Can't install nvidia drivers

[Kevin Martin]

On 12/19/2011 08:01 PM, Marko Vojinovic wrote:
> On Monday 19 December 2011 18:32:56 Kevin Martin wrote:
>>> From the driver page on the nVidia website for your laptop video card:
>>> Linux x64 (AMD64/EM64T) Display Driver
>>> Version: 290.10
>> So after working on this all afternoon with Lawrence, it turned out that we
>> needed to fall back to the 280.13 version of the nVidia akmod from F15 to
>> get it to work.  With the 290.10 and the 285.05.09 we kept seeing this in
>> the Xorg.5.log file (don't know why it was creating the .5 log file but
>> that's another problem for another time):
>>
>> [    42.538] (**) NVIDIA(0): Enabling 2D acceleration
>> [    43.913] (EE) NVIDIA(0): Failed to get supported display device(s)
>> [    43.933] (WW) NVIDIA(GPU-0): Failed to query OR info 0x24
>> [    43.935] (II) NVIDIA(0): NVIDIA GPU Quadro FX 2500M (G71GL) at PCI:1:0:0
>> (GPU-0)
> IIRC, in one of the previous incarnations of this particular thread, someone 
> somewhere mentioned that this is actually a bug in the version 290 of the 
> nVidia drivers. I remember looking at the bugreport to nVidia (lost the link, 
> sorry...), and it was recognized as a bug and also closed as FIXED by nVidia. 
> Of course, the new version of the driver with this fix is yet to be released by 
> nVidia, and in the meantime users that are being hit by this were advised to 
> downgrade to version 280.
>
> The problem was that nobody on the list could walk Lawrence through the 
> downgrading process (as you have probably found out, it's not exactly a thing 
> a newbie would be able to do easily).
>
>> Going back to the 280.13 version fixed this.  We also added the following to
>> the xorg.conf file (again, don't know if we needed this but it was
>> suggested in a forum entry on another forum and we tried it *before* not
>> trying it and since the driver worked after this we didn't try to revert
>> this):
>>
>> Section "ServerFlags"
>>     Option        "AIGLX" "on"
>>     Option      "ignoreABI"
>> EndSection
> The AIGLX option is a good thing if it works, keep it. I wouldn't know about 
> the ignoreABI option, but maybe it is necessary for the downgraded driver. 
>
> Lawrence should keep in mind that he should update his driver to the latest 
> version as soon as it comes out of nVidia, and that the issue he is having is 
> probably going to go away on its own... ;-) In the meantime, he should keep 
> using the 280 driver, and probably keep running the current version of the 
> kernel, until the new driver arrives.
>
> Best, :-)
> Marko
>
>
Darn, I missed the bugreport on downgrading to the 280 version, that would have made the time spent *hours* less.  In any case, he's
working now and we discussed going forward when a new driver comes out.  While I tend to agree with going with the newest driver I
will, as I typically do with anybody when discussing these sorts of things, advocate letting *others* be the guinea pigs and wait to
see if anything shakes out after it's released before upgrading to it.  He has a working system now and I wouldn't want to see that
go away with another buggy driver.

Thanks for the info Marko.  I'll have to check more carefully in the future.

Kevin