nVidia driver and kernel 2.6.13 problems [SOLVED]

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Matrix7 · Post by **Matrix7** » Tue Oct 11, 2005 1:33 pm

I've recently completed an emerge -u world that updated gentoo-sources to 2.6.13-gentoo-r3. Needless to say when I restarted my system, xorg baulked with the "Failed to initialize the NVIDIA kernel module" message. Folowing advice on these forums I tweaked xorg.conf, emerged nvidia-kernel and nvidia-glx, eselect opengl set nvidia all to no avail. I noticed that the necessary device nodes were being created correctly, but still no luck.

After a while I decided to try the nVidia installer that I've used with other distros and also with gentoo early on. I copied the NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7676-pkg0.run file from /usr/portage/distfiles to a safe location and ran it. I wasn't expecting too much, but lo and behold it worked. I've now got a 2.6.13 kernel running with nVidia 1.0.7676 quite happily. If you're experiencing the same problems, give it a try.

It also suggests that the problem lies in the ebuild rather than the nVidia binary driver.

lghman · Post by **lghman** » Tue Oct 11, 2005 2:05 pm

It also suggests that the problem lies in the ebuild rather than the nVidia binary driver.

Code: Select all

~ $ uname -r
2.6.13-gentoo-r3

Code: Select all

~$ equery list nvidia       
[ Searching for package 'nvidia' in all categories among: ]
 * installed packages
[I--] [  ] media-video/nvidia-kernel-1.0.7676 (0)
[I--] [  ] media-video/nvidia-glx-1.0.7676-r1 (0)

No problems here with the 2.6.13 kernel and the nvidia driver ebuild.

--sonik

bassvandijk · Post by **bassvandijk** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 7:04 am

I have the exact same problem.

I'm using the stable nvidia-kernel-1.0.6629-r4. After upgrading to gentoo-sources-2.6.13-r3, xorg gave the error: "Failed to initialize the NVIDIA kernel module". Note that the nvidia module was loaded.

First I'm going to try upgrading to the masked nvidia-kernel-1.0.7676. If that doesn't work I will try you're solution.

H4wk · Post by **H4wk** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 7:31 am

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/udev-guide.xml

Scroll down, and add that udev param to your kernel. That should (hopefully) do the trick.
Updating world doesn't do that automatically i believe.

bassvandijk · Post by **bassvandijk** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 11:59 am

With nvidia-kernel-1.0.7676 xorg will successfully initialize the nvidia module.

H4wk, what udev kernel parameter are you refering to? I can't find it in the udev guide.

dmpogo · Post by **dmpogo** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 4:45 pm

bassvandijk wrote:I have the exact same problem.

I'm using the stable nvidia-kernel-1.0.6629-r4. After upgrading to gentoo-sources-2.6.13-r3, xorg gave the error: "Failed to initialize the NVIDIA kernel module". Note that the nvidia module was loaded.

First I'm going to try upgrading to the masked nvidia-kernel-1.0.7676. If that doesn't work I will try you're solution.

I have the same setup as you, and after upgrade it fails. My problems is that /dev/nvidia0 and /dev/nvidiactl are not created automatically when the module is loaded. If I create these devices by hand, everything works (well can't find /dev/mouse, but this is a known story)

Udev guide did not help either - autoloading nvidia during boot does not help.
Searching for that mysterious udev parameter