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salafiyyah
2nd September 2005, 03:58 PM
I have a fedora core 4 box with a AGP Geforce 2 GTS that apparently is no longer supported with Nvidia's driver. A couple years ago I ran a box with Mandrake 8 on it and used the Nvidia drivers fine. They were the ones that you copied two files to a certain directory and then changed your xfree86.conf file like you still do today.

My question is would it be possible, as Nvidia still has them available, to use the old Nvidia drivers on my fedora core system?

SuperNu
2nd September 2005, 11:49 PM
You should be able to use the older drivers with FC4, but I do know that with changes to the kernel, xorg, etc, older drivers may not function on a recent system. Guess you might have to upgrade your GeForce 2 card if you want to continue using Nvidia's binary drivers.

--SN

rpgcyco
3rd September 2005, 09:48 AM
Try installing the 7174 (http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_display_ia32_1.0-7174.html) drivers, as they were the last release to support the older cards.

They should have a fairly good chance compiling against the later kernels. There is only one way to find out, I suppose. :)

I have no idea why they left in the GeForce 2 MX but chopped the GTS. :(

- Rpg Cyco

corsair2056
3rd September 2005, 10:44 AM
I downloaded the livna SRPM for the 7174 version of the driver and rebuilt it for the latest kernel. It compiles and works fine.
To create the RPMs just do this
rpmbuild --rebuild --target i686 DRIVER_PACKAGE_7174.SRPM

markjensen
4th September 2005, 01:05 AM
I am in the same boat (have a less-powerful nVidia GeForce 256 DRR, though).

7174 supports it. One level more current, 7664 does not.
ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/1.0-7664/README.txt

What I do now is a litany of yum remove / update / remove / install to reduce to a non-nvidia system, update everything, remove the new nvidia (and kernel), then re-install the "nvidia-glx-1.0.7174" module again with my old kernel.

Is there any way to blacklist a specific item (or versions more current than xxxx version) in yum? I could not find anything that indicated so with a google.com/linux search.

salafiyyah
4th September 2005, 11:27 AM
I am in the same boat (have a less-powerful nVidia GeForce 256 DRR, though).

7174 supports it. One level more current, 7664 does not.
ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/1.0-7664/README.txt

What I do now is a litany of yum remove / update / remove / install to reduce to a non-nvidia system, update everything, remove the new nvidia (and kernel), then re-install the "nvidia-glx-1.0.7174" module again with my old kernel.

Is there any way to blacklist a specific item (or versions more current than xxxx version) in yum? I could not find anything that indicated so with a google.com/linux search.


Could you by chance give me some exact instructions what you did? I was able to get it further than I have before....I got the Nvidia screen and such, but as soon as X went to start up, it locked up my system. Had to use the rescue mode to save my install, but unfortunately something happened, as I got complaints about cron and some other things during start up. Tried to fix, but it looked like to me the permissions of a bunch of directories were really wierd. I would try and install software and I would get complaints, even as root, about not having authority. So, I'm reinstalling.

So, instructions from anyone would be really helpful. Should I update my kernel first and then install Nvidia or vice versa?

Thanks.

corsair2056
4th September 2005, 02:33 PM
Whatever happens keep a backup of /etc/X11/xorg.conf.
Second thing is to remove existing installlations of the nvidia driver and check xorg.conf that it loads the "nv" driver instead of the "nvidia".

Third thing, blacklist the nvidia drivers in yum. This can be done by adding the line:
exclude=kernel-module-nvidia* nvidia-glx*
to the livna repo file in /etc/yum.repos.d/ or to whichever repo you use to download the driver normally. This wiil stop showing the the 7676 driver as an update.

4th. Download the SRPM of the 7174 nvidia driver from livna.org stable repo:
wget http://rpm.livna.org/fedora/4/i386/SRPMS.lvn/nvidia-glx-1.0.7174-0.lvn.4.4.src.rpm

5th. Rebuild the driver package for the current kernel you are using with the command:
rpmbuild --rebuild --clean --target i686 nvidia-glx-1.0.7174-0.lvn.4.4.src.rpm
The rpm files will be created in /usr/source/redhat/RPMS/i686/. Off course you will need to have installed the gcc compiler and the kernel-devel package for the running kernel.

