NVIDA drivers and Mandrake 10 Kernel 2.6

[devinWhalen]

Hey,

I had Red Hat 9 and ran your driver installation card and it worked great. I was really happy with it. However, I just installed Mandrake 10 with the 2.6 kernel and the driver installation fails everytime. It can't seem to find my kernel-source...but I a sure (pretty sure) that it is installed! It also trys to connect to the ftp site but fails...I think this is because I am not connected to the internet when I boot up in failsafe. I will try to start my internet connection next time but I want some advice first. My video card is : NVIDIA GeForce 2MX 64 MB.

It displays fine when I am just doing regular stuff, but when I try to play armagetron the display is horrible! And that is not even a very graphic intensive game.

Thanks for the help.

Later

[d3vil]

I had some problems getting the drivers to work with mandrake 10 aswell. I had installed the kernel-source with urpmi, but it had for some reason installed kernel-source-2.6.3-7mdk instead of the kernel-source-2.6.3-4mdk that matches the kernel. I fixed this simply by uninstalling it and then installing the right kernel-source from CD3. It still gave me an error, so I did as someone suggested here on the forums and did a "export SYSINCLUDE=/usr/src/linux-2.6.3-4mdk/include" before running the installer, and finally got it working. Hope this helps.

-marcus

[devinWhalen]

Yeah,

I looked and I seem to be getting the incorrect source from urpmi. I have the cds at home so I will have to try to install the correct sources tomorrow.

Thanks for the help.

I may be back

[shmegegge]

this is a total noob question, so I'm sorry, but could you explain precisely what a person should type at the command line? I've been able to edit inittab and all that to get root access outside of x11 (if i'm saying that properly.) but I get the same problem running the installer you guys have. How can I find out if I have the kernel source, and if I do, what do I do then? I tried typing what you said right before running the installer, but nothing changed. If I DON'T have the proper kernel source, what exactly do I do to get it? I'm not sure what urpmi is. thanks in advance.

[favrefelixf]

I assume that you are using Mandrake 10.0 (and therefore urpmi with relevant sources set - if those sources are not properly set, I advise you to google for " "easy urpmi" )

- to identify which kernel you currently use, type
"cat /var/log/dmesg" in a console
the kernel version is the first line
it should be something like 2.6.3-4mdk or 2.6.3-7mdk or 2.6.3-8mdk depending on whether you did upgrade your kernel

- to identify your installed kernel sources, type
"cd /usr/src" <== kernel sources are installed in this directory
"ls -l"
You should get something like that
lrwxrwxrwx linux -> linux-2.6.3-8mdk/
drwxr-xr-x linux-2.6.3-8mdk/

Note that you may have several kernel sources installed. The one used by default when compiling modules is the one referenced by the symbolic link "linux".

If your kernel source doesn't match your kernel, then check what is available to install :
"urpmq -f kernel-source"
and install the one you want "urpmi kernel-source.blablabla"
==> you may also do this through the rpmdrake gui.

Once kernel and kernel source match, running the nvidia installer is a snap.

I hope it helps,
FFF

[devinWhalen]

Ok,

I now have the proper source installed for my kernel...as far as I am aware.

[devin@192:~]$ls -l /usr/src/
total 24
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root   16 Apr 21 18:16 linux -> linux-2.6.3-8mdk/
drwxr-xr-x  20 root root 4096 Apr 21 18:16 linux-2.6.3-8mdk/
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root 4096 Apr 15 10:46 perl_programs/
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root 4096 Apr 15 10:46 php/
drwxr-xr-x   4 root root 4096 Apr 16 17:20 programs/
drwxr-xr-x   7 root root 4096 Apr 16 11:34 RPM/
drwxr-xr-x   3 root root 4096 Apr 19 15:44 rpm

But when I reboted into failsafe it still would not install! Here is the error-log:

nvidia-installer log file '/var/log/nvidia-installer.log'
creation time: Thu Apr 22 10:55:20 2004

option status:
  license pre-accepted    : false
  update                  : false
  force update            : false
  expert                  : false
  uninstall               : false
  driver info             : false
  no precompiled interface: false
  no ncurses color        : false
  query latest driver ver : false
  OpenGL header files     : false
  no questions            : false
  silent                  : false
  XFree86 install prefix  : /usr/X11R6
  OpenGL install prefix   : /usr
  Installer install prefix: /usr
  kernel source path      : (not specified)
  kernel install path     : (not specified)
  proc mount point        : /proc
  ui                      : (not specified)
  tmpdir                  : /root/tmp
  ftp site                : ftp://download.nvidia.com

Using: nvidia-installer ncurses user interface
-> You appear to be running in runlevel 1; this may cause problems.  For example: some distributions that use devfs do not run the devfs daemon in runlevel
   1, making it difficult for nvidia-installer to correctly setup the kernel mo
   dule configuration files.  It is recommended that you quit installation now
   and switch to runlevel 3 (`telinit 3`) before installing.

