Mandrake & nVidia drivers (whatever version)

[GreyGeek]

I am running a SOYO KT600 Dragon Plus mobo with the video chip Chaintech A-G842 nVIDIA GForce4 MX440-8X 64MB DDR AGP8X, DVI & TV-Out. The CPU is an Athlon 2.0 GHz. RAM is 512MB. There are 5 fans on board.

The nvidia driver that comes with the Mandrake 9.2.1 ISO set will let me setup an X-server but the X-server will not run GL applications. Either they hang or they are slow. After a successful install of the 4496 binary, and making all the modifications required in XF86Config-4, attempts to start the X-server fail with a total screen, keyboard and mouse lockup. 4/5ths of the screen is black. The bottom fifth looks as if the X-server was squeezed into it.


I've tried "NvAGP" with all its options and I've set the BIOS AGPX setting to 4X and to 1X but none of these changes work.

I want to stay with Mandrake. I am adding my experience to the list of folks who have nearly identical experiences so that a squeeky wheel might get a little greese.

[LordMorgul]

All of you having issues with Mandrake 9.2 should generate a verbose logfile from X and post it on this thread. It is very difficult, almost impossible, for the engineers to solve problems without any information to work with. To do this follow the instructions from Andy Mecham on this thread.

Keep the most specific information you can gather about your machine in the SAME post that has your logfile attached, its much simpler to figure out who has what problem.

The drivers do support Mandrake and Redhat, in case anyone there was requesting something new; what is needed is not a new effort at supporting the distro, but in finding the cause of crashes.

Another Note: versions prior to 53.36 do not support kernel 2.6, you must use patches from www.minion.de to use those versions.

[GreyGeek]

Originally posted by LordMorgul
All of you having issues with Mandrake 9.2 should generate a verbose logfile from X and post it on this thread. It is very difficult, almost impossible, for the engineers to solve problems without any information to work with. To do this follow the instructions from Andy Mecham on this thread.

Keep the most specific information you can gather about your machine in the SAME post that has your logfile attached, its much simpler to figure out who has what problem.

The drivers do support Mandrake and Redhat, in case anyone there was requesting something new; what is needed is not a new effort at supporting the distro, but in finding the cause of crashes.

Another Note: versions prior to 53.36 do not support kernel 2.6, you must use patches from www.minion.de to use those versions.

For the MDK NVIDIA_kernel-2.4.22.26mdk-4496.2.3.92mdk.i586.rpm driver here is the msg from the XFree86.log:
(EE) Failed to initialize GLX extension (NVIDIA XFree86 driver not found)

For the NVIDIA 4496 binary here is the msg from XFree86.log
(EE) NVIDIA(0): Failed to initialize the NVIDIA kernel module!

And while attempting to add "Options" to the nVidia binary XF86Config-4 file, in the driver section, I encountered this puzzle:
Option "IgnoreDisplayDevices","DFP,TV"
gave the error msg:
parsing error on line 71 ",gnoreDisplayDevices" an unknown keyword.
Needless to say, there were no invisible control characters, etc., on line 71. Surrounding that line with spaces or moving it up or down in the section didn't help.
So, I couldn't test this option, which gave some people success.

Since I have had success in installing the 4496 binary on my other PC, also running MDK 9.2.1, but with a video card, not a video chip, I am concerned that it is the chip/mobo that is not compatible with the NVIDIA 4496 binary.
GreyGeek

[Antonio P.]

Originally posted by LordMorgul


The drivers do support Mandrake and Redhat

I do not completely agree with that.
The drivers "are supposed" to support Mandrake and Redhat.

I recently purchased a 5700 ultra graphic card from msi.
It didn't work with driver version 5328, although it worked with my previous graphic card (a geforce 2 MX) and it was written in the readme file that 5700 ultra was supported.

I spent a lot of hours trying to solve the problem with my new card, until I upgraded to 5336. In the release notes of the driver, it's said "fixed some bugs with VIA chipsets". That's my case. Now it works fine.
Conclusion :
1- the drivers are supposed to work, in your case it may be false,
2- if your existing driver works fine, don't upgrade, unless you're shure you know how to reinstall the previous driver.

