Another [SOLVED] nVidia drivers problem thread

[mchuskie]

I've just upgraded from Gutsy to Hardy, thinking that after four months the process would have been smoothed out by now... in any case, previously I was running an old version of the nVidia drivers from their 8776 tarball (very old, I know, but it worked nicely). I have an onboard GeForce4 MX graphics adaptor which is only supported in the 96xx series of drivers or older.

I can't get any version of the nVidia drivers to work now. The 8776 drivers won't compile with the 2.6.24-21 kernel (fair enough). The 96.43.07 drivers from the nVidia website, the drivers Envy installs, and the bog-standard nvidia-glx[-legacy] drivers from the repos that the Restricted Driver Manager thing uses all install OK (remembering to completely purge any previous installs between tries!) but X refuses to start, grumbling:

(EE) NVIDIA(0): Failed to initialize the NVIDIA kernel module! Please ensure
(EE) NVIDIA(0): that there is a supported NVIDIA GPU in this system, and
(EE) NVIDIA(0): that the NVIDIA device files have been created properly.
(EE) NVIDIA(0): Please consult the NVIDIA README for details.
(EE) NVIDIA(0): *** Aborting ***

The Envy-provided drivers prefix this with a statement that it "could not open the device file /dev/nvidiactl (No such device or address)"; but

$ ls -l /dev/nv*
crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 195, 255 2008-08-25 15:19 /dev/nvidiactl

Other useful information:

lspci | grep VGA
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV18 [GeForce4 MX - nForce GPU] (rev a3)

lsmod | grep nv
nvidia_agp 9628 1
agpgart 34760 1 nvidia_agp

I'd appreciate any suggestions or ideas to help get this working again!

Thanks in advance.

[mchuskie]

Re: Another nVidia drivers problem thread

Complete xorg.conf listing:

# nvidia-xconfig: X configuration file generated by nvidia-xconfig
# nvidia-xconfig: version 1.0 (buildmeister@builder57) Wed Jul 2 12:30:48 PDT 2008

# xorg.conf (X.Org X Window System server configuration file)
#
# This file was generated by dexconf, the Debian X Configuration tool, using
# values from the debconf database.
#
# Edit this file with caution, and see the xorg.conf manual page.
# (Type "man xorg.conf" at the shell prompt.)
#
# This file is automatically updated on xserver-xorg package upgrades *only*
# if it has not been modified since the last upgrade of the xserver-xorg
# package.
#
# If you have edited this file but would like it to be automatically updated
# again, run the following command:
#  sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier   "Default Layout"
 screen 0 "Default Screen" 0 0
    Inputdevice   "Generic Keyboard"   "CoreKeyboard"
    Inputdevice   "Configured Mouse"
EndSection

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "Module"
    Load      "glx"
    Load      "v4l"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier   "Generic Keyboard"
    Driver     "kbd"
    Option     "XkbRules"   "xorg"
    Option     "XkbModel"   "pc105"
    Option     "XkbLayout"   "gb"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier   "Configured Mouse"
    Driver     "mouse"
    Option     "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier   "Configured Monitor"
    Vendorname   "Generic LCD Display"
    Modelname    "LCD Panel 1024x768"
    Horizsync    31.5  -    48.0
    Vertrefresh   56.0  -    65.0
    Gamma  1
 modeline "1024x768@60" 65.0 1024 1048 1184 1344 768 771 777 806 -hsync -vsync
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier   "Configured Video Device"
    Driver     "nvidia"
    Vendorname   "NVIDIA"
    Boardname    "NVIDIA GeForce4 (generic)"
    Screen 0
    Option     "NoLogo"    "True"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier   "Default Screen"
    Device     "Configured Video Device"
    Monitor     "Configured Monitor"
    Defaultdepth  24
    Option     "AddARGBGLXVisuals"   "True"
    SubSection "Display"
        Depth  24
        Modes      "1024x768@60"
    EndSubSection
    Option     "AddARGBGLXVisuals"   "True"
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
    Option     "Composite"   "Disable"
EndSection

[dibl]

Re: Another nVidia drivers problem thread

Bummer. The proprietary video drivers aren't getting any easier.

Have you tried to run Envy in text mode, and "remove" the driver? Shut down X entirely (exit with Ctrl-Alt-Backspace, then issue

sudo /etc/init.d/kdm stop

), then

sudo envyng -t

And then I think it is menu item #2 if I remember it right. If that seems to work, then you can run the script again, and choose #1 to install the driver. I'll cross my fingers ...

[mchuskie]

Re: Another nVidia drivers problem thread

Bummer. The proprietary video drivers aren't getting any easier.

Have you tried to run Envy in text mode, and "remove" the driver... then ... [re] install the driver.

Afraid so... no luck there. The uninstall seems to go OK, but I still get the same error message no matter which driver I choose to install. I'm completely stumped as to what could be missing here...

[dibl]

Re: Another nVidia drivers problem thread

In the dim recesses of my memory, I recall there was once a requirement to add the "nv" driver to the "DISABLED MODULES="" at the bottom of the file /etc/default/linux-restricted-modules-common, prior to loading the proprietary driver. I have no idea whether that is relevant to your GF4 MX, but it doesn't sound like you have anything to lose ....

[mchuskie]

Re: Another nVidia drivers problem thread

...add the "nv" driver to the "DISABLED MODULES="" at the bottom of the file /etc/default/linux-restricted-modules-common

Sadly I had already done that

[dibl]

Re: Another nVidia drivers problem thread

The xserver-xorg package was recently upgraded, to ver. 1.4.99.906. I wonder if you have that upgraded package installed? If it isn't, probably you should install it. If it is .... I dunno, maybe try to go back to the prior version? Just guessing here ... :P

[mchuskie]

Re: Another [SOLVED] nVidia drivers problem thread

OK, so complete desperation and liberal use of grep found the answer

Somehow "nvidia" had ended up in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-restricted, but dmesg was failing to tell me this when the module was loading. Removing the blacklisting makes everything happy now!

[dibl]

Re: Another [SOLVED] nVidia drivers problem thread

Yay -- whatever it takes!

[txHarleyMan]

Re: Another [SOLVED] nVidia drivers problem thread

OK, so complete desperation and liberal use of grep found the answer

Shhhhhh... careful using the 'L' word.