I'm running an "incomplete" Slackware64-current with alienbob's multilib packages which are all updated currently. I was using the nvidia drivers for a while, but my cards are old and have been slowly dying. So I removed the nvidia drivers since I couldn't even start x with them and switched to the the nouveau drivers which are working well.

At first steam installed with the SBo build script wouldn't start due to missing the nvidia drivers, but that was quickly solved by using slackpkg to reinstall mesa. After that I didn't really touch steam for around and week and was greeted with this error when I tried opening it again.

This was all before the most recent batch of updates and nothing has since changed. Reinstalling mesa or even steam of course didn't work.

rebuild your drivers with 32 bit libraries.
step 1 uninstall the driver . step 2 reinstall mesa both of them 32 bit and 64 bit
step 3 http://docs.slackware.com/howtos:har...aphics_drivers
when nvidia asks to install 32 bit do it.
you will need openal 32 and 64 bit also.

As I said I am running alienbob's multlilib packages, is steam requiring proprietary nvidia drivers a new thing? It was working without them as of recently and there is a lot of documentation online about others being able to use them as well. Running the nvidia drivers is not an option for me currently, my cards are on their final leg and can only manage nouveau. So I either need to get steam working with nouveau again, not play any steam games for the time being or get new cards.

well I have never known Steam to use the Nouveau driver. You have a legacy card so the nauveau driver may have got it to load.
But that is a must for steam the proprietary driver. I have never got it to run on anything else.
if you follow my steps you will be fine.

as for the mesa package mix up on the 21st that has been resolved just reinstall the mesa packages.

http://www.slackware.com/~alien/slac...ADME.Slackware

Unfortunately I won't, I have tried. This thread is also not really the place to deal with all the issues nvidia drivers give my system currently with my half dead cards.

Here are some links documenting that steam does (Or at least did) work with nouveau.

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=196923
https://steamcommunity.com/app/22141...8451466090049/
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pa...est_gpus&num=1

Edit: Also I never installed the 32 bit mesa package that was on the mirrors, I saw it reported here and waited till it was fixed the next morning to upgrade. Besides the issue was present before and is still there after this latest upgrade.

What ever dude I ran a 9800gt for years and would never use the crappy open source driver.

Well if you really want to know, when running the nvidia drivers only after starting x I wasn't able to reboot, suspend, shutdown or even stop x until it got to the point that startx would just give me a black screen. My cards would run violently after playing any game even for just a few minutes and wouldn't stop until I shut down or suspended (Before that stopped working), some opengl games (Doom 3 using running natively on GNU/Linux using the steam game data, but not the steam runtime or client) would reliably just make my computer freeze in certain game areas within a matter of seconds (Couldn't even ssh in) until I was getting issues with mpv segfaulting when using opengl... Yea, I can't use the nvidia drivers until I get new cards, thankfully nouveau drivers still work excluding an occasional crash/freeze.

i have had the opposite issue
the nouveau was the problem and the nividia.run "just works"

a 9800gt is not a half dead card
the Gforce2 mx400 i have in a old box is a half dead card using the 96.run driver

now you might want to use the current 340 driver
the .65 is OLD

http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html
the 340.76 is current
http://www.nvidia.com/Download/drive...px/81761/en-us


after you launch the .run from a text only boot you basically use the arow keys to first " accept" then say YES and OK to everything

the 64 bit .run will ask to install the 32 bit libs -- say "yes"

now
seeing as the .run replaces MESA libs and the mesa headers( glext.h gl.h glxext.h glx.h )
reinstall mesa

now you also must MAKE 100 percent sure !!!
that you use the mesa libs and the MESA!!!! headers
OR!!!!!!
that you use the NVIDIA libs and the NVIDIA!!!! headers

you CAN NOT MIX THEM!!!

if you do mix them you WILL!!! have some odd and seemingly unexplainable problems on SOME!! but NOT all programs

I find this thread somewhat confusing. Unless I'm mistaken OP is running 2 x 9800 GTs in SLI which to me denotes a pretty serious commitment to 3D Acceleration. While I have no doubt that Steam will run with Nouveau drivers, the games are a whole other matter. I do respect (and sympathize with) the nouveau team for what they are attempting to accomplish but 3D Acceleration is by no means fait accomplit with Nouveau

So I have to ask why someone so committed to performance as to shell out ~$400.00 USD for 2 9800s would settle for crippling them with Nouveau?.... unless OP is not experienced in hardware maintenance. If they are truly dying (and what evidence is there that they are?) the odds are extremely high that degraded and/or unstable performance is a heat issue and most often that can be fixed.

