NVidia Graphics Drivers in Squeeze (AMD64, KDE, not that it matters)
Lars Uffmann
This topic comes up every time I set up a new system... I have
specifically bought a new system with NVidia graphics chipset due to the
good proprietary drivers. Now Squeeze has some surprises for me that I
wasn't expecting after being very happy with Lenny for 2 years:
a) KDE 4 - urks. I liked the 3 much better, but well.. "downgrading"
that seems heck complicated, and it's probably going to be discontinued
anyways, so what the heck...
b) where the heck did xorg.conf go? Someone got a link explaining the
plan behind this? It seems to be in /etc/X11/XF86Config now?
c) I fail to install the proprietary drivers from nvidia: I can get past
the complaint that the build-essential shipped gcc is 3.4 while kernel
was compiled with 3.3, by installing 3.3, but then it complains about
not finding "cc" (which I didn't try to solve too seriously, tbh).
However, I found one approach, that takes packaged drivers, and I was
wondering if anyone has some tips for me on alternate approaches (to
install the latest drivers from NVidia, and to test if all functionality
is there).
I wanted to write my working approach down for future reference:
During install, make sure to enable the non-free software (NVidia
drivers are proprietary).
Right after Squeeze install finishes, as root on test terminal (or via
sudo):
-------------------------
edit (vi) /etc/apt/sources.list and comment out the cdrom source
aptitude update
uname -r
(to find out what kernel version you are using, just for reference)
/etc/init.d/kdm stop
aptitude install module-assistant nvidia-kernel-common
m-a a-i nvidia-kernel-source
(this will trigger apt-get install build-essential in an intermediate step)
reboot system here (I don't know how else to get rid of the nouveau driver)
/etc/init.d/kdm stop
rmmod nouveau
(should confirm "[drm] Module unloaded")
aptitude purge libdrm-nouveau1
(also removes xserver-xorg-video-all, xserver-xorg-video-nouveau)
lsmod | grep nvidia
(to confirm nvidia driver is loaded)
aptitude install nvidia-xconfig nvidia-settings
nvidia-xconfig
/etc/init.d/kdm start
(if this goes wrong, rm /etc/X11/XF86Config to get a default driver
running again)
-------------------------
This seems very complicated... I had to gather bits and pieces of
information together from everywhere, find out about the nouveau driver
myself (looking through dmesg) and how to remove it, then experiment
some. Anyone got any better suggestions?
Best Regards,
Lars
Hadron
Its a complete mess. 3 of my systems lost their video completely. There
appears to be little if any info and/or support to help those of us
whose systems could not just go "xorg.conf" less.
I ended up breaking my golden rule and moving to the nvidia
installer. With all the pain that produces such as broken video when the
kernel changes and the need to recompile.
Lars Uffmann
> Its a complete mess. 3 of my systems lost their video completely. There
> appears to be little if any info and/or support to help those of us
> whose systems could not just go "xorg.conf" less.
Well I guess I can't complain about a free operating system too much,
but I'd like to understand the reasoning behind seemingly just moving
xorg.conf to XF86Config ...
> I ended up breaking my golden rule and moving to the nvidia
> installer. With all the pain that produces such as broken video when the
> kernel changes and the need to recompile.
I failed to get the NVidia installer to run :) Since I got it going now,
with the process described, I will skip NVidia installer unless I need
some more recent driver version.
Sadly, replacing nouveau with nvidia also means I only have a 25 lines
text terminal now - nouveau clearly has the better driver for the text
terminal - or rather, I don't know how to enable this setting for the
nvidia configuration...
:/
Lars
Sven Joachim
> Hadron wrote:
>> Its a complete mess. 3 of my systems lost their video completely. There
>> appears to be little if any info and/or support to help those of us
>> whose systems could not just go "xorg.conf" less.
>
> Well I guess I can't complain about a free operating system too much,
> but I'd like to understand the reasoning behind seemingly just moving
> xorg.conf to XF86Config ...
There is no such move, it's just that there should be no need for an
xorg.conf anymore for most users. Of course, you still need one if you
want to use the Nvidia driver, but it's just four lines:
--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
Section "Device"
Identifier "Nvidia card"
Driver "nvidia"
EndSection
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
>> I ended up breaking my golden rule and moving to the nvidia
>> installer. With all the pain that produces such as broken video when the
>> kernel changes and the need to recompile.
>
> I failed to get the NVidia installer to run :) Since I got it going
> now, with the process described, I will skip NVidia installer unless I
> need some more recent driver version.
>
> Sadly, replacing nouveau with nvidia also means I only have a 25 lines
> text terminal now - nouveau clearly has the better driver for the text
> terminal - or rather, I don't know how to enable this setting for the
> nvidia configuration...
There is no decent framebuffer that can be used with the nvidia binary
driver, both nouveau and nvidiafb conflict with it. The best you can
get is vesafb or uvesafb. Both are very slow, but the latter may also
support modern wide screens.
Sven
Lars Uffmann
> There is no decent framebuffer that can be used with the nvidia binary
> driver, both nouveau and nvidiafb conflict with it. The best you can
> get is vesafb or uvesafb. Both are very slow, but the latter may also
> support modern wide screens.
Are you saying I could use vesafb along with nvidia binary driver?
I may also need to check what the differences are between nvidia binary
driver and nouveau - last time I installed my Lenny, I think nouveau
didn't exist yet... And there wasn't really an option to nvidia
proprietary driver if you wanted to use full 3d support - and it worked
well!
Lars
Sven Joachim
> Sven Joachim wrote:
>> There is no decent framebuffer that can be used with the nvidia binary
>> driver, both nouveau and nvidiafb conflict with it. The best you can
>> get is vesafb or uvesafb. Both are very slow, but the latter may also
>> support modern wide screens.
>
> Are you saying I could use vesafb along with nvidia binary driver?
Yes, I had done this for several years.
> I may also need to check what the differences are between nvidia
> binary driver and nouveau - last time I installed my Lenny, I think
> nouveau didn't exist yet... And there wasn't really an option to
> nvidia proprietary driver if you wanted to use full 3d support - and
> it worked well!
If you need 3D, you should stick to nvidia, nouveau in squeeze has no
3D support at all. In experimental there is a package called
libgl1-mesa-dri-experimental that contains a 3D driver, but it's neither
high-performance nor stable -- it can easily crash your system.
Sven
Lars Uffmann
>> Are you saying I could use vesafb along with nvidia binary driver?
> Yes, I had done this for several years.
Okay - I just did a quick google and didn't exactly "stumble" upon a
solution to activate vesafb - do you happen to have a reference for this?
> If you need 3D, you should stick to nvidia, nouveau in squeeze has no
> 3D support at all.
That's a good reason :)
Cheers,
Lars
Lars Uffmann
> Okay - I just did a quick google and didn't exactly "stumble" upon a
> solution to activate vesafb - do you happen to have a reference for this?
NM - it's already running: added vga=0x317 to grub kernel boot option.
Thanks for the hint!
Lars
Sven Joachim
> Sven Joachim wrote:
>>> Are you saying I could use vesafb along with nvidia binary driver?
>> Yes, I had done this for several years.
>
> Okay - I just did a quick google and didn't exactly "stumble" upon a
> solution to activate vesafb - do you happen to have a reference for
> this?
With lilo and grub-legacy, you can pass vga=… to the kernel,
e.g. vga=794 for 1280x1024, 16 bit color-depth. Use vga=ask to see
available modes.
Somewhere I've read that this is deprecated in grub2 and that you should
set the resolution in the grub configuration, but I don't use grub2 yet.
Sven