XFree86/nvidia not detecting: Nforce / Nvidia / XFree86 4.2.1 / Linux 2.4.23-pre7

[rmt]

When I first got this machine, we fiddled, and we had XFree86 running with the nvidia kernel driver. I saw the nvidia logo on boot, and all was good. As time went by, and I upgraded kernels and packages, and something broke.. at the time, I fixed it by having XFree86 use the "nv" driver - not knowing any better at the time, and it working fine for my day-to-day work. Now, however, I wish to have accelerated graphics, and I'll be damned if I can get it to work again.

My motherboard is an ASUS A7N-266VM. It comes with the GeForce2 Integrated graphics chipset. The onboard BIOS is Phoenix (Version 1003 if I recall). (Note - this does not seem to have a "PnP OS?" option) CPU is AthlonXP 2100+. I installed the nforce drivers for nvnet and used the kernel's audio driver. I didn't apply the nvgart patch to the current kernel, as it now has built in nvidia agpgart support, which I assume is compatible.

I'm running the Debian "testing" distribution, which has XFree86 4.2.1 server at this time.
My current kernel is 2.4.23-pre7, although I have tried several other kernels and seen the same or similar problems.

I'll explain the problem - backwards:

Upon running X :1 -xf86config /etc/X11/xf86config.nvidia, I receive the following output (snipped):
---
(--) PCI:*(2:0:0) NVidia GeForce2 Integrated rev 177, Mem @ 0xec000000/24, 0xf0000000/27, BIOS @ 0xefff0000/16
<snip>
(II) MGA: driver for Matrox chipsets:...
(II) GLINT: driver for 3Dlabs chipsets:...
(II) NV: driver for NVIDIA chipsets: ...
(II) TGA: driver for Digital chipsets:...
(II) S3: driver (version 0.3.5 for S3 chipset:...
(II) S3VIRGE: driver (version 1.8.3) for S3 ViRGE chipsets:...
(II) SIS: driver for SiS chipsets:...
(II) RENDITION: rendition driver (version 4.0) for chipsets:...
(II) NEOMAGIC: Driver for Neomagic chipsets:...
(II) I740: Driver for Intel i740 chipset:...
(II) TDFX: Driver for 3dfx Banshee/Voodoo3 chipsets:...
(II) SAVAGE: driver (version 1.1.26) for S3 Savage chipsets:...
(II) CIRRUS: driver for Cirrus chipsets:...
(II) VMWARE: driver for VMware SVGA:...
(II) TSENG: driver for Tseng Labs chipsets:...
(II) TRIDENT: driver for Trident chipsets:...
(II) CHIPS: Driver for Chips and Technologies chipsets:...
(II) APM: driver for the Alliance chipsets:...
(II) FBDEV: driver for framebuffer: ...
(II) I128: driver for Number Nine I128 chipsets: ...
(II) ATI: ATI driver (version 6.4.16) for chipsets:...
(II) R128: Driver for ATI Rage 128 chipsets:...
(II) RADEON: Driver for ATI Radeon chipsets:...
(II) I810: Driver for Intel i810 chipset:...
(II) IMSTT: driver (version 1.0.0 for IMS TwinTurbo chipsets :...
(II) NEWPORT: driver for Newport Graphics Card:...
(II) ARK: driver (version 0.5.0 for ARK Logic chipset:...
(II) CYRIX: driver for Cyrix MediaGX Processors:...
(II) Silicon Motion: driver (version 1.3.1) for Silicon Motion Lynx chipsets:...
(II) VESA: driver for VESA chipsets:...
(II) VGA: Generic VGA driver (version 4.0) for chipsets:...
(II) v4l driver for Video4Linux

(II) Primary Device is: PCI 02:00:0
(EE) No devices detected.

Fatal server error:
no screens found
---

The relevent sections in xf86config.nvidia are:
---
Section "Module"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "NVidia Integrated"
Driver "nvidia"
EndSection
---

The only difference between a working X and a non-working X is having "nv" instead of "nvidia".

I'm a little concerned that I don't see NVIDIA driver in that list - it seems to go through everything else. But I don't know if it is meant to show this.

The nvidia kernel module has been compiled from NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-4496-pkg0, and loaded without errors.

I used the NVidia Installer, and it installed /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers/nvidia_drv.o as well as other libraries.

lspci -v produces (snipped):
---
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV15 [GeForce2 - nForce GPU] (rev b1) (prog-if 00 [VGA])
Subsystem: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 0c11
Flags: bus master, VGA palette snoop, 66Mhz, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 10
Memory at ec000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
Memory at f0000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=128M]
Expansion ROM at efff0000 [disabled] [size=64K]
Capabilities: <available only to root>
---

You'll note it says it uses IRQ 10. (It actually used to be IRQ11, but I reserved IRQ11 in the bios hoping to have the IRQs reconfigure themselves nicely). When I used 2.4.22, in lspci -v, the video card's IRQ was -19 (that's right, negative 19). Disabling ACPI (pci=noacpi or noacpi kernel argument) fixed this, but introduced instability - Linux would crash when X exited. I saw talk of 2.4.22 ACPI bugs, and saw ACPI fixes mentioned for 2.4.23-pre7, so installed that.

However, my /proc/interrupts reads:
---
CPU0
0: 13177480 IO-APIC-edge timer
1: 78331 IO-APIC-edge keyboard
2: 0 XT-PIC cascade
8: 4 IO-APIC-edge rtc
9: 0 IO-APIC-level acpi
10: 4184 IO-APIC-level NVIDIA nForce Audio
12: 1743188 IO-APIC-edge PS/2 Mouse
14: 299144 IO-APIC-edge ide0
15: 200745231 IO-APIC-level eth0
NMI: 0
LOC: 13164713
ERR: 0
MIS: 0
---

I don't think /proc/interrupts lists the Nvidia graphics' card. This seems strange to me (others seem to have "nvidia" for it), and this is where I've been focusing a lot of my efforts.

I'm at a loss. I'm hoping that I've missed something obvious. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Rob

[rmt]

How about that. After a week of screwing around trying to get this working, I finally succeed. It was X!

Upgrading to XFree86 4.3.0.1 (pre-release) made things work. That was all there was to it.

X 4.2 didn't work with it.

An X version about a year ago (combined with NVidia drivers of the same era) worked with it.

And now, the latest NVidia drivers & XFree86 4.3 works with it.

May this post save some other folks their hair. :-) I'll begin the arduous task of growing mine back now.

Cheers.