HowTo: NViDIA 185.18 Drivers in Ubuntu

**ibuclaw** · February 17th, 2010

Originally Posted by Ayasugi

I followed your instructions exactly, and everything went smoothly, until i restarted gdm. Then my old issue reemerged. Ive got a supported card (geforce 9500). Every time i boot, Ubuntu forces me into low graphics mode and i get a dialog that reads "cannot find video device" or "failed to initialize nvidia graphics device on 1:0:0". When i open Nvidia xserver settings, i get a dialog that says "you do not appear to be using the nvidia X driver. Please edit your x configuration file (just run 'nvidia-xconfig' as root), and restart the X server."
Im not an expert, so help is very much appreciated. ive put hours into this so far, and i dont think i have what it takes to find the fix myself. I dont really plan on playing games, i just want my multi-mon capabilities back.

heres the output of grep -i "nvidia\|NVRM" /var/log/syslog

Code:

Feb 16 23:22:16 ayasugi kernel: [  486.746738] NVRM: RmInitAdapter failed! (0x26:0xffffffff:1119)
Feb 16 23:22:16 ayasugi kernel: [  486.746742] NVRM: rm_init_adapter(0) failed

Your system kernel seems to be running out of vmap space.

Edit /etc/default/grub

Code:

sudo nano /etc/default/grub

and add vmalloc=192M to the end of "GRUB_CMD_LINE_LINUX_DEFAULT"

ie:

Code:

GRUB_CMD_LINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash vmalloc=192M"

Save, quit, then run:

Code:

sudo update-grub

and reboot to test.

If problems persist, you could try upping the vmalloc value to 256M.

Regards
Iain

**Ayasugi** · February 20th, 2010

Thank you, i was struggling.
ill try it now.

**Ayasugi** · February 20th, 2010

the file /etc/default/grub/ doesn't seem to exist.

**ibuclaw** · February 22nd, 2010

Originally Posted by Ayasugi

the file /etc/default/grub/ doesn't seem to exist.

What version of Ubuntu are you running?

For older versions (Pre-Jaunty) - or if you still use grub legacy as your boot loader, you are instead required to alter /boot/grub/menu.lst instead.

You should see a line that says:

Code:

# defoptions=

Just append the vmalloc option to that line.

Regards
Iain

**Drone4four** · April 27th, 2011

ibuclaw: Your tutorial is extremely useful. Thanks, man.

**GoodJava** · June 7th, 2011

Anyone have success with Lucid Lynx (10.04)? My kernel version is 2.6.32-32 and I am running GeForce 9500GT with dual DVI monitors. I downloaded the 32 bit drivers (NVIDIA-Linux-185.18.pkg.run) and did all the preliminary steps. During the driver install the compile fails.

The nvidia-installer.log says:

ERROR: Unable to load kernel module 'nvidia.ko'. This happens most frequently when this kernel module was built against the wrong or improperly configured kernel sources...etc...

nvidia: module licence 'NVIDIA' taints kernel
Disabling lock debugging due to kernel taint
NVRM: The NVIDIA probe routine was not called for 1 device(s).
NVRM: This can occur when a driver such as rivafb, nvidiafb or rivatv was loaded and obtained ownership of the NVIDIA device(s).
NVRM: Try unloading rivafb, nvidiafb or rivatv kernel module.

Would love to get some basic GPU enhancements on this box.

Thanks!

**Junkieman** · June 8th, 2011

@GoodJava do you have the kernel headers installed?

Code:

apt-get install linux-headers-2.6.32-32-686 (or whatever your kernel version/architecture is)

Also try this post on Ubuntugeek.com

**GoodJava** · June 10th, 2011

Thanks for the reply. I ended up updating the install to 10.10 and my video card started working...sort of. I have dual desktops working with TwinView and window transfers to screens no longer flicker.

**poitiers** · June 21st, 2011

Hi all, is there something I should be aware of when applying this in Natty?

I've gone as far as trying to install the driver from the shell, but it complained about the lack of kernel sources. So I installed the linux-source package, but the driver installer is still unhappy, now I'm just hoping that pointing the driver installer manually to /usr/src/linux-source-2.6.38/ is going to be the right move. Thanks in advance for any advice/warnings you may have for me.

**poitiers** · June 24th, 2011

Well, many thanks for the clear instructions also on the troubleshooting and deinstallation

I ran into the twin graphics card problem (i have Lenovo T520) and was able to fix that but got stuck on "screens found, but none have a usable configuration" -- at this point I decided that I really need this computer to finally do some work and not to keep playing the tinkering game, and threw the Nvidia modifications away.

Some things that the tutorial may be updated with are:
* the driver version: the installer currently promoted for 64-bit systems is NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-275.09.07.run
* the nonexistence of linux-restricted-modules, since Lucid, I believe.

HTH