Nvidia driver screwed up again (Solved)

[eddieg780]

I had the Nvidia driver 195.36.15 from nvidia's site working fine until an update 2 days ago which totally messed it up again. Now it won't take the driver at all. I have tried all the ways listed including dibl's way, which worked before, and nothing works. Why would kubuntu do this with nvidia? The nouveau driver should be a choice not installed by default, especially when it's not even finished yet, and give you all this trouble. I can not keep trying to reinstall my video driver every time an update comes along. I have been donating $20 a month for 3 years to this project and this has totally disgusted me. I should be able to use any driver I chose. Does anyone know why kubuntu did this with this nouveau driver and more important how do I get the Nvidia driver to work again?

[dibl]

Re: Nvidia driver screwed up again

I can't speak for Kubuntu/Canonical -- I suppose they're trying promote FOSS, which nouveau is.

However, to your point -- I downloaded and installed the new 256.35 Beta driver yesterday and it is working fine. I'm going to gently suggest that you may have rushed the process or skipped over something important. Also, once you have blacklisted the nouveau driver, and if you will keep your downloaded Nvidia installer package in /home/eddie/Downloads, then this is all you will ever need to do to reinstall it (after a new kernel installation, for example):

- Ctrl-Alt-F1 to the tty console
- sudo service kdm stop
- cd /tmp
- sudo cp /home/eddie/Do{tab to complete}/NV{tab to complete} .
- sudo sh NV{tab to complete}
{accept the license, "YES" to the first 3 questions, "NO" to a new xorg.conf, "OK" to the readme.txt ...}
- sudo service kdm start

It's really not that difficult -- takes about 2 minutes on a slow day.

[eddieg780]

Re: Nvidia driver screwed up again

Thank you dibl. I did it exacly as you stated. The nouveau was and still is blacklisted. I will try the beta driver. Can you tell me where to get it please?

[dibl]

Re: Nvidia driver screwed up again

I download the drivers from here: http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=122606

Make sure you select the one for your architecture.

Some folks have indicated that it is also necessary to blacklist the nvidiafb module. It has not been an issue for me, and I have not blacklisted it, but if you continue to have a problem, you might try that too.

I hope this helps.

[blobfish]

Re: Nvidia driver screwed up again

I have had good luck so far with this.

https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-x-swat/+archive/x-updates

[eddieg780]

Re: Nvidia driver screwed up again

This beta driver seemed to install on the second try and it's working again. However, I did have to click 'yes' for a new xorg.conf, not sure why. Thank you for all your help.

[dibl]

Re: Nvidia driver screwed up again

However, I did have to click 'yes' for a new xorg.conf, not sure why. Thank you for all your help.

There must have been a problem with your prior xorg.conf file. Now that you have a good/working xorg.conf, you should always choose "NO" at the end of the driver installation routine -- it should not be necessary to overwrite it with a new one. For safety, you can

sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.good22jun10

That way you can find a good one if you need it.

[geezer]

Re: Nvidia driver screwed up again (Solved)

There must have been a problem with your prior xorg.conf file. Now that you have a good/working xorg.conf, you should always choose "NO" at the end of the driver installation routine -- it should not be necessary to overwrite it with a new one. For safety, you can

Curious.

Are you advising this because the installation program can/will write an invalid xorg.conf??

It seems that if you cannot trust the installation program to write a valid xorg.conf, then why trust the installation of the driver?

I personally would not trust any part of an installation program of which I cannot trust all of the installation program and if I trust all of the installation program, then it seems it would be more prudent to answer "Yes" and have the installation program write a "good" xorg.conf. That would cover the cases where things have changed enough that the old xorg.conf could no longer be valid. In that case keeping the old file would be totally wrong.

Just my possibly ignorant thoughts on the matter and curious as to where my logic is probably wrong.

[dibl]

Re: Nvidia driver screwed up again (Solved)

Fair question geezer -- but apparently you thought about it considerably deeper than I did. I only mentioned that because eddie wrote "... I did have to click "yes" for a new xorg.conf ...". I'm not sure what went on at his system -- I wasn't there. For some reason, it didn't start correctly from the prior xorg.conf, and I was thinking maybe the prior driver version that he was trying made some sort of error, or else possibly he had tried editing it and caused an error.

In general, the nvidia-xconfig routine (either during the installation routine or called post-installation from the command line) will detect the capabilities of the GPU, and also the EDID of the monitor, and do a pretty fair job of writing a suitable xorg.conf. Of course it can't anticipate every option you might want, such as coolbits and modelines, but it should produce a working display.

[eddieg780]

Re: Nvidia driver screwed up again (Solved)

I was curious about selecting "no" to the new xorg.conf file myself because I always selected "yes" to all my previous installs of the Nvidia drivers, I thought I had to to make the driver work. So when I was installing the driver dibl suggested 256.35, I started to receive errors like....

Error: File '/usr/lib/xorg/modules/extensions/libglx.so' is not a symbolic link
Error: Unable to create '/usr/lib/nvidia-current/libnvidia-cfg.so.195.36.15' for copying (no such file or directory)
Error: Unable to create '/usr/lib/nvidia-current/libnvidia-cfg.so.195.36.24' for copying (no such file or directory)
Unable to restore file '/usr/lib/nvidia-current/xorg/libglx.so.195.36.24'
Unable to create '/usr/lib/nvidia-current/xorg/nvidia_drv.so' for copying (no such file or directory)

it repeated this many times and I just kept hitting the enter key until it got to the new xorg.conf question, I answered "no". It then said the driver was installed but when I sudo service kdm start it did not load the driver so I went through the whole process again, got the same as above but answered "yes" to the xorg.conf question then did sudo service kdm start, it loaded the driver and composing was activated and all worked well. I will also say "I never edited my xorg.conf file myself, I don't think I quite up to that yet.

It seems my xorg.conf file was corrupted some how. So dibl, if I install a newer driver later on, I should not select "yes" to the new xorg.conf file if my system was working fine before the install of the newer driver?

[dibl]

Re: Nvidia driver screwed up again (Solved)

Right -- the xorg.conf file, once configured correctly, should not need changed for as long as you have the same graphics card.