NVIDIA Drivers Installation Howto (Custom resolution issues)

[imperia]

Hello,

Recently I reinstalled my Fedora 8 because of some hardware upgrades. I had some difficulties installing NVIDIA drivers and making them work. Now when I finally tamed this wild animal I would like to share my experience so other users can skip my headaches.

I got GeForce4 MX440 so this tutorial applies only for its drivers(96xx). Installation procedure for other NVIDIA drivers are the same only driver packages are different.

So here is what you have to do to make those drivers work:

1. If you are already in KDE/Gnome press CTRL-ALT-F1, login as root and type
init 3
to stop GUI.

2. Download the driver
wget http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/96.43.05/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-96.43.05-pkg1.run
96.xx drivers are for older NVIDIA cards. Get the appropriate driver from here: http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html. Check the README file to see which GeForces are supported by the different packages.

3. Run the driver installation.
sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-96.43.05-pkg1.run
Follow the instructions on screen.
You need to have kernel devel packages already installed before this step. If you still don't have it type this:
yum install kernel-devel

4. Start again the GUI
init 5
You should see NVIDIA logo flashing. That means the drivers is working.


Here comes the tricky part and the problems that I had and how to solve them:

I wanted to set my Dell monitor to 1600x1200 at 85hz and that has to be done through the NVIDIA's own tool. You can find it in K->System->NVIDIA X Server Settings. Don't start it from the menu because it seems that this tool needs superuser privileges so it can write the config to /etc/X11/xorg.conf when you set some custom resolution or alter some other settings. By default its running in your account which does not have rights to write inside /etc folder.

So instead of running the tool from the KDE menu right click on empty space on the Desktop and start Konsole. Then go superuser:
su
and then run it
nvidia-settings

Here you can configure some options of the video card and add custom resolutions.

If you want to define some custom resolution (like me) go to X Server Display Configuration then select your resolution and refresh rate and click Apply then confirm the video mode change by clicking OK. Next save configuration to /etc/X11/xorg.conf by clicking Save to X Configuration File and OK. After your are done click Quit.
While you are still in the superuser console terminate KDE by running:
/sbin/init 3

Next time when you start KDE you will see the following error message:

could not open default font 'fixed'

The problem is that whenever you use nvidia-settings tool to modify some settings and then you use Save to X Configuration File the program adds some wrong lines to /etc/X11/xorg.conf that you have to remove manually, so log in again as root and type:

If you want to make backup of your config file (recommended), type this:
cd /etc/X11/
cp xorg.conf xorg.conf.backup1

Then edit the configuration with some editor. I used nano
nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Delete the following lines:

Section "Files"
RgbPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/default/Type1"
EndSection

With nano you can use CTRL-K to delete whole lines and then use CTRL-X to save the file.


I also added the following lines in the "Screen" section, they may be required for proper enabling compiz:

Option "AllowGLXWithComposite" "true"
Option "RenderAccel" "true"
Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "true"
Option "TripleBuffer" "true"

Here is how how mine looks like:

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Videocard0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "AllowGLXWithComposite" "true"
    Option         "RenderAccel" "true"
    Option         "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "true"
    Option         "TripleBuffer" "true"
    Option         "metamodes" "1600x1200_85 +0+0; 640x480 +0+0"
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
        Modes      "1600x1200" "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

After removing whole "Files" section you should be able to start the GUI again without the fatal error message. Run:
init 5
When you login you can try to start compiz for some nasty visual effects.
Click K - > Settings -> Desktop Effects select Enabled (use Compiz) then click OK.

You are done.

Some notes:
Use the correct resolution and refresh rate that your monitor supports(the above settings are for my monitor). Setting wrong mode may damage your monitor.

Backup files that you modify.