Conflict nouveau-nvidia drivers

[linsuain]

Hello,

Thanks to gogalthorp for the response to my previous post. I have made some progress. I decided to upgrade to openSuSE 11.3 (from 11.2) and that has helped; my wireless LED button now turns blue, whereas before it always stayed orange. Have not been able to connect yet, but I think (or I want to think) it is a matter of editing the router configuration.

Right now I am trying to install nvidia. Got the driver from nvidia.com and after reading a bit on the nvidia site it seems that this is the right one. The problem is the conflict with the driver nouveau.

I edited the /etc/inittab and set the runlevel to 3 and then exited X (to a DOS-like interface). I rebooted in such a state, so the system would start again without starting loading X, but still, the nvidia installer crashes with nouveau and the little disable file does not help (the file that has the commands blacklist nouveau and options nouveau modset=0). I even created similar files for fbdev and swrast just in case, since I saw them listed among the display drivers, but none of this has helped.

It seems to be an issue of initrd. The READ.ME file in nvidia says that the kernel configuration should be changed in the bootloader (adding a line blacklist=nouveau) but I cannot decide what file I need to type this line into.

Any ideas will be appreciated.

Otto.

[meton_magis]

you need to add the 'blacklist=nouveau' to the end of the kernel line in your /boot/grub/grub.conf file. It should start with

/kernel=somefilename

or

/kernel somefilename

you want to add the blacklist=nouveau to the END of that line.

make sure to backup your file first, and copy the entire stanza BEFORE editing it. if you screw up, just boot into your backup stanza, and copy your backup back to the original location.

[linsuain]

Making a backup is clear, I did it for some of my other files before, but backing up the entire stanza sounds totally foreign to me. I realize that having a backup of the original file with a different name may not help when booting if the booting is looking for the file with the original name and if that one is messed up ...

Thanks for your reply to my post, I will see what I can do. By the way, yes I am kind of new to forums and to configuring linux too.

Thanks, Otto.

[meton_magis]

Making a backup is clear, I did it for some of my other files before, but backing up the entire stanza sounds totally foreign to me. I realize that having a backup of the original file with a different name may not help when booting if the booting is looking for the file with the original name and if that one is messed up ...

Thanks for your reply to my post, I will see what I can do. By the way, yes I am kind of new to forums and to configuring linux too.

Thanks, Otto.

I'll show you what I mean. before doing anything else, copy your grub.conf to grub.conf.backup, or whatever, so long as you have a backup before you do any changes.

My grub.conf looks like this.

default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title Fedora (2.6.32.11-99.fc12.i686)
        root (hd0,0)
        kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.32.11-99.fc12.i686 ro root=/dev/mapper/vg--server1-root noiswmd LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=us rhgb quiet rdblacklist=nouveau
        initrd /initramfs-2.6.32.11-99.fc12.i686.img

it's my grub.conf for my media server, it's fedora 12 I think, but it should work for an example. the default=0, timeout=5, and splashimage are global options for grub. they will only be in there once. The 'title Fedora XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX' line STARTS a new stanza. it continues until you hit a new 'title XXX XXXXXX' entry. I'm suggesting that before you edit anything, you copy the stanza.

default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz

title Fedora (2.6.32.11-99.fc12.i686)
        root (hd0,0)
        kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.32.11-99.fc12.i686 ro root=/dev/mapper/vg--server1-root noiswmd LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=us rhgb quiet rdblacklist=nouveau
        initrd /initramfs-2.6.32.11-99.fc12.i686.img

title Fedora-BACKUP (2.6.32.11-99.fc12.i686)
        root (hd0,0)
        kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.32.11-99.fc12.i686 ro root=/dev/mapper/vg--server1-root noiswmd LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=us rhgb quiet rdblacklist=nouveau
        initrd /initramfs-2.6.32.11-99.fc12.i686.img

then make your modifications. as you can see, I added the rdblacklist=nouveau to mine already. but if I wanted to remove it for some reason, I'd change the original, keeping the backup in the original state.

default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz

title Fedora-No_Blacklist (2.6.32.11-99.fc12.i686)
        root (hd0,0)
        kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.32.11-99.fc12.i686 ro root=/dev/mapper/vg--server1-root noiswmd LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=us rhgb quiet
        initrd /initramfs-2.6.32.11-99.fc12.i686.img

title Fedora-BACKUP (2.6.32.11-99.fc12.i686)
        root (hd0,0)
        kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.32.11-99.fc12.i686 ro root=/dev/mapper/vg--server1-root noiswmd LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=us rhgb quiet rdblacklist=nouveau
        initrd /initramfs-2.6.32.11-99.fc12.i686.img

then if you can't boot for some reason, you have the backup stanza to boot from. If you didn't do this, and somehow made your system unbootable, you can use your backup.

[eTech97]

Here is a linkto help you out configuring you Graphics card.

SDB:Configuring graphics cards - openSUSE

Cheers!
etech97

[linsuain]

Thanks, but still cannot figure out how to solve the conflict with nouveau. My grub.conf does not look like yours, here is how it looks:

setup --stage2=/boot/grub/stage2 --force-lba (hd0,1) (hd0,6)
quit

The /boot/grub/stage2 file is not ASCII (binary scramble).

I did find a way to add a line to the boot loader to be past to the kernel. I found that option through YaST and wrote in there the famous line:

rdblacklist=nouveau

The line is still there in YaST under boot loader settings, and also I noticed that /etc/grub.conf.old was created automatically, but none of this helped. I am thinking I need to add the line to the file /boot/initrd-2.6.34.7-0.5-desktop, but cannot be sure.

[gogalthorp]

That is that wrong file the correct file is /boot/grub/menu.lst

OpenSuse still uses the old grub. not grub 2