Fedora 9 (F9) and Nvidia 173.08 with OpenGL!

[lottc]

Please refer to post #135 and follow the instructions in the "TO INSTALL NEW" section.
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showpo...&postcount=135

THE FOLLOWING IS NO LONGER NEEDED!!!



Two weeks ago, I purchased my first speed demon...well for personal use anyways. I have setup and currently maintain countless quad-core and dual-quad-core servers all over the country. But this one for me!

It is using the new 780i EVGA board with a Q6700 and an Nvidia 9600GT (yes I know the 8800 has more shaders).

But like countless others out there, I was remiss to find that I was dead in the water...not only with the 9600GT, but also with my 7600GT...because Nvidia will not release a driver for Xorg 1.4.99x and Fedora decided to use a prerelease.

So how do we fix this? There really is no way to get Nvidia 173.08 working with Xorg 1.4.99x with 3D/OpenGL, yes you can get 2D working by using -ignoreABI...but really, what is the point! The only remaining solution is to downgrade Xorg...and this scares the living ***** out of people...so lets do it!

So, what does this do???
1. Allows you to use 3D, Composite and Compiz with Nvidia graphics cards and Fedora 9.
2. Allows you to use Geforce 9000 series graphics cards, in addition to 7000 series, 8000 series and mobile variants.

Here we go...
(Standard disclaimer should apply...don't blame me if you kill your system.)

Login as root.

su -

Remove the Xorg server and mesa libraries.

yum -y remove xorg-x11-server-Xorg xorg-x11-server-common
rpm -e --nodeps --allmatches mesa-libGL mesa-libGLU mesa-libGL-devel mesa-libGLU-devel glx-utils

Download fedora8.repo and modify fedora.repo.
Note: The modified fedora.repo only adds an "exclude" line to ignore the unwanted Xorg Xserver 1.4

cd /etc/yum.repos.d
wget http://www.linux-ati-drivers.homecall.co.uk/fedora8.repo
perl -i -pe "s/(\[.*\])/\1\nexclude=xorg* linuxwacom* rhpxl* mesa*/"  fedora.repo
perl -i -pe "s/(\[.*\])/\1\nexclude=xorg* linuxwacom* rhpxl* mesa*/" fedora-updates.repo

Install Development Tools/Libraries

yum -y groupinstall "Development Tools" "Development Libraries"
yum -y install kernel-devel

Now, you are ready to install Xorg 1.3!

yum -y groupinstall "X Window System"
yum -y install mesa-libGL mesa-libGLU mesa-libGL-devel mesa-libGLU-devel synaptics

# Optional, re-install compiz.
yum -y install compiz-gnome compiz-fusion* gnome-compiz-manager ccsm

Now, just install the Nvidia drivers.

32-bit Nvidia drivers

cd /tmp
wget http://www.dfm.uninsubria.it/compiz/nvidia/nvidia-x11-drv-173.08-1.fc9.i386.rpm
yum --nogpgcheck localinstall nvidia-x11-drv-173.08-1.fc9.i386.rpm
/usr/sbin/nvidia-config-display enable
reboot

64-bit Nvidia drivers

cd /tmp
wget http://www.dfm.uninsubria.it/compiz/nvidia/nvidia-x11-drv-173.08-1.fc9.x86_64.rpm
wget http://www.dfm.uninsubria.it/compiz/nvidia/nvidia-x11-drv-32bit-173.08-1.fc9.x86_64.rpm
yum --nogpgcheck localinstall nvidia-x11-drv-173.08-1.fc9.x86_64.rpm nvidia-x11-drv-32bit-173.08-1.fc9.x86_64.rpm
/usr/sbin/nvidia-config-display enable
reboot

And thats it!

Nvidia 173.08, F9 and Xorg Server 1.3 all seem to play nice with both of my Nvidia cards, the 7600GT and the 9600GT...but I make no promises here. The safest thing to do would be to wait until Xorg Server 1.5 is released and pray that Fedora decides to include it in the F9 updates (which probably wont happen).



Oh! To reverse the changes:
Edit /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora.repo and /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-updates.repo
Remove this line:

exclude=xorg* linuxwacom* rhpxl* mesa*

Remove the fedora8.repo we created and update your Xorg RPMs.

rm /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora8.repo
yum update

I hope this helps all of you Nvidia fans on the bleeding edge of Fedora...

- Lott Caskey
lottc AT fugitol DOT com

[leigh123linux]

Heres the 173.08 rpm's complete with libwfb.so ( I know these rpm's work ! )


http://www.dfm.uninsubria.it/compiz/nvidia/


Edit packages removed as they are no longer needed !

[lottc]

Try using these rpm's from freshrpms

http://sulphur.freshrpms.net/rpm.html?id=382

http://sulphur.freshrpms.net/rpm.html?id=384

I could be wrong, but the FreshRPMs package doesn't solve the OpenGL issue with the Nvidia drivers to begin with. OpenGL and 173.08 will only work with Xorg 1.3. Otherwise you have to run your Xserver with -ignoreABI and you loose 3D because of an incompatibility with F9s libwfb.so...and what is the point of using an 8800GT or 9600GT if you can't have 3D...

[leigh123linux]

I could be wrong, but the FreshRPMs package doesn't solve the OpenGL issue with the Nvidia drivers to begin with. OpenGL and 173.08 will only work with Xorg 1.3. Otherwise you have to run your Xserver with -ignoreABI and you loose 3D because of an incompatibility with F9s libwfb.so...and what is the point of using an 8800GT or 9600GT if you can't have 3D...

