I've received tons of help from these forums in the past. I felt obliged to post my solutions to upgrade issues that I came across with Ubuntu 8.04. Everyone should keep in mind that Ubuntu is FREE!!! Most systems work well with it. Unfortunately there are some pieces of hardware that have a conflict with it. Even with the conflicts, I'll take Ubuntu over Windows any day!!! I have a Toshiba Satellite 1415-S173 laptop with a NVIDIA GeForce4 420 Go with 16 Meg of RAM. I'm a big fan of Neverwinter Nights so 3D graphics is a must. I upgraded to Ubuntu 8.04 through the System/Administration/Update Manager utility. Everything went well with the exception of the graphics was set to low resolution on reboot and the gcc-3.3 and gcc-3.4 info files were dropped. The missing gcc files were critical since they prevented me from installing or un-installing programs. I found the gcc fix in a Ubuntu bug report. The solution was provided by Tiger!P. The problem is that the files are not where some scripts think they should be. The trick is to recreate them from other gcc files. In short I opened a terminal window and typed the following... sudo cp /usr/share/info/gcc-4.1.info.gz /usr/share/info/gcc-3.3.info.gz sudo cp /usr/share/info/gccint-4.1.info.gz /usr/share/info/gccint- sudo cp /usr/share/info/gcc-4.1.info.gz /usr/share/info/gcc-3.4.info.gz sudo cp /usr/share/info/gccint-4.1.info.gz /usr/share/info/gccint-3.4.info.gz sudo dpkg --configure -a It may not be the best solution but it worked for me. No problems yet. Next on the list was to fix the NVIDIA driver. NVIDIA has several drivers that worked with previous versions of Ubuntu. Each one would load and have a black bar on the right side of the flat panel display. NVIDIA didn't configure the driver to work with every display on the planet. Lucky me!!! I have one of those problem displays!!! The black bar was a tough one and required some hexidecimal edits to an edid.bin display file to fix it. I found that the following NVIDIA drivers do not work with Ubuntu 8.04 on my laptop (even when patched)... NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8776-pkg1 NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-9631-pkg1 NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-9755-pkg1 The new legacy driver (NVIDIA-Linux-x86-96.43.05-pkg1) worked when first loaded after I fixed the edid.bin file. However, the driver was dumped on a reboot. The only way to recover was to reinstall the driver every time I turned the laptop on. The graphics were choppy and scrolling came with a poor refresh rate. My solution from the forums was as follows... 1) Load ENVY through the System/Administration/Synaptic Package Manager. Thanks to Alberto Milone (aka tseliot) for writing this sweet utility. 2) Start Envy from Applications/System Tools/EnvyNG. From the main window select NVIDIA and Uninstall the NVIDIA driver. I needed to remove any traces of NVIDIA from the system to make this work. Select Apply and reboot the system when asked. 3) Re-start Envy. From the main window select NVIDIA and Install the NVIDIA driver (Manual Selection of the Driver). The driver version I selected was the 96.43.05 option. Select Apply and reboot the system when asked. 4) After the reboot open the NVIDIA utility from System/Administration/NVIDIA X Server Settings. Go to the DFP-0 - (NVIDIA Default Flat Panel) tab and in the right side window select Aquire EDID. What happens here is the Flat Panel configuration gets exported in a binary format. This is where the hex editor comes in. You can load one through the Synaptic Package Manager. The problem is that the driver's display resolution does not match the resolution of the actual Flat Panel display. Thanks to orlo11 for the hint on fixing the display. The instructions are as follows... Save the EDID by nvidia-settings to a file and edited this. I called mine edid_04_28_2008.bin. The horizontal resolution is saved in the bytes with the offset 56(Hex:38 ) and 58 (the upper four bits) (Hex:3A ) In the original EDIT these bytes were C9 and 31 (0x3C9 = 969) Change them to 00 and 41 (0x400 = 1024). Then add the Option "CustomEDID" "/path/to/patched/EDID.file" to the XORG.CONF located in /etc/X11 folder. ( edit made June 1, 2008 ) I needed to add a "DFP-0:" switch to the option pathway. This forces the option to be used with my flat panel display. See below for some excerpts from my xorg.conf file. Further information about the structure of the EDID you will find at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EDID#EDID_1.1_data_format My XORG.CONF file looked like this in the display section (Critical lines I added are in bold type) ... Section "Screen" Identifier "Default Screen" Monitor "Configured Monitor" Device "Configured Video Device" Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True" Option "UseDisplayDevice" "DFP" Defaultdepth 24 EndSection Section "Device" Identifier "Configured Video Device" Option "UseFBDev" "true" Driver "nvidia" Option "CustomEDID" "DFP-0:/etc/X11/edid_04_28_2008.bin" EndSection Edits to the XORG.CONF file need to be made with the GDM stopped. To do this do the following... CTRL+ALT+F1 "Jumps to the 1st console" sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop "Stops GDM" sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf "Starts editor. Make your edits and save" sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart "Starts GDM. You should automatically switch back to the log in of the desktop" Now, if only I could only get my Linksys Wireless G (WPC54GX4) card to work life would be perfect. UPDATE TUESDAY MAY 6TH 2008!!! I have the WPC54GX4 working on Ubuntu 8.04 now!!! See the reply below!!! By the way... To get Neverwinter Nights to work I had to modify the shell script. The nwn script file in the game directory looks like this... #!/bin/sh # This script runs Neverwinter Nights from the current directory cd /home/david/nwn export SDL_MOUSE_RELATIVE=0 export SDL_VIDEO_X11_DGAMOUSE=0 # If you do not wish to use the SDL library included in the package, remove # ./lib from LD_LIBRARY_PATH export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=./lib:./miles:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH export LD_PRELOAD=./nwmovies.so ./nwmain $@ I had to change the export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=./lib:./miles:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH line to export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=:./miles:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH to play the game in Ubuntu 8.04. Deleting the ./lib text did the trick.