[jboschee]

Just to let everyone know, I solved my issue which was to add

Option "NvAGP" "0"

to the Devices section

Originally posted by jboschee
I have the same problem. I have tried RedHat 9 and the drivers work fine. In Mandrake 9.2 I startx and get a black screen and I have to hard reset. I have tried all the fixes found so far. This is a stock install, nothing changed, by the way. I have a Geforce4 Ti4600

Jeff

[salemvam]

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Hello people
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I only experimented that problem with Mandrake Distro. The driver works fine with Red Hat 9 (Shrike), Mepis (2003.10) as they are the only distros I could try due my limited knowledge of Linux.
Of course nVidia drivers must work with any other distro you can try too. But in my case the problem comes when I install them on Mandrake: only MDK.
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Now I'm running with "nv" generic driver again, but this weekend I'll install nVidia drivers again to send back to this thread the needed files to try to solve this particular problem in my machine and any others by the way.
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SaLuTaTiOnS

[GreyGeek]

Originally posted by salemvam
==================================================
Hello people
==================================================
I only experimented that problem with Mandrake Distro. The driver works fine with Red Hat 9 (Shrike), Mepis (2003.10) as they are the only distros I could try due my limited knowledge of Linux.
Of course nVidia drivers must work with any other distro you can try too. But in my case the problem comes when I install them on Mandrake: only MDK.
==================================================
Now I'm running with "nv" generic driver again, but this weekend I'll install nVidia drivers again to send back to this thread the needed files to try to solve this particular problem in my machine and any others by the way.
==================================================
SaLuTaTiOnS

I switched to SUSE 9.0 and used their puplished solution ( http://suse.de/~sndirsch/nvidia-installer-HOWTO.html ) of installing 5336 binary.
It creates an X-window and KDE will display. After doing a couple of menu clicks the desktop freezes and I have to reset.

What I think I will try next is to remove that ChainTech GForce4 MX440-8X chip from my mobo and install an NVIDIA PCI card that is known to work with Linux. I haven't seen any references to anyone getting this chip version of nvidia working in Linux.
GreyGeek

[LordMorgul]

Originally posted by Antonio P.
I do not completely agree with that.
The drivers "are supposed" to support Mandrake and Redhat.

The quality of support is questionable, yes. But there are known issues with nearly every linux distribution because they all supply non-accelerated Mesa GL, which when improperly linked WILL, without question, cause problems. When installed correctly, there should be no significant issues with the 'distro itself', except for oddities like Mandrake rewriting the config file..
Generally speaking "Support" should not be considered to mean "Will work correctly in every case". That cannot be taken for granted even when installing windows supported hardware.

Originally posted by Antonio P.

it was written in the readme file that 5700 ultra was supported.

I spent a lot of hours trying to solve the problem with my new card, until I upgraded to 5336. In the release notes of the driver, it's said "fixed some bugs with VIA chipsets".

This is not a distribution issue, it's a hardware support issue. Therefore it doesn't support a disagreement with my statement. I won't challenge that these hardware issues exist, that is the primary reason I spend time here to help people resolve them (the presence of issues requires the presence of people that can help).

[Antonio P.]

Originally posted by LordMorgul

This is not a distribution issue, it's a hardware support issue.

Well, yes, it's a hardware support issue with the previous driver version.
What I mean is that it works sometimes and sometimes not, mostly because of driver issues. And you'll discover it sometimes late, because unlike windows drivers, the linux drivers are not so widely tested.
As far as I know we all have hardware that gives no problem with ms windows. So all that we have are software issues.

I agree with you that one cannot say "it doesn't work with mdk or with redhat". I am with mdk 9.2 and it works perfectly, with 5336.

Sorry for the possible misunderstandings, due to my bad english.

[LordMorgul]

Your english seems fine; I didn't really misunderstand you and hope I didn't sound too argumentative. You do raise a good point, I just meant to clarify.

The discussion and problem solving done here should be first to determine whether the distro is directly to blame, or if the hardware is to blame. In most cases the answer is the hardware, but that should not lead anyone to jump to conclusions; distribution specific problems do occur.

Which leads us to Andy Mecham's guide for discussing driver issues. The distro is of interest, but without specifics on the hardware (such as video bios / chipset and mobo chipset) there really is only so much one can do to resolve the problem, or at least identify the real cause.

[salemvam]

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Hello again
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I reinstalled the nVidia driver and I saved the "Xfree86.0.log" and "XFConfig-4" files. Now, after install Mandrake again I can send them to you but I did it in another thread. This files and all the information of my PC are located in this thread.
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As always I had the same results: my screen freezes after I log in KDE or GNOME. I don't know what's the problem, but it only happens with Mandrake.
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Good luck guys!
See you

[letseymoe]

"NvAgp" "0" worked for me... thanks!!!