installing nvidia drivers

[b0uncyfr0]

I just downloaded nvidia drivers for my 7600GT. (1.0-9629) to be precise. I start the installation but it says u are running X server and i have to exit it. How do i do this?

[podunk]

Re: installing nvidia drivers

I'm sure there is a more graceful way to do this, but I would just restart the computer and chose the repair option on the grub boot menu.

[b0uncyfr0]

Re: installing nvidia drivers

but the repair boot is comand prompt...how can i install the drivers from command?

[podunk]

Re: installing nvidia drivers

If you *could* install the drivers while the desktop was up you'd do it by typing commands in the Konsole application. In other words it's basically the same thing.

Have you already installed a previous version of the drivers? If not, you could do what I did and cheat.

Go to this page and download and install Automatix2:
http://getautomatix.com/wiki/index.p...tion&Itemid=38

Please note that the install instructions are not the same for Ubuntu and Kubuntu. Also the instructions differ for Dapper and Edgy.

Once you get it downloaded you can use it to install the drivers. They aren't quite as new, but are bug free.

Big warning here - if you've already installed drivers and try to do it with Automatix your system will get borked.

When I did it the first time it gave me a big warning that the drivers were already installed and said it wasn't a good idea to keep going. I kept going anyway and they were right. :-)

[Kthulhu]

Re: installing nvidia drivers

Automatics want to install bunch of Gnome crap, is it possible to avoid this? I'd like to keep my system clean as much as possible.
If not, could please someone point me to short and clear manual on how to install 9629 nvidia drivers onto my kubuntu 6.10?
And one more question - is it possible to control display settings from within systemsettings app after 9629 installation? I'm sick of these console "configure-reconfigure" tools

[claydoh]

Re: installing nvidia drivers

There are no official packages for 9629 in edgy, though there are how-to's on Ubuntu's forums. You cannot install the driver file you downloaded from nvidia without killing the gui completely

There is unsupported Edgy package available if you run that, they are found in the same how-to as the big beryl/aiglx how-to over on ubuntu's forums

You should be able to edit your monitor settings via system settings, but i cannot vouch for its stability, the driver used should not make any difference on that

If you don't care about beryl, then install the nvidia-glx package from Adept. and enable it by using the command 'sudo nvidia-xconfig' or editing your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file appropriately.

Automatix does not configure your card for you, you still may have to edit the config or run a command line

[b0uncyfr0]

Re: installing nvidia drivers

Thanx claydoh for the info............

[Raven-sb]

Re: installing nvidia drivers

Also be warned that the 9629 drivers are buggy. A number of people have found that they are unable to run their games full screen with those drivers - if at all.

[dibl]

Re: installing nvidia drivers

I have a 7900GS card on an Intel motherboard, and a Samsung Syncmaster 1100MB monitor. I was totally new to Linux 3 weeks ago, but after reinstalling it about 10 times I'm gradually getting the picture .....

Here's the drill that works for my combination:

1. Install the OS from the CD image, which gets you a generic plug-n-play 60Hz headache-maker KDE screen.
2. Go into System configuration menu, choose "Display/Monitor" (something like that), click the Administrator tab and give it your password, then change the "plug-n-play" monitor to what it actually is. Ooops -- Syncmaster 1100MB is not listed. Oh well, change it to a Syncmaster 1100DF. Now go to the screen resolution and frequency settings, and move it to the one you want long term.
3. Log out, shut down, and restart (gurus would just restart the X server, but then they do a lot of things I can't ....).
4. When the system is back up, the next thing to do is download Automatix2, following the instructions here:

http://getautomatix.com/wiki/index.p...e=Installation

5. With Automatix saved on your desktop, right-click it and choose "Install with Adept Manager" (approximately - I'm at the office on a Windows box), and choose "Install". In the white box that comes up, it will complain about a short list of packages that you don't have on your machine. gksu and Tango-extras are two that I remember, but there are 5 or 6 that you need. Note them down, exit the aborted install, go to System, Adept Package Manager, and find the packages that you lack, marking them for installation, and proceed to request installation.

6. Assuming that the missing packages installed as requested, you are now ready to REALLY install Automatix. So right-click it again, choose to install it again, and this time it should actually install. Don't be scared by the fact that it only takes .25 of a second to install -- check the System menu item and it should be there right under the Adept Package Manager.

7. Cool -- now you're actually going to get your Nvidia driver! Run Automatix, stare for 2 seconds at the red warning about the legalities of media codecs, accept their warning, and proceed. Click the "Miscellaneous" menu item, put an "X" in the "Nvidia driver" item, and while you're at it, go to the Internet menu item and put an "X" on Firefox. Now choose "Install" at the top, and your driver will be installed. But you'll need to restart your system for it to take effect.

