006, 02:51 PM

Yup, /dev/shm is mounted, I have a tmpfs.

drkstr · 04-21-2006, 08:29 AM

This is probably a stupid question, but are you sure that the nvidia Gentoo package is the same as the official nvidia driver? I don't know if nvidia has some kind of deal with Gentoo, but their drivers are proprietary. The non official nvidia driver that comes with most linux distros does not support hardware acceleration. Just for debugging purposes, try getting the driver from nvidia themselves and see if that helps. It's good to eliminate all possible problems when trying to figure out the source of the problem.

regards,
...drkstr

Avieth · 04-21-2006, 03:58 PM

Here's the top of the ebuild for the nvidia-glx package:

Code:

# Copyright 1999-2006 Gentoo Foundation
# Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2
# $Header: /var/cvsroot/gentoo-x86/media-video/nvidia-glx/nvidia-glx-1.0.8756.ebuild,v 1.1 2006/04/08 03:46:10 augustus E$

inherit eutils multilib versionator

X86_PKG_V="pkg1"
AMD64_PKG_V="pkg2"
NV_V="${PV/1.0./1.0-}"
X86_NV_PACKAGE="NVIDIA-Linux-x86-${NV_V}"
AMD64_NV_PACKAGE="NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-${NV_V}"
#X86_FBSD_NV_PACKAGE="NVIDIA-FreeBSD-x86-${NV_V}"

DESCRIPTION="NVIDIA X11 driver and GLX libraries"
HOMEPAGE="http://www.nvidia.com/"
SRC_URI="x86? ( ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/${NV_V}/${X86_NV_PACKAGE}-${X86_PKG_V}.run )
         amd64? ( http://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/${NV_V}/${AMD64_NV_PACKAGE}-${AMD64_PKG_V}.run )"

As you can see in the bottom line, it downloads the driver from nvidia.