Nvidia Modules Build, Install And Work... Sort Of.

[PC_Chris]

OK, this has been posted on forums, IRC channels, and support boards everywhere. No answers so far, so if anyone here can help you've really got something going for you. Alright, I'm running kernel 2.6.12-10 and stock nvidia drivers 7676 with a FX5900. I install the nvidia drivers, they build with no gotchas, and everything looks fine. I start X, no instability, no apparent troubles. So what am I complaining about? Well, this:



Notice where it says 'Kernel module'... ? I can actually add and remove the module successfully manually using modprobe, but I still have the same problems (which I'm getting to, bear with me). It seems I am not truly getting 3D accelleration; GL seems to be software rendered judging by its speed. I've been able to get a few hundred FPS out of apps such as Enemy Territory on this same rig with the same hardware in Linux. Now, I get maybe 5-15FPS. In addition, KDE themes like Crystal-GL crash instantly. I cannot for the life of me figure out what is going wrong here. When I run glxinfo, the verbosity it spits out looks perfectly kosher, 'Direct Rendering = Yes' and all that. Yes, I am specifying "nvidia" as the device in my xorg.conf, like I said everything looks kosher. If there's someone out there who's smarter than me (and everyone on all of the other forums I've posted on), please do help me out. I'm at the end of my rope!

[whig]

When running glxinfo you don't want to see Mesa in there. Look in your X log as well. Post them here if you like.

[chunkey]

yes, you should post your whole nvidia-bug-report.log! (Don't forget to change the file extension to .txt if you want to attach it!)
(you can create it... by running nvidia-bug-report.sh as root)...

[PC_Chris]

Alright, here's the debugging info. If mesa was mentioned anywhere that'd be the first thing I'd tackle (easy fix). However, to me at least everything looks pretty normal. If you can gleam the problem from these logs, you're wiser than I.

[Pingus]

Did you include a DRI section in your xorg.conf?
Could we see your whole xorg.conf?
Is this a laptop or a desktop?

[PC_Chris]

No DRI in my xorg.conf (look for yourself, file attached). It's a desktop, as evidenced by my specs in the nvidia-bug-report. I'm positive this isn't a hardware problem, as I've had 3D working perfectly on this rig with no hardware changes.

[netllama]

PC_Chris,
You're using a lot of experimental software (a beta of Mandriva, a release candidate of Xorg, etc). I'd wonder if this problem persisted if you moved to a final-release version of Mandriva, or any other distribution.

When you say that you've had 3D working perfectly with no hardware changes, under what configuration did it work? If you revert back to that state, does it work again?

thanks,
Lonni

[PC_Chris]

I was afraid the 'cooker' status of my system would flag somebody, but really it's not much different than Gentoo in this respect (except I don't have to wait for everything to compile). I've had the same problem with older, stable versions of the OS, and not just Mandriva either. In fact, that's why I chose to go to the unstable branch -- I was hoping a newer package/kernel/something would resolve the problem. It seems like 3D worked perfectly in kernels =< 2.6.11-6 with current nvidia drivers.

[netllama]

PC_Chris,
If you reinstall the older working kernel in your current environment, the instability goes away?

-Lonni

[PC_Chris]

Thanks for the reply, Lonni. No, I'm using GCC4 and some other newish libraries, so I can't even compile a kernel that old in my envorinment. My buddy has a system running kernel 2.6.11-12, and he's having the same problem I am with 2.6.12-10. However, he's got GCC 3.4, so he'll be able to compile an earlier kernel to test this theory. I'll let you know how it goes. It'll be a huge pity if I have to roll back my OS to get 3D accelleration working properly, especially since Mandriva 2006 is shaping up to be a very fast & stable environment already. But in any case, I'd like to know exactly what is causing this problem in case I encounter issues like this in the future.

-Chris

[PC_Chris]

Man, how disapointing... it seems his system is still having the problem after rolling back to 2.6.11-6! Now I'm stumped to the exact source of the problem except to say it must have been some update we both downloaded.

[whig]

Wild suggestion: if your video card takes a molex power supply is it plugged in?