8. Note that when you restart your system, on booting up you'll see an Nvidia splash screen fly by -- that's your first clue that it worked. When you've got your KDE desktop, check the System menu and you should see the Nvidia driver item listed. If you click it, you'll get the driver utility, MINUS THE OVERCLOCKING OPTION. And, it should show your correct monitor make and model (assuming you didn't have to lie about the model like I did ...).

9. If you want the overclocking option, you'll have to edit your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file. Here's how I did it:

10. Open the Kconsole terminal window, and type "sudo Kate". This will bring up the Kate text editor, which is the only one I know, having happily forgotten EDLIN and the vi editor about 20 years ago.

11. In Kate, browse up to the "/" directory. It will only show /home and /media, but if you type "etc/" after the intial "/", it will show the contents of the /etc directory, and if you continue by typing "X11/" after the "/etc/", then it will show you the contents of the /etc/X11/ directory. You want to locate and double-click the "xorg.conf" file.

12. With xorg.conf open in Kate, scroll your cursor down through the input devices, and through the screens, until you get to the "Device" section that shows the Nvidia driver -- it's only about 6 lines long. Position your cursor at the end of the line immediately preceding "EndSection", and press "Enter" to make a new line. On this new line, indent two spaces, and type the following line:

Option "Coolbits" "1"

Then click "save" on the Kate menu, and close Kate.

13. Shutdown and restart your system. When you're back to the KDE desktop, go to the System menu and open your Nvidia driver package, and you'll see a new item called (approximately) "GPU and memory frequencies". This is your overclocking capability. As far as I can tell, you can't permanently reset it, but you can go to the 3D settings, let it auto-seek the maximum safe limits, apply them, and that willl be your setup until your next reboot.

14. After you've got your card and monitor set up, don't ever go into the system configuration menu and mess with your card or monitor configuration settings. If you do, it appears to me that xorg.conf gets overwritten and you're back to the generic "nv" driver, not your new one.

15. Also, it appears to me that the "Power Management" function, for shutting down the monitor after a period of non-use, either doesn't function at all, or doesn't retain its setting after a reboot of the system.

That's how it went for me -- perhaps some of this will help you with the 7600GT.

[b0uncyfr0]

Re: installing nvidia drivers

Thanx dude ill be getting to this over the weekend......exams in a day..

[Kthulhu]

Re: installing nvidia drivers

Here's my way for kubuntu 6.10+9629+beryl, taken from here:

*"add repo" means you should add repository in "adept" or manually into "/etc/apt/sources.list".

// --======== UPDATING =========--
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

// --======== NVIDIA =========--
add repo: deb http://seerofsouls.com/ edgy contrib
add repo: deb http://ubuntu.lupine.me.uk/ edgy lrm-amd64
wget http://seerofsouls.com/keys/hawkwind.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get remove nvidia-glx
sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx
sudo nvidia-xconfig

// --======== BERYL =========--
add repo: deb http://ubuntu.beryl-project.org edgy main
add repo: deb http://compiz-mirror.lupine.me.uk/ edgy main-edgy main-edgy-amd64
wget http://beryl-mirror.lupine.me.uk/1609B551.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install beryl-core beryl-plugins beryl-plugins-data emerald beryl-settings beryl-manager beryl beryl-dev emerald-themes

// --======== XORG.CONF =========--
Modules:
#Load           "dri"
#Load           "glcore"

Screen:
Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"
#Option "DisableGLXRootClipping" "True"

Device:
Option "TripleBuffer" "True"
#Option "TwinView" "True"

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

To restart X server just press Ctrl-Alt-Backspace after all things are done. After that type "beryl-manager" and it should work. But i'm still unable to control my display from systemsettings app.

If you will have some problems with nvidia drivers - try to remove "nvidia-kernel-common" and then add "nvidia-glx" again from the adept.

I get it working on two machines with different nvidia cards. One of those was dual-head and worked just fine.

[Kthulhu]

Re: installing nvidia drivers

I would be very grateful if anyone point me, where xorg stores it's videocards database, and how to tune screen update frequency with nvidia cards?
I has managed once to get "nvidia" in the systemsettings app, i believe it was done with automatix, but i don't like to install all stuff with it, and want just to make things clear with videocards in kubuntu.

[claydoh]

Re: installing nvidia drivers

While it is older, this post has a lot of information on how to do various settings
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=83973
Unfortunately gui configuration tools are few and far between. it has more to do with monitor detection than video cards, which is why I think it is more difficult.