Proprietary Nvida Fixes Found Don't Seem To Work For Me

[zenarcher]

Re: Proprietary Nvida Fixes Found Don't Seem To Work For Me

Well, I didn't want to just "rant," dibi. I was just trying to look at the practical aspect of it. A couple of years ago, Mandriva went through some bouts of messing up when they had a kernel update which was really frustrating. Seemed they always "forgot" some package when messed up the whole deal. Then, a long time issue with some of the HP printers and the setup for them.

I don't use the DVI connection on the monitor, dibi. I use the VGA, as my KVM switch doesn't have a DVI connector on it...only VGA. I've looked at some of the DVI KVM switches, but they are pretty expensive yet, so I've held off on that.

I'm inclined to agree that it's something with the monitor being put to sleep right away, as the system appears to continue running. As I say, I did an identical install the other day on a system with a GeForce 6xxx series card and LCD display and it worked just fine, so I think it's something with the GeForce 8xxx series specifically. I have three of those cards here on systems in the house, so I'm sort of stuck with them right now.

I've recently had great success with Debian Squeeze. I tried three or four times in the past to install it with everything I wanted and just couldn't seem to get it right. Then, a couple of months ago, I tried again after more reading and it just worked! Did some more installs to see that it wasn't just dumb luck and all has been well. I agree about the latest KDE packages appearing in Kubuntu, which is why I've been trying. Just got some updates in Squeeze which fixed some minor annoyances in KDE yesterday. Nice. And some KDE 4.5.2 packages. Not many, but a few.

I would like to try Sid one of these days, but I had a hard time getting my sources list right for Squeeze. I have that now and just copy it over to a new system. Haven't found a good one yet for Sid. I tried using this, but it didn't seem to work quite right for me.....

http://debgen.simplylinux.ch/

If I could get a good sources list, I probably would switch Squeeze over in my test machine.

As for the Nvidia setup in Squeeze, I've been using this which really seems to work easily and also not a big deal when you have a kernel update. Not much more difficult than jockey to me. I've just been using "The Debian Way," which hasn't given me trouble yet.....

http://www.linuxadventures.net/installsetup/nvidia.html

Anyways, I'll keep checking back and watching for progress with this Nvidia issue and hope it gets resolved soon. And, I'll probably keep growling about the Nouveau driver insisting on taking over everything. :-X

If you know of a good sources list for Sid....or if I could post my one I'm using for Squeeze, maybe you could show me how to change it over to Sid, if it wouldn't be too much trouble for you.

Thanks again,
zenarcher

[dibl]

Re: Proprietary Nvida Fixes Found Don't Seem To Work For Me

More examples of problems with 8xxx-series Nvidia cards trying to run 10.10: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1600063

It's hard to see how a single series of GPUs could be screwed up like this -- I can't think of a previous comparable situation. Weird!

For Debian Sid, I run aptosid. This isn't the place to advertise for another distro, so I'll just suggest that you check out the Live CD and draw your own conclusions. They have a repo for their special packages, and mirrors outside of Europe. I'll be happy to PM you my source lists if you want to try an installation. Their preferred mode of support is via IRC, and their forum is pretty tightly moderated -- no chatting such as this is permitted. You do need to keep an eye on the "Upgrade Warnings" subforum -- I failed to do that one day last year and totally trashed my system when a badly-packaged ia32-libs package snuck into the Debian Sid repo. But that's pretty unusual in my 3-years experience.

[zenarcher]

Re: Proprietary Nvida Fixes Found Don't Seem To Work For Me

Well, I'm sure happy to see that it's not just me, dibi. I was beginning to wonder, as I saw nothing else in the way of this issue. I'm a little familiar with Aptosid. I even burned a disk for it and did an install awhile back playing with it. Also registered on the forum and did see the Warnings. Good idea to watch, as you said.

Yes, if you would PM your sources list, I would appreciate it. I may give it a go in my test system. Appreciate that and thanks again!

Cheers,
zenarcher

[doctordruidphd]

Re: Proprietary Nvida Fixes Found Don't Seem To Work For Me

I know I'm jumping in this thread late in the game, pardon the incursion, but a couple of things caught my attention, so I thought I'd make mention.

I don't use the DVI connection on the monitor, dibi. I use the VGA, as my KVM switch doesn't have a DVI connector on it...only VGA. I've looked at some of the DVI KVM switches, but they are pretty expensive yet, so I've held off on that.

