Official FreeBSD drivers

[markie]

:afro: :afro2: nice! I expect there'll be another huge explosion on freebsd mailing lists and forums when that's released :) can't wait to be able to try it!

[bAz]

Hope will be 4.x (specially 4.8) compatible

[zander]

Your mileage with this will likely vary, but I've just made a set of patches available for 1.0-3203 (http://www.minion.de/nvidia.html); the 1.0-3203 patch addresses several known issues, such as FreeBSD -CURRENT incompatibilities, stability problems with the NVIDIA AGP GART driver and the infamous SiS 735 startup failure. There are also two patches against the FreeBSD kernel to address crashes when exiting KDE 3.x applications (qt applications linked against libGL) as well as crashes with multi-threaded Linux OpenGL applications inside the Linuxulator. Give them a try if you want and let me know if it works or if you're having difficulties.

[bengt]

I have already a very stable dual boot, Windows XP SP1 and RedHat 9, all configured OK and my GeForce4 Ti4200 works flawlessly in both OSs.

I just downloaded Solaris 9, 4 ISOs. I just want a goot UNIX system to learn from... I need to know UNIX, since I want to work in the corporate level. I study Computer Cience here in Rio de Janeiro, Brasil.

Do anyone here have any experience to lead me in the right way: learn from Solaris or freeBSD? I already have 3 HDs: one is Windows, other is Linux and the new one, I wish to install a "pure" UNIX system, and learn from it.

Any sugestions? freeBSD, Solaris.... or both? Are they that different, with one has better free documentation, etc?

Thanks for any reply!

PS.: nvidia always awesome... linux and now freeBSD drivers are far beyond anything the competition had come with yet. Keep up the good work!

PS2.: could any of those drivers run on Solaris 9 x86? =]

[BrianzaMan]

What about a new release of the drivers?

I'm getting very much problem with this release and KDE!

Bye

Brianza

[clash rocker]

Yeah how 'bout an driver update. I would very muck like to see my 4800 supported.

[Soulburner]

I'm also waiting for new drivers. Looking forward to actually being able to play games under BSD (3103 or whatever are as unstable as anything on my system). Just hope that by the time the drivers are actually released, they support FreeBSD 5.1 as well.

[fps]

iam waiting for a newer bsd driver too (because of some arb extensions). hopefully one with a cleaner/easier setup procedure. iam not a kernel hacker, i just wanna get my game compiling and running under bsd.

supporting 4.8 would be fine, ive mixed feelings about the "todo lists" of 5.1.

[Soulburner]

Well, I just rebuilt QT with WITHOUT_OPENGL=yes, and that solved the problems of QT programs segfaulting on exit. With my 1.2ghz Athlon, 768mb ram, GF2 Ti (honestly don't know more than that offhand) running on FreeBSD 4.8, GLXGears gives me:

10244 frames in 5.0 seconds = 2048.800 FPS
11627 frames in 5.0 seconds = 2325.400 FPS
11635 frames in 5.0 seconds = 2327.000 FPS
11425 frames in 5.0 seconds = 2285.000 FPS
11696 frames in 5.0 seconds = 2339.200 FPS

Now, if anyone would care to show me how to get Half-Life and mods to run under WINE without totally screwing with every single texture (everything is super stretched out), I would be most happy.

[blenko]

What is NVIDIA doing?

After thousands of signatures for the NVIDIA FreeBSD driver they decide to release a beta driver just to keep people quiet. If the codebase is so portable why does it take so long? 7 months have passed and they still haven't updated their driver, those of us who run FreeBSD are NVIDIA customers too, we shouldn't be left out!

FreeBSD 5.1 will be released shortly so I hope this changes.

PS: Many thanks to zander for his excellent patches.

[87GTR]

does these drivers work for 5.1R? I tried to build them today and this is what I got.

