GeForce in FC5 PROBLEM

[Justbill]

I purchased a GeForce FX 5200 this evening to put in my machine. Figured, how tough can it be, WRONG! I can't even get FC5 to boot into a shell with the card in. So can somebody tell me, if I can't install (physically) the card, in the pci slot, because my computer won't boot, how am I supposed to run the nvidia 8178 installer?

First my soundblaster wouldn't work, and I had to give up on that, and go back to onboard sound, and now the GeForce, and nvidia driver are a problem! So its back to onboard graphics. This was easy in Ubuntu 5.10!

Was FC5 really ready for release? Seems to have alot of hardware issues! I find myself having to settle for second best, with the hardware problems! I think maybe it needed to stay in the test 3 version a little longer!

Justbill

[tashirosgt]

Does the boot get as far as the brief appearence of the grub screen? If so, hit the space bar and read the directions about editing the lines of the boot configuration. At the end of the line about vmlinuz, add the option: lowres
That might get you a primitive display.

If you can't see the grub screen, you will probably have to use your old card so you can see to install the right driver.

[Justbill]

I just read this:

"The kernel that ships with the Fedora Core 5 release iso images is not compatible with third party 3D graphics acceleration drivers. You should immediately update your kernel upon installation to get a newer kernel that is compatible. ("yum -y update" as root.) At the moment a compatible kernel is not available via yum"

So I'm wondering if anything will work until a new kernel is available? Kinda gets back to what I said, was this really ready for final release!

Justbill

[tashirosgt]

I suggest you leave you system in its present unusable state as a historical monument to this premature debut.

[Justbill]

Good Idea! :-)

Justbill

[Segovia]

I'm also miffed by this video card situation. Yes, sure, I can live without 3D for a few days or even a week or two, based on my knowledge that this is a dev distro and some things will be broken from time to time. ( <--- This sentence is a disclaimer to try to ward off the countless retards who will be frothing at the mouth to "inform" me that this is a bleeding edge distro. )

However, the Mesa drivers are unable to control the fan speed on my card (7800GT). It's running full blast 24/7 and it's quite loud and *extremely* annoying. This I can't live with.

[lvanek]

I have a GeForce 6600 AGP card & found that it works with the stock "nv" driver (edit xorg.conf) perhaps the 5200 will as well.

Im waiting for new kernel & livna repo nvidia drivers

[jmtdstoc]

I have a similar situation Ivanek: a nvidia 6600GT AGP card that FC5 defined to use the "VESA" driver. I had to edit xorg.conf and change it to "nv".
This is quite strange since FC4 automatically configured the card with the "nv" driver!!?? Why does FC5 use a slower driver??
We have to wait for a new kernel ;).

[Antifreeze]

Hey guys, seems like even kernel upgrades don't solve this problem.

I have been through 4 new kernels, and I have as yet been able to get the nvidia drivers to compile properly. Right now, I'm running 2.6.16-1.2080_FC5. I have tried the following kernels. The closest I've gotten to success was under 74, where the kernel module compiled and installed, but Xorg refused to start with the nvidia drivers installed.

2.6.15-1.2054
2.6.16-1.2069
2.6.16-1.2074
2.6.16-1.2075
2.6.16-1.2080

Even with all the kernels above, I have been unable to successfully get the nvidia drivers from nvidia's website to install. The installer fails the compile about half way through. (See attached compile log for details)

I have also had similar issues compiling other drivers, (AKA kernel modules) either it's an incompatibility with the new gcc 4 compiler, or they've done something hinky with the kernel it's self.

[Justbill]

What was the previous gcc compiler.......3.2 or 3.4, something like that, I wonder if it would work with that?

Justbill

[jhetrick62]

Are you running x64 arch? If so, did you run the patch for the Nvidia compiler? It's my understanding that the Nvidia will not install properly without a patch.

Jeff

[Justbill]

No, here are my specs.

Compaq Presario SR1426NX
2.93Ghz Pentium 4
1.5GB PC2-3200 DDR2 SDRAM
160GB 7200RPM Serial ATA hard drive

my current kernel is 2.6.15-1.2054_FC5 i686

I tried to run the patch, and had problems. I am going to give it a whirl again tonight.

Bill

[jhetrick62]

Have you looked at this thread? http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-fedora-fc5.html#nvidia

This guy is usually pretty good.
Jeff

[weinerdogus]

Justbill
I have the Nvidia fx 5200 card in my box and it was picked up fine during the install and works great. This may be a silly question, but have you disabled your onboard video and set your bios to use the pci device?
If yes, do you maybe have the pci card in a pci-e slot?
regards

[Seve]

Hey guys, seems like even kernel upgrades don't solve this problem.

I have been through 4 new kernels, and I have as yet been able to get the nvidia drivers to compile properly. Right now, I'm running 2.6.16-1.2080_FC5. I have tried the following kernels. The closest I've gotten to success was under 74, where the kernel module compiled and installed, but Xorg refused to start with the nvidia drivers installed.

