Problems Installing Closed Nvidia Drivers

[hcaulfield57]

I hope this is the right location for this question, if not move it.

I just got a new graphics card, and was hoping to be able to install it with the closed nvidia drivers, because I want to play games with it! I followed the steps on this page (http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/nvidia-guide.xml). I reconfigured my kernel with the necessary options, changed VIDEO_CARDS="nvidia" in my /etc/make.conf, and then did "emerge --update --deep --newuse world", but I'm having two issues. One my console (before startx) does not fix the resolution like it did before I installed the new driver, two I cannot startx. It complains that there are no drivers available. I tried adding the nvidia module to /etc/conf.d/modules, but could not figure out how. I also tried changing /etc/X11/xorg.conf, but it does not exist. Any help is appreciated.

[cach0rr0]

on the console resolution, that would have been a function of KMS within whichever other driver you were using
to get that with the binary nvidia driver, youll want to set up something like uvesafb and add a 'vga' statement to your grub.conf

as far as the binary nvidia driver

-do a quick emerge -pv nvidia-drivers to make sure it's indeed installed
-have a gander at your Xorg log; if in doubt, throw it (/var/log/Xorg.0.log) on pastebin and share the link
-post up your lspci -k output so we can see if something else might be conflicting
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[hcaulfield57]

[BillWho]

hcaulfield57,

Use nvidia-xconfig to setup the xorg.conf file. I use vga=794 on the kernel grub line.

Another package that might be useful to you is media-video/nvidia-settings - which is a gui app.

Check

[hcaulfield57]

Thanks for the response BillWho. I changed opengl to nvidia, it was set on X11 before. Would you suggest I use nvidia-xconfig? I also have nvidia-settings installed, but have yet to really look at it. "vga=794" does not work for me, in fact it doesn't want to boot with that option.

[cach0rr0]

i was told a while back nvidia-xconfig generates an extraordinary amount of cruft
id be surprised, however, if it didnt generate a usable xorg.conf (though an xorg.conf shouldnt be required nowadays)
i wouldnt be surprised, if nvidia-xconfig is back to being useful again, though if it is the xorg.conf it generates should be tiny, and have only entries relevant to the nvidia driver, not things like e.g. input
_________________
Lost configuring your system?
dump lspci -n here | see Pappy's guide | Link Stash

[cach0rr0]

[BillWho]

hcaulfield57,

[hcaulfield57]

[cach0rr0]

[hcaulfield57]

[hcaulfield57]

Managed to get vesa installed, doesn't look great, but resolution is much better now. On a side note I am experiencing some sort of screen tearing with mplayer, dunno why its happening.

[BillWho]

hcaulfield57,

You might want to check your use flag settings for ffmpeg and mplayer.

vdpau : Enables VDPAU decoders (requires nVidia video cards and binary nvidia-drivers to offload CPU processing to video card)
vaapi : Enables VAAPI (Video Acceleration API) for hardware decoding
opengl : Adds support for OpenGL (3D graphics)

and others that might improve the quality.

Also, if you use smplayer, check the options/preferences/video tab selections .

Good luck

[hcaulfield57]

BillWho:

I've tried what you said about mplayer, doesn't seem to help. Also tried installing a native Linux game, it runs (looks great too), but I'm still experiencing minor screen tears. They're not as bad as some that I've seen, but considering I paid I would like to have good performance.

EDIT: I strongly suspect that xcompmgr might be the culprit behind the screen tearing. It seems to basically go away without it running. Although I'm not positive. That will be a shame, I really enjoy my transparent terminals. Also curious if the fact that I am using a small 19inch tv as my monitor would change anything.

[BillWho]

hcaulfield57,

Glad to hear you at least got it working. As far as the tearing is concerned, a couple of things can impact performance, composting being one of them.

Processor speed and the gpu speed are also factors along with the resolution of the video. I don't know the model card you purchased or if it's a high-end gaming card or not.

I noticed your glxgears framerate. I'm not at the computer with the nvidia card at the moment, but I'll check it tomorrow and let you know what it is.

As far as my system goes it's lightweight, no composting, LXDE desktop and openbox windows manager. I'll throw a couple of system specs in along with the framerate for comparison.

Enjoy

[hcaulfield57]

My system is very lightweight, and I should have way more than enough CPU, RAM, GPU. It's definitely not the hardware, not top of the line but more than enough for what I'm doing at the moment. I feel that disabling xcompmgr did produce a noticeable improvement, which is a shame, like I said I enjoyed my transparent terminals, perhaps I should try fake transparency and see how that looks, although I've never liked fake transparency.

Have you heard of using a TV creating less than optimal viewing situation? Perhaps updating to the current nvidia drivers would help? The ones included by Gentoo are not the newest, although still pretty new. I should be able to see what other games look like at some point, but for now, I just used some of the native Linux games that I have on hand right now.

Thanks for the help too, I appreciate it.

[BillWho]

hcaulfield57,

Just to clarify, I don't do any composting with this computer either - so much for spell checks and not paying attention

Here's the info on the system with the nvidia graphics:

[claudecat]

FWIW, I generally don't have to mess with uvesafb when using the proprietary nvidia driver - just appending vga=795 to my kernel line in grub gives me a decent looking console. In fact, kms gives me almost unreadably small text. You could try using vga=ask to see what setting works best for your monitor/tv, or vga=788 (1024x786 iirc) is a good safe choice. Just a guess, but I would imagine that using a tv as a monitor may be contributing to your issues here... All that being said, I find using the nouveau driver works great with gentoo - it's a new enough version not to crash regularly like older ones did (on other distros at least - it's never crashed in gentoo), and provides the snappy desktop effects in KDE that all the kids are raving about. I'm not a gamer though (aside from kbreakout ), so this probably means little to you...
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[hcaulfield57]