Nvidia driver installation on Fedora

[pandora]

Not on your life! Between Schotty's link and Googling there must be a solution.

[Schotty]

What revision driver do you have installed? I would try the latest revision

http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_d..._1.0-8776.html

I have seen oddball issues with older drivers for doing PCIX and dual head on newer cards. That said, I dont think that the 5200 is new at all. Not having two cards, I can only think of a few things to offer here:

Are there any errors associated with your pci bus on system boot? Look at your boot log and syslog for that info

Are there any issues with your motherboard chipset?

Is there any bios updates that could help here (read the update info for each patch to the bios)?

Last I read, for the SLI mode, you needed driver, motherboard and cards that supported it all, and then it wasnt that much for Xorg to get it going. Dual cards (can be mixed) for multi displays (what my site had info on) just needed the agp/pci slots free and drivers for each card installed. Then the Xorg config I offered would work (on nVIDIA that is).

[tuxette]

In frustration I gave up on this. I'm going to try again today.

I used the Livna method. Installing the drivers using the nvidia provided script began to become complicated. I think the FC6 kernel bug was most of the problem.

Now the only resolution being offered is 800x600 and setting the display to dual mode crashes X, even though the system is now detecting both cards.

I'll post the actual errors I'm getting and see if anyone can help.

[Kernel_Killer]

Do you have to enable Xinerama in FC6 for dual? I know you do in FreeBSD, but of course that never means it has to apply to Linux.

[tuxette]

After weeks of on and off, half hearted, efforts with lost of cursing, I got this thing to work.

I used the Livna method from FedoraFaq.org.

• Rename your /etc/X11/xorg.conf
• Run

system-config-display

• Click on the Dual Head tab
• Click on the Use Dual Head box
• Select a monitor
• Click OK till you exit. If you get an X error message, don’t worry.

• Next you need to run

  nvidia-config-display enable

  command which inserts the nvidia driver locations in the brand new xorg.conf file that system-config-display just recreated.
• Edit xorg.conf. Make sure the

 Driver      "nv"

Statements are replaced with

Driver      "nvidia"

• Edit xorg.conf. The modes sections didn’t match the capabilities of my cards, so I edited them out with a #.
• Run startx.

Here’s the final config.

# Xorg configuration created by system-config-display

Section "ServerLayout"
        Identifier     "Multihead layout"
        Screen      0  "Screen0" LeftOf "Screen1"
        Screen      1  "Screen1" 0 0
        InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
        Option      "Xinerama" "off"
        Option      "Clone" "on"
EndSection

Section "Files"
        ModulePath   "/usr/lib/xorg/modules/extensions/nvidia"
        ModulePath   "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier  "Keyboard0"
        Driver      "kbd"
        Option      "XkbModel" "pc105"
        Option      "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"

 ### Comment all HorizSync and VertSync values to use DDC:
        Identifier   "Monitor1"
        VendorName   "Monitor Vendor"
        ModelName    "LCD Panel 1280x1024"
 ### Comment all HorizSync and VertSync values to use DDC:
        HorizSync    31.5 - 67.0
        VertRefresh  50.0 - 75.0
        Option      "dpms"
EndSection

Section "Device"
        Identifier  "Videocard0"
        Driver      "nvidia"
        Option      "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"
EndSection

Section "Device"
        Identifier  "Videocard1"
        Driver      "nvidia"
        VendorName  "Videocard Vendor"
        BoardName   "nVidia Corporation NV34 [GeForce FX 5200]"
        Option      "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"
        BusID       "PCI:3:9:0"
        Screen      1
EndSection

Section "Screen"
        Identifier "Screen0"
        Device     "Videocard0"
        DefaultDepth     24
        SubSection "Display"
                Viewport   0 0
                Depth     24
        #       Modes    "800x600" "800x600" "800x600" "640x480" "640x480" "640x480"
        EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
        Identifier "Screen1"
        Device     "Videocard1"
        Monitor    "Monitor1"
        DefaultDepth     24
        SubSection "Display"
                Viewport   0 0
                Depth     24
        #       Modes    "800x600"
        EndSubSection
EndSection

I feel so proud of myself. I'm going to have dessert for lunch! I deserve it. Rice pudding, yum!

[tuxette]

Kernel_Killer, you were right. I had to enable xinerama. My configuration was for individual desktops, not "spanning desktops".

