Yet Another Linux + FX5600 Thread
 

I too am having difficulties installing the nVidia driver under Red Hat Linux 9.

Setup:
Dell Precision 360 Workstation
Pentium 4 - 3.2ghz
i875-based motherboard
PNY GeForce FX5600 w/ 256MB
Dell UltraSharp 2001FP LCD

Here are the steps I took:[list=1][*]Mistakenly selected the GUI install. Anaconda detected an "Unprobed Monitor" and the "vesa" driver.[*]Ran throught the install, selecting the "Workstation" option, but configured the packages list by adding "Kernel Sources"[*]On the X Configuration part, added sync ranges for the monitor setup. Changed in video setup from vesa to "nVidia GeForce FX (generic)", selected 128MB (256MB was not on the list).[*]Reboot, forgot that "firstboot" runs on, well, the first bootup :), which meant that it would need a GUI. Got garbage. Killed X Server (Ctrl-Alt-Backspace), logged in via text mode.[*]ftp'ed to updates.redhat.com to get the newest version of up2date and up2date-gnome, because the SSL certificate expired on August 28th.[*]Ran up2date via the command line, updated all packages, including kernel, kernel-smp (remember, I have a P4 with hyperthreading), and kernel-source.[*]Rebooted system with the newest kernel-smp (2.4.20-27.9).[*]Downloaded and installed build 5328 of the nVidia driver.[*]Edited XF86Config as explained in the README. VideoRam = 262144, Driver = nvidia, "Load glx" still there, "Load dri" and "Load GLcore" removed. Also made sure the monitor settings were correct.[/list=1]

Good news: it seems that X is working, with my default resolution of 1600x1200@24bpp.

Bad news: when I exit X (either from running startx or shutting down/rebooting in runlevel 5), I get a blank screen. But it looks like the system is still running. If I was running startx, then stopped, I can still type ctrl-alt-delete to reboot. It would just be a blank screen for a few seconds, and the it will reboot. If I was on runlevel 5, and selected Reboot under Gnome, I could hear some disk activity (the services are being stopped, I think), and then it will reboot.

Is this a known problem? Any ideas how to fix?


BP

Additional information:

Adding the "ConnectedMonitor" option to XF86Config doesn't change anything.

Adding the "ConnectedMonitor" and the "IgnoreDisplayDevices" options to XF86Config cause X not to start at all.

Switching to another virtual terminal while in X (Ctrl-Alt-F2 for example) gives me a blank screen, and switching back via Ctrl-Alt-F1 does nothing -- I cannot go back to X. My LCD tells me that I cannot display in "that mode". I can still reboot if I do Ctrl-Alt-F2 and then Ctrl-Alt-Delete.

Edit: adding the vga=xxx (where xxx is some number) in grub.conf causes a blank screen at bootup. There is disk activity, though, during bootup, so it sounds like the services are being loaded still. I can press ctrl-alt-del after the disk activity stops, and after a few seconds, the system reboots. Have only tried two values of vga so far. I'm going through the others right now.


BP