6th. Install the newly created RPM packages:
yum localinstall nvidia-glx-1.0.7174-0.lvn.4.4.i686.rpm
yum localinstall kernel-module-nvidia-2.6.12-1.1447_FC4-1.0.7174-0.lvn.4.4.i686.rpm

7th. Reboot and the driver should work properly. The livna package takes care of the changes in /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Moreover, the SRPM contains a spec file which has some useful info in the beggining about the rebuild procedure. For example you can only build the kernel-module instead of the whole package.

Hope these help.

markjensen
4th September 2005, 02:39 PM
The way I have done it (and this is a FC3 system, but should be the same for you)
yum remove nvidia-glx which removes nvidia's module and the kernel module.
yum update
yum remove kernel-2.6.xxxx to remove the newer kernel it installed (I have had trouble with newer kernels assuming newer nvidia modules and not working right)
yum install nvidia-glx-1.0.7174 to reinstall the specific 7174 module my card needs.

That is the general gist of it, anyhow. Would be nice to just force yum to limit itself to the 7174 version of nvidia's module...

vasillalov
5th September 2005, 07:34 PM
5th. Rebuild the driver package for the current kernel you are using with the command:
rpmbuild --rebuild --clean --target i686 nvidia-glx-1.0.7174-0.lvn.4.4.src.rpm

This step does not work for me... Here is the ouput:

error: Failed build dependencies:
kernel-devel-i686 = 2.6.12-1.1447_FC4 is needed by nvidia-glx-1.0.7174-0.lvn.4.4.i686


However, I DO have the correct kernel-devel package because rpm -qa | grep kernel produces:

kernel-2.6.12-1.1447_FC4
kernel-devel-2.6.12-1.1447_FC4

What is going on here...

jim
5th September 2005, 07:44 PM
kernel-devel-i686 = 2.6.12-1.1447_FC4

you specified a target arch e.g. i686 the kernel-devel you have is based on i386

try
rpmbuild --rebuild --clean nvidia-glx-1.0.7174-0.lvn.4.4.src.rpm

vasillalov
5th September 2005, 07:50 PM
kernel-devel-i686 = 2.6.12-1.1447_FC4

you specified a target arch e.g. i686 the kernel-devel you have is based on i386

try


I just tried this and it did not work. Here is the output:

error: Failed build dependencies:
kernel-devel-i386 = 2.6.12-1.1447_FC4 is needed by nvidia-glx-1.0.7174-0.lvn.4.4.i386

Can anyone post a link with an actual rpm compiled...

jim
5th September 2005, 08:01 PM
what was the rpmbuild command you tried...
post all the output from the terminal

vasillalov
5th September 2005, 08:06 PM
Alright. Here it is:

[root@indigo nvidia]# rpmbuild --rebuild --clean nvidia-glx-1.0.7174-0.lvn.4.4.src.rpm
Installing nvidia-glx-1.0.7174-0.lvn.4.4.src.rpm
warning: InstallSourcePackage: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID a109b1ec
warning: user machbuild does not exist - using root
warning: group machbuild does not exist - using root
warning: user machbuild does not exist - using root
warning: group machbuild does not exist - using root
warning: user machbuild does not exist - using root
warning: group machbuild does not exist - using root
warning: user machbuild does not exist - using root
warning: group machbuild does not exist - using root
warning: user machbuild does not exist - using root
warning: group machbuild does not exist - using root
warning: user machbuild does not exist - using root
warning: group machbuild does not exist - using root
warning: user machbuild does not exist - using root
warning: group machbuild does not exist - using root
warning: user machbuild does not exist - using root
warning: group machbuild does not exist - using root
warning: user machbuild does not exist - using root
warning: group machbuild does not exist - using root
warning: user machbuild does not exist - using root
warning: group machbuild does not exist - using root
warning: user machbuild does not exist - using root
warning: group machbuild does not exist - using root
error: Failed build dependencies:
kernel-devel-i386 = 2.6.12-1.1447_FC4 is needed by nvidia-glx-1.0.7174-0.lvn.4.4.i386
[root@indigo nvidia]#

vasillalov
5th September 2005, 08:16 PM
IGNORE ALL MY POSTS ABOVE!

I had the wrong kernel-devel architecture (i586) installed instead of the one for i686...

raoul
11th September 2005, 03:15 PM
livna.org has an nvidia-glx-legacy package and the kernel module if anyone is interested.