ASRock ION-330 X won't start on Fedora 11 *solved*

[manicminer]

Hi,

I've just bought a nice shiny new ASRock ION-330 system. However I cannot get X to work with the NVidia driver, which is a shame as this is my new media centre and I need the NVidia driver to use VDPAU for high def.

I've tried searching everywhere but no luck on solutions.

I've tried many drivers 180.51, 185.18 and the beta 190.36 however they all seem to fail with the same / similar failure symptoms.

I'm using Fedora 11

Linux lounge 2.6.30.8-64.fc11.i586 #1 SMP Fri Sep 25 04:30:19 EDT 2009 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

With the latest 185 driver from the Nvidia web site but X fails to start with the following problem:

(EE) NVIDIA(0): Failed to initialize the NVIDIA graphics device PCI:1:0:0.
(EE) NVIDIA(0): Please check your system's kernel log for additional error
(EE) NVIDIA(0): messages and refer to Chapter 8: Common Problems in the
(EE) NVIDIA(0): README for additional information.
(EE) NVIDIA(0): Failed to initialize the NVIDIA graphics device!

Checking /var/log/messages I have the following error:

Oct 1 19:59:00 localhost kernel: NVRM: loading NVIDIA UNIX x86 Kernel Module 185.18.36 Fri Aug 14 17:18:04 PDT 2009
Oct 1 19:59:01 localhost kernel: vmap allocation for size 16781312 failed: use vmalloc=<size> to increase size.
Oct 1 19:59:01 localhost kernel: NVRM: RmInitAdapter failed! (0x26:0xffffffff:1096)
Oct 1 19:59:01 localhost kernel: NVRM: rm_init_adapter(0) failed

Anyone got any clues what I am doing wrong? People on the web seem to have it working just fine, is it a particular problem with my kernel, or do I possibly have a hardware issue? The standard nv driver works just fine.

[manicminer]

Always the way, you find a solution just after posting...

Adding vmalloc=192M to my boot options in grub allows the driver to load correctly. Desktop effects work, OpenGL works.. now off to try out VDPAU