My reasoning to writing this is to fill in the blanks that may be in question for those source installers.
Fingel's guide is an awesome .rpm installation guide for your rpm install needs.
NOW, to the fun part.
this is intended for the non .rpm using distro's ect. mainly slackware
NOTE=(this is the way I do it and I have yet to have a problem)
(the commands are located in "" brackets, thats what you will type)
(when I refer to /home/user I am referring to your user directory. mine is mitch so I would go to /home/mitch/)
(the txt editor I use is pine's pico , if you use vi do so respectivly)
first go to the nvidia website and grab the newest drivers
This is for the TNT2 - GeForce 4 (maybe GeForce FX) get the IA32
Download the kernel and GLX drivers
http://download.nvidia.com/XFree86_4....0-4191.tar.gz
http://download.nvidia.com/XFree86_4....0-4191.tar.gz
for those with the IA64 people (you know who you are)
or the AMD64 get their respective drivers from
http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp
ok so now that you have them downloaded let say in your /home/user/ dir (assuming this) first this we need to do is set your inittab to runlevel 3 or the equivilant of multiuser mode. this setting is located at /etc/inittab/
make it look like
id:3:initdefault:
to edit it open a console and su to root. then type "pico /etc/inittab" go down and edit that initdefult.
now we need to check to see if you have your kernel source installed. if not no biggie, to check open up a console and type "cd /usr/src/linux"
if you get (cd: /usr/src/linux: No such file or directory) then try "cd /usr/src/linux-2.*) and if you get the same No such file or directory then we will need to install it. you can do either of 2 things, one you can go to the
www.kernel.org and download YOUR kernel only not a new one unless you want to upgrade, but we will do that in my next HOWTO
The other option is to get it off your install cd. on my slackware cd it's located in /mnt/
cdrom/slackware/k/kernel-source-2.4.18-noarch-4.tgz
install the package (assuming you know how) then it will place it in your /usr/src/linux-2.4.18 dir. now we need to creat a link to help our install along
open a console and su to root. now type "ln /usr/src/linux-2.4.18 /usr/src/linux"
this is assuming you are using kernel 2.4.18 if not change the command to reflect YOUR kernel. PHEW any problems with that step lmk.
now restart
when you get to the login screen type
"root"
(enter password) then hit enter
then go to the directory where the drivers are located
"cd /home/user" (assuming this is wher you downloaded them to)
not sure if they are there type "ls" to see if they are there
now we will untar them.
"tar -xzvf NVIDIA_kernel-1.0-4191.tar.gz"
"tar -xzvf NVIDIA_GLX-1.0-4191.tar.gz"
Great!!
now we will cd to their respective directory's. Nvidia says install the Kernel driver frist ok so we will.
"cd NVIDIA_kernel-1.0-4191"
now for the installation
"make install"
it should finish without error (if you get one report it to the forums
now we will cd to the GLX driver dir
"cd /home/user/NVIDIA_GLX-1.0-4191"
now for the installation
"make install"
this should finish without errors also.
GREAT almost done
now we need to edit out a few lines in your XF86Config file located in /etc/X11/
now that all the installing is done lets wrap this up with a quick
"pico /etc/X11/XF86Config"
scroll down to the (Section "Module") portion this is near the top
in that section go down to the GLX module part make sure it looks like this and no exceptions.
# This loads the GLX module
Load "glx"
ok now we are going down a little the portion called
# Graphics device section
the only part we are going to edit is the part where it says
Section "Device"
Driver "nvidia" #change it to "nvidia" instead of "nv"
so the end result should look like this
Section "Device"
Identifier "GeForce3 Ti500"
Driver "nvidia"
#VideoRam 64968
# Insert Clocks lines here if appropriate
EndSection
ok lets recap we changed it to say load "glx" only and changed the driver strain to say "nvidia" instead of "nv"
great we are all but a startx away from being finished.
now type
"startx"
you should see a white screen with the nvidia logo on it then it will go to your defult WM. if it worked kudos to you
now to go back to your inittab settings and change it back to 4 or 5 depends on your distro in slack it's 4.
in a console su to root
then type "pico /etc/inittab/"
change the runlevel to
id:4:initdefault:
now you are done. give your self a had as you are one step closer to becoming a guru
Thanks for reading