Nvidia Proprietary Video Driver -- HOW TO

[dibl]

Re: Nvidia Proprietary Video Driver -- HOW TO

Good job finding the article on Debian wiki -- I knew it was a fact but couldn't find the authoritative reference.

I guess I've run the proprietary driver installation so many times that it feels easy. I do recall being shocked at the sight of the CLI the first time I ever rebooted after a kernel upgrade -- it's a bit unnerving when it's not expected. But, with the driver stored in /home/dibl/Downloads and the routine memorized, it is only a 2 minute process to get to the KDE greeter.

I'd rather have the newest driver, but it's a choice that does tradeoff something in the "easy" domain.

[wizard10000]

Re: Nvidia Proprietary Video Driver -- HOW TO

You can do that with one command. Saves a little time.

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Except that if any command in the string has a nonzero exit status subsequent commands will be ignored. Works fine if you're sitting there watching it, though

[Telengard]

Re: Nvidia Proprietary Video Driver -- HOW TO

@Detonate & @Wizard: If you don't care about the exit status at each stage of the chain then you can use ; to link the commands instead.

sudo apt-get update ; sudo apt-get upgrade ; sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

I still prefer to do each step separately because I enjoy watching apt do it's work. (Am I a geek or what?)

[dibl]

Re: Nvidia Proprietary Video Driver -- HOW TO

(Am I a geek or what?)

We knew the answer to that when we saw your first post -- this is a Linux forum, after all.

[wizard10000]

Re: Nvidia Proprietary Video Driver -- HOW TO

@Detonate & @Wizard: If you don't care about the exit status at each stage of the chain then you can use ; to link the commands instead.

Yeah, but a nonzero exit status means something failed

I kinda like to watch it too.

[footer]

Re: Nvidia Proprietary Video Driver -- HOW TO

Thanks for this HOW TO. I don't recall how I stumbled upon it but I recently rebuilt my system. I have an nVidia card and I had everything tweaked fine and working before the rebuild (I have an SSD which complicates matters but whatever).

Anywho, I was running the older nVidia driver (version 173) installed via Method 1 and my AVI/WMV files would not show the video. I could hear sound but no video. Also, logins were broke. I did not get the gui upon logout, the only way to restart the machine was to reboot. I poked around for awhile and installed this and that thinking it was a codec problem but nothing worked. This HOW TO got me thinking that maybe it's the video driver. So I installed the current version (195.36.24) using Method 1 and WALA! my AVI/WMV now actually show video, and the logout brings up the gui (vs. a blinking cursor). The text is much crisper as well on the screen with this newer driver.

I would have never guessed that the driver would cause this problem but I'm glad I stumbled upon this HOW TO and gave it a try!

Thanks!

[oshunluvr]

Re: Nvidia Proprietary Video Driver -- HOW TO

Here's some "Device" options I use with my 8800gt card. A couple of them may be hold-overs and I haven't taken the time to really test their individual effects:

  Option "TripleBuffer" "True"
#        + Enables triple buffering. "Decreases the time an application stalls while waiting for vblank events, but increases latency slightly" (NVIDIA Readme) 
  Option "UseCompositeWrapper" "True"
#        + Enables the X server's composite wrapper instead of the builtin one. 
  Option "AllowIndirectPixmaps" "True"
#        + Could improve hardware rendering on G80+ cards with more than 256 MB of video memory. 
  Option "BackingStore" "True"
#        + Cache overlayed areas in case they get redisplayed later 
  Option "PixmapCacheSize" "200000"
#        + allocate said number of pixels for pixmap caches 
  Option "OnDemandVBlankInterrupts" "True"
#        + only fire VBlank interrupts in modes where they are needed 
EndSection

My gtkperf total time with 10 windows open, dual monitors, full 3d effects, kde 4.4.5, runinng all tests 100 round is 4.24

[Guest]

Re: Nvidia Proprietary Video Driver -- HOW TO

I cannot get past 600x480 resolution. I have a GEforce 6200 (256Mb) with a 17 inch LCD monitor. I've installed the latest drivers from Nvidia. I've run nvidia-xconfig and nvidia-settings 'til I'm blue in the face and it won't give me a resolution larger than small. I don't know what to do next. Any suggestions? I've seen a couple of dozen suggested fixes via google but none either worked or fit.

Thanks,
Jim.

# nvidia-xconfig: X configuration file generated by nvidia-xconfig
# nvidia-xconfig: version 256.35 (buildmeister@builder101) Wed Jun 16 19:25:59 PDT 2010


Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Layout0"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"

# generated from default
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "auto"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"

# generated from default
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "Unknown"
ModelName "Unknown"
HorizSync 28.0 - 33.0
VertRefresh 43.0 - 72.0
Option "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Device0"
Driver "nvidia"
VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Device0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
EndSection

[img width=400 height=251]http://windangel.org/images/snapshot1.png[/img]

[dibl]

Re: Nvidia Proprietary Video Driver -- HOW TO

I don't think the problem is the Nvidia driver, per se, I think it is your monitor. It looks to me like your monitor is not DPMS capable, and isn't recognized by the driver. So the "Option DPMS" line isn't doing anything.

