t.web

Hi to you all this is my first post. I’ve just installed suse 11.0 on my machine which is my first try out of a Linux distro. I have a bit of UNIX knowledge from my job but none the less having a couple of frustrations.
Once installed I found that KDE did not load up despite it being set to run level 5. Scanning the text out put during the command startkde, it appears it has a problem with my display and I decided that the first thing I should rule out is ensuring a usable driver is installed for my Geforce 2 VGA graphics card. (although I don’t see why the installation and Grub displays both showed in pretty graphics if this is the problem).
I’ve leaned from forums that many Geforce graphics card users seemed to required additional drivers and now I believe I have found and downloaded the correct one for my old Geforce 2. Unfortunately when running the install package I get a message saying that I need a compiler like GCC to use this file.
Despite many comments on forums saying that a compiler like GCC should be included on suse I can not find it on my disk that contains a suse 11.0 image I downloaded from Novell. I have also searched with in my current install. Although my search abilities could be better I had a good look around and can not see any file with gcc in it. From what I've read about downloading and installing GCC it seems a bit overkill and wonder about my current direction.

I’d be grateful for any thoughts on this subject (especially any that end up with KDE loading – it does load fine in safe mode by the way)

kind regards, t.web

bigtomrodney

Have you got an internet connection? If so you can fire up YaST and go to the Software Installation/Software Management section and search for gcc and kernel source. You may be able to choose kernel headers instead of source which would be a lot smaller to download.

This is all assuming you downloaded a one disc setup which may not have the included files. If you downloaded a DVD or multiple CDs you most definitely have gcc available to you. Either way using YaST will locate it for you, always try to stick to your package manager.

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t.web

Thanks for the response. From what I've read Yast could be helful but with out GUI I'm not knowledgable enough to use from a command line. I'll try what you've suggested in safe mode when next at machine but should also advise that there's a command which I tried,

gcc -v

(from memory I think that right) that should tell you if gcc is installed the results of which suggeszted it was not. I'll check Yast though and post my findings tomorrow.
If not there, it seems a shame if gcc is needed to compile 3rd party drivers etc that it is not already included with suse 11.0 basic install

coopstah13

did you read this from nvidia download page for your driver?
Nvidia Installer HOWTO for SUSE LINUX users

driver page:
Linux Display Driver - x86

this is for the 32bit os though, not 64

t.web

I really appreciate the question as I had been through the text you'd linked to but didn't appreciate it's relavence at the time I was downloading driver.
Of course re reading it now.....

As I can currently get into KDE in safe mode to use Yast in GUI I'm presuming it is ok to do installation of driver from here as not familiar with Yast from a command line.
Here's hoping the driver is the problem anyway. When I'm home tomorrow I will soon find out.

bigtomrodney

Don't worry, YaST is pretty smart. If you launch it from a terminal it will run within the terminal in a graphical fashion. It's ncurses based, think very old DOS program

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t.web

thanks, do I kick it off just by typing yast ?

Jonathan183

Yes that should work ... the tab key comes in handy for toggling through selections/options ... or at least it did in openSUSE 10.3 ... you will probably find yas then press the tab key will auto complete yast for you

scrarfussi

Not infront of pc at the mo but i think the command is yast2 also a simpler way of sorting out your pc is too boot with the dvd inside go to installation now instead of choosing install choose other options select repair installed system from there you will get a list of conflicting packages also packages you can add etc this normally works for me one of the reason's i love opensuse

t.web

yast and yast2 seem to bring up exactly the same software so no probs there. I booted into suse safe mode and from there I tried to install driver from disk but it was having none of it, still complaining about no gcc.

Fortunately I now have ethernet connection and using the software search fascilty I found in KDE I dug up 'gcc' and 'make' which where both required when I tried to run driver install manually.
I may try the repair suggested in preveous thread but the same issue has existed with 2 suse installs on this machine. I have established that nvidia seem to favour one driver for a range of cards and this has caused frustration for many.
Once installing 'gcc' and 'make' I now get an error well detailed by someone in the 1st of following links.

http://linux.derkeiler.com/Mailing-L...5-06/2781.html comments that led to next link

FC9 installing Nvidia driver "Unable to find Kernel Source Tree" - LinuxQuestions.org possible solution

FedoraForum.org - Fedora 9 (F9) and Nvidia 173.08 with OpenGL! patch


I may try the patches suggested but may just buy a VGA graphics card with decent Linux drivers. (suggestions welcome)
As I persue this I wonder if anyone can tell me why safe mode displays KDE without a problem and how I might change the normal suse bootup to use the same settings as safe mode thus allowing it to startkde successfully.