Indubitableness
January 1st, 2009, 11:02 AM
Okay, this has been driving me insane, and I'm not the only one. I've seen several threads about this, none of which help except to show me that I'm not the only one with this problem.
I don't know quite which forum this particular complain belongs in, but after much frustrating work, I've finally decided to post.
Ibex allows you to install the newest Nvidia drivers using the usual method (i.e. System->Administration->Hardware Drivers). My particular system has an NVidia Geforce 6150SE nForce 430 integrated graphics card, which means i'm trying to use the latest driver (177.83) for the GeForce 6 series. Of course, i'm not using Ibex, and i didn't like it when i did use it.
The point is this, when I use the self extracting installer file (in tty1, after stopping x server) followed by the nvidia-xconfig configuration tool I am able to restart X server (sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart) and use the latest driver. This particular driver messes up Gnome's windows (the little bar at the top of each window tries to disappear, which is annoying) but it improves video playback immensely (i no longer have to disable compiz-cube when i want to watch videos) This trade off is more than worth it to me.
The problem that I and everyone else who's ever used the internet (overstatement) seems to be having is that after a restart the system forgets how to use the new drivers. It tries to start gdm, crashes three times, and starts in Low Graphics Mode. You get the option to configure your graphics card here, but it doesn't do anything.
I've tried all sorts of stuff mentioned in the official Readme here http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/177.82/README/index.html
none of it helped.
I have a feeling this has something to do with the kernel modules generated during the install, and that something needs to be done to make sure the system loads the proper kernel modules during boot, but i'm not experienced enough to know how to do this correctly. The readme file posted above mentions how to make sure the correct .so files are used, and i tinkered with them a little bit, but most of it's honestly above my head, and of course the authors of the documentation seem to assume we're all experts. I'm good with computers, but it'll be some years before i can claim to be an expert. I think that's probably true for most of us on these forums.
Speaking of forums I've also tried several things mentioned in forums, but most of the solutions discussed involve older Drivers or older distros of Ubuntu. Some of them seem to just not apply here, and no matter what i do in xorg.conf it changes nothing (i'm still able to use the new driver each time i reinstall it, but ONLY when i go out of my way to reinstall it.)
If anyone has enough experience to troubleshoot this, or perhaps if there's a way to obtain this particular driver from the repository (it seems like there MUST be, if they provide it for 8.10) please post here.
If I've posted this in the wrong section (i didn't see any specific sections for drivers) let me know and i'll move it or something.
Thanks for your time guys, although I half expect no one will really have a solution (no one online ever seems to have a solution unless it's for problems i don't need solved.)
I'm off to write to the NVidia guys now.
I don't know quite which forum this particular complain belongs in, but after much frustrating work, I've finally decided to post.
Ibex allows you to install the newest Nvidia drivers using the usual method (i.e. System->Administration->Hardware Drivers). My particular system has an NVidia Geforce 6150SE nForce 430 integrated graphics card, which means i'm trying to use the latest driver (177.83) for the GeForce 6 series. Of course, i'm not using Ibex, and i didn't like it when i did use it.
The point is this, when I use the self extracting installer file (in tty1, after stopping x server) followed by the nvidia-xconfig configuration tool I am able to restart X server (sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart) and use the latest driver. This particular driver messes up Gnome's windows (the little bar at the top of each window tries to disappear, which is annoying) but it improves video playback immensely (i no longer have to disable compiz-cube when i want to watch videos) This trade off is more than worth it to me.
The problem that I and everyone else who's ever used the internet (overstatement) seems to be having is that after a restart the system forgets how to use the new drivers. It tries to start gdm, crashes three times, and starts in Low Graphics Mode. You get the option to configure your graphics card here, but it doesn't do anything.
I've tried all sorts of stuff mentioned in the official Readme here http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/177.82/README/index.html
none of it helped.
I have a feeling this has something to do with the kernel modules generated during the install, and that something needs to be done to make sure the system loads the proper kernel modules during boot, but i'm not experienced enough to know how to do this correctly. The readme file posted above mentions how to make sure the correct .so files are used, and i tinkered with them a little bit, but most of it's honestly above my head, and of course the authors of the documentation seem to assume we're all experts. I'm good with computers, but it'll be some years before i can claim to be an expert. I think that's probably true for most of us on these forums.
Speaking of forums I've also tried several things mentioned in forums, but most of the solutions discussed involve older Drivers or older distros of Ubuntu. Some of them seem to just not apply here, and no matter what i do in xorg.conf it changes nothing (i'm still able to use the new driver each time i reinstall it, but ONLY when i go out of my way to reinstall it.)
If anyone has enough experience to troubleshoot this, or perhaps if there's a way to obtain this particular driver from the repository (it seems like there MUST be, if they provide it for 8.10) please post here.
If I've posted this in the wrong section (i didn't see any specific sections for drivers) let me know and i'll move it or something.
Thanks for your time guys, although I half expect no one will really have a solution (no one online ever seems to have a solution unless it's for problems i don't need solved.)
I'm off to write to the NVidia guys now.