2.6.15-1.2054
2.6.16-1.2069
2.6.16-1.2074
2.6.16-1.2075
2.6.16-1.2080

Even with all the kernels above, I have been unable to successfully get the nvidia drivers from nvidia's website to install. The installer fails the compile about half way through. (See attached compile log for details)

I have also had similar issues compiling other drivers, (AKA kernel modules) either it's an incompatibility with the new gcc 4 compiler, or they've done something hinky with the kernel it's self.
Hi:
Not quite sure if this helps or not but, I have had no problem compiling the 8178 drivers against any of the .16 kernels both 32 and 64 bit? Here is an output of my gcc etc.
$ uname -r
2.6.16-1.2080_FC5smp
$ rpm -aq | grep gcc
gcc-gfortran-4.1.0-3
compat-gcc-32-3.2.3-55.fc5
gcc-gnat-4.1.0-3
gcc-objc-4.1.0-3
gcc-c++-4.1.0-3
libgcc-4.1.0-3
gcc-java-4.1.0-3
compat-libgcc-296-2.96-135
compat-gcc-32-c++-3.2.3-55.fc5
gcc-4.1.0-3
compat-gcc-32-g77-3.2.3-55.fc5
gcc-objc++-4.1.0-3
$rpm -aq | grep kernel
kernel-smp-devel-2.6.16-1.2078_FC5
kernel-smp-2.6.16-1.2080_FC5
kernel-smp-devel-2.6.16-1.2080_FC5
kernel-devel-2.6.16-1.2080_FC5
kernel-devel-2.6.16-1.2078_FC5
kernel-smp-2.6.16-1.2078_FC5
$ rpm -aq | grep binutils
binutils-2.16.91.0.6-4
$ rpm -aq | grep sharutils
sharutils-4.6.1-1.2
$ glxgears
98949 frames in 5.0 seconds = 19789.697 FPS
105012 frames in 5.0 seconds = 21002.370 FPS
104985 frames in 5.0 seconds = 20996.929 FPS
104960 frames in 5.0 seconds = 20991.857 FPS
104928 frames in 5.0 seconds = 20985.491 FPS
104827 frames in 5.0 seconds = 20965.224 FPS

All of the 8178 drivers were patched from here:http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=62021

And, I used Firewing1's howto for FC5 32 bit: http://forum.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=99285&page=1&pp=15
and used the normal method from Nvidia's download for my x86_64 installation.

hth
Seve

[Justbill]

"Have you looked at this thread? http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/m...fc5.html#nvidia"

yes I have looked at that, and had some trouble with it, but will try again tonight. Thanks for the link though!

"I have the Nvidia fx 5200 card in my box and it was picked up fine during the install and works great. This may be a silly question, but have you disabled your onboard video and set your bios to use the pci device?
If yes, do you maybe have the pci card in a pci-e slot?'

The only option I have found for that is the place where you select "pci" or "onboard", is there another place to disable the onboard video? I am reasonably sure my slots are pci, and not pci-e. I put the fx5200 in the slot that my soundblaster had been in (it worked in fc4, and not in fc5) and, of course, it is pci.

Justbill

[Antifreeze]

Single 32 bit processor here.. nothing special, just a AMD Athlon +2200. ... As for the compiler I have no idea, I've got all the gcc compats avialable on yum installed. So there should be no cross compile troubles with downward compatability. But who knows..

[Antifreeze]

YAY! I managed to get the NVIDIA drivers to work..

I followed the instructions here here (http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-fedora-fc5.html) My problem was the bug in the Nvidia drivers themselves. Once patched, it installed just fine... well that and once I rebuilt the RPMs..

[Justbill]

OK, Itried to foolow the directions in the above link, and at step 2 this is the problem I have run into:

[bill@Goliath ~]$ su
Password:
[root@Goliath bill]# cd fc5-nv
[root@Goliath fc5-nv]# rpm -ivh nvidia-kmod-1.0.8178-0.lvn.3.2.6.15_1.1881_FC5.src.rpm
error: cannot create %sourcedir /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES
[root@Goliath fc5-nv]#

Soooooooo, what is causing this problem? Also, if i decide to try one of the newer kernels, how would I go about installing it?

Justbill

[jhetrick62]

I've found two pieces of information in another thread that I think may help you. First, I would upgrade off of that kernel. You can do that by following this.

** Updated ***

I've deleted what I posted earlier due to it being wrong and don't want to confuse anyone needing help.

****

For those too lazy to read the whole thread, the basic problem is that Fedora Core 5 shipped a kernel that does not allow binary only modules - an updated kernel is in the works and many 3rd party kernels exist that fix the problem until the official kernel is released. One of the more popular kernels is Dave Johnson's:

http://people.redhat.com/davej/kern...C5/RPMS.kernel/
****

Next, this guy claims that there are kernels built under the testing files that you can install along with the matching nvidia update. My problem here is that I believe that as they are under testing, they are just that. It seems the method above will still require a rebuild, but that the kernel listed there may be stable. See this post:

***
Apparently you are one of those too lazy to read the thread. There are new kernels available in fedora/updates/testing: http://download.fedora.redhat.com/p...ates/testing/5/
They have been there for almost a week!
And for these exact kernels, you find the modules in http://rpm.livna.org/fedora/testing/5/
So why are people still posting problems with building?
Apparently you are one of those too lazy to read the thread. There are new kernels available in fedora/updates/testing: http://download.fedora.redhat.com/p...ates/testing/5/
They have been there for almost a week!
And for these exact kernels, you find the modules in http://rpm.livna.org/fedora/testing/5/
So why are people still posting problems with building?
***

I knew that I had read this stuff somewhere before, I just had to go find it again. I'm not running FC5 on my box with an nvidia card, so it's not an issue for me right now, but I've been reading as I have a new nvidia based MB sitting here to install as soon as I can get off the road for work!

Goodluck,
Jeff

[Justbill]

thanks for the links Jeff, but they did not work for me: "404 page not found".
I downloaded the new kernel..........same problem!

Justbill

[jhetrick62]

Justbill, All of these have .... inside of them, you have to start with the link and back out to before the ... and then find the path. Here is the first one for you.
http://people.redhat.com/davej/kernels/Fedora/FC5/RPMS.kernel/

When I copied them, they didn't copy the actual link, but the shortened text.

Jeff

[Segovia]

With the kernel update today and the livna drivers, everything seems to be sorted... for me, anyway.