[SOLVED] 12.04: How to install nVidia drivers that works? [Archive]

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XEtedBear

May 25th, 2012, 09:48 AM

A default 'clean' install of 12.04 does not appear to install a video driver which will fully exploit my (old) nVidia card (Geforce FX5200). Under 11.10 I was able to install an Ubuntu recommended driver version 173, which also gave me access to nVidia Xerver settings applet. Under 12.04 I don't have those functions.

I am asking how to install an updated driver - proprietary if necessary - that will make better use of the card and give me an nVidia Xserver settings applet, in a way that really works.

This is the seond install of 12.04 in 12 hours. I abandoned the first after following advice available via Google on adding ppas which would pick up the latest nVidia drivers. The result was a progressive descent into chaos. For example the 'Additional Drivers' applet told me that I had a'current version' driver installed (but what version ?), that it was activated but not in use (!) and the only option I had was to remove it.

So, how do I get to driver version 173, with post-release updates included, under 12.04 (the process apears to be different to 11.10)?

bogan

May 25th, 2012, 12:36 PM

Hi!, XEtedBear,

There is an updated 173 driver v34, suitable for the FX5xxx series video cards, available from nvidia downloads.

That is the good news.

The bad news is that it is not compatible with the Xorg server that comes with 12.04.

I believe it is possible to replace the 12.04 version with an earlier one that is OK with 173, but I have no idea how.

Perhaps you can find out with Google or on nvidia's NVNews FAQ pages.

Chao!, bogan.

XEtedBear

May 25th, 2012, 05:20 PM

Hi!, XEtedBear,

There is an updated 173 driver v34, suitable for the FX5xxx series video cards, available from nvidia downloads.

That is the good news.

The bad news is that it is not compatible with the Xorg server that comes with 12.04.

This news comes as some surprise to me: at last someone who tells me the truth!

I see all these Google discovered sites telling me how easy it is to install the latest nVidia drivers - but they never tell me the process is tremendously fragile and dependnecy-laden. And I see no warnings prominantly displayed on the nVidia downloads page.

So thanks for your advice; I'll stop trying (successfully,thus far) to shoot myself so much in the foot: I'll see if nVidia tech. support can do it for me instead....

zivley

May 25th, 2012, 06:00 PM

I guess it's your lucky day, because I'm going to give you the solution!
I had exactly the same problem and had been searching and trying different approaches until I've found this post (http://forum.ubuntu-fr.org/viewtopic.php?pid=9049191) (post #15) in the french ubuntu forum. I don't really understand french but the instructions were straight forward and easy to understand, so I'm going to detail them here below

As bogan said, and he was right, the only way to make the nvidia 173 drivers to work is by downgrading the xorg-xserver, so this is what we're going to do

Create /etc/apt/sources.list.d/oneiric.list and add the oneiric repo
(You can copy/paste the text of the following entirely on a terminal

sudo cat >/etc/apt/sources.list.d/oneiric.list <<EOF

deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric main
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric main

EOF

You will need also to perform a "pinning" so the xserver-xorg will be chosen and kept to be the older version and not the latest.

Create a new file in /etc/apt/preferences.d/

cat > /etc/apt/preferences.d/xorg-xerver-pin-1050 <<EOF
Package: xorg xserver-xorg*
Pin: release a=oneiric
Pin-Priority: 1050

Then run

sudo apt-get update & sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

This will warn you it's going to downgrade a lot of "xorg" related packages, that's exactly what we need

The next step in the post says to do

apt-get install nvidia-173
which I did but didn't really help me, so I opted for trying to use the official latest nvidia driver which I downloaded from here (http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/173.14.31/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-173.14.31-pkg1.run)

