Support for Quadro FX 3500 - Solaris 10 x86

[sol10]

The latest NVIDIA driver for Solaris x86 does not appear to support my almost new Quadro FX 3500 card. The 3450 and 4000 are supported, but not the 3500. Why? Should I try installing it anyway on Solaris 10 5/08 (u5) x86 and cross my fingers? Does anyone have any other suggestions?

Thank you in advance...

[sol10]

The reason I asked is that only TrueColor visuals are supported in my Xorg setup.

I am running Sol 10 5/08 x86 64-bit on a Dell Precision 690 wkstn with WinXP using VMware Workstation 6.0.4. I have a NVIDIA Quadro FX 3500 video card. I am not sure if this is really a VMware issue or one that can be solved using Solaris.

I need to run "Xnest -depth 8 -class Pseudocolor," but my video setup, using the Xorg server (Xsun not supported by VMware Tools), does not support Pseudocolor visuals. Here is my xdpyinfo:

xdpyinfo
name of display: :0.0
version number: 11.0
vendor string: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
vendor release number: 10300000
maximum request size: 16777212 bytes
motion buffer size: 256
bitmap unit, bit order, padding: 32, LSBFirst, 32
image byte order: LSBFirst
number of supported pixmap formats: 7
supported pixmap formats:
depth 1, bits_per_pixel 1, scanline_pad 32
depth 4, bits_per_pixel 8, scanline_pad 32
depth 8, bits_per_pixel 8, scanline_pad 32
depth 15, bits_per_pixel 16, scanline_pad 32
depth 16, bits_per_pixel 16, scanline_pad 32
depth 24, bits_per_pixel 32, scanline_pad 32
depth 32, bits_per_pixel 32, scanline_pad 32
keycode range: minimum 8, maximum 255
focus: window 0x1e0000a, revert to Parent
number of extensions: 37
BIG-REQUESTS
DAMAGE
DEC-XTRAP
DOUBLE-BUFFER
DPMS
Extended-Visual-Information
GLX
MIT-SCREEN-SAVER
MIT-SHM
MIT-SUNDRY-NONSTANDARD
RANDR
RECORD
RENDER
SECURITY
SGI-GLX
SHAPE
ST
SYNC
SolarisIA
TOG-CUP
VMWARE_CTRL
X-Resource
XAccessControlExtension
XC-APPGROUP
XC-MISC
XEVIE
XFIXES
XFree86-Bigfont
XFree86-DGA
XFree86-Misc
XFree86-VidModeExtension
XINERAMA
XINERAMA
XInputExtension
XKEYBOARD
XTEST
XVideo
default screen number: 0
number of screens: 1

screen #0:
dimensions: 1600x1200 pixels (542x406 millimeters)
resolution: 75x75 dots per inch
depths (7): 24, 1, 4, 8, 15, 16, 32
root window id: 0x3e
depth of root window: 24 planes
number of colormaps: minimum 1, maximum 1
default colormap: 0x20
default number of colormap cells: 256
preallocated pixels: black 0, white 16777215
options: backing-store NO, save-unders NO
largest cursor: 32x32
current input event mask: 0xfa2033
KeyPressMask KeyReleaseMask EnterWindowMask
LeaveWindowMask ButtonMotionMask StructureNotifyMask
SubstructureNotifyMask SubstructureRedirectMask FocusChangeMask
PropertyChangeMask ColormapChangeMask
number of visuals: 4
default visual id: 0x22
visual:
visual id: 0x22
class: TrueColor
depth: 24 planes
available colormap entries: 256 per subfield
red, green, blue masks: 0xff0000, 0xff00, 0xff
significant bits in color specification: 8 bits
visual:
visual id: 0x23
class: TrueColor
depth: 24 planes
available colormap entries: 256 per subfield
red, green, blue masks: 0xff0000, 0xff00, 0xff
significant bits in color specification: 8 bits
visual:
visual id: 0x24
class: TrueColor
depth: 24 planes
available colormap entries: 256 per subfield
red, green, blue masks: 0xff0000, 0xff00, 0xff
significant bits in color specification: 8 bits
visual:
visual id: 0x25
class: TrueColor
depth: 24 planes
available colormap entries: 256 per subfield
red, green, blue masks: 0xff0000, 0xff00, 0xff
significant bits in color specification: 8 bits

Notice that only 4 TrueColor visuals are supported. Does anyone know how I can change my setup so that my Xserver supports a Pseudocolor visual? VMware Tools is very limited for Solaris, and it set up the Xserver for me.

Would installing the latest NVIDIA Solaris driver (even though my Quadro fx 3500 card is not supported by it) help with this problem?

Any help or advice anyone could provide would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks...

[sol10]

I installed the latest nvidia driver and ran nvidia-xconfig, which made a new xorg.conf file. Option "CIOverlay" is in the new file, which should enable Pseudocolor visuals. However, after rebooting with -- -r, Xorg won't start. Xerrors says:

No devices detected

Fatal server error:
no screens found

XIO: fatal IO error 146 (Connection refused) on X server ":0.0"

error (pid 714): Server for display :0 can't be started

/var/log/Xorg.0.log appears to show that /usr/X11/lib/modules/drivers//nvidia_drv.so (compiled for 4.0.2, module version 1.0.0) is loaded:

(II) NVIDIA dlloader X driver 173.14.09
(II) NVIDIA Unified Driver for all Supported NVIDIA GPUs
(II) Prinmary Device is: PCI 00:0f:0
(EE) No devices detected

So Xorg can't find my video devices. This page: http://us.download.nvidia.com/solari...ppendix-c.html does show that the Quadro FX 3500 is suppoted (thank heavens). All this should work, no?

Please help! Thank you......

[sol10]

This file is not present after installing the new NVIDIA driver:

/usr/X11/lib/modules/extensions/libglx.so.1

There also is no /dev/fbs/nvidia0. The contents of /dev/fbs are:

text-0 -> ../../devices/pci@0,0/display@f:text-0

There are no symlinks in /usr/include to the g*.h files in /usr/X11/include/GL

Does VMware Tools interfere with the driver in some way. Since Xorg can't find my display, and there is no link in /dev/fbs to a display in /devices, something went wrong somewhere. Any ideas?

[sol10]

Never mind. A guest OS in a VMware environment can only see the VMware video driver.

[strim]

That is kind of obvious. Even if 3D acceleration is enabled in VMware, only virtual graphics adapter is visible to guest operating system. Standard VMware graphics driver (one present in Solaris for example) does not know how to use 3D acceleration. Installing VMware Tools will not help also, as special driver supporting this acceleration is only available for Windows XP guests.

[strim]

Ah, btw. regarding PseudoColor visuals. You can try using "vga" driver instead of "vmware". This driver supports PseudoColor, however I'm not sure if it will work out of the box.