I have heard there are problems with kvm switches. Is it possible to hook your keyboard, monitor, etc up directly and bypass the switch, for testing purposes?

Another thing to try: From the grub boot menu, highlight the item you want to boot, hit e to edit it, and remove all of the video commands -- splash, quiet, vga=, all of that stuff. Then hit CTRL-X to boot. My nvidia card only works with grub in framebuffer mode (the "vga=" method), and any attempt to run plymouth (the boot splash screen) just crashes the system.

Also make sure that you have completely gotten rid of nouveau, which nowadays comes packaged with the kernel. The nvidia driver will not load if it sees the nouveau kernel module, or at least is not supposed to. I didn't notice if you have done this yet, but:

1. In your /etc/modprobe.d directory, create a blacklist-nouveau.conf file, with the following line in it:

blacklist nouveau

2. If you are using the proprietary nvidia drvier ("the nvidia way"), then make sure you have removed all traces of the nvidia-current driver.
locate nvidia-current.ko
If that command returns anything in the /lib/modules/2.6.35-22-generic directory, you have not removed that driver. Do it manually, with 'sudo rm whatever-locate-returned.
If you are using the nvidia-current driver from the x-swat ppa (which I am doing on maverick), then likewise you need to make sure that neither nvidia.ko or nouveau.ko are present.

3. Run sudo update-initramfs -u
This must be done, or the nouveau driver will remain, even if you have blacklisted and manually removed it.

Hope this is of some help. I had real trouble with Maverick, until I discovered that nouveau is now packaged in the kernel, and will choke the proprietary AND x-swat drivers, unless you take special steps to prevent it from doing so.

Another thought: can you get to the CTRL-ALT-F1 console after the screen goes blank? If so, it might be an X or plasma crash as opposed to the video driver.

[zenarcher]

Re: Proprietary Nvida Fixes Found Don't Seem To Work For Me

I know I'm jumping in this thread late in the game, pardon the incursion, but a couple of things caught my attention, so I thought I'd make mention.

I don't use the DVI connection on the monitor, dibi. I use the VGA, as my KVM switch doesn't have a DVI connector on it...only VGA. I've looked at some of the DVI KVM switches, but they are pretty expensive yet, so I've held off on that.

I have heard there are problems with kvm switches. Is it possible to hook your keyboard, monitor, etc up directly and bypass the switch, for testing purposes?

Another thing to try: From the grub boot menu, highlight the item you want to boot, hit e to edit it, and remove all of the video commands -- splash, quiet, vga=, all of that stuff. Then hit CTRL-X to boot. My nvidia card only works with grub in framebuffer mode (the "vga=" method), and any attempt to run plymouth (the boot splash screen) just crashes the system.

Also make sure that you have completely gotten rid of nouveau, which nowadays comes packaged with the kernel. The nvidia driver will not load if it sees the nouveau kernel module, or at least is not supposed to. I didn't notice if you have done this yet, but:

1. In your /etc/modprobe.d directory, create a blacklist-nouveau.conf file, with the following line in it:

blacklist nouveau

2. If you are using the proprietary nvidia drvier ("the nvidia way"), then make sure you have removed all traces of the nvidia-current driver.
locate nvidia-current.ko
If that command returns anything in the /lib/modules/2.6.35-22-generic directory, you have not removed that driver. Do it manually, with 'sudo rm whatever-locate-returned.
If you are using the nvidia-current driver from the x-swat ppa (which I am doing on maverick), then likewise you need to make sure that neither nvidia.ko or nouveau.ko are present.

3. Run sudo update-initramfs -u
This must be done, or the nouveau driver will remain, even if you have blacklisted and manually removed it.

Hope this is of some help. I had real trouble with Maverick, until I discovered that nouveau is now packaged in the kernel, and will choke the proprietary AND x-swat drivers, unless you take special steps to prevent it from doing so.

Another thought: can you get to the CTRL-ALT-F1 console after the screen goes blank? If so, it might be an X or plasma crash as opposed to the video driver.

Thanks much for the suggestions here. Right now, I've switched my systems back over to Debian Squeeze so I have working computers, but I have copied your post and saved it so I can give this a try when I get time. I had not thought about the KVM switch situation, as I have 4 computers here...two each hooked up through a KVM switch....and the other two hooked up through a second KVM switch. I could probably move components around enough to get one hooked up directly to give that a try.

