NVidia 96.xx.xx & 173.xx.xx Legacy drivers don’t work in Ubuntu 12.04

PenguinPower · 04-27-12, 12:19 PM

After a clean install from, or update to Ubuntu 12.04, the latest NVidia 96.43.20 and 173.14.31 Legacy drivers don’t work anymore due to missing dependencies, caused by a new version of xorg.

Log:
XorgDriverHandler(nvidia_96, nvidia-96, None): Disabling as package video ABI xorg-video-abi-10 does not match X.org video ABI xorg-video-abi-11
DEBUG: NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver not available
WARNING: modinfo for module nvidia_current failed: ERROR: modinfo: could not find module nvidia_current

When trying to install the driver manually or via softwarecentre:
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
nvidia-96: Depends: xorg-video-abi-10 but it is not installable

This is the result of the new xorg version in 12.04. In the past NVidia updated its Legacy drivers pretty quickly in similar cases, hopefully they will do so again this time.

ZenmasteR · 04-27-12, 02:27 PM

buy a new pc
they havent updated since 10.04...

PenguinPower · 04-27-12, 03:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ZenmasteR

buy a new pc
they havent updated since 10.04...

You clearly haven't got a clue what you're talking about...

Both the 96.43.20- and 173.14.31-driver were released on 2011.08.17, so that's 1 year and 4 months áfter the release of 10.04...
2 Days ago the drivers were still working perfectly well. It's just that they are not compatible with the latest xorg version that comes with Ubuntu 12.04, so we just have to wait till NVidia comes with an update for these drivers to make them compatible. Most of the cards that require these drivers are still adequate enough for everyday use, so it's a waste of money to simply suggest 'buy new'.

LLStarks · 04-27-12, 04:05 PM

There's no point in using the legacy drivers anymore.

If you want a guarantee of continuous development and improvement for years to come, Nouveau is your best best.

PenguinPower · 04-27-12, 06:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LLStarks

There's no point in using the legacy drivers anymore.

Well actually there IS a point:
As far as I know Nouveau doesn't support TV-out for example.

Quote:

If you want a guarantee of continuous development and improvement for years to come, Nouveau is your best best.

People who use these cards usually are not asking for continuous development and improvement or completely rewritten drivers, they just want the driver to be made compatible with the current version of xorg. And since 12.04 is an LTS edition, it would be nice if NVidia would make these drivers compatible once more.

htank · 04-28-12, 01:02 AM

I have been using 173.x.x drivers for ubuntu 10.04 LTS and it was running wonderfully without any problem. yesterday, I upgraded to 12.04 and X stopped working!

I agree with PenguinPower, Nvidia should help here and provide updated drivers. that will be great help for many users who support open source and that will encourage new users to move towards linux.

luk1don · 04-28-12, 08:43 AM

NVIDIA drivers 96 and 173 series are not compatible with X.org in Ubuntu 12.04.
I've added option ignoreABI True in xorg.conf and Xes started but crashed with segfault.

BilaRC · 04-28-12, 02:21 PM

I agree with PenguinPower, and I posted (http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=177055) wondering when it was still a beta 1.

searchfgold6789 · 04-28-12, 07:52 PM

I'm getting the same thing and am very frustrated -.-
I sent an email to nVidia requesting info about this. I will post back here if I get a reply.

SamanthaDL · 04-29-12, 09:49 AM

The upgrade to Ubuntu 12.04 has indeed been very frustrating so far. Not only did the upgrade tool manage to screw up the boot manager, it also did not configure a handful of essential packages, requiring some good old livecd bootin', chrootin' and fixin' afterwards.

After those small annoyances, it turned out that the nvidia-173 driver is no longer compatible with the current xorg abi. "Oh well" I thought; "then we shall use the nouveau driver until a new compatible version of the nvidia drivers is released.". Alas, for me, the nouveau driver freezes the system constantly (I traced back some kernel panic coming from / leading to a Nortbridge HW error - I have no idea weither this came from the nouveau driver interacting with the hw or not, and google does not seem to know either). So for the time being I am running on the vesa driver, which is decent enough for web browsing but currently I can forget about watching any videos.

searchfgold6789: Hopefully they'll pick up on your mail and this issue. I am interested in Nvidia's reply to your mail.

geribeto · 04-30-12, 11:37 AM

Methinks some users don't understand the reason why some other users need the legacy drivers. Now my two cents.