Once downloaded, you need to stop the GUI, so get to the terminal by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F1 login with your user and stop the xserver with

sudo service lightdm stop
Go to the place where you saved it (most probably in your home downloads folder)

cd ~/Downloads
and run the following

sudo chmod +x NVIDIA-Linux-x86-173.14.31-pkg1.run & sudo ./!$

Follow the onscreen instructions, mostly "yes" to all and once it finishes reboot the computer.
Voila! You're now using the nvidia driver with full 3D support!
If you want to configure other settings, you can use the nvidia-settings application that you have now installed.
If you change something and want to save it, you'll have to run it as root, so you better fire it up by pressing Alt+F2 and on the command type "gksu nvidia-settings"

This worked for me, and I hope this will help many others.
It can also work for some other legacy NVIDIA cards as well, but YMMV...

haresear

May 25th, 2012, 06:06 PM

Actually it is the older versions of driver 173 (vers 30,31) that are not compatible with the new Xorg version in 12.04. The newest (pre-release) Nvidia driver 173.14.34 IS compatible with Ubuntu 12.04, but unfortunately the 32-bit version of the driver has a bug that doesn't allow the 'glx'. module to be loaded. The 64-bit version of 173.14.34 seems to be okay. I would expect the 32-bit version to be fixed fairly quickly.

Here's some Nvidia forum threads on this subject:
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=181386

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=179489

bogan

May 25th, 2012, 06:36 PM

Hi!, zivley.

You Posted :
I opted for trying to use the official latest nvidia driver which I downloaded from here (http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/173.14.31/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-173.14.31-pkg1.run)But that, and your later install commands refer to the 173.14-31 version, whilst the latest is 173.14-34 and is the Post-release version supposed to correct some bugs, as haresear pointed out.

For those who do not know, to "stop the GUI" the command in a terminal required is:
sudo service lightdm stop You will get a black screen with some text, but if there is no log-in prompt, press 'Ctrl+Alt+F1' to get one, log-in, enter your password and press 'Enter', then run the commands listed.

Looking forward to the 'Pinning' code.

Chao!, bogan.

zivley

May 25th, 2012, 06:43 PM

Yeah, I've forgot to point out stopping the lightdm, thanks @bogan for the clarification, I'll add it to the post too
BTW, the "pinning" code was added to my original post

@haresear, thanks for the info, I didn't know about it, anyway, so far, I've got this working, so I guess it will remain the same until they fix the bug for 32 bit.

I've also forgot to mention the link for the NVIDIA driver is only for the 32bit version, so if you have 64bit you'll have to look for the proper driver...

If there's something not clear enough about my howto, please let me know and I'll be happy to explain and help as much as I can

XEtedBear

May 25th, 2012, 06:53 PM

"Better Solutions may bring Worsened Problems": After Lao Tse, b. circa 405BC. a contemporary of Confucius. Died:circa 600BC.
They did things differently in those days, apparently!! .

They most certainly must have: 'contemporary' but died 150 years apart. Hmmmm.... btw, on behalf of a close friend, whose mother is a Kong and whose father is a Meng (so some pretty smart genes in that corner of the pool), shouldn't it be Kong Fuzi, if you are also using the (correct) name Lao Tse?

OH, hang on a minute; that's off topic. I mean to say the latest driver that the nVidia site finds for me is 14-31, not 14-34, so how did you find this later 'latest' version?

XEtedBear

May 25th, 2012, 07:05 PM

If there's something not clear enough about my howto, please let me know and I'll be happy to explain and help as much as I can

Hi Zivley,
I have to say thanks for thedetail you have given in the how to - it also recognises that there is a time aspect to most 'HowTos' - what worked when the author wrote it almost certainly doesn't by the time I come to read it. And these HowTos are never updated (and never initially dated either!).

I'm just slightly nervous that I am storing a set of future shock problems by pinning part of my installation (and a key part, at that) to a previous release of Ubuntu. What will happen if some apps (especially graphics based ones,like Scribus or Gimp) come along, assuming that my 12.04 installation is all 12.04 level?

So, for the moment, I am considering holding my breath for a fixed 32-bit version of the NV34 chip driver from NVidia.