Last edited by brigadoon; June 1st, 2008 at 12:07 PM.
Getting the Linksys WPC54GX4 wireless adapter running on Ubuntu 8.04 was very easy!!! Download the WPC54GX4-v1.00.09-2.0.1.19.zip driver from the Linksys web site. Extract it to a directory. I was using a Netgear wireless to download. I un-plugged it. Do not insert the WPC54GX4 into the PCMCIA slot. Select System/Administration/Windows Wireless Drivers. On the menu that pops select Install New Driver Goto the directory the driver was extracted to and select the tmimo3P.inf data file. Press install. After a minute my laptop froze. I killed the power. Before turning it back on I inserted the WPC54GX4 into the PCMCIA slot. After login select System/Administration/Windows Wireless Drivers again. On the menu that pops up select Configure Network. The wireless connection appears and is locked in roaming mode. Left click the network icon next to the time and date display in the upper right corner of the desktop. A drop down menu appears with my home wireless network on it. I select it and log in to the home network. I could never get the card to work until I remembered that in the Windows installation instructions you are directed not to install the card until the driver is installed. The same methodology must apply to Ubuntu as well. Nice and simple.
Last edited by brigadoon; May 7th, 2008 at 01:32 PM.
Hi! Thanks for this guide. I am having exactly the same problem with the same card, although I'm using a Sony VAIO PCG-FR130. However, I am very new to Linux and Ubuntu, and really have no idea of how to perform all these steps you mentioned, or where to get the files. You, or anybody, knows an easier of newbie proof way of fixing this? Million thanks! -Reg
Which files do you need specifically? Some can be installed through the Synaptic Package Manager others you'll have to down load from hardware vendor sites. Let me know which files for what you can't locate and I'll try to help you out.
Hello again! THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU... and so on.... So, I went on... sat down and read carefully through your post, and managed to install the driver though the EnvyNG. So, I got till the part of the AquireEDID. However, my computer display resolution is correct, and everything is working like a charm. I don't know if I should edit the EDID file anyways, should I? If that is the case, then I would like to know how to open the HEX editor tough the Package Manager. Man, I am so grateful! THANKS! I'm kind of liking the Linux support thing!
If your happy with the resolution settings available then you don't need to use a custom EDID file. There's an old programmers saying... Better is the enemy of good. If it's good I'd leave it alone. Trying to make it better sometimes makes it worse. I needed to use a custom EDID file since my driver didn't recognize the display resolutions on my laptop. It sounds like your drive works well with your monitor and you're good to go. Glad I could help.
An interesting thing happened to me this week when I updated gdm through a standard update. My NVIDIA driver was obliterated. No amount of reloading my Nvidia driver would work. I couldn't get above 800x600 resolution. Even if I tried a custom EDID file solution listed above I had no success. I finally scorched earth my xorg.conf file in a fit of desperation. I ended up installing a fresh xorg.conf file from xorg by running the following command... sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg This was a method of last resort and needs to be done with gdm stopped and the Nvidia driver components uninstalled. A very basic version of a xorg.conf file is loaded into the /etc/X11 folder. I restarted gdm and reloaded my Nvidia driver through Envy. The driver installation modified the xorg.conf file as needed for my system. I then generated a custom EDID file to get a 1024x768 resolution. Everything was back to normal. My xorg.conf file is much simpler now. My guess is that there was just too much junk in the file that was either no longer supported or conflicted with the new updates. Either way something in the old xorg.conf file was creating a problem. The new file is much more streamlined.
Help I cant edit my edid_04_28_2008.bin file
Thanks so much, I had no more hair to pull out..LOL.. I appreciate your help. Thanks again. I am now enjoying what windows will never provide for free.. Thanks
Thanks brigadoon! Your "UseDisplayDevice" "DFP" is awesome! I'm using Ubuntu 8.04 for my Toshiba 2450 laptop and nVidia GeForce4 420 Go. I'm almost frustated because My NVIDIA-Linux-x86-96.43.05-pkg1 driver didn't work at all. It shows blurry white screen over the display. But it's work after I try adding Option "UseDisplayDevice" "DFP" in my /etc/X11/xorg.conf Now I can activate that fancy Visual Effects and running 3D Application like Google Earth.
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