Official FreeBSD drivers

[runkpock]

On FreeBSD:
4.8-PRERELEASE
X Version:
XFree86 Version 4.2.99.901 (4.3.0 RC 1) (from cvs)
nvidia driver:
NVIDIA XFree86 Driver 1.0-3203

Misc:
FreeBSD/SMP (dual PII @ 332mhz)
Chipset GeForce2 MX 100/200
Device is: PCI 00:12:0
gcc version 2.95.4

Works great FYI ;) plenty of fps for quake3
buhahahahaha

Very simple Device section for X too

Section "Device"
Identifier "Card0"
Driver "nvidia"
EndSection

[markie]

I'm getting the crash/reboot problem too, both with FreeBSD 4.7-STABLE and FreeBSD 5.0-CURRENT (from yesterday) after running something OpenGL more than once or twice. I have no DRI in my XF86Config either....
I thought it was just random reboots, but now it appears that it's actually a panic so i'll have to learn how to setup a serial console i guess :afraid: if I manage to get some output, what use would it be and where exactly would I have to report the problem and send the dump?
Has this issue been solved already? :)

Thanks
Markie

[JediHobbes]

Andy/Anyone else,

When will the NVidia drivers *stably* support FreeBSD 5.0? I know that, with a bit of tweaking, they work at the moment, but when will the support be stable? :)

Tks,
-JediHobbes-

[apeiron]

I have an SiS (yes, I know, but it was either SiS or no system) chipset trying to get nVidia FreeBSD drivers to work. So far all I can get is the dreaded lines of varying colors, no matter what I try. I've followed all instructions to the letter, and have stumped everyone to whom I've presented the information. I've attached a textfile with all the information that I think is necessary. If anything else is needed, please drop me a line.

[Desertfox]

The driver compiled fine, and loads fine according to the dmesg.boot file.

However, when running X, the nvidia splash screen loads, and the default X background loads, but any painting to the screen seems to lock up the computer requiring a hard boot.

here's my XFree86Config:

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Layout0"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
Option "Xinerama" "true"
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "xie"
Load "pex5"
#Load "glx"
Load "dri"
Load "dbe"
Load "record"
Load "extmod"
Load "type1"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "auto"
Option "Buttons" "7"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
#Option "Emulate3Buttons"
Option "Device" "/dev/psm0"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "keyboard"
Option "XkbModel" "pc101"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
HorizSync 31.5 - 79.0
VertRefresh 50.0 - 100.0
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Card0"
Driver "nv"
ChipSet "GeForce4 Ti 4200"
Card "NVidia GeForce4 Ti 4200"
VendorName "NVIDIA"
BoardName "NVidia GeForce4 Ti 4200"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Card0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1280x1024" "1152x864" "1024x768" "640x480"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Any ideas?

[Desertfox]

Well, I posted the Wrong XFree86Config.

Here's the correct one:

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Layout0"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
Option "Xinerama" "true"
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "xie"
Load "pex5"
Load "glx"
#Load "dri"
Load "dbe"
Load "record"
Load "extmod"
Load "type1"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "auto"
Option "Buttons" "7"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
#Option "Emulate3Buttons"
Option "Device" "/dev/psm0"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "keyboard"
Option "XkbModel" "pc101"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
HorizSync 31.5 - 79.0
VertRefresh 50.0 - 100.0
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Card0"
Driver "nvidia"
#ChipSet "GeForce4 Ti 4200"
#Card "NVidia GeForce4 Ti 4200"
VendorName "NVIDIA"
BoardName "NVidia GeForce4 Ti 4200"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Card0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1280x1024" "1152x864" "1024x768" "640x480"
EndSubSection
EndSection

[VasqueZ]

I am having trouble setting up my Dual head display with the FreeBSD drivers, I can't seem to get the second GeForce to initialise, everything works great with the 'nv' driver and Xinerama, But I'd like OpenGL support.

