Driver issues

[Ericj1186]

Can someone give me a step-by-step guide to updating my drivers? My video cards are two Geforce Nvidia 250 GTS (they run in SLi) and my sound card is a Creative Soundblaster X-Fi Fata1ity.

I was advised for the video card to run it in the F2 environment, but Ctrl+Alt+F2 did not work on my computer. I have a wireless Microsoft Natural Ergonomic 7000, and I cannot remember the Fs working too well. I also installed the sound card driver, and on restarting, it loaded a black screen (after a really slow Ubuntu loading) telling me that Loading Hardware Drivers failed. They said it may be an incapable driver. How can I reverse installing that, find the right driver, and install that?

I think that's everything that is stopping me from using Ubuntu 9.04 for now. If you have any questions for something I should clarify, please ask.

Thanks

[D-cat]

Where did you get the drivers and what were the original file names?

I ask this because Ubuntu typically does not need outside resources for drivers; anything that's not included internally for legal reasons is still linked to in the repos for easy installation. Linux in general doesn't use Windows drivers. I'd be kind of surprized if the sound card driver didn't install itself. Usually the Creative cards work out of the box, the worst I've ever seen happen is the channels get reversed.

The nVidia driver should be available from the Hardware Drivers panel either on the taskbar or the system menu. There should be a check box that allows you to download and install the nVidia 3D driver in one step.

[Ericj1186]

I got my installs first from the Hardware Drivers under System, then from the Nvidia site.

Every time I install that driver (NVIDIA-Linux-180.51-pkg1.run or the NVIDIA Accelerated Graphics Driver), then reboot, it would load my computer in the terminal (with tty1), and the X server wouldn't work. I tried to do startX and such and it would give me errors with not being able to find the X server/xinit errors. The second I uninstalled the driver, I could reload the GUI.

With my sound card, I was able to update my drivers, but I can only get sound in Pidgen, nothing else (not Youtube or Ubuntu itself).

Thanks for the reply!

[D-cat]

The nVidia driver from the repo is your best bet.

However, the sound isn't a driver issue; If you get sound with anything, the driver is installed. It sounds like classic PulseAudio issue. Replacing it with Esound will get back most of Ubuntu's sound system, but YouTube (or other flash audio) is still a bit of a crap shoot.

Howto solve all PulseAudio-related issues in Ubuntu|Ubuntu Geek

[Ericj1186]

I will try the sound thing. Thanks.

What should I do about the Video card issue? If I install the driver from the repo, I cannot access the GUI at all unless I uninstall it. This seems like a really critical issue. Also, I get tons of errors regarding xinit and X server.

Any ideas?

[D-cat]

Possible idea, may or may not work.

Uncheck the nVidia box in the hardware manager, this should return you to the 2D "nv" driver. After restarting X, open a terminal and type sudo init 3
You should be dropped to a text interface, you may have to log back in. Type sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg which will hopefully reset the video configuration.

Type sudo init 5 to restart X

Try checking on the nVidia driver again.

[Ericj1186]

Before I do that, can you tell me the command to uninstall that driver from the terminal in case I get stuck in it again?

[D-cat]

Looking at the file here, it appears the uninstall command should be

sudo nvidia-installer --uninstall

[Ericj1186]

Possible idea, may or may not work.

Uncheck the nVidia box in the hardware manager, this should return you to the 2D "nv" driver. After restarting X, open a terminal and type sudo init 3
You should be dropped to a text interface, you may have to log back in. Type sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg which will hopefully reset the video configuration.

Type sudo init 5 to restart X

Try checking on the nVidia driver again.

The sudo init # commands did nothing for me, but the reconfigure command gave me this:

xserver-xorg postinst warning: overwriting possibly-customised configuration file; backup in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.20090517201022

I restarted, and it booted right back to the terminal. Once again I got the following:

Loading, please wait...

19+0 records in
19+0 records out
kinit: name_to_dev_t(/dev/disk/by-uuid/92[...] = dev (8,22)
kinit: trying to resume from /dev/disk/by-uuid/9b29[...]1cd
kinit: No resume image, doing normal boot...

Ubuntu 9.04 eric-desktop tty1

eric-desktop login

I login, and type StartX and I get this:

(==)Log file: "/var/log/Xorg.0.log", Time: [Today]
(==) Using config file "/etc/X11/xorg.conf"
(EE)No devices detected.

Fatal server error: 
No screens found.


ddxSigGiveUp: Closing log
giving up.
xinit: No such file or directory (errno2): unable to connect to X server
xinit: No such process (errno 3): Server error.

I type sudo gdm -start, and it says:

gdm[40980: WARNING: GDM already running.  Aborting!
GDM already running. Aborting!

Ctrl + Alt + F7 yields a black screen with a blinking cursor.

So, I run sudo nvidia (caps and non-)- installer --uninstall, and it said Nvidia-installer: command not found. (I then removed the driver with envyng, restarted, and it booted back to the GUI without issue.

Does this help narrow it down?

[D-cat]

Since I have never used envy, I can't say it really narrows anything down for me, however, I am glad you got it to work. It claims that if you remove the driver with envy, then your next boot you will be using the open source (2D) driver. This is more or less where I was trying to get to before attempting the 3D driver again.

I still suggest using the hardware applet if possible to install the 3D driver. Failing that, try using envyng. I'd avoid using the nvidia bin.run file, since that worked oh-so-well last time (/sarcasm)