Just to extend my question a little: I was seeking to make this transition to the proprietary driver in part because I want to install the latest Gnome Shell - 3.4 I think (I'm a dis-unity man). Is my assumption - that I need an updated driver to fully exploit the new Gnome Shell - valid? I ask this beacuse my first attempt to install that Shell results in a totally corrupt screen when I log out of Unity into Gnome.

XEtedBear

May 25th, 2012, 07:14 PM

I would expect the 32-bit version to be fixed fairly quickly.

Here's some Nvidia forum threads on this subject:
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=181386

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=179489

Thanks for the clarification; on reading in the threads you pointed us to, I see:

"Unless you can upgrade to a 64-bit release or live without GLX, yeah. Sorry" in answer to the question "do we have to wait for another driver release?"

Now, that sounds slightly longer than a period characterised by 'holding my breath' - I think this says 'months', not 'days'. So I have to ask what is the implication of "live without GLX'. I have no idea what this means. Any advice?

bogan

May 25th, 2012, 07:20 PM

Hi!, XEtedBear,

You Posted:
how did you find this later 'latest' version?
From memory I found it in nvidia.com> Drivers>"beta & Archives" searching for GeForce>FX5500>Linux 32bit, but it is not there currently.

You can find it as a Pre-release by clicking on this excerpt from the NVidia NVNews> Linux Forum:
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=122606

Kong Fuzi sounds like a KungFu Foot Boxer.

Chao!, bogan.

bogan

May 25th, 2012, 07:43 PM

Hi!, zivley,

You Posted :
BTW, the "pinning" code was added to my original post Yeah, I see it now; I was expecting to see a 'hold' command.

Does not 'Pinning' the release to oneiric result in other thing also not being updated or upgraded?

I share XEtedBear's apprehensions:
I'm just slightly nervous that I am storing a set of future shock problems by pinning part of my installation (and a key part, at that) to a previous release of Ubuntu. What will happen if some apps (especially graphics based ones,like Scribus or Gimp) come along, assuming that my 12.04 installation is all 12.04 level?

Glad I do not have an FX series card.

Chao!, bogan.

zivley

May 25th, 2012, 08:40 PM

The pinning is only for the xorg packages, it won't do anything to the rest of the system, I've already done that on my PC and tested before I posted this earlier today.
I know is not a "best solution", it's more like a temporary hack.
Anyways, I think I was happy too early.
The driver works indeed and everything looks fine, the screen resolution is finally detected properly for my display, BUT, after some more checking I realize I'm actually using Unity2D after all!
So this solution makes the graphic card work fine, but Unity3D still doesn't support it!
I'll keep trying to see if there is any chance to make this work, otherwise I'll just ditch this card and try a better luck with another similar one I have, the problem is the other one is an ATI based card, and I know those are even more problematic for linux than NVIDIA, so I don't know, perhaps I'll opt for using the darn onboard display chip, who knows, maybe it will support 3D?

How did I find the driver? By going to nvidia.com and searching, I've got a list of 3 versions of 173 legacy drivers, I chose the latest one (biggest numbers...)

haresear

May 25th, 2012, 09:04 PM

Thanks for the clarification; on reading in the threads you pointed us to, I see:

"Unless you can upgrade to a 64-bit release or live without GLX, yeah. Sorry" in answer to the question "do we have to wait for another driver release?"

Now, that sounds slightly longer than a period characterised by 'holding my breath' - I think this says 'months', not 'days'. So I have to ask what is the implication of "live without GLX'. I have no idea what this means. Any advice?

I don't expect the wait to be a month -- perhaps a week, I'm hoping less. Living without GLX means no 3-D acceleration, so you couldn't run the Gnome shell or Unity 3D. Gnome classic should run. If your card is old enough to need the 173 driver, I'm not sure it will ever be able to run Gnome shell adequately. I have an FX 5200 and have to use 173, and Gnome shell didn't run well for me with the previous-Xorg server (Ubuntu 11.10, Mint 12). My card has always been blacklisted by Unity 3D, so I've never been able to run that either.

