Geforce4 T1 4200 + mandrake 8.1 fault

[icmac1]

I recently intalled a Verto Geforce4 T1 4200 card on a mandrake 8.1, kernel 2.4.8-26. I have downloaded the tar.gz kernel and
glx files, made and installed (no problems). However I keep getting x server re-spawns. I have tried to use the standard vga drivers, same problem. i have edited the Xfree86-4 config file
to load glx and use nvidia as the driver.

I used the NVIDIA_GLX-1.0-3123 and NVIDIA_kernel-1.0-3123 source files.

My log files show the NVdriver is loaded.
I have attached my Xfree86 log file

Ps I used to use a riva TNT2 34M card, my new card works on win98

[bwkaz]

From your log file:

(EE) NVIDIA(0): Failed to initialize the NVdriver kernel module!
(EE) NVIDIA(0): *** Aborting *** If you are positive that NVdriver is loaded (if it's listed in /proc/modules, it is loaded), then check either /var/log/messages or dmesg (near the end of either) after a failed attempt for a reason your system isn't able to initialize the NVdriver module.

9 times out of 10, the "failed to initialize" message is because the kernel module isn't loaded, and in that one case where that isn't the problem, the problem 90% of the time is that the card can't get an IRQ because "Assign IRQ to VGA" is turned off in your BIOS. If that's the problem, you will see a message to that effect in one of those logs (dmesg is the direct kernel log; /var/log/messages is generally the concatenated kernel logs of every time the system has been up).

[icmac1]

Hi, in your reply you said the fault 90% was the kernel module not loaded, I assume if NVdriver is listed using lsmod then that
is the kernel module?

I will re-check dmesg, however my bios does not have the choice to assign the irq to vga

[bwkaz]

Yeah, lsmod is a nicely-formatted version of the /proc/modules file. So if it's in lsmod, it'll be in /proc/modules as well, and it'll be loaded.

[icmac1]

Hi Bwkaz, thanks for replying, I have just run the nv_check.sh
script which did find that my/dev/nvidia1 --3 did not exist, I have
created them and now nv_check.sh reports my system should be ok, however I am still getting the same fault. I have checked the
dmesg for any references to IRQ and nvidia or the geforce card
but nothing is reported.


I am going to check the /etc/modules.conf, I seem to remember
something about the alias has to be changed

[icmac1]

I have re-checked using a modified nv_check.sh and it reports
no faults. NVdriver is listed in lsmod, the alias in /etc/module.conf
appears to be correct as I am running devfs,i.e

/dev/nvidia* NVdriver

I am still getting the same Xserver output, i.e kernel module failed to intialise

Absolutely stumped

[bwkaz]

So was there anything in the logs? Attach the output of dmesg, after you've run startx.

[icmac1]

Hi Bwkaz, I have attached the output of dmesg, XFree86.0.log and a copy of my Xfree86-4 config file as a zip file

[bwkaz]

Well, I don't see anything -- how about /var/log/messages? Do a tail -f 350 /var/log/messages >log.txt or something -- I'll hopefully only need the last 350 lines. The full file is going to be too much.

Other than that, I'm not sure -- do you have a "PnP OS" setting in your BIOS? Is it set to yes? If so, it should be set to no.

[icmac1]

Hi, yes i set the PNP os to no, I will post the last 300 lines of messages tomorrow, thanks for helping

[icmac1]

Hi I have attached the results of a tail -n 350 on /var/log/messages

[bwkaz]

I must have missed this the first time around:

Jan 19 10:01:58 icmac1 kernel: NVRM: loading NVIDIA kernel module version 1.0-1512 That version very likely predates GeForce4 series cards, which is why the next line says "unsupported PCI ID".

Install 3123 or 4191 again, but delete /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/drivers/video/NVdriver first, so that you're sure it installs.

[icmac1]

I am not worthy, I have finally got my card to work.

I did have a file problem with my /etc/mtab missing which I fixed,
same fault with the driver, however as per bwkaz's suggestion
I removed the NVdriver, re-made and installed, same fault, I checked the driver was correct, it was, version 3123, however the loaded version reported a lower number. I found a NVdriver.o.gz under the ../drivers/char dir, I renamed this and reloaded the NVdriver and success.

However I wonder what the driver uder the char dir was, any clues?

This may be why some other folks have the same problem, prev to installing I did remove the nv drivers, however I msiised this one for soem reason.

Many, many thanks to Bwkaz

[bwkaz]

NVdriver.o.gz? WTF is Mandrake thinking?

Do you happen to know where that file came from? I never got that when I was using Mandrake 8.1, though I'm not sure why.

It seems to be an old driver that some package (a Mandrake-installed package, or not, I don't know) thought you needed. But why was it under kernel/drivers/char? :eek: No idea... And why was it named NVdriver.o.gz? The .o makes it sound like whoever made it thought they would "help" nVidia by making the name "properly-formed" -- which isn't necessary, it's just the way the rest of the modules are named. The .gz makes it sound like they also gzipped the driver (actually, this is almost assuredly what they did), which is usually something distros do.

But again, it never did that to me...

[icmac1]

I think this file must have been in the original dist as the date was 2001, ps all the files under driver/char are o.gz's plus some under vidio as well (I guess these are unzipped during loading into the kernel. Mind you I thought the default driver was nv.

I will look at my original dist cd to see If I can find it

[bwkaz]

The default driver is "nv", but that's a different thing altogether. That's an XFree86 driver, not a kernel module. NVdriver (and the new name for it, nvidia.o) are kernel modules; nv_drv.o and nvidia_drv.o (the first one should be under /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers, and the second will be put there by the NVIDIA_GLX package) are X drivers.

Yes, recent modutils allow modules to be gzipped on disk. They do decompress them before loading them into the kernel.