FC5: NVIDIA binary not working

Eric Buist · #1 25th March 2006, 07:42 PM

I did not have any problem with the NVIDIA binary drivers with Fedora Core 4, but now, after I installed Fedora Core 5, I cannot get the driver to work anymore. I am using the 8178 version of the Linux x86_64 driver against kernel 2.6.15-1.2054_FC5.
The first problem I encountered was the impossibility to compile the nvidia module because of a strange error. I found a patch on the Internet, I tried it, and this resulted in a compilable module. However, it signals errors when I load it; some symbols cannot be found.
Only the nv driver works now, and it does not support glx at all! I cannot even run glxgears. I tried to disable dri without any effect. Is there AT LEAST a way to get OpenGL working in software mode? I am more and more considering 3D hardware as winmodems (they require a Windows-centric driver and we cannot do anything about that. Any Linux driver must be considered temporary.), but at least, we should be able to work around that with a good CPU...
I suspected the kernel to be the cause of my trouble so I decided to try recompiling a vanilla 2.6.15.6 kernel. This worked and the kernel booted, but I still could not compile the NVIDIA module. With the patch, the module can compile and load, but the Xorg driver does not execute with Xorg.
So the problem is not only the kernel but also Xorg. I discovered that the 2.6.15 kernel of FC5 is an hybrid of 2.6.15 and 2.6.16 kernels, like Red Hat 9 had an hybrid of 2.4 and 2.6 kernels. This was a pain for third party modules (e.g., the GATOS km module) and I fair to never be able of compiling the NVIDIA driver under Fedora Core 5.
But it seems that other patches in Xorg or even the C library prevent me from running the Xorg driver. I could test with Xorg 6.8 to verify that, but I cannot figure out any non-destructive ways to do it.
With such an unstable software environment, the only solutions are standardized 3D hardware interfaces (which is not likely to happen for years) or drivers integrated into the kernel and Xorg. I thought NVIDIA was the best choice of graphic cards for Linux because of their driver, but it seems I was wrong. The best option would be a card whose driver is integrated into Xorg. Otherwise, like my old ATI All-In-Wonder 128 Pro, it will work perfectly for the first months and afterwards it would start flawing! Is Xorg only supporting old graphic cards? If so, how can I plug such an oldy in a PCI Express slot? And which card must I choose to have 2D and some 3D acceleration?

jhetrick62 · #2 25th March 2006, 09:15 PM

Take a look at the Nvidia install thread on the first page of the forum today, it should help you. Author is FireWing. I believe there is some kind of limititation in this kernel about working with binaries and it will be fixed in the next kernel. If not, that applies to x64. Just something that I read but these guys seem to have a work-around that I will use next week when my new board arrives!

Jeff

Eric Buist · #3 25th March 2006, 10:50 PM

Thank you for this suggestion. I searched for NVIDIA on the forum and found a thread about that. The proposed procedure consists of updating to 2.6.16 kernel and trying again to install the driver. I did that, but I used the NVIDIA self-extracting file rather than the RPMs. It did not work, even though the RPMs are made from the NVIDIA sfx driver. I had to apply the patch to compile the kernel module which loaded successfully, but Xorg refused to start. I suppose this is a second issue which is caused by x86_64 and this is a no-go. I cannot figure out if this is caused by NVIDIA, Xorg, the Fedora kernel or a combination of all that factors.
So I used the only solution that I know will work: reboot to Fedora Core 4 which I kept on my disk. Maybe this will work in some months, but this is really annoying.
One solution to have 3D in FC5 would unfortunately be to try with an ATI card since Xorg integrates some DRI driver for that. But I might finally still be stuck to install a closed-source driver, and the NVIDIA driver is better than ATI's. Moreover, I don't want to start playing back and forth with graphic boards, because that will get me mad and I will screw something up.

