On Tue, 2004-09-21 at 19:13 -0700, Rick Graves wrote: > Hey, > > I tried it. The short answer is that nVIDIA cards are > OK for text, but may not work at all under X. > > I downloaded the 3.3 ISO's, and burned new CD's. I > did an X desktop install on a test bench P3 600 MHz > system with a 4.3 gig drive. I did the install with a > known-to-work Voodoo Banshee card to get the system > going. I used a Mag DX1495 monitor, which I know does > not to work on Linux with nVIDIA cards (but which > works just fine running Windows with nVIDIA cards). > > Everything installed OK with only a minor glitch > toward the end (just when going into the reboot, after > setting up the monitor and display card, there were > some messages about cannot find some graphics files). > > > After going into my regular user account and adjusting > some preferences, I shut the system down, replaced the > Voodoo Banshee card with an nVIDIA Riva TNT 2 card, > and restarted the computer. During startup, kudzu > detected the hardware change, and configured the > machine for the new card following my confirmation. > (Windows can do this automatically, why not Linux?) > > Sure enough, when X tried to load, the screen went > blank. Not only did the screen go blank for the X > console #7, but the screen was blank for the 6 other > consoles as well. I knew this because I could change > to my favorite with F2, then Ctl-Alt-del to reboot. > The screen stayed blank until the computer began the > new boot, when the screen came back. > > This was exactly the situation under CentOS 3.1. > > Moral of the nVIDIA story: if the monitor/display > card/motherboard combination works for you, great. If > not, using a display card from a different > manufacturer may be the best solution. > > IMHO. > > Rick Rick, The issue is as it was with CentOS 3.1 ... and it probably concerns either a NFORCE2 motherboard (Which requires the kernel-unsupported and kernel-source packages to be installed ... and it is not installed by the default install) ... AND/OR the video card is higher than an FX5200, and requires the kernel-source package and the binary drivers from NVIDIA to be installed. When booting the machine, press "a" at the kernel selection screen to append the run level and add a "SPACE" and a "3" (no quotes, just spacebar and 3) to boot in test mode, then do: yum install kernel kernel-source kernel-unsupported (if the kernel is upgraded, boot to the new kernel in runlevel 3 again) then get the latest nvidia drivers with: wget http://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/1.0-6111/NVIDIA-Linux- x86-1.0-6111-pkg1.run Then do: chmod 755 NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-6111-pkg1.run then do: IGNORE_CC_MISMATCH=YES ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-6106-pkg1.run Then edit your /etc/X11/XF86Config file and remove (or remark out) anything having to do with "dri" and change the driver line to: Driver "nvidia" --------------------------- This scenario also requires that the binary driver be recompiled every time the kernel is changed. --------------------------- See my page on this issue for details: http://www.hughesjr.com/content/view/34/2/Site_News -------------------------- This problem is caused by 2 things ... RedHat not loading all kernel drivers (ie, having a kernel-unsupported package) and NVIDIA not providing the code for their hardware to the open source community (requiring a binary, closed source driver to be installed and recompiled at every kernel upgrade). ------------------------- Johnny Hughes <http://www.hughesjr.com/>