[CentOS] autoprobe for nVidia 6200 broken

Sun Oct 8 19:50:30 UTC 2006
Ted Miller <ted-miller at att.net>

I have the same problem on the install disks and on the Live CD: The
computer locks as soon as the Xserver starts.  I end up with a blank screen
(color varies) with a moving mouse cursor.  Nothing else.  Nothing appears
on the screen.  Keyboard and mouse are inoperative.  Even Alt-SysRq-R
doesn't work.  Only way out is the reset button (or maybe SSH, but I don't
have another machine handy to try that from).

I am expecting you to blame in on "upstream", but you can't blame the
LiveCD on upstream.

With the LiveCD, I can boot OK by using the VESA driver.  The root of the
problem seems to lie in the open-source "nv" video driver and my card.  The
proprietary "nvidia" driver works fine (once it is installed).

With the install disks, I am stuck with a text install (and thus locked out
of some of the LVM options I need).  I have not found a way to override the
autoprobed video driver except to use "noprobe", and I have no idea what
drivers I need to install to do the install correctly.

Wish list for fixes:

1. Fix (or update) "nv" driver so it works right with all 6200 cards.

2. Fix the autoprobe so it uses the "vesa" driver for my card (Gigabyte
GV-NX62158D<P>).

3. Create option "xdriver=" on install disks, like there is on video disks.

4. Create option "noprobe-video" and let me tell install disk to use VESA
driver.

If I can supply any more information to help diagnosis of this mis-probe, I
will gladly poke my system if you give me detailed instructions as to what
commands to execute.  Doing it from the LiveCD-4.4 is probably best and
most repeatable.

Ted Miller
Elkhart, IN, USA