XEtedBear

May 25th, 2012, 10:24 PM

... and Gnome shell didn't run well for me with the previous-Xorg server (Ubuntu 11.10, Mint 12). My card has always been blacklisted by Unity 3D, so I've never been able to run that either.

What a pain in the fundament!

I came into this show directly as a result of installing Gnome Shell 3.4 on Ubuntu 11.10 and discoverung that the performance was truly terrible (Relive those wonderful days of trying to run OS/2 on an 8086....). I was advised to do a clean install of 12.04 and add Gnome Shell to that - which (in my fevered mind) required me to have the proprietary drivers for the FX5200 installed.

I'm going round in circles (and disappearing up my own ... oh, never mind) with this. It's a true Catch-22. And I'm not going to invest in a new nVidia card when the rest of the configuration is as old, if not older. And, as if this isn't enough, the next project is to migrate the 'production' linux system to 12.04 - with an Ati card installed....

haresear

May 26th, 2012, 02:13 AM

XEtedBear

May 30th, 2012, 12:45 PM

I may have been too optimistic...

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=181386&page=2

Q: "Are there plans to release an updated 173.14.xx driver to fix the 32-bit GLX problem?"

A: "Yes, I just can't promise a timeframe."

Your intuition may be right.

It gives me no pleasure to learn this -it's just a confirmation that my 'intuition', derived from more than 50 years of messing near the periphery of software development, has taught me that commercial firms really have certain priorities which are immutable. Self-advantage is the chief of these; customer requirements are satisfied only as a by-product of that process.

I have decided to revert to 11.10 and solve the problem in other ways - especially sense I became bored with the incessant error message "Ubuntu 12.04 has suffered an internal error". I should have remembered not to upgrade to 12.04 until 12.10 is released.

onecup2many

June 9th, 2012, 05:39 PM

After following many google search recommendations for a solution to this problem it appears the fix is finally here. I've tried all of the methods and was really regretting upgrading to 12.04LTS but now I'm OK. I am running an older IBM/Lenovo Thinkcentre with an NVIDIA FX5500.

Here is what I did to fix my graphics issues.

Get the latest update from NVIDIA's ftp server:

ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/173.14.35/

When you run it be sure to ALT+F1 and stop your X server or the installer will give you an error:

sudo stop lightdmThen run the binary (New Linux users: you must navigate to the directory you downloaded the file into before running this command):

sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-173.14.34-pkg0.runIt will tell you that the pre-install script failed and ask if you would like to continue anyways, answer YES

I think this is because you are running a version of the X server that is beyond the supported version the pre-install script checks for.

At this point it will tell you to blacklist Nouveau and you will tell it YES.

If the installer fails at this point re-run the installer and the kernel package should build at this point. (It did for me, you may have to reboot I can't remember).

It will ask you if you would like NVIDIA to create your X configuration. Answer YES.

Voila! you have the latest 173! They know we are using X 1.2 with this driver and they are obviously working on it.

If you want to make changes to NVIDIA settings be sure to run it as root. As Zivley mentioned:

If you change something and want to save it, you'll have to run it as root, so you better fire it up by pressing Alt+F2 and on the command type "gksu nvidia-settings"GUI Terminal will work too.

Here is a interesting read from NVIDIA:

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=46678

I still don't know how to get Unity 3D going. Can anyone help me with this? Do I need to install anything since my graphics wouldn't support it during fresh install? Any help would be appreciated.

ciroliroli

June 10th, 2012, 05:47 PM

I'm new on ubuntu, and my english is bad so i'm sorry at first.

I'm trying to follow the onecup2many (http://ubuntuforums.org/member.php?u=1669878)'s instructions and tried to download those files at nvidias's ftp but there was nedded some sort of registration, and I couldn't make it. Anyone have some tips on how to do that?
I have the same problems with an fx5200 nividia and 12.04 ubuntu.
Thanks

rambux

June 29th, 2012, 03:18 AM

There is a much simpler way to get the 173 driver.

