nvidia drivers and slack 9.1
 

Greetings everyone.

Im a new convert to slackware 9.1 (From mandrake). I find slackware to be far superior to any previous distro I have ever used and i have had little trouble setting it up. However, Im have run into a stump with the nvidia drivers, and as Im not very good with linux yet, I would appreciate some advice on how to get my system working with the drivers.

i have a geforce 5600 ultra card, 128MB.

I downloaded the installer and ran it with the --extract-only option.

I entered the src directories, and typed make.

I received a message saying that the drivers were installed successfully.

I edited XF86Config so that the driver would read as nvidia. I commented out the "load dri" line. I restarted X.

I received errors saying something like, 0 screens found, no nvidia module found.

I changed the "nvidia" back to "nv" and x started up again without a hitch.

So, does anyone know how I should proceed from here? I, personally, have no idea.


Thank you.

What's your XF86Config look like?

Well, I gave away my old Geforce 2MX and bought a Matrox G550. But as far as I remember, the nvidia drivers came in 2 parts:
- XFree86 driver
- Kernel module
The kernel module must be loaded before X if you want to use the nvidia driver.

Here's mine at any rate, if it helps.

Section "Device"
Identifier "nVidia"
VendorName "nVidia"
BoardName "nVidia Geforce 4 mx420"
Driver "nvidia"
EndSection

Also make sure in your screens section, the line Device "whatever", you replace "whatever" with what you used as the identifier in the device section. So for me, it would look like this:

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen 1"
Device "nVidia"
Monitor "hp pavilian mx50"
DefaultDepth 24

Also make sure you have the line "Load "glx""(without the outermost quotes) under the Module section.

this may seem dumb but why not type:

su
[password]
init 3

then log in as root and run the installer? works for me!
[oh yeah and edit /etc/X11/XF86Config of course]

Ill post my XF86config later.

(1)I ran the installer when I had mandrake 9.1, and I had the same problem.

(2)Under slackware its better to extract the source and install it manually, otherwise things get weird.

(3) The new installer is supposed to contain everything needed, so its one part now, instead of two parts.

Im beginning to think that the card itself is not supported properly under the drivers. Lots of people cant get the 5600 ultra to work, it seems.

Hi, try this..........insert the ....."Option" you see above,,,, just like it shows.

My 2 cents...
 

Hey all:

I have a self-built desktop with a Geforce 2, and a Toshiba laptop with a Geforce 4 Go. Both are running Slackware 9.1. Here is what I did:

1) Download the installer from Nvidia.
2) Run the installer as root.
3) Edit the xfconfig file so that the driver reads "nvidia" where it used to say "vesa".
4) I'm in business.

Actually, for the laptop, I had to add the following line to /etc/modules.conf:

option nvidia NVreg_SoftEDIDs=0

before adding this option, I had a vertically oriented black bar on the right of my screen. Anyway.

I'm not sure why you need to extract the installer the manually run make, I have never had to do this. The only wrinkle I ever ran across, when I was running a version of Slackware current, was the installer refusing to build because the version of GCC installed was different than the version used to compile the kernel. This was easily remedied with the following:

export IGNORE_CC_MISMATCH=true

last I checked, you needed to do this to install under Fedora. This may also be the situation right now if you are running Slackware current, because GCC 3.3x was just moved from testing into the distribution.

Just my 2 cents!
charlie

FIXED