nvidia/Xorg confusion.........

[fatbloke]

Ok, so my aunt (in her early 80's) dual boots windies and Kubuntu

She read some stuff about 8.10/KDE 4 etc and asked me to upgrade it for her.

Now, using a "factory supplied" disc (courtesy of "shipit") it seems to install fine, but by the time that we've done the updates it seems to just refuse to start the X server with a "no screens found" error.

It doesn't seem to matter whether we try the 173 or 177 driver, it just won't start.

The option of enabling "restricted drivers" for the system doesn't want to download the driver. If I just select all the nvidia bits via synaptic it sometimes just sticks during the boot up freezing the system.

If I then look at the xorg.conf to see if it's trying to use the nvidia driver, it's really strange as the file seems to be full of notes but when you get down to the business sections it just seems to say stuff like

Device "configured device

" and

Monitor "configured monitor"

. It's as if a whole swathe of stuff hasn't been included in the xorg.conf

If I look at my own xorg.conf at home there's a mountain of entries (some I understand and some not) but they're there, whereas on my aunts system they not - it's as if they've moved half of the config info to other files - of course it might be my lack of technical ability to understand WTF's actually going on.

Is it just the case of doing a re-install, then using a package manager - removing all entries to nvidia with that and then downloading the kernel headers for the latest kernel and getting newest driver from the nvidia site and manually installing it ?

I'm really confused about this as I've not had such problems before so any guidance would be brilliant.

regards

fatbloke

[Zibrah3ed]

Re: nvidia/Xorg confusion.........

Ok this may be a dumb question but does grandma have 2 nvidia cards setup for sli? This sounds like the problems I had when upgrading to the 177 driver. I had to add the following to /etc/X11/xorg.conf to get my computer back out of the commandline:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Configured Video Device"
Driver "nvidia"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "VideoCard0"
Driver "nvidia"
VendorName "Nvidia"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
Screen 0
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Monitor "Configured Monitor"
Device "Configured Video Device"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "VideoCard0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
EndSection

[mudlark]

Re: nvidia/Xorg confusion.........

Ok, so my aunt (in her early 80's) dual boots windies and Kubuntu

She read some stuff about 8.10/KDE 4 etc and asked me to upgrade it for her.

Now, using a "factory supplied" disc (courtesy of "shipit") it seems to install fine, but by the time that we've done the updates it seems to just refuse to start the X server with a "no screens found" error.

It doesn't seem to matter whether we try the 173 or 177 driver, it just won't start.

The option of enabling "restricted drivers" for the system doesn't want to download the driver. If I just select all the nvidia bits via synaptic it sometimes just sticks during the boot up freezing the system.

If I then look at the xorg.conf to see if it's trying to use the nvidia driver, it's really strange as the file seems to be full of notes but when you get down to the business sections it just seems to say stuff like

Device "configured device

" and

Monitor "configured monitor"

. It's as if a whole swathe of stuff hasn't been included in the xorg.conf

If I look at my own xorg.conf at home there's a mountain of entries (some I understand and some not) but they're there, whereas on my aunts system they not - it's as if they've moved half of the config info to other files - of course it might be my lack of technical ability to understand WTF's actually going on.

Is it just the case of doing a re-install, then using a package manager - removing all entries to nvidia with that and then downloading the kernel headers for the latest kernel and getting newest driver from the nvidia site and manually installing it ?

I'm really confused about this as I've not had such problems before so any guidance would be brilliant.

regards

fatbloke

the latest version of kubuntu *.10 that i am uing there is a difernt way of running the Xserver and the Xorg.conf seems to have been simplified a great deal. I had the no screens issue as well as others. I managed to sort it by usin synaptic to remove the older nvidia drivers and starting again.

[Teunis]

Re: nvidia/Xorg confusion.........

You might be best of to install envyng for quick changing between drivers.
Because it has a command line mode that is fairly fool proof for just in case you can only log in via the recovery mode.

As already mentioned the xorg.conf file in 8.10 is hugely simplified but you can still declare a video driver in it.
Below is part of the content of mine:

Section "Module"
	Load	"glx"
	Disable	"dri2"
EndSection

Section "Device"
	Identifier	"Configured Video Device"
	Driver	"nvidia"
EndSection

In case of start up problems you can change "nvidia" to "vesa", a driver that nearly always works.

[The Liquidator]

Re: nvidia/Xorg confusion.........

Sorry I can't really offer any help here but must express my admiration for your aunt