Flicker's and X using nvidia drivers

Esben

Hi,

can't seem to solve this one:

When using the nvidia driver for my AOpen MX440 Geforce 4 card, the X-server behaves really strangely during startup. First it sort of flickers for a while, then it shows the nvidia logo, and then it proceedes to show a garbled (almost melted) screen. Can't kill it at this point; nor can I switch to another terminal with e.g. ctrl-alt-f1. If I hit ctrl-alt-del, the screen changes (but is still garbled.) Hitting the three-finger salute a couple times more reboots the machine.

Now if I disable glx(?!) then it behaves identically until the nvidia logo, then proceeds to the login prompt. From there it works; except if I try to change back to text-mode (e.g. alt-ctrl-f1, shutdown, etc.) Then it does it's garbled stunt again.

Looking at the XF86 log, everything seem normal, except a warning about beeing unable to read a Exxx from the monitor. I suppose that could account for the flickering (windows does a bit of this too, though not as severe) but it certainly doesn't account for the garbling of the display. And why should the glx module effect the "normal" (non-3D) login prompt?

I tried to disable AGP, which was ack in the log. However, the symnptons was unchanged...

As TeX is wont to put it, stymied.

Puuuhleaase :roll:

? Could anyone help me? I might just be willing to scrap the entire installation and try over, if I thought that would help. It's certainly useless now.. and me with open bugs in bugzillla :O)

P.S: I can try to post the XF86*log if anyone thinks that would help, but it's a couple of pages.

P.P.S: I installed nvidia's drivers from nvidia webpage before discovering the e-builds. Could that be the culprit? I did a make clean when rebuilding the kernel and modules, but still...
_________________
regards, Esben
True trade is honest, but not merciful. Politics is dishonest, no matter how merciful... and war is neither honest nor merciful.... therefore, choose trade above politics, but politics above war.

noalavida · Posted: Wed Aug 28, 2002 2:56 am Post subject:

I've exactly the same problem. I've probed a lot of configurations and different kernels compilation. I download the Nvidia drivers with emerge and now i'm reinstalling all another time. My next step will be to use a older nvidia drivers downloaded form the nvidia page. My graphics card is a Leadtek GeForce 2MX. All my investigations make me think the problem is with the opengl libraries, but i've probed so many things that in this point i don't know what to do.
So time ago i used a Mandrake distribution and the drivers worked ok, so i could play opengl games, so i think is very probable that the bug is caused by an incompability betwenn latest nvidia drivers and the xfree 4.2.? os caused by a bad option in compiling time of the xfree.
This is all i can say you, but i'll continue investigating. If you solve the problem, please tell me how.

voidzero · Bodhisattva Joined: 21 Jul 2002 Posts: 265 Location: Grnn

This helped for me:

nicogo · n00b Joined: 28 Aug 2002 Posts: 2

*Maybe* (no guarantees) I can help. I have a VisionTek GeForce 2 MX card which I originally set up under Slackware, and now use with Gentoo. I'm using the latest nVidia drivers there are ebuilds for (1.0.2960) and XFree 4.2, so there doesn't seem to be a conflict there.

I've always had trouble getting a working XF86Config (I wrote one from scratch under Slackware), but the following technique seems to work for me:

First, obviously, make sure you've installed the nVidia drivers. I recommend emerging them so they end up in the appropriate paths.

Then run the following from a console (with no X server running) as root:

voidzero · Bodhisattva Joined: 21 Jul 2002 Posts: 265 Location: Grnn

that pretty much says what I said.

noalavida · Posted: Thu Aug 29, 2002 5:38 pm Post subject: A solution

Finally i've get to put the nvdia drivers working on. The solution is to use the previous version of the drivers , that is, th 1.0-2880. With this drivers i've no problem.

Esben · Posted: Thu Aug 29, 2002 7:09 pm Post subject: finally recompiled

I tried finally reinstalled the whole thing after trying out the all the advice posted here (except the last one, started recompiling before I saw that one.) I now believe that it is related to using the xfs-*-sources instead of the gentoo-sources, since now both the eepro100 drivers (for my netcard) and nvidia works. Or perhaps I had configured my kernel to oblivion.

Well, everything works now except that the X-server still takes forever to figure out the right resolution... but I can live with that.

Now to find out why kde can't seem to see any users but root. The ought to be an easy one to solve, comparatively :O)

Thank you guy for your help. It appreciated more than I can tell...

Wish these groups were carried as newgroups... but I digress.
_________________
regards, Esben
True trade is honest, but not merciful. Politics is dishonest, no matter how merciful... and war is neither honest nor merciful.... therefore, choose trade above politics, but politics above war.

kyron · Posted: Thu Aug 29, 2002 7:23 pm Post subject: Re: finally recompiled

Esben · Posted: Thu Aug 29, 2002 7:46 pm Post subject: Re: finally recompiled

Esben · Posted: Thu Aug 29, 2002 8:21 pm Post subject:

Misssing shell script AND saving the setup did the trick. Thanks :-)

Now only the flickering at startup remains. I will work on that... later! :O)
_________________
regards, Esben
True trade is honest, but not merciful. Politics is dishonest, no matter how merciful... and war is neither honest nor merciful.... therefore, choose trade above politics, but politics above war.