P4 2.6
2gig ram
G4 Ti 4600

make setup
===> module
cc -O -pipe -mcpu=pentiumpro -I/root/NVIDIA_FreeBSD-1.0-3203/module/../src -D__KERNEL__ -DNV_MAJOR_VERSION=1 -DNV_MINOR_VERSION=0 -DNV_PATCHLEVEL=3203 -DNV_UNIX -DNV_BSD -DNVCPU_X86 -D_KERNEL -Wall -Wredundant-decls -Wnested-externs -Wstrict-prototypes -Wmissing-prototypes -Wpointer-arith -Winline -Wcast-qual -fformat-extensions -std=c99 -DKLD_MODULE -nostdinc -I- -I/root/NVIDIA_FreeBSD-1.0-3203/module/../src -I. -I@ -I@/dev -I@/../include -fno-common -mno-align-long-strings -mpreferred-stack-boundary=2 -ffreestanding -Wall -Wredundant-decls -Wnested-externs -Wstrict-prototypes -Wmissing-prototypes -Wpointer-arith -Winline -Wcast-qual -fformat-extensions -std=c99 -c /root/NVIDIA_FreeBSD-1.0-3203/module/../src/nvidia_ctl.c
In file included from /root/NVIDIA_FreeBSD-1.0-3203/src/nvidia_ctl.c:14:
/root/NVIDIA_FreeBSD-1.0-3203/src/nv-freebsd.h:31:2: #error This driver does not support FreeBSD 5.0/-CURRENT!
/root/NVIDIA_FreeBSD-1.0-3203/src/nvidia_ctl.c:22: warning: initialization makes integer from pointer without a cast
/root/NVIDIA_FreeBSD-1.0-3203/src/nvidia_ctl.c:23: warning: initialization makes integer from pointer without a cast
/root/NVIDIA_FreeBSD-1.0-3203/src/nvidia_ctl.c:24: warning: initialization from incompatible pointer type
/root/NVIDIA_FreeBSD-1.0-3203/src/nvidia_ctl.c:25: warning: initialization from incompatible pointer type
/root/NVIDIA_FreeBSD-1.0-3203/src/nvidia_ctl.c:26: warning: initialization from incompatible pointer type
/root/NVIDIA_FreeBSD-1.0-3203/src/nvidia_ctl.c:27: warning: initialization from incompatible pointer type
/root/NVIDIA_FreeBSD-1.0-3203/src/nvidia_ctl.c:28: warning: initialization from incompatible pointer type
/root/NVIDIA_FreeBSD-1.0-3203/src/nvidia_ctl.c:29: warning: initialization from incompatible pointer type
/root/NVIDIA_FreeBSD-1.0-3203/src/nvidia_ctl.c:30: warning: initialization from incompatible pointer type
/root/NVIDIA_FreeBSD-1.0-3203/src/nvidia_ctl.c:31: warning: initialization makes pointer from integer without a cast
/root/NVIDIA_FreeBSD-1.0-3203/src/nvidia_ctl.c:32: warning: initialization from incompatible pointer type
/root/NVIDIA_FreeBSD-1.0-3203/src/nvidia_ctl.c:34: warning: initialization makes pointer from integer without a cast
/root/NVIDIA_FreeBSD-1.0-3203/src/nvidia_ctl.c:38: warning: excess elements in struct initializer
/root/NVIDIA_FreeBSD-1.0-3203/src/nvidia_ctl.c:38: warning: (near initialization for `nvidia_ctl_cdevsw')
*** Error code 1

Stop in /root/NVIDIA_FreeBSD-1.0-3203/module.
*** Error code 1

Stop in /root/NVIDIA_FreeBSD-1.0-3203.



this is a fresh install of Freebsd 5.1

[Mad_Pilot]

Try using the port (/usr/ports/x11/nvidia-driver) there are a few patches to make it work with 5.x

Here I have 5.1-RELEASE and it works flawlessly(well almost...just very few problems!)

