NVIDIA driver *taints* kernel???

Jonathan Berry berryja at gmail.com
Wed Jan 19 03:35:44 UTC 2005


On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 22:12:06 -0500, Sam Varshavchik
<mrsam at courier-mta.com> wrote:
> Jonathan Berry writes:
> > On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 21:37:42 -0500, Sam Varshavchik
> > <mrsam at courier-mta.com> wrote:
> >> Michael Cobb writes:
> >> > Steven,
> >> >
> >> > I have the same problem on a Opteron based FC-2 box with an Nvidia FX-500
> >> > card. I set runlevel 3, execute startx, and look at a blank screen. I have
> >> > been working on this problem for 2 weeks. So far no love from fedora!
> >>
> >> Good luck getting NVidia working on an Opteron.  Their closed source driver
> >> is 32-bit only.  It won't be easy to shoehorn it into a 64bit kernel.  Even
> >> if it's possible at all.
> >
> > Whoa!  This is false.  I have an Athlon 64 and nVidia's drivers work
> > just fine.  Please get your facts right before posting.
> 
> The only Fedora 64bit kernel I'm aware of is the Opteron kernel. There is no
> athlon64-specific kernel either in the i386 Fedora build, or the x86_64
> Fedora build.

It's the same architecture whether it's the Athlon 64 or the Opteron. 
Just like the i386 kernel runs on both Pentium 4s and Zeons.  The
Opteron is AMDs server class processor.  The Athlon 64 is basically
the same, just with fewer HyperTransport channels.  They both use the
AMD64 arch which boots with the x86_64 kernel.  I know what I'm
talking about here.

> If you are booting the 32-bit i686 kernel, you are running in 32bit mode.

I think I know the difference between 32- and 64-bit.  I downloaded
and installed the x86_64 version of FC3 specifically.  In case you
don't believe me:
$ uname -a
Linux ClawHammer 2.6.10-1.741_FC3 #1 Thu Jan 13 16:35:56 EST 2005
x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
Oh yeah, and there are my numerous posts about 64-bit issues to this
mailing list.

> Yes, you have a much better chance of getting the 32bit Nvidia drivers
> running under your 32bit kernel.

Go to www.nvidia.com and click on download drivers.  Then go to the
Linux and FreeBSD drivers link.  Or for the lazy:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux.html
Linux AMD64 listed plain as day.  They do support 64-bit and it does work.
And by the way, it would be *impossible* to run a 32-bit driver on a
64-bit system (running with a 64-bit kernel, of course).

> The previous poster, though, is booting the Opteron kernel.  He's in a very
> different pickle.  And if you are indeed booting the x86_64 build of Fedora,
> I'm sure he'll appreciate the exact details of what you did to get Nvidia's
> albatross off the ground.

Update the system and boot newest kernel.  Download the driver (6629
as 6111 seems to be broken now, was with the 32-bit kernel initially),
switch to a virtual console, log in as root, init 3, sh NVIDIA...,
follow the prompts, edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and replace "nv" with
"nvidia", init 5, and look, it works.  And I get 1700 fps in glxgears,
it's something like 200-300 with the nv driver (GeForce 440 Go).  I
did have to add something special to modprobe.conf (for the 6629
driver), but that's specific to my laptop (Compaq R3000Z).

Jonathan

PS: Please, do not question someone if you do not know the facts and
have no experience.  It's just plain rude and insulting.




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