NVIDIA proprietary graphics drivers

[TerryN]

IMPORTANT news for users of GeForce 6 and 7 (6xxx/7xxx series) cards

We will shortly be moving the NVIDIA 310.19 (nvidia-current) drivers from Testing into the stable repo.  For the majority of users this will just be a normal upgrade but NVIDIA has now dropped support for older (GeForce 6 & 7) cards from this driver and moved it to a new "legacy" 304 driver. There is a list of the cards affected by this here.
To check exactly which card you have you can open a terminal and run:

Code: [Select]

lspcidrake -v | grep DISPLAY
and check the "device" field against the Device PCI ID field listed on that page.  For example:

Card:NVIDIA GeForce 400 series and later: NVIDIA Corporation|NV43 [GeForce 6600] [DISPLAY_VGA] (vendor:10de device:00f2 subv:1043 subd:81b1) (rev: a2)

When the nvidia-current-310.19 update appears, users of these older cards who wish to continue using the proprietary driver will need to reconfigure their cards to use the legacy driver (preferably before rebooting  ).  In order to do this open Synaptic and install:

dkms-nvidia304
x11-driver-video-nvidia304

Then go into PCC (Configure Your Computer->Hardware->Configure Video Card) and ensure "GeForce 6100 to GeForce 7950" is selected as the Card/X server.



As long as the nvidia304 packages mentioned above are installed there will be a message saying that proprietary drivers are available.  Answer YES if you wish to use them (saying NO will configure the nouveau driver).

Failure to do this before rebooting will result in the system rebooting to a text console screen.  
To recover from this, login as root and run:

Code: [Select]

apt-get install dkms-nvidia304
This will install the legacy packages.  Once the packages are installed run:

Code: [Select]

drakx11
and configure the card as "GeForce 6100 to GeForce 7950"
(The text interface uses the arrow, TAB and return keys)



For information the following table shows how the PCC settings for Card/X server maps to driver used:

PCC Entry	Free Driver	Proprietary Driver
GeForce 2 MX to GeForce 4	nouveau	nvidia96xx
GeForce FX series	nouveau	nvidia173
GeForce 6100 to GeForce 7950	nouveau	nvidia304 (304.64)
GeForce 8100 to GeForce 360	nouveau	nvidia-current (310.19)
GeForce 400 series and later	vesa	nvidia-current (310.19)

[BobK54]

Printed and filed because I KNOW I'm going to forget!  GeForce6150SE nForce 430 integrated card.

THANKS!!

[ternor]

Many thanks.  I have done as instructed.  There is one confusing step in the process.  After making the driver selection, there is a message informing you that there is a proprietary driver and asking whether you wish to use it.

Having installed the new legacy driver, I take it the 'current' versions should be removed. ?

EDIT: If I reply no to the question asked, nouveau becomes the driver.

EDIT: I notice that white is now displayed as a light yellow.

[Old-Polack]

Many thanks.  I have done as instructed.  There is one confusing step in the process.  After making the driver selection, there is a message informing you that there is a proprietary driver and asking whether you wish to use it.

Having installed the new legacy driver, I take it the 'current' versions should be removed. ?

EDIT: If I reply no to the question asked, nouveau becomes the driver.

EDIT: I notice that white is now displayed as a light yellow.

If you decide to make a liveCD/DVD of your installation, and then try to install it on a different computer, with a different nVidia card, you'll want all of the nVidia drivers present. Normally a basic installation has all the nVidia, Intel, and ATI drivers included, because we don't know what graphic card may be present. It's better to have drivers present and not used, than to have needed drivers not included.

[user-01]

Yesterday I ran a normal update before reading here, and lo and behold no X display.  I have an integrated Nvidia 6100 on an older Abit motherboard with an Athlon64-2x. Well, after some panic, I renamed xorg.conf so I could at least have a GUI. After a while doing some searches on this forum and others (still not going directly to the announcements section where I should have started!!!) I finally stumbled on this thread. All is good now.

Once again I've learned the importance of keeping up with the forum announcements regularly (rather than just poking through the Sandbox  ).  Thanks, guys!!

[ternor]

Thank you OP.  Should I therefore update the nvidia 'current' package?

{BTW, I am having trouble now loading applications.  The icon appears briefly and vanishes.  The system monitor shows the process running but the process window is not visible.  I mention this only in case it relates to the new nvidia package.  I am NOT asking for help with that issue.}

A problem probably related to the new driver is that in Firefox I now see borders around certain objects such as this edit box.

[Old-Polack]

Thank you OP.  Should I therefore update the nvidia 'current' package?

{BTW, I am having trouble now loading applications.  The icon appears briefly and vanishes.  The system monitor shows the process running but the process window is not visible.  I mention this only in case it relates to the new nvidia package.  I am NOT asking for help with that issue.}

A problem probably related to the new driver is that in Firefox I now see borders around certain objects such as this edit box.

