Nvidia video card drivers not working (prevents desktop effects)

[SpectrumDT]

Hello.

After a recent update, desktop effects no longer work. This appears to be because there is something wrong with my video card drivers.

I am running Fedora 11 and KDE 4.2.4. My video card is a GeForce 7900 GT/GTO.

I have tried various things, including removing and reinstalling "kmod-nvidia" and editing /etc/X11/xorg.conf. In the process I have only made the problem worse. Look:

[ore@Spectrum ~]$ glxinfo
name of display: :0.0
Xlib:  extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0".
Xlib:  extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0".
Xlib:  extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0".
Xlib:  extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0".
Xlib:  extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0".
Error: couldn't find RGB GLX visual or fbconfig

Xlib:  extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0".
Xlib:  extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0".
Xlib:  extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0".
Xlib:  extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0".
Xlib:  extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0".
Xlib:  extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0".
Xlib:  extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0".
[ore@Spectrum ~]$

I am pretty sure the above is bad.

Before I started changing things, glxinfo said approximately this (reconstructed):

[root@ore@Spectrum ~]# glxinfo|grep render
direct rendering: No (to see why, do some stuff...)
OpenGL renderer string: Software Rasterizer

Can anyone help? How do I get my drivers (and thus desktop effects) working again?

Thanks in advance.

[jaygeefed]

If your recent update was to kernel 2.6.29.6-217.2.3.fc11.i586 then it might be that you are missing the appropriate kernel module - in my case my FX 5200 card needs file kmod-nvidia-173xx-2.6.29.6-217.fc11.i586-173.14.18-2.fc11.11(i586) which doesn't seem to be available yet.

Having just got Desktop Effects enabled with the previous 2.6.29.4-167.fc11.i586 kernel it's frustrating to insatll kernel update and then find Desktop Effects disabled. FWIW my advice is to sit tight til the new kmod file appears.

[newiLuvatar]

check if the versions match:

$ rpm -qa | grep nvidia
kmod-nvidia-185.18.31-1.fc11.x86_64
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs-185.18.31-1.fc11.x86_64
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-185.18.31-1.fc11.x86_64
kmod-nvidia-2.6.29.6-217.2.3.fc11.x86_64-185.18.31-1.fc11.x86_64

$ uname -r
2.6.29.6-217.2.3.fc11.x86_64

I had the same problem, seems like some of the rpmfusion mirrors are not up to date. I solved it by uncommenting the baseurl in /etc/yum.repos.d/rpmfusion-*.repo and then doing an update.

[sidebrnz]

I had a similar problem today: after a kernel upgrade, I rebooted and got a white screen. I used CTRL-ALT-F2 to get to a console, logged in and rebooted, selecting the old kernel. After a little checking in yumex to see just which kmod-nvidia I have, Installed the appropriate akmod, rebooted and everything's fine. (If you're going to try this, make sure kernel-devel is also installed; it's a dependency for akmod-nvidia, but isn't properly listed.)

[SpectrumDT]

Thanks for the replies. It turns out that the following day, new drivers appeared in the repositories, so a new yum update solved the problem.