I linked the nvidia rpm's so people could use them instead of bastardising their systems with the nvidia homepage installer ( it can replace system files and is harded to use and requires recompiling each kernel change )
You would still need to downgrade the xorg server .


I didn't need 173.08 for my card so I patched 169.12 instead .


P.S If you change your howto to use the rpm's instead of nvidia installer , I would give this guide a temporary forum sticky !

[lottc]

I linked the nvidia rpm's so people could use them instead of bastardising their systems with the nvidia homepage installer ( it can replace system files and is harded to use and requires recompiling each kernel change )
You would still need to downgrade the xorg server .


I didn't need 173.08 for my card so I patched 169.12 instead .


P.S If you change your howto to use the rpm's instead of nvidia installer , I would give this guide a temporary forum sticky !

You are right, no need to clutter things up. I had to test it to make sure it would work, but everything is looking great. Feel free to sticky this post!


CHANGE
Changed back to NVIDIA's package install FreshRPMs/Livna removes libwfb.so

[jeffers_uk]

Didnt work for me with a 8500GT...

(II) NVIDIA(0): Initialized GPU GART.
(II) NVIDIA(0): Setting mode "1280x1024"
(II) Loading extension NV-GLX
(II) NVIDIA(0): NVIDIA 3D Acceleration Architecture Initialized
(EE) NVIDIA(0): Need libwfb but wfbScreenInit not found

Fatal server error:
AddScreen/ScreenInit failed for driver 0

[lottc]

This is my fault. I changed the walktru to use the FreshRPMs Nvidia, which doesn't include libwfb.so.

Use the following:

yum -y groupinstall "Development Tools" "Development Libraries"
yum -y install kernel-devel

cd /usr/src
wget http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree8...73.08-pkg1.run
chmod 755 NVIDIA-Linux-x86-173.08-pkg1.run
./NVIDIA-Linux-x86-173.08-pkg1.run

This should resolve your issues.

[lottc]

I linked the nvidia rpm's so people could use them instead of bastardising their systems with the nvidia homepage installer ( it can replace system files and is harded to use and requires recompiling each kernel change )
You would still need to downgrade the xorg server .


I didn't need 173.08 for my card so I patched 169.12 instead .


P.S If you change your howto to use the rpm's instead of nvidia installer , I would give this guide a temporary forum sticky !

The FreshRPM package wont work because of the exclusion of libwfb.so as mentioned in the changlelog.

I will be making an RPM package which I will post on http://rpm.fugitol.com and will update this post accordingly when done, It will be Sunday before I can get to this and I have reverted the post back to the Nvidia installer. I will reply to you when this has been completed so we can make it sticky.

[leigh123linux]

I hope you don't mind but I have borrowed parts of your guide for my compiz howto .

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showpo...29&postcount=2

[zackf]

Pretty awesome, first time I've seen this working on any distro.

[kalpik]

...The safest thing to do would be to wait until Xorg Server 1.5 is released and pray that Fedora decides to include it in the F9 updates (which probably wont happen)...

Are you absolutely sure on this? What makes you think that Fedora would not include the released xorg in the updates?

[Muhahahahaz]

What if the only way that I can connect is via wireless? I believe that the wireless is turned off if I'm not in runlevel 5. How do I download before "init 3" and then install after?

I've broken Xorg and had to reinstall several times. This is getting annoying.

[Muhahahahaz]

Ok, so I finally got it working. I was able to remove the beta Xorg, and install Xorg 1.3 without doing "init 3" first. (I only had to "init 3" to install the Nvidia drivers.) However, the "groupinstall" does NOT install xorg-x11-server-Xorg for me, so I also had to install that FIRST. Next, when I do the groupinstall, it installs a lot of xorg stuff, rather than just a few dumb fonts (most of which I don't need) like it apparently did before.

Thanks for the info. Please add "yum -y install xorg-x11-server-Xorg" before the groupinstall, otherwise it looks like Xorg 1.3 may not be installed properly (and if you only have wireless like me, then you're screwed and you have to reinstall).

Also note that for whatever reason you MUST use Nvidia's latest beta driver. I guess that may have been implied, but I didn't see any particular reason why I would want to specifically use their beta driver (except that I apparently have to). I tried their latest non-beta, but it gave some error when trying to compile the module, so I tried the beta, which I had also downloaded, and that worked.

[leigh123linux]

Ok, so I finally got it working. I was able to remove the beta Xorg, and install Xorg 1.3 without doing "init 3" first. (I only had to "init 3" to install the Nvidia drivers.) However, the "groupinstall" does NOT install xorg-x11-server-Xorg for me, so I also had to install that FIRST. Next, when I do the groupinstall, it installs a lot of xorg stuff, rather than just a few dumb fonts (most of which I don't need) like it apparently did before.

Thanks for the info. Please add "yum -y install xorg-x11-server-Xorg" before the groupinstall, otherwise it looks like Xorg 1.3 may not be installed properly (and if you only have wireless like me, then you're screwed and you have to reinstall).

Also note that for whatever reason you MUST use Nvidia's latest beta driver. I guess that may have been implied, but I didn't see any particular reason why I would want to specifically use their beta driver (except that I apparently have to). I tried their latest non-beta, but it gave some error when trying to compile the module, so I tried the beta, which I had also downloaded, and that worked.

The older drivers need to be patched to work with the 2.6.25 kernel !

Heres a patch guide

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/show...27&postcount=1

[Muhahahahaz]

The older drivers need to be patched to work with the 2.6.25 kernel !

Heres a patch guide

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/show...27&postcount=1

Ah, ic. Well the beta drivers "just work", so I don't mind using them.