You need to chase down the specs for your monitor, find out the maximum horizontal and vertical refresh rates, and write a "metamodes" line that will set the resolution that you want (within the limits of the monitor). Google can help you with "metamodes".

[Guest]

Re: Nvidia Proprietary Video Driver -- HOW TO

I don't think the problem is the Nvidia driver, per se, I think it is your monitor. It looks to me like your monitor is not DPMS capable, and isn't recognized by the driver. So the "Option DPMS" line isn't doing anything.

You need to chase down the specs for your monitor, find out the maximum horizontal and vertical refresh rates, and write a "metamodes" line that will set the resolution that you want (within the limits of the monitor). Google can help you with "metamodes".

OK thanks, I'll do that. There are refresh rates in the xorg.conf file. Are they bogus or did something tell it what they were? Something else I don't' understand, when I'm installing from the CD, the display is fine. I wish there were an option to say "hey, that worked and here's the configuration".

Thanks,
Jim.

[dibl]

Re: Nvidia Proprietary Video Driver -- HOW TO

If you can figure out the horizontal and vertical refresh rates, and the maximum resolution that your card will support, you can put a line approximately like this in the "Screen" stanza of your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file:

  Option     "metamodes" "1600x1200 +0+0"

That lets my Samsung Syncmaster 1100 run in 1600x1200 resolution.

[oshunluvr]

Re: Nvidia Proprietary Video Driver -- HOW TO

EDID will override settings in xorg.conf. Look in your /var/log/Xorg.0.log file and you'll see lines about modes found and not found. DPMS has nothing to do with resolution.

What you need to do is turn off EDID in xorg.conf and put in the correct resolution(s).

Here's an example:
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "monitor1"
VendorName "Plug'n Play"
ModelName "DELL 1905FP"
Option "UseEdidFreqs" "False"
HorizSync 30.0-80.0
VertRefresh 60.0-60.0
Modeline "1280x1024" 108.88 1280 1360 1496 1712 1024 1025 1028 1060 +HSync +Vsync
Modeline "1024x768" 64.11 1024 1080 1184 1344 768 769 772 795 -HSync +Vsync
Modeline "800x600" 38.22 800 832 912 1024 600 601 604 622 -HSync +Vsync
Modeline "640x480" 23.86 640 656 720 800 480 481 484 497 -HSync +Vsync
Option "UseEdidDpi" "False"
Option "Dpi" "100x100"
EndSection

Obviously substitute your own settings for scan freqs and resolution.

BTW: You have built in tools to create modelines. In a terminal window, type:

gtf 1024 768 75

The output will look like:

# 1024x768 @ 75.00 Hz (GTF) hsync: 60.15 kHz; pclk: 81.80 MHz
Modeline "1024x768_75.00" 81.80 1024 1080 1192 1360 768 769 772 802 -HSync +Vsync

[nobaloney]

Re: Nvidia Proprietary Video Driver -- HOW TO

Thanks for this great thread. It really helped.

On my system (10.04) the Kubuntu way showed nothing filled in, so I used the Nvidia way. It works fine with one caveat...

I can't enable cube desktop switching; just says it can't be enabled. It worked previously on 9.10.

Card is GeForce 7300 SE/7200 GS.

Any ideas?

Jeff

[dibl]

Re: Nvidia Proprietary Video Driver -- HOW TO

On your panel, at the left, do you see a 4-way desktop icon, or a 2-way?

In System Settings > Desktop Effects, on the "Advanced" tab, do you have a "Compositing Type" drop-down menu? I'm looking at 10.10 KDE 4.5 atm so it might be a little different than 10.04, but the same compositing choice is also in 10.04. Try switching to XRender, then re-enable compositing, and then switch it back. OpenGL should work, but I recall having to twiddle that once before.

[oshunluvr]

Re: Nvidia Proprietary Video Driver -- HOW TO

My system - 10.04. KDE 4.4.5.

System Settings> Under General, Look and Feel, click "Desktop"

Enable Desktop effects (tick the box), and apply, should then show a green check next to "Composting is active". Compositing type is then under the Advanced tab (same page). If this fails, check your logs for output. Verify you have multiple desktops enabled.

If you're using an /etc/X11/xorg.conf file, you might need to add

Section "Extensions"
  Option "Composite" "Enable"
  Option "RENDER" "Enable"
EndSection

to it.