VGA card driver

satimis · 08-05-2012, 08:15 AM

Hi all,

Ubuntu 12.04 server 64bit, newly installed.
$ lspci | grep VGA

Code:

07:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G71 [GeForce 7300 GS] (rev al)

On booting it popup:

Code:

error: fd0 read error

after a while it continued to boot with white rectangle blocks displayed on screen. Text scrolling couldn't be read. After booting finished I can login. But the characters were tiny, very small.

Disable floppy drive on BIOS
and
Installing nvidia-current

didn't help, even becoming worser. A white screen with symbols, such as ( { ) } etc were displayed finally.

I have to start at booting;
Recover mode
-> Resume normal boot

Then finally I can read normal size characters on screen.

I suppose it is the problem of nVidia driver. Please help how to sort out the problem. TIA

B.R.
satimis

tommcd · 08-05-2012, 09:41 AM

How did you install the nvidia-current driver?
If you installed the driver from the terminal, as I do, then be sure to enable the driver. Boot up and open a terminal and run:

Code:

sudo nvidia-xconfig

This should enable the driver. Try rebooting after enabling the driver if there is no improvement.
If you have trouble booting to the graphical desktop, you could run the above command from recovery mode.

Then check to see if the driver is indeed enabled. From the terminal run:

Code:

glxinfo | grep -i render

It should produce an output similar to this:

Code:

tom@desktop:/data$ glxinfo | grep -i render
direct rendering: Yes
OpenGL renderer string: GeForce 8400 GS/PCIe/SSE2
    GL_NV_conditional_render, GL_NV_copy_depth_to_color, GL_NV_copy_image, 
    GL_NV_path_rendering, GL_NV_pixel_data_range, GL_NV_point_sprite, 
    GL_NVX_conditional_render, GL_NVX_gpu_memory_info, GL_OES_depth24, 
    GL_OES_fbo_render_mipmap, GL_OES_get_program_binary, GL_OES_mapbuffer,

The parts I highlighted in bold are what is important. It should report that direct rendering is enabled with a yes. And your graphics card should be listed on the OpenGL renderer string line.

satimis · 08-05-2012, 10:15 AM

Hi,

Thanks for your advice.

Before replying your questions I have to explain that this is a server without GUI.

What I don't understand is why text scrolling at booting became a complete mess.

Quote:

Originally Posted by tommcd

How did you install the nvidia-current driver?
If you installed the driver from the terminal, as I do, then be sure to enable the driver. Boot up and open a terminal and run:

Code:

sudo nvidia-xconfig

This should enable the driver. Try rebooting after enabling the driver if there is no improvement.
If you have trouble booting to the graphical desktop, you could run the above command from recovery mode.

I installed the driver after booting up the server. After finish I rebooted the server discovering the situation even worser than before. Then I uninstalled it afterwards.

Quote:

Then check to see if the driver is indeed enabled. From the terminal run:

Code:

glxinfo | grep -i render

- snip-

$ glxinfo | grep -i render

Code:

Error: unable to open display

There is no graphic display on the server.

B.R.
satimis

John VV · 08-05-2012, 03:34 PM

if there is no GUI then why did you put a old gforce 7000 series card in it
if X org is not there then the nvidia drive can not even install
the "sh *.run" command will error

satimis · 08-05-2012, 09:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by John VV

if there is no GUI then why did you put a old gforce 7000 series card in it
if X org is not there then the nvidia drive can not even install
the "sh *.run" command will error

This is an old box.

I have another hd with Debian 6.0.5 desktop running on it. There is no problem, both at booting and after boot up.

The only problem is on this Ubuntu 12.04 server, both at booting and after boot up (remark: when running this hd the another hd was disconnected and vice versa). Therefore I tried installing the driver to see whether it can help at booting and after boot up. But there was result. I already uninstalled it.

Ah, I recall that this hd was previously running Ubuntu 12.04 desktop. It also had problem at booting with white screen displayed. Text scrolling could not be read. But there was no problem after boot up. I didn't need installing the nVidia driver.

B.R.
satimis