Athlon XP1500
Asus A7V266
Geforce3 Ti 200 (AGP)
GeForce4 MX 420 (PCI)

here are some logs and my XF86Config files, any ideas would be appreciated

from pciconf

nvidia0@pci1:0:0: class=0x030000 card=0x51051462 chip=0x020110de rev=0xa3 hdr=0x00
vendor = 'Nvidia Corporation'
device = 'GeForce3 Ti 200 [NV20DDR]'
class = display
subclass = VGA
none0@pci0:15:0: class=0x030000 card=0x000210b0 chip=0x017210de rev=0xa3 hdr=0x00
vendor = 'Nvidia Corporation'
device = 'GeForce4 MX 420 [NV17.3]'
class = display
subclass = VGA

[Desertfox]

Well, I've managed to get the version of the driver in the ports tree to at least build the kernel module by changing directory into work and then the NVIDIA... driver folder and running make setup there.

However, when I boot, the device comes up

nvidia0: <GeForce4 Ti 4200> mem 0xd8000000-0xd807ffff,0xd0000000-0xd7ffffff,0xe4000000-0xe4ffffff irq 11 at device 0.0 on pci1
Bad malloc flags: 0

**note the bad malloc flags** Anyone know how to fix this?

X crashes when I try to run it anyway.

On a side not, does anyone know how to revert to the non-nvidia OpenGL? I would like to run GL apps (however slowly) until I can get the hardware wirking.

[Desertfox]

I ahve had success on 5.0 by following the instructions on this page:

http://www.cs.queensu.ca/home/chene/freebsd/Freebsd_nVidia.html

Also, I used the example XF86Config file there for the device settings.

[condomz]

well in previous post many ppl said that glx and dri should not be used one with another. but as i saw some people could really get X working with Nvidia's graphics and both dri and glx enabled while i can't get it working any way. my problem is that on start it shows something like this:
(...bla bla nothing interesting bla bla ...)
(==) NVIDIA(0): Write-combining range (0xde601000,0x1000) was already clear
(EE) NVIDIA(0): Failed to initialize the NVdriver kernel module!
(EE) NVIDIA(0): *** Aborting ***
(II) UnloadModule: "nvidia"
(II) UnloadModule: "vgahw"
(II) Unloading /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/libvgahw.a
(EE) Screen(s) found, but none have a usable configuration.

Fatal server error:
no screens found

nvidia module is loaded in kernel.
this is when i disable dri and leave only glx. of course in Cards section of config file i am using nvidia instead of nv.

[Kasperle]

Hi,

i would like to know whether there is any progress in resolving the "vertical garbled lines problem" described at

http://kinkywizard.ath.cx/broken.html

which, according to http://kinkywizard.ath.cx/broken/ seems to appear most often with mainboards utilizing SiS chipsets.

[jackangel]

All of you people are encouraged to ask nvidia to release all their linux/freebsd drivers as open source. I've created an online petition where you can sign it, later I'll send it to NVIDIA by snail-mail. Please, consider it seriously, it's very important issue. If we can get NVIDIA release their drivers open-source, kernel hackers will quickly fix many bugs and boost their performance, also possibly simplifying installation process or converting the driver architecture to standard DRI.

Here's the petition:
http://www.petitiononline.com/hwopennv/petition.html

[Jago]

Originally posted by jackangel
All of you people are encouraged to ask nvidia to release all their linux/freebsd drivers as open source. I've created an online petition where you can sign it, later I'll send it to NVIDIA by snail-mail. Please, consider it seriously, it's very important issue. If we can get NVIDIA release their drivers open-source, kernel hackers will quickly fix many bugs and boost their performance, also possibly simplifying installation process or converting the driver architecture to standard DRI.

Here's the petition:
http://www.petitiononline.com/hwopennv/petition.html
Please, stop being silly. No amount of petitions will change the fact that NVIDIA cannot open-source their drivers even if they wanted to, because in order to create them, a lot of technology (S3TC texture compression, for example) had to be licensed from 3rd-parties.

[JediHobbes]

I beg to differ. It is possible to release the drivers as open source and include compiled versions of the S3TC libraries and so on, dependant on the license agreements for said libraries. One of the projects I have worked on is completely open source bar 3 compiled .so libraries for FreeBSD. It is still an open source project, and people can make changes and commit them to the source tree and so on. Further, the nature of open source does not rule out using license driven, closed source libraries within the program. I do think that this is something NVidia should consider.