   Quit installation now? (select 'No' to continue installation) (Answer: No)
-> License accepted.
-> No precompiled kernel interface was found to match your kernel; would you li
   ke the installer to attempt to download a kernel interface for your kernel f
   rom the NVIDIA ftp site (ftp://download.nvidia.com)? (Answer: Yes)
-> No matching precompiled kernel interface was found on the NVIDIA ftp site;
   this means that the installer will need to compile a kernel interface for
   your kernel.
-> Kernel source path: '/usr/src/linux'
-> Performing cc_version_check with CC="cc".
ERROR: Unable to determine the NVIDIA kernel module filename.
ERROR: Installation has failed.  Please see the file
       '/var/log/nvidia-installer.log' for details.  You may find suggestions
       on fixing installation problems in the README available on the Linux
       driver download page at www.nvidia.com.

Can anyone help with this? What am I doing wrong. Do I need to give you more info?

Thanks for the help.

Later

[favrefelixf]

Why do you boot in failsafe ?
=> you should boot as usual, open a console as root and type "init 3" to enter runlevel 3

FFF

[devinWhalen]

Thanks for the help on this.....really appreciate it

Ok, I did init 3 but I still get errors. Here is the error log:

Using: nvidia-installer ncurses user interface
-> License accepted.
-> No precompiled kernel interface was found to match your kernel; would you li
   ke the installer to attempt to download a kernel interface for your kernel f
   rom the NVIDIA ftp site (ftp://download.nvidia.com)? (Answer: Yes)
-> No matching precompiled kernel interface was found on the NVIDIA ftp site;
   this means that the installer will need to compile a kernel interface for
   your kernel.
ERROR: The kernel header file '/usr/src/linux/include/linux/modversions.h' does
       not exist.  The most likely reason for this is that the kernel header
       files in '/usr/src/linux/include' have not been configured.
ERROR: Installation has failed.  Please see the file
       '/var/log/nvidia-installer.log' for details.  You may find suggestions
       on fixing installation problems in the README available on the Linux
       driver download page at www.nvidia.com

I think I might know what the problem is. If I run uname -a I get:
Linux 192.168.1.80 2.6.3-4mdk #1 Tue Mar 2 07:26:13 CET 2004 i686 unknown unknown GNU/Linux

So my Kernel version is 2.6.3-4mdk.

However, if I run: ls -l /usr/src/ I get:

lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root   16 Apr 21 18:16 linux -> linux-2.6.3-8mdk/
drwxr-xr-x  20 root root 4096 Apr 21 18:16 linux-2.6.3-8mdk/
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root 4096 Apr 15 10:46 perl_programs/
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root 4096 Apr 15 10:46 php/
drwxr-xr-x   4 root root 4096 Apr 16 17:20 programs/
drwxr-xr-x   7 root root 4096 Apr 16 11:34 RPM/
drwxr-xr-x   3 root root 4096 Apr 19 15:44 rpms/

The versions don't match!! So I guess I have to uninstall the kernel source
linux-2.6.3-8mdk and install the kernel source: 2.6.3-4mdk

I don't know how this happened. I installed my kernel-source through urpmi. Am I right on this?

Again...thanks for the help.

Later

[favrefelixf]

That happened because when you did "urpmi kernel-source", urpmi took the latest available kernel source i.e. 2.6.3-8 from the "updates" source.
Your kernel 2.6.3-4 is the one distributed in the initial 10.0 Community edition.

At this point, you can either go for a kernel upgrade (see HERE for instructions) to move your kernel to version 2.6.3-8 (this is what I did)
OR you can install kernel source 2.6.3-4 that should be on CD 3 of mdk 10.0CE.

FFF

[devinWhalen]

It worked!!! I now have the latest kernel and kernel source and I was also able to install the drivers!! Everything works great. I didn't know it was so easy to upgrade your kernel!

Thanks for all you help on this =)

Later

[GuardianD]

Thanx for all the tips guys. I've been meaning to getting into Linux for a good while now, but never seemed to get around to it. Finally installed Mandrake 10.0 Community, and had an issue with installing the nVidia driver. (Basically the same type of stuff that was posted here.) Anyhow, by following the posted advice and links here, I got it working with absolutely no trouble at all. It's been a VERY long time since I've worked out of a command line, even longer since I've done any work with anything other than DOS/Windows. (Used to run Bayan VINES networks in the military... very little Unix needed for what we did, so I didn't get to learn as much as I'd like.)

Anyhow, thanx again... I'm off to the library to get some books on Linux, and enjoy learning something new again!

I love it when my first post in a forum community is a "thank you", rather than a "help me"!

[shmegegge]

you guys rock my ever-lovin' socks. Thanks for all the help.