Failed to install GForce4 driver on suse7.1! Help!!!

[WAY]

I've just bought a new computer and installed SUSE7.1 on it, but I can't get the GeForce4 Grafic card work!

My computer has a AMD Athelon 2400XP proceesor, motherboard is from Elitegroup K7VTA3, with the KT333 chipset. Graphic card is GeForce4MX-440 SE.

Following the instructions on NVIDIA homepage and posts on this forum, I have tried out two dirrerent versions of driver, but both failed.

1) Driver version one
NVIDIA_GLX-1.0-4180.tar.gz
NVIDIA_kernel-1.0-4180.tar.gz

from NVIDIA website, it is said that this is the offical driver for Linux AMD64 operating system.

After tar the file, when I do

cd NVIDIA_kernel-1.0-4180
make install

The system gave the error message as

"cc1: Invalid option 'cmodel=kernel'
nv.c: In function 'nv_agp_translate_address':
nv.c: 2756: warning: cast from pointer to integer of different size.
make: ***[nv.o] Error 1"

By the way, within the NVIDIA_kernel-1.0-4180 directory, there is another README file giving the instrcution that I shall choose a correct $make command. I don't quite understand this.

I have a gcc version 2.95.2 and Linux kernel version is : 2.2.18-SMP.

2) Driver Version Two
NVIDIA_GLX-1.0-29600.suse71.i386.rpm
NVIDIA_kernel-1.0-2960.suse71.i386.rpm

After running the NVchooser.sh, it shows that I should download the above drivers. I made it, but when I do

rpm -ivh NVIDIA_kernel-1.0-2960.suse71.i386.rpm

the system prompts:

"file /lib/modules/2.2.18-SMP/video/NVdriver from install of NVIDIA_kernel-1.0-2960 conflicts with file from package k_smp_2.2.18-6."

The same message still appeared even after I deleted the above NVdriver file.

and with the command:
rpm -ivh NVIDIA_GLX-1.0-2960.suse71.i386.rpm

the system prompts:

"error: failed dependencies:
NVIDIA-GLX conflicts with mesasoft-3.4-7."

I am very new on Linux and I really have no idea now what other way I should try. Help please!

[bwkaz]

Originally posted by WAY
1) Driver version one
NVIDIA_GLX-1.0-4180.tar.gz
NVIDIA_kernel-1.0-4180.tar.gz

Nope. You are using the wrong architecture to be able to use these drivers. AMD64 is not Athlon processors! Athlon processors are IA32-compatible; they run all programs compiled for IA32. They do not run programs compiled for AMD64 (AKA Hammer/Opteron) chips. And I know you don't have an Opteron, because AFAIK they are not even released yet. Get driver 4191 instead (the Linux IA32 one) and try it from source.

As for your "file conflicts" messages, those are not because certain files exist on your system, they come up because certain files exist in your RPM database. I don't know of any clean way to fix that, either. Just try 4191 from source.

[WAY]

Thanks for the help. So I downloaded the driver tar version 4190 and tried to install it again. This time it compiled successfully but insmod failed, it said that the driver is for kernel version 2.4.0, and my computer has a kernel version 2.4.0-64GB-SMP. I don't know where I can find a driver version for SMP, in README file, NVIDIA does say that there are different versions for uniprocess and multiprocess system. But it seems only for RedHat. Anyway, just for a try, I used command "insmod -f" to force the module to be installed.

Then I configured the XF86Config file according to the README instruction, also partly through Sax2, but it always gave the error message that "screen found, but no usable configuration". Do I install the wrong driver module ---because of this SMP kernel version? Or do I configure the screen section wrong? Attached please find my config file and the log file. Please help!

[WAY]

here is my config file

[bwkaz]

Which kernel source did you install? Is there a separate source package for -64GB-SMP? If so, you NEED to install it, not the source package for 2.4.0. That very well could be the problem...

insmod -f won't work (well, it'll appear to, but it won't) if your kernel sources are configured for uniprocessor (and no highmem support) but your running kernel is configured for SMP and 64gb highmem support.

Make sure you got the right kernel source. If there are other config files for different kernels for SuSE (AFAIK RH is the only distro that does that, though), then make sure you've got the right one in place before you make oldconfig on the kernel source (which may be necessary). oldconfig looks for a .config file in the root of the source tree.

One other possibility is that editing the toplevel Makefile and making EXTRAVERSION be -64GB-SMP MIGHT work. But I doubt it; I think the problem is that you have the wrong kernel source.

[WAY]

Many many thanks! It works now!!!!

The kernel source package installed is called

"lx_sus24-2.4.0.SuSE-6"

And the kernel which was chosen automatically by suse7.1 during the installation is the SMP version --- probably because of my motherboard. I just installed the normal kernel version2.4.0. And now everything works . The GeForce4 grafic card renders very nice GUI. I may need to run more GUI applications to test a bit more! But at least tonight I can have a nice sleep!!

Once again, you've offered great help! Vielen Dank!!!