Warning, installing the Nvidia drivers will bork your Arch Linux install!

[RJARRRPCGP]

If you do a "pacman -S nvidia" and reboot, you will get:


ERROR: root fs cannot be detected. Try using the rootfstype= kernel parameter.

ERROR: Unable to create/detect root device '/dev/disk/by-uuid/xxxxx

Dropping to a recovery shell... type 'exit' to reboot

__________________________________________________ ______

Thus, you will be stuck in a reformatting and reinstalling trap!

With this bug, you would be wondering if it should still be in alpha!

[mips]

Which version of the nvidia driver and on which arch, i686 or AMD64?

Maybe try

yaourt -S nvidia-utils-beta
yaourt -S nvidia-beta

Which will install 180.27-1

[fwojciec]

If you do a "pacman -S nvidia" and reboot, you will get:


ERROR: root fs cannot be detected. Try using the rootfstype= kernel parameter.

ERROR: Unable to create/detect root device '/dev/disk/by-uuid/xxxxx

Dropping to a recovery shell... type 'exit' to reboot

__________________________________________________ ______

Thus, you will be stuck in a reformatting and reinstalling trap!

With this bug, you would be wondering if it should still be in alpha!

I don't think this has anything to do with nvidia drivers. I don't see how nvidia would affect recognition of filesystems by the boot image.

I also have two Arch machines that use nvidia drivers and I never had any problem like this.

In either case, this kind of problem is not something that requires either reformatting or reinstalling. Just make sure that the uuid identifiers are correct in menu.lst/fstab. Alternatively you can ditch uuids and use the old style /dev/sdX designations for filesystems.

See this for how to deal with kernel panics (which are usually easy to fix): http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Kernel_panic First thing you should try when you boot into your system, aside from checking that grub and fstab configurations are OK, is regenerating boot images with "mkinitcpio -p kernel26".

[Rumor]

I've got nvidia 180.22-1 installed with no issues here.

As fwojciec pointed out, installing nvidia doesn't do anything to your file system. It plugs a module into your kernel, but that's about as invasive as it gets.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Which version of the nvidia driver and on which arch, i686 or AMD64?

Maybe try

yaourt -S nvidia-utils-beta
yaourt -S nvidia-beta

Which will install 180.27-1

Just typing "pacman -S nvidia" will install 182.xx, 182.22 or later IIRC.

And BTW, it's i686. With an Athlon XP 3000+.

[RJARRRPCGP]

I don't think this has anything to do with nvidia drivers. I don't see how nvidia would affect recognition of filesystems by the boot image.

I also have two Arch machines that use nvidia drivers and I never had any problem like this.

In either case, this kind of problem is not something that requires either reformatting or reinstalling. Just make sure that the uuid identifiers are correct in menu.lst/fstab. Alternatively you can ditch uuids and use the old style /dev/sdX designations for filesystems.

See this for how to deal with kernel panics (which are usually easy to fix): http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Kernel_panic First thing you should try when you boot into your system, aside from checking that grub and fstab configurations are OK, is regenerating boot images with "mkinitcpio -p kernel26".

!The fstab was valid before "pacman -S nvidia"!

[RJARRRPCGP]

See this for how to deal with kernel panics (which are usually easy to fix):

It wasn't a kernel panic, because it didn't display "Kernel panic:not syncing" and the caps lock light didn't start blinking.

And with a kernel panic, it wouldn't even give you a prompt. LOL.

[fwojciec]

It wasn't a kernel panic, because it didn't display "Kernel panic:not syncing" and the caps lock light didn't start blinking.

And with a kernel panic, it wouldn't even give you a prompt. LOL.

It doesn't matter -- the procedure for fixing it is the same: kernel panic ~= non-booting system.

And my guess is that when you installed nvidia pacman pulled some dependencies alongside with it, or something entirely different happened. Like I said, there is no way installing nvidia driver would affect the boot routine.

[mips]

Just typing "pacman -S nvidia" will install 182.xx, 182.22 or later IIRC.

pacman -S nvidia will install 180.22-1, there are no 182.xx drivers. yaourt will pull in the latest (180.27-1) from AUR.

[crimesaucer]

I'm using the official NVIDIA 180.25 and my graphics have never been better.