I was able to install the nvidia 173 driver, straight from Ubuntu. I just downloaded the package from:

http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/restricted/n/nvidia-graphics-drivers-173/

Specifically, nvidia-173_173.14.35-0ubuntu1_i386.deb at:

http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/restricted/n/nvidia-graphics-drivers-173/nvidia-173_173.14.35-0ubuntu1_i386.deb

After a quick cd to the Download directory, I installed via the command line with:

sudo dpkg -i nvidia-173_173.14.35-0ubuntu1_i386.deb

Then installed the nvidia-settings, rebooted, ran nvidia-settings, and everything is working out just fine!

(I have an nvidia GeForce FX 5200, (NV34). TV out via S-video is working perfectly! )

I hope this helps anyone who is in the same predicament I was in!!!

cybergalvez

July 1st, 2012, 06:38 PM

bogan

July 1st, 2012, 08:49 PM

I would not mess with installing the drivr directly from nvidia, you will be stuck rebuilding it every time the kernel is updated. I would install the x-swat ppa and just use the drivers that they build, works everytime

https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-x-swat/+archive/x-updates/ (https://launchpad.net/%7Eubuntu-x-swat/+archive/x-updates/)
That is a matter of opinion and experience, complicated by the variations in video cards and other hardware.

I prefer to use the Nvidia Download and run route, which once you have done it, only takes a minute or two, and is predictable and reliable, doing all the necessary uninstalls, cleanups and configurations.
Edit: There are in any case fixes available to avoid the need to re -install after kernal updates.

The only problem I have had, was with the bugged version of 295.40, and that was transferred to the Ubuntu ppa versions as well.

Incidently, unbelievably, 295.40 is still being offered in Additional Drivers as 'nvidia-current'.

My experience with the #x-swat/x-updates version was an unmitigated disaster on one of my Desktops, though it worked OK on the other.

Use what works for you.

@cybergalvez
Perhaps you should add to your advice the x-swat recommendation that you should install 'Purge PPA' and run it before any kernal update. And that is a lot work and more risky than using an nvidia download.

Chao!, bogan.

cybergalvez

July 1st, 2012, 10:37 PM

That is a matter of opinion and experience, complicated by the variations in video cards and other hardware.

I prefer to use the Nvidia Download and run route, which once you have done it, only takes a minute or two, and is predictable and reliable, doing all the necessary uninstalls, cleanups and configurations.
Edit: There are in any case fixes available to avoid the need to re -install after kernal updates.

The only problem I have had, was with the bugged version of 295.40, and that was transferred to the Ubuntu ppa versions as well.

Incidently, unbelievably, 295.40 is still being offered in Additional Drivers as 'nvidia-current'.

My experience with the #x-swat/x-updates version was an unmitigated disaster on one of my Desktops, though it worked OK on the other.

Use what works for you.

@cybergalvez
Perhaps you should add to your advice the x-swat recommendation that you should install 'Purge PPA' and run it before any kernal update. And that is a lot work and more risky than using an nvidia download.

Chao!, bogan.

All true. From my personal (and take that for what its worth) experience I've never had to do te purge PPA after a kernel update, but I have had to do it when I wanted to remove the x-swat driver the month or so that nvidia had serious river issues. The reality way works well most of the time, I prefer the PPA beccause they stay pretty up to date and requires less effort on my part

ethana2

July 6th, 2012, 05:42 AM

The nVidia driver installer actually tells me it's installed at this point, but I still have no OpenGL nor glx. The driver shows up in jockey-gtk, but when I select it it says I'm "holding broken packages" and informs me that I'm screwed. All I can think this whole time is "would it seriously kill nVidia to provide their own .deb?!"

Vontux

May 31st, 2013, 04:42 AM