As you mention about the Nouveau driver overriding everything else....that has become my biggest objection to the entire situation. I am especially happy to have your instructions on dealing with it, as none of the other instructions I've found have been real clear....yours are....and that Nouveau driver has been driving me crazy for the past couple of releases. I really don't understand the thinking when it comes to imposing a crippled free driver on we Nvidia users. Making it so difficult to remove it. Especially when with it, there is no 3D and the graphic response is so slow when using it that you have nothing but frustration. I would say that's my real "rant."

Whatever the problem is, it only appeared in this final release. Alpha 1 through the Release Candidate were working just perfectly here with the same systems. By the way, CTRL-ALT-F1 was something I had tried, but to no avail. The monitor is sound asleep and I can get no response out of it with anything. I can see that the system itself continues to load, even though the monitor is asleep, by watching the hard drive activity light on the computer.

Thanks again for the suggestions and when I get a chance, I'm sure going to give them a try.

Regards,
zenarcher

[zenarcher]

Re: Proprietary Nvida Fixes Found Don't Seem To Work For Me

Well, it appears that I'm not alone with the Nvidia 8xxx series video cards and proprietary Nvidia driver. I don't think my issue is specifically my KVM switch, which is also USB as in the article, as my keyboard and mouse function properly. However, using the KVM switch, I have no DVI port on it, so can't move my video over from VGA to DVI. And this article confirms my finding that all was well until the final release of 10.10.

http://linuxtrends.com/an-ubuntu-10-.../#comment-4550

Cheers,
zenarcher

[doctordruidphd]

Re: Proprietary Nvida Fixes Found Don't Seem To Work For Me

I really don't understand the thinking when it comes to imposing a crippled free driver on we Nvidia users. Making it so difficult to remove it. Especially when with it, there is no 3D and the graphic response is so slow when using it that you have nothing but frustration. I would say that's my real "rant."

I hesitate to get into this, so I will just make one point, and then drop it. This is not the first time this kind of issue has come up -- ever hear of Pulseaudio? It appears that, for the standard Ubuntu (gnome) desktop, for what the developers have envisioned as standard hardware, and for the software included on the distribution disk, pulse and nouveau work just fine. They are aiming for a distribution that is plug-and-play, and that necessitates making some choices about standards. But if you want to do more than that, or if your setup is not what it has been assumed to be, there will be problems. Pulse has been, and still is for many, a real nightmare, and nouveau is following in its tracks. When nouveau is fully developed, it may in fact be superior to the proprietary drvier, as the plan is to incorporate Gallium3d, which should make it much easier to get D3D applications like games to work. But it's not production quality yet, so it should have been left as an option. And pulse, well, blessed pulseaudio -- enough said.

Regarding the kvm switch, I have seen postings about problems getting monitors to detect properly through the switch. Just thought if you could temporarily bypass it, it would remove one more variable.

[zenarcher]

Re: Proprietary Nvida Fixes Found Don't Seem To Work For Me

I really don't understand the thinking when it comes to imposing a crippled free driver on we Nvidia users. Making it so difficult to remove it. Especially when with it, there is no 3D and the graphic response is so slow when using it that you have nothing but frustration. I would say that's my real "rant."

I hesitate to get into this, so I will just make one point, and then drop it. This is not the first time this kind of issue has come up -- ever hear of Pulseaudio? It appears that, for the standard Ubuntu (gnome) desktop, for what the developers have envisioned as standard hardware, and for the software included on the distribution disk, pulse and nouveau work just fine. They are aiming for a distribution that is plug-and-play, and that necessitates making some choices about standards. But if you want to do more than that, or if your setup is not what it has been assumed to be, there will be problems. Pulse has been, and still is for many, a real nightmare, and nouveau is following in its tracks. When nouveau is fully developed, it may in fact be superior to the proprietary drvier, as the plan is to incorporate Gallium3d, which should make it much easier to get D3D applications like games to work. But it's not production quality yet, so it should have been left as an option. And pulse, well, blessed pulseaudio -- enough said.

Regarding the kvm switch, I have seen postings about problems getting monitors to detect properly through the switch. Just thought if you could temporarily bypass it, it would remove one more variable.

Well, just for the record, I've waited for Natty, Alpha 1 before trying Kubuntu again. Same result as with Maverick Final. But, just to clear up the KVM switch question, I pulled one of the computers out of my system and hooked it up to a keyboard, mouse and monitor, all on it's own. No KVM switch. I get exactly the same result as I got with the KVM switch. Sleeping monitor.

