nvidia driver and Xft problem

[IndieRockSteve]

I'm running Mandrake 9 with the 3123 drivers(srpm rebuilt). My fonts in GTK2 apps, when XFT for GDK is enabled are all screwy, bits of the characters don't render, some apps have whole letters that don't render, etc. If i turn of XFT for GDK its fine, if i switch to the standard "nv" driver its fine, and in QT its fine. Noone else I know has this problem, but I don't know anyone running this configuration with a GeForce3(my friend was running it with a GeForce4MX and said his was fine).

Anyone have any ideas as to how to fix this, or is it just a bug in the NVidia drivers?

thanks!

[kappax]

Not a driver problem, it is a config problem, I have XFT working nice, you need to get more fonts or better fronts and config it right

there are alot of readmes and HOWTO's on google.

[IndieRockSteve]

no it is a driver problem, because it only fixed itself when i stopped using the nvidia drivers from the webpage but it worked with the drivers nvidia provides free for distros to include.

on a side note, I recompiled the 3123 drivers and it started working. Do the drivers need the freetype development stuff when compiling? this might be what caused the problem because when i first compiled I hadn't installed the newer freetype files and development files.

[bwkaz]

Originally posted by IndieRockSteve
...when i stopped using the nvidia drivers from the webpage but it worked with the drivers nvidia provides free for distros to include. nVidia doesn't provide those. They were written by people, independent of nVidia, that reverse-engineered enough of the video card's architecture to be able to work with it in 2D. The developers don't know enough to get 3D working, though.

The drivers shouldn't need freetype installed. All that "recompiling the 3123 drivers" does is re-set up the kernel-mode half of things. The XFree86 driver, which is the only thing that should ever handle anything related to Xft, are statically compiled at nVidia, regardless of which GLX you install (rpm, .src.rpm, or .tar.gz).

If it works now with the 3123 drivers, but didn't before, then I too would suspect something wasn't configured quite right. I don't know what it would have been, but it shouldn't matter now since it works.

[kappax]

Originally posted by IndieRockSteve
no it is a driver problem, because it only fixed itself when i stopped using the nvidia drivers from the webpage but it worked with the drivers nvidia provides free for distros to include.

on a side note, I recompiled the 3123 drivers and it started working. Do the drivers need the freetype development stuff when compiling? this might be what caused the problem because when i first compiled I hadn't installed the newer freetype files and development files.


xft has nothing to do with drivers. it is a X server config problem you are having. if anything. post the X config you use when you use the nv driver and post the config when you use the Nvidia driver./

[IndieRockSteve]

well, I just rebooted, and now its back to how it was. argggh... this is so frustrating, now I have to figure out what i did before to get it to work so I can do it again everytime I reboot....

[IndieRockSteve]

well, I tried everything I could think of. with no luck, I have no idea how i did it last time.
here's what i went through this time...

first I had the "nv" driver load up, fonts with xft enabled were fine(as before). So then i changed it back to "nvidia" and the problem reappeared.
I tried removing the 3123 drivers and installing the 2960 drivers, didn't change anything. I put the 3123 drivers back no change. I reinstalled all my freetype2 packages, nothing...

I did manage to loose all fonts in KDE and Gnome during one of these steps... logged out of X and then did a startx again and they were back. I didn't touch anything else... logged out again, then startx again and they were gone. since then its been fine. but during these periods I didn't do anything or run anything in X.

I think there is definitly a problem in Mdk9 with the NVidia drivers and freetype2.

If anyone has any ideas please help! hopefully the nvidia driver guys will fix this in the next release, but until then, I'd like to find a workaround(like how i managed to do it before)

thanks!

[kappax]

post your X config, you are not going to get help without that, and your x log, nobody knows what to do so just post them and ppl can start to help.

[IndieRockSteve]

Kappax, sorry, missed the request to post this info before, here it is, thanks!
...
ok, here's my XF86Config-4 file, the only difference between this and when i use the "nv" driver is that I comment out the Load "glx" line, otherwise everything else is the same.
-----------------
, # File generated by XFdrake.