Clunixchit · #4 26th March 2006, 12:04 AM

You can give a try to
http://clunixchit.blogspot.com/2006/...a-drivers.html

Eric Buist · #5 26th March 2006, 01:49 AM

I got it! It was a real puzzle, but I got the solution.
First, I had to upgrade to 2.6.16 kernel. The simplest way I found is to download the kernel from http://people.redhat.com/davej/kernels/Fedora/FC5. For a invertible modification, it is important to use rpm -ivh to install the new kernel; rpm -Uvh will update the kernel and thus remove the current kernel. This will be harder to roll back in case of problems.
Second, I used the NVIDIA driver version 8178, but its kernel module does not compile out of the box. I followed instructions on http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=62021 to patch the NVIDIA driver, which has turned the module compilable. I could then proceed with the driver installation normally.
NVIDIA driver patching got nvidia.ko compiled while the kernel update allowed me to load nvidia.ko into memory. But this is only half of the process.
The second piece of this puzzle is Xorg. X.org or Fedora moved files away so the NVIDIA driver put the files at the wrong place. To fix that, I had to move the files in /usr/X11R6/lib64 elsewhere on the filesystem. To summerize, verything in /usr/X11R6/lib64 goes right into /usr/lib64/xorg. But this is important not to copy the files blindly, because otherwise, it will be impossible to roll back in case of problems, at least without reinstalling Xorg. The most important thing to remember is to backup /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/extensions/libglx.so, because it will be overridden by the NVIDIA's version.
After this rearrangement, which I performed from Fedora Core 4, I tried to reboot into Fedora Core 5 and a miracle happened: Xorg started! I now have glxgears working! But I hope NVIDIA will correct their drivers soon, because I admit this is a real problem and this patching and file moving is error-prone.
Because of the complexity of my solution, I will not rename this thread to mark it as Solved. Moreover, the driver is not designed for Xorg 7.0 so it may lock up or malfunction. To summarize, this is still an open problem.

jhetrick62 · #6 26th March 2006, 05:09 AM

Thanks so much for the solution! As I indicated, I will need this myself next week as I have a new MB arriving w/ an Nvidia chipset.

Jeff

Eric Buist · #7 26th March 2006, 04:06 PM

This will solve only one subproblem, unfortunately. The NVIDIA chipset includes a network card, a SATA controller, etc. Actually, a system can have a NVIDIA chipset with a non-NVIDIA graphic board.
My solution will not make your SATA hard drive work if the sata_nv module does not cooperate.

jhetrick62 · #8 26th March 2006, 05:23 PM

Yes, I realize that, but each problem down leaves 1 less! I know that ahead of time I may need the nic driver and sound driver which I have downloaded from NV already. Some of the chipsets are readily recognized like the Nvidia4, but mine is a 410 and I'm not sure about that falls under the general (4) heading or not.

Jeff

Eric Buist · #9 14th April 2006, 10:37 PM

I just tried the new 8756 NVIDIA driver, and it has exactly the same problem as the 8178 version. It seems that Fedora has moved the files for Xorg, and the driver places its files at the wrong place. If the problem was caused by Xorg, I hope NVIDIA would have patched its driver. This is really a bad thing that Red Hat/Fedora complicates the use of proprietary technologies. They did the same thing with MP3 and NTFS, but unfortunately, this is impossible to get rid of them completely. But I like Fedora Core anyway, because, in contrast with Mandriva, the x86_64 DVD is downloadable.
So the actual way to make the NVIDIA driver work is:
1. Yum update to get a 2.6.16 kernel. Reboot to boot the new kernel, if using a 2.6.15 kernel before.
2. Download and install the NVIDIA driver.
3. Move up the NVIDIA files as indicated in my previous post.
The driver update has to be repeated every time a new kernel is released, or when updates on Xorg are performed. For NVIDIA driver updates, one needs to redo the step 3 (moving files).

Eric Buist · #10 15th April 2006, 04:17 PM

A much better and simpler solution for installing this driver is to set up a link to the Livna repository and to use yum install kmod-nvidia xorg-x11-drv-nvidia xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-devel xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs-32bit. This is also cleaner, because the driver does not get messed up when xorg-x11-server is updated. The only problem is that you may have to wait some days after a new kernel is released to get a new version of kmod-nvidia.

Eric Buist · #11 6th May 2006, 04:01 PM

In fact, the latter problem is occuring on every kernel update made by Fedora. This is an extremely bad design decision to put the NVIDIA module (and the NTFS module) out of the core repository, because this complicates the life of newbies installing FC5 for the first time. For example, if someone installs the distro today, and performs a yum update, he will get new newest kernel with no matching kmod-nvidia and kmod-ntfs modules! The person will then try to install the NVIDIA binary driver (from nvidia.com) and this won't work too. This would be much better if the NVIDIA binary driver could install without file moving, or at least if there was a script to recompile automatically the nvidia.ko module on every kernel update.