Use it, don't use it:)

Ciao,
-=JediHobbes=-

[tbyte]

When would be ready newer, bug free :D ,4-series, enhanced :p drivers ? :)
Becouse I wanna play :rw: hehe
And the 3 series are hum buggy. Every SDL game (or whatever uses SDL and OpenGL) recieves a SIGSEGV :( . XFree startup is a bit laggish ...

[Jago]

Originally posted by tbyte
When would be ready newer, bug free :D ,4-series, enhanced :p drivers ? :)
Becouse I wanna play :rw: hehe
And the 3 series are hum buggy. Every SDL game (or whatever uses SDL and OpenGL) recieves a SIGSEGV :( . XFree startup is a bit laggish ...

That's a user error or a problem with your system. All SDL and OpenGL apps are working just fine for me, albeit I am having system stabiluty issues on FreeBSD 5.0.

[tbyte]

This problem apeared in XFree 4.2.x then I reinstall whole system and do install latest XF 4.3 latest SDL and latest everything :) - but this keeps happening - SIGSEGV "SDL Parachute deployed ... " something like this - I own GF4 MX440 - If the application don't use SDL - It works :)
I don't know what is the problem but it looks like a software problem ... (SDL works with MESA)

[kevryn]

I have a TNT2 card; not sure of the chipset as I've lost the box. With the nvidia driver my system hangs a second or so after starting X and won't respond to ping. If I disable the glx module it takes maybe a second or two longer to hang but it is still unusable.

Various logs and system information that may be helpful in solving this (http://webpages.charter.net/conndoris/nvidia_problem/)

[Gold-Reaver]

Short thing: I read almost everything and did almost anything that was in there, except for trying 4.7, but when I start XFree with the famous startx command the screen goes so GREEN with other lines in it, after that I still have full control(it seems) except for display which stays the way when XFree was started...

[kevryn]

I realized I had the wrong XFree86.0.log up and fixed that (it was a log using the nv driver, which works fine).

I discovered that I can start X without a window manager with no problems; the lockup comes when trying to start applications.

[Gold-Reaver]

Originally posted by Jago
That's a user error or a problem with your system. All SDL and OpenGL apps are working just fine for me, albeit I am having system stabiluty issues on FreeBSD 5.0.

Not everyone has a perfect system you know... :p

[kevryn]

Okay, fixed the lockup problem by using the FreeBSD AGP instead of the builtin, but now I'm getting random reboots while running GL apps.

updated logs (http://webpages.charter.net/conndoris/nvidia_problem/)

[trevarthan]

I am about to buy a new laptop to replace my desktop PC. I REALLY like the Dell Inspiron 8500 series laptop and it comes with an NVIDIA GeForce4 Go 4200 64M graphics card, which is great!

However, I haven't seen a single update to these FreeBSD drivers since they were released! I'll most likely have to run FreeBSD 5.0 in order to get ACPI support and Cardbus support running. But from what I've seen by reading these messages, FreeBSD 5.0 isn't supported and the NVIDIA FreeBSD drivers are buggy on FreeBSD 5.0 (at best).

This fact may force me to instead buy a Sony VAIO GRX700 series laptop with an ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 graphics chip set. After all, I need OpenGL support! I like to develop games in my spare time.

So what gives? Is NVIDIA going to Open Source their drivers? Are they going to continue developing for FreeBSD? Or are they going to drop FreeBSD support in favor of LINUX? Not everyone loves LINUX...

I run FreeBSD servers and I don't see that changing anytime soon (especially when KSEs become stable in 5.0). Because of this fact, I bend over backwards to run FreeBSD workstations. NVIDIA developers, please either release your drivers as Open Source or continue development! I don't want to go with ATI!

[Andy Mecham]

We expect to release a new FreeBSD driver shortly (which will support FreeBSD 5.0) - I don't have a timetable, but I expect it won't be much longer.

--andy

[Gold-Reaver]

GREAT!!