[87GTR]

yeah I found them in the ports

(/usr/ports/x11/nvidia-driver

make install

then
cd work/Nvdriver..... dir
make setup

and change the x config file and it worked

[hellpimp]

I noticed that the FX line of graphics cards seems to be newer than the FreeBSD drivers (November 2002).

The Linux drivers that are one month newer (December 2002) did not specify the FX line as being supported.

My simple question is, are the FX line of cards (especially the 5200) supported by the FreeBSD drivers?

I would like to know before I run into problems.

If not, I guess its Linux for me.

[disklord]

I just got an nForce2 board and AGP isnt supported yet. Is there a way to disable it so i dont get hardware lockups?
The XF86Config Option doesnt help.

BTW: Why didnt they forge a .o which is interchangeable between BSD and Linux and can be compiled into the kernel driver? Like the old aureal .o for the soundcards.

disklord:afro:

[easytoker]

Personally, I think nvidia should just opensrc the unix ports for its drivers as it appears they really don't care about their customers using unix as oppose to that virus called windows. If their attitude does not change, I suppose Radeon would be getting some new customers. The first and last release almost a year ago, come on ...cant you guys see they just don't care. As it does not look like anything will change soon, can anybody recommend a good card that works well with dvi. I have a digital dvi flat panel that i would like to use.


Thanks in ./adv

[blenko]

Yes, it is true, NVIDIA's commitment to supporting open source operating systems is extremely low. They just don't care because that's not where the money is. Why would they care about a small amount of users when compared to the millions using Windows?

[dej]

Anyone running freebsd 5.1 with the nvidia drivers? I've gotten them to compile and load into the kernel, but they won't initialize (not surprisingly) when x starts.


-dj

[dej]

Whoops, never mind; missed the patch posted earlier in the thread...


-dj

[87GTR]

they work fine with 5.1

did you

after did make install in the ports dir

cd work/Nvdriver..... dir
make setup

???

[Jandrese]

Originally posted by 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

We're approaching two months after you made this comment. Is there any truth behind it, or were you teasing? The Nvidia issue is the one reason I'm staying with 4.8 right now instead of upgrading to 5.1, and I still get a few crashes every now and then (especially when playing games on the Linuxulator).

[dej]

The patches for freebsd 5.1 from minion work great; only been using it for a day now, but my first reaction is it seems more stable than with 5.0... Thanks!


-dj

[blenko]

I doubt they are working on updating the drivers. The current ones are far from stable!

I guess we'll have to wait a long time before we get decent drivers.

[Soulburner]

I think it's now safe to assume that nvidia doesn't give a damn about FreeBSD users. I would LOVE for them to prove me wrong, but it just doesn't seem like it's going to happen. At this point, I'm honestly surprised they haven't just rebranded the old drivers with a new version and released those. Seems like the next logical step in their "support" for FreeBSD.

[worldcon]

I've looked everywhere, but no one seems to have seen what would seem to be a very common error. My X runs fine, I set GL_SINGLE_THREADED. Don't know what else could be wrong. Going crazy. Using FreeBSD 4.8 and The Drivers. No patches.

./ut2003
Couldn't set video mode: Could not create GL context


History:

Exiting due to error

or this one from q3demo:
----- R_Init -----
...loading libGL.so: Initializing OpenGL display
...setting mode 3: 640 480
Using XFree86-VidModeExtension Version 2.2
XF86DGA Mouse (Version 2.0) initialized
XFree86-VidModeExtension Activated at 640x480
Using 8/8/8 Color bits, 24 depth, 0 stencil display.
X Error of failed request: BadMatch (invalid parameter attributes)
Major opcode of failed request: 143 (GLX)
Minor opcode of failed request: 5 (X_GLXMakeCurrent)
Serial number of failed request: 30
Current serial number in output stream: 30

or this from gltron (freebsd native)
trying to create window
WARNING: can't init video; it's already running
Fatal signal: Segmentation Fault (SDL Parachute Deployed)
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

glxgears runs overall(it exhibits the trademark driver bugginess of not starting repeatedly)