Red Hat 7.3 2.4.18-3 & Nvidia drivers

well it's day three of my attempt to install the Nvidia drivers to my Red Hat 7.3 OS ... and still no success, the only problem is that i really don't know a way out this time

i've first installed the drivers with the rpm-files but i got the
(EE) NVIDIA(0): Failed to initialize ...
error

so after reading the FAQ out the Readme i realised i had to reinstall the NVIDIA drivers with the tar-files and make the install with the command

make install SYSINCLUDE=/path/to/kernel/headers

the only problem is when i try to do that i get the following error:

/bin/sh nv_compiler.h: Read Only File System
make:***[nv_compiler.h] Error 1

can someone help my out of this mess ? i'm really desperate ...

TIA and greets

Daelin

[bwkaz]

Undo any permanent changes you've made using the tar file installation. Normally I'd suggest using tar files, but in this case, they're giving you strange errors, so don't bother.

The "failed to initialize" message you got with the RPM drivers almost always means your drivers are installed properly, but the kernel module (NVdriver) isn't getting loaded.

If you're booting to a text-mode login, try doing a /sbin/modprobe NVdriver (as root) before you try to startx -- that should fix it until you reboot. After a reboot, it's a bit of a different story. It is fixable, but the fix depends on whether or not your distro runs devfs. To find out, run one of these:

[ -c /dev/.devfsd ] ; echo $?

If it prints a 0, then edit your /etc/modules.conf file and add a line reading alias /dev/nvidia* NVdriver

It it prints a 1, then edit your /etc/modules.conf file and add a line reading alias char-major-195 NVdriver

When you're done, do a depmod -a as root, and reboot to see if it works (actually, rebooting isn't strictly necessary, but it's easiest).

hi there, i tried the stuff you told me to do and i think i'm in more trouble then i first suspected ...

after doing the /sbin/modprobe NVdriver
command i still got the message that the Nvidia Driver couldn't been loaded (something in that area...)

then i tried the [ -c /dev ... ]; echo $? command, followed your instructions and if i do startx now, i get a black screen again ...

the problem is, i'm only beginning with linux so the next i'm going to try is to upgrade my Xfree86 and if that doesn't do the trick, i'll try to install the red hat 7.3 kernel headers on my OS (i've heard they aren't installed standard) and try again with the tar files and with the command line that points the make files where the kernel headers are located

if that doesn't work then i think i'm planning on throwing my computer out of the window ;-)

if you have some good advice or think i should do some other stuff first, plz share it here

thanks in advance for all your trouble

greets

Daelin