If we have some older computers with older hardware to play older games, no matter the OS, we generally need older drivers that work nice with our hardware. In my experience the newer drivers that have backwards support for older hardware often fail to perform well or even don't work at all. Perhaps the guys that tell us " Hey! Trash your system. Buy a new one!" don't quit understand this fact.

In the other hand, If you use older hardware whatever is the reason you are compelled to, must think twice before install newer versions of OS. If your system is doing right with Ubuntu 10.04 or 11 or whatever, do not change it. The newer OS versions even in linux, generally need enhanced or new hardare to perform well.

Now, for the particular case of the question. For those of you that want to use your older Nvidia cards with Ubuntu 12.04 and the legacy drivers, you may need to install an older version of the Xorg. I have been waiting for Nvidia to updated its drivers for years, so it is very likely they won't do it.

PenguinPower · 04-30-12, 12:18 PM

Just got an update for xorg-server. When i saw the notification i thought 'should it be...', but no.

Would have been too good to be true, i guess.

When searching the internet you'll notice that many people are affected by this. Not all of them even understand that their problems mainly have got to do with the incompatibility with the xorg version that comes with 12.04. So plenty of bugreports are filed for. I think it's somewhat of a fault or imperfection that Ubuntu doesn't warn users for not being able to use the NVidia drivers (for the time being) by updating. Of course you can wait and see what others report, but if a version gets out of beta-status, it would prevent a lot of disapointment and problems to get such a warning. Particularly since the nouveau driver simply reduces functionality compared to the NVidia driver (lack of proper TV-out for instance).

Trying to add
Option "IgnoreABI" "True"
to xorg.conf won't work either, since the driver cannot even be installed. I guess for the moment the only possible 'solution' is probably indeed downgrading to the previous version of xorg like geribeto suggests, although many people advise against that.

Does anybody know if someone has already done that succesfully? Without 'breaking' other things, dependencies etc...?

04-27-12, 12:19 PM	#1
PenguinPower Registered User Join Date: Apr 2012 Posts: 12	NVidia 96.xx.xx & 173.xx.xx Legacy drivers don’t work in Ubuntu 12.04 After a clean install from, or update to Ubuntu 12.04, the latest NVidia 96.43.20 and 173.14.31 Legacy drivers don’t work anymore due to missing dependencies, caused by a new version of xorg. Log: XorgDriverHandler(nvidia_96, nvidia-96, None): Disabling as package video ABI xorg-video-abi-10 does not match X.org video ABI xorg-video-abi-11 DEBUG: NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver not available WARNING: modinfo for module nvidia_current failed: ERROR: modinfo: could not find module nvidia_current When trying to install the driver manually or via softwarecentre: The following packages have unmet dependencies: nvidia-96: Depends: xorg-video-abi-10 but it is not installable This is the result of the new xorg version in 12.04. In the past NVidia updated its Legacy drivers pretty quickly in similar cases, hopefully they will do so again this time.

04-27-12, 02:27 PM	#2
ZenmasteR Registered User Join Date: Jul 2002 Posts: 30	Re: NVidia 96.xx.xx & 173.xx.xx Legacy drivers don’t work in Ubuntu 12.04 buy a new pc they havent updated since 10.04...

04-27-12, 04:05 PM	#4
LLStarks Registered User Join Date: Dec 2010 Posts: 66	Re: NVidia 96.xx.xx & 173.xx.xx Legacy drivers don’t work in Ubuntu 12.04 There's no point in using the legacy drivers anymore. If you want a guarantee of continuous development and improvement for years to come, Nouveau is your best best.

04-28-12, 01:02 AM	#6
htank Registered User Join Date: Apr 2012 Posts: 1	Re: NVidia 96.xx.xx & 173.xx.xx Legacy drivers don’t work in Ubuntu 12.04 I have been using 173.x.x drivers for ubuntu 10.04 LTS and it was running wonderfully without any problem. yesterday, I upgraded to 12.04 and X stopped working! I agree with PenguinPower, Nvidia should help here and provide updated drivers. that will be great help for many users who support open source and that will encourage new users to move towards linux.

04-28-12, 08:43 AM	#7
luk1don Registered User Join Date: Nov 2008 Posts: 55	Re: NVidia 96.xx.xx & 173.xx.xx Legacy drivers don’t work in Ubuntu 12.04 NVIDIA drivers 96 and 173 series are not compatible with X.org in Ubuntu 12.04. I've added option ignoreABI True in xorg.conf and Xes started but crashed with segfault. __________________ 250 MB free extra space on Dropbox! <= Please join by this link!

