Video problems since upgrading to Lucid x64

[TheBigAmbulance]

For the most part, the upgrade from 9.10 to 10.04 went really well! I have one small bug though.

I used to have my nvidia drivers installed with EnvyNG and using the repository of ppa:nvidia-vdpau/ppa. Neither of these are available at this time.

But since the upgrade, Lucid freezes when I start applications that use heavy video.

How do I redo my video drivers?

[EDIT] - Everything under Karmic 9.10 x64 ran perfectly without any sign of issues. I believe the upgrade gave my system a small inconsistency.

[oshunluvr]

Re: Video problems since upgrading to Lucid x64

Your not the only one - I've heard that going back to the 173 series drivers can help but I haven't tried it yet

[doctordruidphd]

Re: Video problems since upgrading to Lucid x64

Are you saying that
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/nvidia-vdpau/ppa/ubuntu lucid main
is not available? The nvidia-current package from that repository is available, at least on my system, and loads the 195.36.15 driver.

Now as to whether it works correctly or not, well that's another matter...

When I try to use that package, as opposed to the driver from nvidia's website, kde will not start -- I get the login loop. Gnome runs just fine. It is also possible to install the driver using jockey (a.k.a. "Hardware Drivers") but I get the same problem. Others report that it works fine, though.

[TheBigAmbulance]

Re: Video problems since upgrading to Lucid x64

I've been reading a lot about how multi-card systems are having a hard time with Lucid. I have two 8800GTS cards that had been working great under 9.10.

In an attempt to manually add the drivers, I purged everything nvidia using

sudo apt-get --purge remove nvidia-*

So there is nothing nvidia left on my system. I then downloaded the drivers and ran into "Unable to load kernel module 'nvidia.ko' "

I did add the apt-repository you mentioned (THANKS doctordruidphd! ). But I've heard that jockey has problems adding the 195.36.15 drivers as well. And is envyng-core is not installable in Lucid?

sigh..... I feel stuck! heh

[doctordruidphd]

Re: Video problems since upgrading to Lucid x64

So there is nothing nvidia left on my system. I then downloaded the drivers and ran into "Unable to load kernel module 'nvidia.ko' "

I'll bet there is.

sudo updatedb
locate nvidia

Put up a whole bunch of stuff I never knew was there.

OK, I finally got this to work, but it's an ugly process, to say the least.

First thing -- during the process, there were several points at which I could get neither the console nor kde to start. Fortunately, I had gnome also, which seems to work fine. I suspect ubuntu has tested all of this with gnome, and it's pretty failsafe, but with kde, it crashes frequently, until you get it set up right.

What I had to do was uninstall the proprietary nvidia driver with sudo nvidia-installer --uninstall. Be sure you remove (or move out of the way) your /etc/X11/xorg.conf also.
Then reboot. Then install nvidia-current. Then remove nvidia-current, with the --purge option. Now when you do the purge, it will flash a bunch of stuff on the screen saying, words to the effect, "/usr/lib/libgl.so## empty", or something like that. I went through and manually deleted each one of those things. Then you need to apt-get remove --purge xserver-xorg-video-nouveau, if you have been using it, as it will conflict with the nvidia drivers. Then do an apt-get remove --purge jockey-common jockey-gtk jockey-kde. Then apt-get install jockey-gtk jockey-kde.
OK, when all this guano has run its course, you should be able to boot, get into gnome (kde will probably not start), run jockey, and load the nvidia-current driver. Once that is done, you may need to replace your xorg.conf file, if you have a custom one. then you reboot again, and if you have made the proper offerings to the appropriate spiritual entity, kde just might start for you. Even if it does, jockey will still barf on your custom xorg.conf file. Tough.

Don't ask me to write this out as a procedure. I basically just hacked and whacked until it worked. And don't try this without a full system image backup.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the 'nomodeset' thing. After all the yelling and screaming by me and others on launchpad, nvidia patched their proprietary driver so it will run without the nomodeset option. nvidia-current followed suit, so you can basically boot without any kernel options, and it works.

I'm not suggesting anyone with a sane mind try this. Just an example of what has to be done to get it all working.

[oshunluvr]

Re: Video problems since upgrading to Lucid x64

I haven't been through as much as you two guys - but I haven't had a lockup since the very latest update to 195.36.15-0ubuntu3, for whatever thats worth.

I was just about to turn the clock speed down when my card stopped throwing NVRM xid errors.

I did add pci=nommconf as a kernel option at the same time as the driver update.

[doctordruidphd]

Re: Video problems since upgrading to Lucid x64

195.36.15-0ubuntu3

is the patched version of the driver, to correct the problems associated with multiple video cards on amd-64 systems (and possibly other problems as well).
see:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...rs/+bug/573557