Unfortunately when I click on the "spanning desktops" option in the GUI display config window, it never saves. I have tried redefining the monitor, graphics card etc for both monitors and cards, but the "apply/save" button is always greyed out.

Any help is welcome. I'm sooooooooooo close!

[tuxette]

OK. I got it to work eventually. Really!

Here we go again:

I used the Livna method from FedoraFaq.org. There are some modifications, stop just before doing the "init 5".

• Rename your /etc/X11/xorg.conf
• Run
  

  system-config-display

• Click on save. This will create a default xorg.conf file.
• Edit xorg.conf. Make sure the
  
  

   Driver      "nv"

  Statements are replaced with
  
  

  Driver      "nvidia"

• Continue editing xorg.conf. Comment out the Modes section out with a #. I was getting a default of 800x600 which was too small to do the steps that follow.
• Save file and exit your text editor.
• Run

  # startx

• Open a terminal window.
• Run

  # nvidia-settings

• Click on "X Server Display Configuration"
• Highlight the secondary monitor (it may be disabled)
• Click on "Configure", and then "Separate X Screen", and then "OK"
• Click on "Configure", and then "Separate X Screen", and then "OK"
• Click on "Enable Xinerama"
• Click on "Save to X Configuration file"
• Shutdown X

  <CTRL><ALT><BACKSPACE>

• Run

  # nvidia-config-display enable

  This inserts the location of the nvidia drivers into your xorg.conf file.
• Run

  # startx

• Important: Run all future display setting modifications using:

  # nvidia-settings

  I also noticed that if you don't run:
  

  # nvidia-config-display enable

  and restart X after running "nvidia-settings" that you may not be able to open a terminal window later

It super works. I tried it a couple times to make sure I wasn't wrong.

Here is the final xorg.conf output:

# nvidia-settings: X configuration file generated by nvidia-settings
# nvidia-settings:  version 1.0  (buildmeister@builder3)  Wed Nov  1 19:48:08 PST 2006

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Layout0"
    Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
    Screen      1  "Screen1" RightOf "Screen0"
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "Files"
    RgbPath         "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb"
    FontPath        "unix/:7100"
EndSection

Section "Module"
    Load           "dbe"
    Load           "extmod"
    Load           "type1"
    Load           "freetype"
    Load           "glx"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
    Option         "Xinerama" "1"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Mouse0"
    Driver         "mouse"
    Option         "Protocol" "auto"
    Option         "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
    Option         "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
    Option         "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    # generated from data in "/etc/sysconfig/keyboard"
    Identifier     "Keyboard0"
    Driver         "kbd"
    Option         "XkbLayout" "us"
    Option         "XkbModel" "pc105"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    # HorizSync source: edid, VertRefresh source: edid
    Identifier     "Monitor0"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "IBM L170p"
    HorizSync       30.0 - 81.0
    VertRefresh     55.0 - 76.0
    Option         "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    # HorizSync source: edid, VertRefresh source: edid
    Identifier     "Monitor1"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "IBM L200P"
    HorizSync       31.0 - 92.0
    VertRefresh     56.0 - 85.0
    Option         "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Videocard0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BoardName      "GeForce FX 5200"
    BusID          "PCI:3:9:0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Videocard1"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BoardName      "GeForce FX 5200"
    BusID          "PCI:3:10:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Videocard0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "metamodes" "nvidia-auto-select +0+0"
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
        Modes      "1600x1200" "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen1"
    Device         "Videocard1"
    Monitor        "Monitor1"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "metamodes" "nvidia-auto-select +0+0"
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
        Modes      "1600x1200" "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Hooray! Time for rice pudding again! Now to get some work done!

[pandora]

Nice work tuxy! I got it to work too. I'll bookmark the post.

[azieniki]

Thanks, I managed to get my dual screens working with an FX5200 using the method above.

I managed to lock up my gnome-terminal, it wouldn't open, it would just say "starting terminal".

To fix it, I added this code to the bottom of /etc/X11/xorg.conf for anybody that has the same problems!

Section "Extensions"
	Option "Composite" "false"
EndSection

Thanks for the help guys.

[kupertini]

Congrats Tuxette, it looks like the hard work paid off!

I think I'll try this too. Will work with Nvidia cards using different chipsets?