Problem with December 21, 2002 up2date Kernel vs. NVidia GeForce4 card

[charshaw]

I have a problem with the latest kernel updates that I did on December 21, 2002 via up2date. I am running RH8 on a Pogolinux Ravenna machine with an NVidia GeForce4 card. When the machine was rebooted, X was not able to start saying that the kernel module wasn't there. I was able to get it running again by using an earler kernel and an earlier XF86Config. Is anyone else having this problem, or can anyone offer some advice about how to get my card to work with this kernel update?

Thanks,
Clint

[Andy Mecham]

If you change or update your kernel, you have to rebuild the NVIDIA driver to match your new kernel. Please download and rebuild the SRPM from the 1.0-4191 driver download page. Please note that you'll also have to download and install kernel-source-2.4.18-19***.i386.rpm from a RedHat mirror to properly rebuild the driver.

--andy

[charshaw]

Hi Andy! Thanks for the quick reply. I'm getting conflicting information though. The driver you suggest is different than NVchooser.sh suggests.

Will the 1.0-4191 driver work with kernel 2.4.18-19.8.0?

NVidia's page says it will work with 2.4.18-18.0, but doesn't say anything about it working with the kernel revisions released through RHN's up2date on 12/21/02.

I ran NVchooser.sh -- both when using 2.4.18-18.8.0 and 2.4.18-19.8.0 (in text-mode since X won't start without the error (EE) NVIDIA(0): Failed to initilize the NVidia kernel module!)) and the output was the same:
--------
Please download and install the following files:
NVIDIA_kernel-1.0-2960.src.rpm
NVIDIA_GLX-1.0-2960.i386.rpm
--------

Clint

[Andy Mecham]

You're using an old NVchooser.sh. Please visit http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=linux_display_ia32_1.0-4191 (which is also the current driver release) for a new copy.

--andy

[charshaw]

I've dl'd the new NVchooser and it tells me that I need:
--------------
Please download and install the following files:
NVIDIA_kernel-1.0-4191.rh80up_2.4.18_18.8.0.i686.rpm
NVIDIA_GLX-1.0-4191.i386.rpm
--------------

So I dl'd from them from the site, as well as:
NVIDIA_kernel-1.0-4191.src.rpm, since Andy's earlier suggestion was to dl the SRPM.

When I type:
rpmbuild --rebuild NVIDIA_kernel-1.0-4191.src.rpm
The output is tremendously long, and filled with warnings and errors, finishing with a bad exit status.

What should I try next?
Clint

[Wolfman [TWP]]

Did you also update the Kernel Source for the new Kernel???

If you didn't, you will not be able to rebuild the drivers for the new kernel.

I've got the new RH8.0 kernel updates and it's working perfectly..

[charshaw]

Yes I did get the kernel source updates. I also dl'd the kernel-source updates from the Duke RH mirror, and when I tried to rpm it, I got the "Package Already Installed" message.

Clint

[charshaw]

I got some additional things to try from the pc builder's support:

reboot to new kernel, let X fail,

cd /usr/src/redhat/BUILD/NVIDIA_kernel-1.0-4191/

make clean
make install
install

(all of which was done successfully)

reboot.

but X can't start (XF86Config has driver="nividia" in it). I've replaced the driver with driver="vesa" and I can at least get X going. But not without a lot of flicker at 1280x960, and the NVidia driver isn't loaded.

Clint

[charshaw]

OK - I got it to work now, and want to share what I did to get things working:

went back to the downloaded rpms directory.

rpm -ivh --force NVIDIA_GLX-1.0-4191.i386.rpm

changed the XF86Config file to have driver="nvidia" like before.

It works.

I wonder if there was something screwy in my original unpacking of the GLX rpm??

Thanks to Glenn, Clayton, Andy, and Wolfman for help with this!!

Clint

[Chalnoth]

It seems you're still having compilation problems, though. I'll let you know what I did to fix mine:

rpm -e kernel-source
rpm -ivh kernel-source-*

After doing this, recompiling the source rpm's worked just fine. I also feel a little bit better doing it this way, as you can optimize the rpm's for an athlon by using:

rpmbuild --rebuild (package) --target=athlon