# ************************************************** ********************
# Refer to the XF86Config man page for details about the format of
# this file.
# ************************************************** ********************

Section "Files"
# Multiple FontPath entries are allowed (they are concatenated together)
# By default, Mandrake 6.0 and later now use a font server independent of
# the X server to render fonts.
FontPath "unix/:-1"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
#DontZap # disable <Crtl><Alt><BS> (server abort)
AllowMouseOpenFail # allows the server to start up even if the mouse doesn't work
#DontZoom # disable <Crtl><Alt><KP_+>/<KP_-> (resolution switching)
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "dbe" # Double-Buffering Extension
Load "v4l" # Video for Linux
Load "extmod"
Load "type1"
Load "freetype"
Load "glx" # 3D layer
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard1"
Driver "Keyboard"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
Option "XkbOptions" ""
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse1"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "MouseManPlusPS/2"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "monitor1"
VendorName "ViewSonic"
ModelName "ViewSonic PT813"
HorizSync 30-107
VertRefresh 50-160

# Sony Vaio C1(X,XS,VE,VN)?
# 1024x480 @ 85.6 Hz, 48 kHz hsync
ModeLine "1024x480" 65.00 1024 1032 1176 1344 480 488 494 563 -hsync -vsync

# TV fullscreen mode or DVD fullscreen output.
# 768x576 @ 79 Hz, 50 kHz hsync
ModeLine "768x576" 50.00 768 832 846 1000 576 590 595 630

# 768x576 @ 100 Hz, 61.6 kHz hsync
ModeLine "768x576" 63.07 768 800 960 1024 576 578 590 616
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "device1"
VendorName "nVidia Corporation"
BoardName "NVIDIA GeForce3 (generic)"
Driver "nvidia"
Option "NvAgp" "1"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "screen1"
Device "device1"
Monitor "monitor1"
DefaultColorDepth 24

Subsection "Display"
Depth 8
Modes "1600x1200" "1400x1050" "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1152x864" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubsection

Subsection "Display"
Depth 15
Modes "1600x1200" "1400x1050" "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1152x864" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubsection

Subsection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "1600x1200" "1400x1050" "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1152x864" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubsection

Subsection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1600x1200" "1400x1050" "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1152x864" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubsection
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "layout1"
InputDevice "Keyboard1" "CoreKeyboard"
InputDevice "Mouse1" "CorePointer"
Screen "screen1"
EndSection
---------------

[IndieRockSteve]

my log files are too big to be posted here, if you want I can attach them as a file.

[bwkaz]

Please do. Make sure that you take the log from an X session where you do actually run the programs that aren't working with Xft, so if there are any errors at runtime, you get those too. Should be obvious, but you never know.

[IndieRockSteve]

is there a way to increase the verbosity of errors written to the XFree86.0/9.log files?
I've looked through them myself and cant remember seeing any information that would be helpful, if i can somehow have more information written to the files it would help.

also, should I do one set using the "nv" driver and one using the "nvidia" driver?

thanks!

[bwkaz]

Sure, do both. You'll have to have 2 posts though.

To increase log verbosity, do a startx -- -logverbose 10 or so. You can also print more stuff to the screen by using -verbose 10 or so.

The higher the number, the more gets printed / logged, up to some limit.

[IndieRockSteve]

ok, I've attached log files for the 4 possible cases.
nvidia+gdkxft=1
nvidia+gdkxft=0
nv+gdkxft=1
nv+gdkxft=0
I had logverbose set to 10

I went through and I don't see anything out of the ordinary.
are there any driver option I should try? and logs of the xfs server or the driver I could look at too?

thanks!
I'm gunna install slack soon if i can't get this to work to see if that works. I still can't figure out why I'm the only one with this problem...

(ps. remove the file is a tar.bz2 file, but i appeneded .zip so it would upload)

[IndieRockSteve]

well, I emailed a bug report to nvidia, and I got a quick response(3 hours later) to use the
Option "NoRenderAccel"
in my X config file. problem solved!
and apparently the render acceleration feature is a work in progress, with almost no actual hardware acceleration. so turning it off won't affect anything.

hope this helps other solve any problems like this they may have.

thanks!

[bwkaz]

Hmm... Well, OK. If it works, I guess... ;)