04-28-12, 02:21 PM	#8
BilaRC Registered User Join Date: Mar 2012 Posts: 6	Re: NVidia 96.xx.xx & 173.xx.xx Legacy drivers don’t work in Ubuntu 12.04 I agree with PenguinPower, and I posted (http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=177055) wondering when it was still a beta 1.

04-28-12, 07:52 PM	#9
searchfgold6789 Registered User Join Date: Apr 2012 Posts: 8	Re: NVidia 96.xx.xx & 173.xx.xx Legacy drivers don’t work in Ubuntu 12.04 I'm getting the same thing and am very frustrated -.- I sent an email to nVidia requesting info about this. I will post back here if I get a reply.

04-29-12, 09:49 AM	#10
SamanthaDL Registered User Join Date: Apr 2012 Posts: 4	Re: NVidia 96.xx.xx & 173.xx.xx Legacy drivers don’t work in Ubuntu 12.04 The upgrade to Ubuntu 12.04 has indeed been very frustrating so far. Not only did the upgrade tool manage to screw up the boot manager, it also did not configure a handful of essential packages, requiring some good old livecd bootin', chrootin' and fixin' afterwards. After those small annoyances, it turned out that the nvidia-173 driver is no longer compatible with the current xorg abi. "Oh well" I thought; "then we shall use the nouveau driver until a new compatible version of the nvidia drivers is released.". Alas, for me, the nouveau driver freezes the system constantly (I traced back some kernel panic coming from / leading to a Nortbridge HW error - I have no idea weither this came from the nouveau driver interacting with the hw or not, and google does not seem to know either). So for the time being I am running on the vesa driver, which is decent enough for web browsing but currently I can forget about watching any videos. searchfgold6789: Hopefully they'll pick up on your mail and this issue. I am interested in Nvidia's reply to your mail.

04-30-12, 11:37 AM	#11
geribeto Registered User Join Date: Apr 2012 Posts: 1	Re: NVidia 96.xx.xx & 173.xx.xx Legacy drivers don’t work in Ubuntu 12.04 Methinks some users don't understand the reason why some other users need the legacy drivers. Now my two cents. If we have some older computers with older hardware to play older games, no matter the OS, we generally need older drivers that work nice with our hardware. In my experience the newer drivers that have backwards support for older hardware often fail to perform well or even don't work at all. Perhaps the guys that tell us " Hey! Trash your system. Buy a new one!" don't quit understand this fact. In the other hand, If you use older hardware whatever is the reason you are compelled to, must think twice before install newer versions of OS. If your system is doing right with Ubuntu 10.04 or 11 or whatever, do not change it. The newer OS versions even in linux, generally need enhanced or new hardare to perform well. Now, for the particular case of the question. For those of you that want to use your older Nvidia cards with Ubuntu 12.04 and the legacy drivers, you may need to install an older version of the Xorg. I have been waiting for Nvidia to updated its drivers for years, so it is very likely they won't do it.

04-30-12, 12:18 PM	#12
PenguinPower Registered User Join Date: Apr 2012 Posts: 12	Re: NVidia 96.xx.xx & 173.xx.xx Legacy drivers don’t work in Ubuntu 12.04 Just got an update for xorg-server. When i saw the notification i thought 'should it be...', but no. Would have been too good to be true, i guess. When searching the internet you'll notice that many people are affected by this. Not all of them even understand that their problems mainly have got to do with the incompatibility with the xorg version that comes with 12.04. So plenty of bugreports are filed for. I think it's somewhat of a fault or imperfection that Ubuntu doesn't warn users for not being able to use the NVidia drivers (for the time being) by updating. Of course you can wait and see what others report, but if a version gets out of beta-status, it would prevent a lot of disapointment and problems to get such a warning. Particularly since the nouveau driver simply reduces functionality compared to the NVidia driver (lack of proper TV-out for instance). Trying to add Option "IgnoreABI" "True" to xorg.conf won't work either, since the driver cannot even be installed. I guess for the moment the only possible 'solution' is probably indeed downgrading to the previous version of xorg like geribeto suggests, although many people advise against that. Does anybody know if someone has already done that succesfully? Without 'breaking' other things, dependencies etc...?