Yes to the nvidia 'current' package.

Also, I don't know if this is peculiar to my machine, or rather common, but after the upgrade to KDE 4.10, and rebooting, my system was running noticeably slower than before, and there was a noticeable lag in cursor response using the mouse. A second reboot seemed to improve the situation, and after a third reboot everything was back to normal. I didn't change anything in between reboots, as far as packages or configuration settings go, just rebooted, logged in, tested the response time then rebooted again. You might want to try rebooting a couple of times to let the system sort itself out, before actively looking for a solution to the newest problem. It may solve itself with the additional reboots.

[kalwisti]

Printed and filed because I KNOW I'm going to forget!  GeForce6150SE nForce 430 integrated card.

THANKS!!

@TerryN,

A big "Thanks!" from me, too. My desktop PC has this same model, and your instructions worked perfectly.

They certainly spared me a headache, because otherwise this package update would've been a surprise ...

[ternor]

Thanks OP.  I have discovered the same after re-booting several times.

[Myakka1]

I need to reset the Nvidia settings on this partition, and it has gone to a blank screen.  I am here now because an error message occurred in the process of starting up my desktop and the report an error message had a link which clicked me on into Firefox.

But there is no prompt to allow me to type anything at. 

If I hit ctrl alt delete, a pop up appears which allows me to log out.  But I don't see anyway of getting to a konsole-type situation there either.

Maybe there is someway of entering the code I want into the address bar?  I have thought of that, but I can't even figure out where the konsole program is from the firefox open file command.  If it is going to find the program on my computer, I need to give it the correct path don't I?

[Old-Polack]

I need to reset the Nvidia settings on this partition, and it has gone to a blank screen.  I am here now because an error message occurred in the process of starting up my desktop and the report an error message had a link which clicked me on into Firefox.

But there is no prompt to allow me to type anything at. 

If I hit ctrl alt delete, a pop up appears which allows me to log out.  But I don't see anyway of getting to a konsole-type situation there either.

Maybe there is someway of entering the code I want into the address bar?  I have thought of that, but I can't even figure out where the konsole program is from the firefox open file command.  If it is going to find the program on my computer, I need to give it the correct path don't I?

Ctrl+Alt+F1 will get you to a virtual console and a command line login prompt. Log in as root. From there, first issue the command;

[root@localhost ~]# init 3                                      <Enter>

...then follow the instructions from the original post by TerryN.

[Myakka1]

Thanks, I did that.  So hopefully that issue is solved.

I worked hard to try again get out of the ctrl alt f3 place (without pulling the power cord).  It was easy to sign out: exit, but that still kept me in terminal mode.

The command: reboot seemed to work.

I still have a blank screen and the same error message though.

Probably my fault.  I goofed around with some things before I ran into your info.

Thanks for your help though.

[Old-Polack]

Thanks, I did that.  So hopefully that issue is solved.

I worked hard to try again get out of the ctrl alt f3 place (without pulling the power cord).  It was easy to sign out: exit, but that still kept me in terminal mode.

The command: reboot seemed to work.

I still have a blank screen and the same error message though.

Probably my fault.  I goofed around with some things before I ran into your info.

Thanks for your help though.

That doesn't tell us anything useful. Maybe if you tell us which nvidia card you have, and exactly what you "goofed around with" we might be able to offer more specific help.

[Myakka1]

The Nvidia sticker on my HP laptop says AMD Turion X2.  

What I goofed around with in my trying to fix my problem is I reinstalled my system.  But (because I don't really know what the frack I am doing most of the time) I installed it to the other partition.  

I have what is meant to be a very basic system.  I have 3 partitions on my hard drive.  A small 20 Gigabyte one, a linux swap partition, and a large 200+ Gigabyte one.  When I usually reinstall, I put my OS on the large one -- it is this large one that is still broke.  BUT this time I put it on the small sda1 instead of the large sda6 one.  Now when I go to sign in I have two different OS mount points to choose from.

The OS on the small partition is working.

I'd really much prefer to have my old installation back again -- that seems within reach -- because it is still there just broken.  But I don't have all the details I need to know to get that to happen.

[Myakka1]

I am in the smaller partition and the fix works fine here.  This looks like a fully-functional OS to me.

I forgot to say in my last post that the offered Nvidia options in drakx11 didn't include GeForce6100 - GeForce 7950 even after I did the install as directed.

The one that was available (and close to that) was GeForce 6100 - GeForce 360.

I wonder if I need to update the synaptic program listings in that broken OS to get the correct one to install.

It seemed to me like I was doing synaptic functions in terminal -- maybe it is possible to do this one, too?