Just to isolate further, I removed my Nvidia 8xxx video card, since this computer I'm testing with has onboard video. The onboard video is an Nvidia GeForce 6150SE graphics chip. I then booted up the system and sure enough, everything worked just fine with the Nvidia proprietary driver.

I then did another fresh install, using only the onboard graphics. I then installed the proprietary Nvidia driver and rebooted. Black screen. Went to Recovery Mode and ran sudo grub-mkconfig && sudo update-grub. Booted again and the Nvidia proprietary driver was working fine with the onboard graphics chip. Reinstalled the Nvidia 8xxx card and back to a sleeping monitor. Checking xorg.conf, the file is identical with the working xorg.conf file in my Debian Squeeze system, where the Nvidia 8xxx card works just as it should.

So, whatever it is, it has nothing to do with the KVM switch nor the xorg.conf, so far as I can tell. It's simply a matter that if I use an Nvidia FX5200 video card or the onboard Nvidia 6150, the system works fine. But, install an Nvidia 8xxx card and following the BIOS splash screen, all I get is a sleeping monitor....whether I'm using my regular 21 inch LCD monitor or my 19 inch LCD test monitor.

Cheers,
zenarcher

[Snowhog]

Re: Proprietary Nvida Fixes Found Don't Seem To Work For Me

So, whatever it is, it has nothing to do with the KVM switch nor the xorg.conf, so far as I can tell. It's simply a matter that if I use an Nvidia FX5200 video card or the onboard Nvidia 6150, the system works fine. But, install an Nvidia 8xxx card and following the BIOS splash screen, all I get is a sleeping monitor....whether I'm using my regular 21 inch LCD monitor or my 19 inch LCD test monitor.

Cheers,
zenarcher

Might it simply be, that you didn't disable the onboard nVidia chip when you installed the nVidia card? Unless you are/were running dual-head video configuration, having two 'active' video controllers can/does create problems.

[Detonate]

Re: Proprietary Nvida Fixes Found Don't Seem To Work For Me

We've had several threads about 8xxx cards here and on other forums. Here is one recent thread. Sorry, no solution reached there either.

http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3114384.0

[zenarcher]

Re: Proprietary Nvida Fixes Found Don't Seem To Work For Me

Thanks, Detonate. I've been trying to resolve this issue on the Ubuntu forum, as well and it seems people there didn't realize that a lot of people with the 8xxx series cards are having major issues. In fact, several people on the Ubuntu forum say their systems are working fine with the 8xxx series. But, I'm with you. I've read blogs and everything else where others are experiencing this. It seems that the two alternatives are to either buy 3 replacement video cards or use Debian Squeeze. I'd prefer to stay with Kubuntu, although I hate to have to put out that much money on video cards. *LOL* That whacks a Social Security retirement budget!

Thanks again for the help and comments. Could you tell me if this issue exists with the Nvidia 9xxx series cards, as well? Have you noted people with problems there, too?

Just out of curiosity, could anyone tell me if this problem exists with the Nvidia GeForce GT210 video card, as well? I'm doing some looking around at replacement video cards, which are reasonably affordable. Due to my hardware configuration in two of my machines, I have to stay with a low profile card, which is not quite as inexpensive as the full size cards. I've found some fairly reasonable GeForce GT210 cards, but don't want to trade one problem for another. Any info on these and Kubuntu would be most appreciated.

Regards,
zenarcher

[Detonate]

Re: Proprietary Nvida Fixes Found Don't Seem To Work For Me

I'm using a GeForce 9500 GT and it works fine with the latest driver from the xswat repository. This card is inexpensive and can be had for a reasonable price for those on a Social Security retirement budget. That includes me. Note that I am not a gamer. But it works with everything I have used. Glxgears shows over 5000 fps. Nvidia-settings shows 32 CUDA cores.

[ubersoft]

Re: Proprietary Nvida Fixes Found Don't Seem To Work For Me

So in Lucid I actually had to add the nouveau driver to my blacklist before I could successfully install the proprietary drivers. Is that no longer a requirement?

[Detonate]

Re: Proprietary Nvida Fixes Found Don't Seem To Work For Me

I did not have to do that. Maybe the install from xswat did it for me. I don't know.

[ubersoft]

Re: Proprietary Nvida Fixes Found Don't Seem To Work For Me

It might be something for zenarcher to try. The problem zen is having sounds very similar to the problem I was having in Lucid before I did that. After I did that, it worked fine.