Nvidia driver installation problem (s) Help!

[fnlorrain]

I've read tons of threads, followed various suggestions to set up the driver I need (NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7184-pkg1.run) without success. I originally tried to set up the newest driver using YAST, but found I needed the legacy driver. I made sure I had the correct kernel sources, make, etc. Installed the driver, which compiled for my kernel, removed the previous driver,and reported the installation complete, "run sax2 now"
which I did, "access to your display has been granted", then modprobe gives me "ups lost card during probing, abort", and /etc/x11/xorg.conf has no entry for Nvidia modules. Whenever I try to use control center "display and graphics" i get black screen lock-up. I made sure the driver supports the ancient card I'm running, (I know, buy a new card..) but nothing is working. I've been under the hood of suse linux for about a year, and have managed to use ndiswrapper to get my wireless internet going ( about the trickiest thing I've had to do yet) so I guess I'm an "experienced" noob.

I suspect that my problem has to do with the onboard graphics adapter on my comp confusing the issue. There is no option in the bios to disable the onboard adapter, which is called out as device 0 in my sax2 log.
My card is called out as device 1 in the sax2 log
Should I try to run "sax2 -r 1=nvidia" in console as root?
I'm afraid to lose my display completely if this is incorrect.

I've got logs for the nvidia installer, sax2, and xorg, for those who might know how to spot my error, but for some reason can't upload them from my windoze box (they are TEXT files). Any suggestions woud be most appreciated!

[techieMoe]

I see most of your trouble seems to be centered around SaX2. Have you tried manually changing your /etc/X11/xorg.conf? Also, when you finished the install did you remember to type modprobe nvidia to load the newly-created module?

The newer drivers will change your xorg.conf for you, but I'm not sure if the legacy driver will. What specific model of Nvidia card do you have? Also, do you know what the onboard chip is by chance? What model motherboard do you have? These would all help.

For help on modifying your xorg.conf file, see step 8 of my tutorial here:

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/lin...d-drivers.html

[gogalthorp]

It looks to me that the problem may be the onboard vidio. If you can't disable it the drivers might be wrong for it may not even be a NVIDIA chip set.

Please describ exactly what hardware you have MB and vidio what chip set in on the MB

[fnlorrain]

I'm not sure about "modprobe nvidia" as I've been struggling with this problem for days, and am a little mixed up about what I've done when. As for manually editing etc/x11/xorg.conf (say in MC) I'm not certain what I'd do there, once again, noob problem. The board is standard hp pavilion 7855, the onboard video is intel 82810E CGC, the PCI card is an old 16mb Vanta (this comp is donated for use in a workshop, nothing fancy) which is supported by the legacy driver I'm trying to use. I have to set it up manually since yast points me to the wrong driver, and I've been messing about with this so long, I'm not even sure what steps I've taken, and in which order. If I remember, in console "sh NVIDIA-x86-1.0-7184-pkg.run" then instructed to run sax2, no mention of modprobing the driver first, after that I can't remember. I've read that the driver is often incorrectly called "nv", but when I hunt around, I find nothing! I remember getting out of the xserver, and running a command, but which I can't say. Lets face it, I'm confused!

[techieMoe]

I'm not sure about "modprobe nvidia" as I've been struggling with this problem for days, and am a little mixed up about what I've done when. As for manually editing etc/x11/xorg.conf (say in MC) I'm not certain what I'd do there, once again, noob problem.

...

If I remember, in console "sh NVIDIA-x86-1.0-7184-pkg.run" then instructed to run sax2, no mention of modprobing the driver first, after that I can't remember. I've read that the driver is often incorrectly called "nv", but when I hunt around, I find nothing! I remember getting out of the xserver, and running a command, but which I can't say. Lets face it, I'm confused!

Look at the tutorial I linked earlier. It will tell you what section of your xorg.conf to look inside to find the "nv" line. It's Step 8, as I said.

[linoleum13]

I'm not sure about "modprobe nvidia" as I've been struggling with this problem for days, and am a little mixed up about what I've done when. As for manually editing etc/x11/xorg.conf (say in MC) I'm not certain what I'd do there, once again, noob problem. The board is standard hp pavilion 7855, the onboard video is intel 82810E CGC, the PCI card is an old 16mb Vanta (this comp is donated for use in a workshop, nothing fancy) which is supported by the legacy driver I'm trying to use. I have to set it up manually since yast points me to the wrong driver, and I've been messing about with this so long, I'm not even sure what steps I've taken, and in which order. If I remember, in console "sh NVIDIA-x86-1.0-7184-pkg.run" then instructed to run sax2, no mention of modprobing the driver first, after that I can't remember. I've read that the driver is often incorrectly called "nv", but when I hunt around, I find nothing! I remember getting out of the xserver, and running a command, but which I can't say. Lets face it, I'm confused!

I had a similar problem with a Compaq desktop that had Intel i845 graphics and an ancient ATI card. Even with the onboard video disabled in the BIOS sax2 would give me a black screen lock up. You can run both video "cards" in SUSE without too much trouble but you just have to get sax2 to ignore the Intel graphics.

First...definitely backup your working Xorg.conf file. You might need it if things go bad and you have to restart the computer in a command prompt. You are going to want to run sax2 -r or run sax2 and choose the card to configure manually (i think it is a "sax2 -c 1" type command where the number after -c is the number of your NVIDIA card). Then you can set it up in the GUI. I edited out everything from Intel in the .conf file and things finally worked.

I hope this helps.

[fnlorrain]

First, Thanks for everyone's responses. TechieMoe, I actually read your guide early on while working on this, again, no mention of nvidia at all in xorg.conf, many devices are listed, but no nvidia. I'm hesitant to guess which device lines to modify. As I recall, I went into runlevel 3, as root, and installed the driver , that was the part I wasn't remembering in my previous post. I'll be here pulling what little hair I have left out if anyone can help me figure out this problem.

[fnlorrain]

O.K., Making progress here. I re-ran the installer, then modprobed nvidia, then sax2 -c1, bingo! nvidia splash screen! Getting somewhere now, my display is a little funny, with the top of the screen kind of squished down with some bright lines running across, but hey, I'll take what I can get. One problem, when i go into control center now, i still get black screen. After install and sax2 the graphics/ monitor setup started by itself, and went fine, I was able to adjust the screen size etc, but going back in to try to fix the top of the display crashed the comp after a restart. Anyhow, thanks to linoleum13 for the excellent advice, I'm on the home stretch now! I'll post back my efforts in case someone finds this thread useful, and to ask for help as I learn a little more about whats going on now, Thanks to all, Linuxforums is a great resource!