How To: If Your Nvidia Driver Won't Install (8.10)

[The Odometer]

Anyone willing to update this vmalloc hack for fresh installs of 9.10 which don't use menu.lst (grub2)? I just reinstalled 9.04 to use this method. I think if I do a system upgrade, it'll keep grub1 and the hack will still work but I'm not sure that I want to try it.

Ditto here. Using the open source driver until someone comes out with instructions on how to do it. I'm not certain how to get started--and really don't want to mess up what I have going.

[The Odometer]

Here's the answer to my question. If I'd only read more closely before posting. I'm posting here for anyone else that has the same question. I tried this--and it worked perfectly!

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...=vmalloc+grub2

(see post #6)

[LarryJ2]

Like Christmas Scrooge, the nvidia binary driver VS. conexant cx18 conflict is still with us. (written 21 Dec 09) So after installing the nvidia drivers and doing nvidia-xconfig and you are still stuck at a max screen resolution of 800x600, this might help:

My mythbuntu is now 9.10 with myth .22.

lj@mythtv:~$ mythbackend --version
Please include all output in bug reports.
MythTV Version : 22594
MythTV Branch : branches/release-0-22-fixes
Network Protocol : 50
Library API : 0.22.20091023-1
QT Version : 4.5.2
lj@mythtv:~$ uname -a
Linux mythtv 2.6.31-16-generic-pae #53-Ubuntu SMP Tue Dec 8 05:20:21 UTC 2009 i686 GNU/Linux

Mythbuntu installs the xfce desktop manager by default, and again by default, the grub2 boot manager is installed. This means that the applicable grub file is located at /boot/grub/grub.cfg. However, you can't write to it because the file is read only! The reason this is read only is because Mythbuntu 9.10 and Karmic Koala 9.10 all use the newer grub2 boot manager. So, if my understanding is correct, the proper place to put the "vmalloc=256M" imperative suggested by 76GTA is in the file /etc/default/grub. Specifically the line

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash

can be changed to

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="vmalloc=256M

.

As far as I understand, this should serve the same purpose as the original grub entry in the menu.lst suggested by 76GTA.
Larry

[ravalox]

Editing Ubuntu 10.04's /etc/default/grub in the above way seems to do nothing for me, any ideas?

[ravalox]

sorry, running sudo update-grub clears up the situation. Thanks for all the advice in this thread.

[LarryJ2]

If you are missing the familiar menu.lst file, your installation probably uses the newer grub2 program. Here's how my grub2 reports itself (April 3, 2010):

lj@dell:~$ grub-setup --version
grub-setup (GRUB) 1.97~beta4

More info here:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Grub2

[alex_o]

i couldnt wait for ubuntu 10.04 and the 195 driver so i installed beta 2

at first i couldnt even get Xorg to work so i had to use a tty(which WAS working) to apt-get update;apt-get upgrade which fixed the issue.

then i had the problem of low graphics which was an eye sore and since i use dual head i only have 1 working screen atm.

at one stage i have had working 18x drivers and 195 drivers working but on package updates this broke

help anyone?

[tcchris]

Just for general info , I ran into this problem about a year ago , but I did not find this thread at the time .

I tried to install 32 bit Ibex , and always ended up in low graphics . So I went back to 64 bit which I never had a problem with . Again with Lucid I tried and failed 32 bit . Then I tried this thread , which worked but my tv card "cx18" was choppy , so I went back to 64 bit .

So , if you don't have a problem with 64 bit , it might work better for you , if you have hvr1600 tv card and want to use nvidia drivers .
Boxee was my need for 32 bit but I don't run it on this computer anymore , so I use 64 bit on this computer with no problem

[Quadari]

Big thank you to this thread! =D>
Especially the first poster, 67GTA, and to ravalox for showing how to do it in grub2.

Just to detail out what I did, so that if someone else comes along with this problem they can fix it also:

I'm running 10.04, have a Sparkle 8400GS graphics card and a Hauppauge HVR-1600 tuner card.

What I did was:

sudo vim /etc/default/grub

(I use vim, you can use the editor of your choice. If you're totally new, pico might be a good choice.)
And commented out the line that says:

#GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"

And added the line right after that:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="vmalloc=512M"

Then save the file. Then back at the command line you have to run

sudo update-grub

Then reboot and things should work.

Yay! You can't believe how long it took to isolate this problem for me. 8)

One question, for those of you who are better at this than me:
Note that I put "vmalloc=512M" rather than the originally suggested "256M". I did this because my graphics card has 512MB of RAM built in to it. Is that the right way to think of it? It seems to be working, so I wanted to get people's thoughts on that.

[67GTA]

I can't believe this still hasn't been fixed. I've moved to 64bit, and this bug is not present because of how the 64bit kernel addresses virtual memory. Your virtual memory is your swap partition in Linux. Windows uses a page file. Since your graphics card has it's own memory, the vmalloc size isn't as important. The only thing vmalloc is doing in your case is allocating some VM early in the boot process for your GFX card (even though it doesn't need it) because the cx18 and nvidia modules fight over VM and causes a kernel panic and keeps both modules from loading. Generally vmalloc does it's own thing after boot according to I/O and hardware needs, so the vmalloc=? command doesn't matter at that point.