It is my opinion that if the cards can run w/ Nouveau they should also be able to run w/ nvidia drivers if installed correctly, assuming the cards haqve been decently maintained. By that I mean thermal paste checked for drying out, fans checked for function and setting and free from dust bunnies.

If I am not just jumping to ridiculous conclusions here these are still quite respectable graphics cards (especially 2 of them!) and I (and I'm sure others) would be willing to troubleshoot and fix what ails them.

They are really old, refurbished by dell and I got them before I was even using GNU/Linux. They have been giving me issues which have been progressively getting worse for a while and the best explanation I have is that its the hardware. I'm not really that knowledgeable about hardware though and I can't really tell if I'm right without trying new cards which I have been wanting for a while anyways for opengl 4.0+, but money is an issue... I tried reinstalling the nvidia drivers several times before resorting to to the nouveau drivers, which while they work unlike the nvidia drivers, its not really a smooth ride and the issues still seem connected to my cards.

If the cards are bad as I suspect why the nouveau drivers still kind of work while the nvidia drivers don't is an interesting question, but to be honest or even blunt, this thread is not really about if I should or shouldn't use the nvidia drivers, I know how to install them and would be using them if I could (Even if I don't appreciate their licensing). What I am stuck on is if using steam with the nouveau drivers which seem to be my only option for steam at this point. I have searched online extensively for this, but I haven't really gotten anywhere although that could been my own poor search queries...

The nouveau drivers likely "sort of work" because they do less work. That is to say many features even of your older cards are not even accessed let alone implemented. I don't think you need a new/different card for reference. You can tell a great deal about their relative health just by looking at temperatures. There is just no good reason for any decent graphics card to idle over 100C. For reference my stock GTX 760 idles ~80C. Prior to that purchase I had an 8800 GT which did originally idle at ~95C but for around $25 USD an Arctic Cooler replacement shrouded HS/Fan dropped it to ~82C. You don't have to spend (much) money if they're older and have never been serviced.

GPUs very often run hotter than CPUs so the thermal paste dries into a useless cake much sooner. Just removing the HS/Fan assembly and cleaning off the old junk (final wipe w/ alcohol swab) and replacing with a uniformly thin coat of good paste like Arctic Silver can actually drop temps by 10C or more. Just alternately cross-tighten the mounting bolts firmly but not over tight. Generally 1/4-1/2 turn past solid hand tight is sufficient and safe. You really don't have a lot to lose since they barely work now so you could conider this an opportunity.

Also FWIW you don't have to spend more than $100-150 USD to get a single modern card that will outperform even your 2 in SLI as they were when new. The technology has improved just that much. For an older machine I bought n MSi nVidia card for $65 that way outperformed my old 8800 GT that cost me $225 new.

80C idle? That seems really excessive! My card is sitting idle at 52C. It is several years old, but is was pretty much top of the line at the time, so it certainly isn't due to a lower powered GPU. Have GPUs really changed that much since I bought mine?

So its been a while, but I finally figured out what went wrong....

/usr/lib/libGL.so.1 was linked to /usr/lib/libGL.so.340.65 which is an old nvidia library that never got removed for one reason or another.

So I removed both and relinked libGL.so.1 to libGL.so.1.2.0. Now steam works with nouveau again.

More details here - https://github.com/ValveSoftware/ste...ux/issues/4158

Edit: I additionally found that /usr/lib/libEGL.so.1 links to /usr/lib/libEGL.so.340.65 which appears to be the last remaining nvidia library. I removed both and symlinked libEGL.so.1 to libEGL.so.1.0.0, now LDD no longer reports any issues involving nvidia in /usr/lib. Interestingly enough /usr/lib64 seems completely free of old nvidia libraries.

Edit: A better way to fix this was to remove my new symlinks and then reinstall the mesa-compat32 package so that the doinst.sh can recreate the symlinks.