[SOLVED] nvidia geForce 7050 not working in Deb/lenny

[rudeboy925]

Hi, I'm new at Linux...

I just did a fresh install of Debian lenny and I'm having an issue with the display driver. The system is defaulting to 1600x1200 and it's not allowing me to change it to a lower resolution. The PC has a Nvidia geForce 7050 display card and the monitor I bought with the machine goes up to 1366x768 resolution.

I ran the dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg but nothing happens, it's only giving me options to change the keyboard. There is nothing on the xorg.conf for the monitor settings:
Seletion "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Monitor "Configured Monitor"

Apparently, the install did not picked up the display card automatically.

I also looked up the drivers for the adapter and downloaded the nvidia-glx_173.14.09-5_i386.deb file but, don't know how to install it.

Thank you in advance

[reed9]

Debian usually defaults to the nv driver which is not very good.

There is a newer open source driver, nouveau, which is shaping up nicely, but does not yet support hardware acceleration. Also, this is not easily available for Debian yet. (I believe it's still in the experimental repos.)

So you best option is probably the proprietary nvidia driver.

Instructions here: NvidiaGraphicsDrivers - Debian Wiki

[reed9]

Hmm I realize that guide is a bit long. To summarize (unless you're using a custom kernel, which I would assume not) do

su -
apt-get install module-assistant nvidia-kernel-common
m-a auto-install nvidia-kernel${VERSION}-source
apt-get install nvidia-glx${VERSION}
apt-get install nvidia-xconfig
nvidia-xconfig

[rudeboy925]

Sorry.. I didn't get a chance to try out the commands you suggested until now..

Anyway, I just tried it and after I entered :
apt-get install module-assistant nvidia-kernel-common

I get a message: couldn't find package nvidia-kernel-common

Thanks again for your help

[reed9]

Debian -- Details of package nvidia-kernel-common in lenny

It's in the contrib section, which may not be enabled by default.

If you edit /etc/apt/sources.list

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

There will be a number of lines looking something like this

deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ lenny main

Add contrib (and if you want non-free) to the end so it looks like this

deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ lenny main contrib non-free

Then as root

apt-get update

And do the above again.

EDIT: nano in the above is just a command line text editor. It can be replaced by any other text editor of your choice (that you have installed), such as gedit, kwrite, leafpad, etc.

[rudeboy925]

gr8... I updated the source list and ran the first command successfully..

But before I execute the other commands.. I got one quick question.
Where do I get the version for these commands:
m-a auto-install nvidia-kernel${VERSION}-source
apt-get install nvidia-glx${VERSION}

I saw this on the screen : /nvidia-kernel-command_20080825+1_all.



Sorry for being very basic but this is my first install.
Also do I need to incluced the $

again, thank you so much

[reed9]

gr8... I updated the source list and ran the first command successfully..

But before I execute the other commands.. I got one quick question.
Where do I get the version for these commands:
m-a auto-install nvidia-kernel${VERSION}-source
apt-get install nvidia-glx${VERSION}

I saw this on the screen : /nvidia-kernel-command_20080825+1_all.



Sorry for being very basic but this is my first install.
Also do I need to incluced the $

again, thank you so much

You don't need to replace it with anything. Just enter as is. The $ indicates a variable. Basically, this value of this variable will be automatically substituted in the command.

[rudeboy925]

You're the best... it's working now.

However, I had to add the driver to the xorg.conf file

Under the Section "Device"
Identifier "configured video device"
Driver "nvidia" [ I added this line to make it work"

Thanks again...