Open gl programs quit, nvidia driver "permissions are too restrictive."
 

i am running slackware 10, just switched from mandrake so im a noob. i got the nvidia driver to install without a problem but everytime i try to open a opengl program it exits with the following error:

Error: Could not open /dev/nvidiactl because the permissions
are too restrictive. Please see the FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
section of /usr/share/doc/NVIDIA_GLX-1.0/README for steps
to correct.

i did look in the README file and it says to:

It is likely that a security module for the PAM system may be
changing the permissions on the NVIDIA device files. In most cases
this security system works, but it can get confused. To correct this
problem it is recommended that you disable this security feature.
Different Linux distributions have different files to control this;
please consult with your distributor for the correct method of
disabling this security feature. As an example, if your system has
the file
/etc/security/console.perms
then you should edit the file and remove the line that starts with
"<dri>" (we have also received reports that additional references to
<dri> in console.perms must be removed, but this has not been verified
by NVIDIA). If instead your system has the file
/etc/logindevperms
then you should edit the file and remove the line that lists
/dev/nvidiactl. The above steps will prevent the PAM security system
from modifying the permissions on the NVIDIA device files. Next,
you will need to reset the permissions on the device files back
to their original permissions and owner. You can do that with the
following commands:
chmod 0666 /dev/nvidia* chown root /dev/nvidia*


i had to do this in mandrake to get my nvidia driver to work, but in slackware i dont have either a /etc/security/console.perms or a /etc/logindevperms file. if i do the chmod 0666 /dev/nvidia* chown root /dev/nvidia* my opengl programs work fine, but i would like to figure it out so that i dont have to do that everytime i reboot my machine. what file do i need to alter to fix this? thanks in advance!
-brett

that is weird because I had the same problem but I have the file /etc/security/console.perms as they said. I'm using Slackware 10 too... try to go to Slackware-current now with slapt-get. This corrected some problems with nVidia card for me.

Do you have the file /etc/udev/permissions.d/udev.permissions ?

In that file there is a line :

nvidia*:root:video:0660

This means that the permissions for all nvidia devices are 0660, now to have access to the nvidia devices you can do 2 things :

- change 0660 to 0666
- add your user to the video group (you can do that with KUser)

awesome!! udev.permissions fixed it! thanks! i didnt know about slapt-get, this program looks freakin awesome! thanks for everyones help!
-brett

Remember that if you upgrade X you'll have to make a change to your xorg.conf file (or create a new one). Here: ftp://ftp.slackware.com/pub/slackwar.../ChangeLog.txt you can see what's changing in current. Oh, and try to avoid upgrading ALSA, it will break because it's compiled for a new kernel.