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iandoug
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Joined: 11 Feb 2005
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Location: Cape Town, South Africa
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 Posted: Wed Aug 04, 2021 10:53 am Post subject: Some comments on getting X / Nvidia to work |
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Hi
Just some comments.
Been on Gentoo since 2005. Busy setting up new box, the initial install of base system was not too bad, but had headaches after that.
Could not get X to start and started to feel like total noob. Reading various Gentoo pages about X and Nividia (including wrong advice) got me nowhere.
Search the forums for "no screens found" does not help... the search function decides to only look for "screens", even when I put the phrase in quotes.
So I resorted to Google which first produces an old post referencing HAL.
Luckily another link went to https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-8447666.html?sid=30a376e6caf38c78aaa1fa9a50f29134
which mentions to run nvidia-xconfig. That instruction is not on the Nvidia page at https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/NVIDIA/nvidia-drivers
Once I ran it as root, startx immediately worked as user.
So posting this in case someone else has similar issues.
Cheers, Ian
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Jaglover
Watchman
Joined: 29 May 2005
Posts: 8291
Location: Saint Amant, Acadiana
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| Posted: Wed Aug 04, 2021 11:36 am Post subject: |
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The conf from Gentoo Wiki works well.
| Code: | Section "Device"
Identifier "nvidia"
Driver "nvidia"
EndSection |
I wouldn't run nvidia-xconfig, as it creates a huge bloated unnecessary conf.
The four-line conf is for plain nVidia and won't work with hybrid graphics.
| Quote: | | Reading various Gentoo pages about X and Nividia (including wrong advice) got me nowhere. |
Such remarks are not helpful, and you do not mention what graphics hardware you have. Is it Optimus?
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iandoug
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Joined: 11 Feb 2005
Posts: 832
Location: Cape Town, South Africa
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| Posted: Wed Aug 04, 2021 12:24 pm Post subject: |
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| Jaglover wrote: | The conf from Gentoo Wiki works well.
| Code: | Section "Device"
Identifier "nvidia"
Driver "nvidia"
EndSection |
I wouldn't run nvidia-xconfig, as it creates a huge bloated unnecessary conf.
The four-line conf is for plain nVidia and won't work with hybrid graphics.
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Thanks. Last I remember about Xorg was "don't need config file anymore, it just works." So did not set one up.
FWIW the config file it created is very plain vanilla ... none of the old modeline gunk.
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1207 Aug 4 12:38 /etc/X11/xorg.conf
| Jaglover wrote: |
| Quote: | | Reading various Gentoo pages about X and Nividia (including wrong advice) got me nowhere. |
Such remarks are not helpful, and you do not mention what graphics hardware you have. Is it Optimus? |
| Code: |
Edit: I was kind of hoping not to have to (not the best at writing docs / editing wikis and have other things to do), but I've put revamping that page on my TODO (or maybe just remove a few wrong bits at first). The more I look at it, the worse it looks. Much of this seem to date back to >10 years ago and nobody is daring clean it up. Disabling DRM was fine with old drivers for what it's worth, but not now that nvidia has a nvidia-drm module.
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https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-8642055.html#8642055
Card is VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation TU117 [GeForce GTX 1650] (rev a1)
Must update my .sig
Thanks, Ian
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Jaglover
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Joined: 29 May 2005
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Location: Saint Amant, Acadiana
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| Posted: Wed Aug 04, 2021 1:09 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | Last I remember about Xorg was "don't need config file anymore, it just works." So did not set one up. |
This was your mistake. Xorg does not need config with open source drivers, but it needs the four-liner with proprietary nvidia driver.
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Ionen
Developer
Joined: 06 Dec 2018
Posts: 2719
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| Posted: Wed Aug 04, 2021 1:24 pm Post subject: |
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It works out of the box for me (Edit: mostly tested with common gnome/gdm and plasma/sddm), assuming have kms helper enabled in the kernel anyway (the ebuild would complaint if it wasn't). It needs nvidia-drm to work to auto-detect and load the ebuild-installed .conf file.
Manual config should only be needed in case of multiple GPUs / offloading.
Last edited by Ionen on Wed Aug 04, 2021 1:29 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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Jaglover
Watchman
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Location: Saint Amant, Acadiana
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| Posted: Wed Aug 04, 2021 1:27 pm Post subject: |
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Ionen,
you say this four-liner is no longer needed? Then Gentoo Wiki definitely need to be updated. I have currently no machines with nVidia blob to test how it works.
Edit: I saw your edit, so ebuild installs a conf file now.
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Ionen
Developer
Joined: 06 Dec 2018
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| Posted: Wed Aug 04, 2021 1:35 pm Post subject: |
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On my stable systems I use for testing (with gentoo-kernel-bin) where I intentionally configure nothing to test out-of-the-box, I only changed VIDEO_CARDS=nvidia (plus adding video group) and Xorg worked just fine both with my 560ti and 1070.
Not that I test 390.xx often wrt 560ti, that old box isn't faring so well and the card likes falling off the bus  Think may have bad ram too, need to check that sometime. |
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Ionen
Developer
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Posts: 2719
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| Posted: Wed Aug 04, 2021 1:41 pm Post subject: |
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For wiki, there's a lot of old advice that would need to test to be sure it's really outdated. It's hard to tell if every obscure issue is still relevant when I don't have the same hardware or every kind of setups people may be using (and I notably never had a optimus laptop, almost every issues I keep seeing people run into seem to be related to these).
Edit: for 390.xx, a custom .conf may also override a workaround that's needed to get GLX working due to its incomplete glvnd support |
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Jaglover
Watchman
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flyerone
n00b
Joined: 19 Nov 2019
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| Posted: Wed Aug 04, 2021 3:38 pm Post subject: |
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| Hi, my fresh install has a weird malfunction. The logs tell my drivers are loaded but machine locks up with no trace of starting Xfce. Would someone please answer my post? |
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Banana
Veteran
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Location: Germany
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Jaglover
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Goverp
Advocate
Joined: 07 Mar 2007
Posts: 2006
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| Posted: Wed Aug 04, 2021 6:52 pm Post subject: Re: Some comments on getting X / Nvidia to work |
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| iandoug wrote: | ...
Search the forums for "no screens found" does not help... the search function decides to only look for "screens", even when I put the phrase in quotes.
So I resorted to Google which first produces an old post referencing HAL.
... |
Sometime soon we should be seeing the new Gentoo forums, which I hope will have a better search engine.
In the meantime, the best way to search the forums is to Google
| Code: | | site:forums.gentoo.org no screens found |
or whatever.
There's probably a way to build a custom search in firefox or whatever, but I don't know it 
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