Mandrake 9.1 / Gforce 2 nvidia driver ...mystery about instability
 

Hi to all the people out there.

I have mandrake 9.1 installed with generic drivers for the gforce.

my problem is :

when i use the nvidia driver ( after going trought all the steps to install them ) my system is very unstable.

For exemple, i cant run a game like quake ... or it goes 2 a black screen with the watch on it as a mouse icon.


the strange thing is that when i switch to a generic driver, the system seems to be quite stable.

Every application can run, except Quake of course which need the nvidia drivers.


How can i make my mandrake working properly with my linux ?
i tried with the last version of nvidia drivers and the version before. It does the same thing...

i wonder why , please help me :))

In your position, I would use one of the archive drivers, going older until it gets stable, hopefully.

Re: Mandrake 9.1 / Gforce 2 nvidia driver ...mystery about instability
 

Hey.

My knowledge is very limited regarding linux. I too am using Mandrake 9.1 but I'm having a different problem. When I shutdown my x server, my screen goes all nuts. This also happens when I'm shutting down or restarting. How do I restore the previous driver?

Thanks in advance for your help.

-Reef.

I had a similar problem that I tracked down to using a VESA VGA mode on the console. Whenever a VESA VGA console mode was used, I couldn't do anything that loaded glx.

What I did to correct the problem is to remove the line:

vga=788

in each kernel image section of /etc/lilo.conf and make sure the vga line in the top of /etc/lilo.conf said:

vga=normal

Then run the command:

/sbin/lilo

If the output has no errors, reboot and try again. I have had this problem with at least the last 2 nvidia drivers...
-------------------------------
If you use grub instead of lilo as your bootloader, just remove any vga= or video= switches in the kernel line of /boot/grub/menu.lst and reboot.

Thank you for your help. However, I'm still very new at this. Where did you remove this line "vga=788" from? And what has the display got to do with lilo?

Thank you for being patient.

-Reef.

have a look at file /etc/lilo.conf
you'll find those lines, change them then run the program lilo entering at the command line, logged as root, the command :
/sbin/lilo

This has to do with lilo because it defines the screen mode used for booting / shutting down your pc (no problem at boot as the nVidia driver is not yet loaded, problem at shutdown as nVidia has messed somewhere not yet identified...).

It's the display of console mode (that is, out of X).
I'll give it a try this evening...
In fact "the screen goes all nuts" has been thoroughly described at nvnews (see nVidia forum, the link appears at download) : fonts used seem size 90, blinking... with many characters displayed (like at shutdown) : everything is dancing... made it for me only with 4496 version of nVidia drivers, was correct with 4363, I've been too lazy to revert...

Thank you. It worked. And it made total sense! :)

I just with there are other people as helpful as you are.

-Reef

For my case it was a thing to change in the /etc/X11/XF86CONFIG-4

just add this line in the options : Option "NvAGP" "0"
(see /usr/share/doc/NVIDIA_GLX-1.0/Readme

i tested and it does launch quake and the system seems to be totally stable ...

Do you think it s a pb about the AGP port configuration ?

im using a duron 700 + KT7 via 133 something...