Mageia 2 with a nvidia fx5200 graka

[willie]

I want to install Mageia on my old desktop with a nvidia FX5200 graka, with Mandriva 2010.* is works perfectly.
When trying Mageia 2 all i got is a black screen with a cursor that can move. I suppose that Mageia is also having the 173.14.20 driver.
Someone an idea what to do tho got it working.

There are no errors when booting

[alf]

Sadly MGA2 has no suitable driver for older nvidia-cards like FX5200. You may either user the nv-driver(w/o hardware acceleration and full 3d-support) or dowload a driver from nvidia-homepage directly. (http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux-disp ... .28-driver)

[willie]

Oke but i must have a boot option in grub, would that be vga=nv or a other line

[alf]

Oke but i must have a boot option in grub, would that be vga=nv or a other line

yes, maybe also xmodule=nv or xdriver=nv. You my also boot into runlevel 3, edit the /etc/X11/xorg.conf, set

Code: Select all

Driver "nv"

in section "Device" and reboot.

[jankusanagi]

The 'nv' driver is deprecated, if I'm not mistaken.
It was replaced by the much more complete nouveau driver.

I use it on my Mageia system, with a NVidia FX 5200, and it works like a charm.

There is one thing, though: I need the "nokmsboot" parameter in the GRUB boot line, otherwise there is a DRM-related error which appears constantly during boot, and makes the whole system _really_ slow. But with nokmsboot, it works flawlessly.

[doktor5000]

Why not link to the errata? https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Mageia_2_Errata#Nvidia

[willie]

Why not link to the errata? https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Mageia_2_Errata#Nvidia

Thanks, xdriver=nouveau didn't work, same result black screen with a cursor that can move
xdriver=nvidia is working i see a desktop. Not with direct rendering but it was a live session

[wintpe]

unrelated to fixing your problem, but from a hardware perspective.

this was a particulary nasty card from nvidea, in that it has abizmal performance, well bellow what its 5 series suggests.

In fact a much older TNT2 would perform better.

If your happy then fair enough, but there are a plerothra of newer nvidea cards around, (on ebay if nessasary if your stuck with agp)

that will easily outperform this card. If its PCI-E then $20 will buy a more modern and faster card.

maybe worth a thought at least.

regards peter

[willie]

Mageia installed, the result is the same black screen. Added the lines xdriver=**** to grub, didn't work

@wintpe
The card is for me good enough i'm not a gamer. I use draftsight and libre office

[doktor5000]

Well, AFAIK nouveau or nv drivers should work fine for that card, as nvidia drivers for older cards (not necessarily saying bad cards, i still got a Geforce 4 TI4200 in my older workstation) don't work with newer Xserver like Mageia 2 uses as nvidia doesn't seem to care to update/support those as well as the newer ones.

If it doesn't please report that as a bug: https://wiki.mageia.org/en/How_to_report_a_bug_properly

[Erik]

I have the same problem, but with Nvidia GeForce FX 5600.

I get a black screen with a mouse pointer that can move. I cannot make out from this thread how I can get the "nouveau" driver working. How do you achieve this without a screen?

Erik

[peispud]

Same issue here with an Nvidia GTX465. Installing proprietary Nvidia drivers fails every time. Every version of Linux I have tried that comes with only Noveau drivers on the DVD and no video driver set-up utility are pure poison video wise. PC-BSD's video driver set-up is pure perfection, gives the user choice, and should be the way everybody does things. Noveau might be fine for some garbage system, but nobody spends hard earned cash on a system, particularly for a decent video card only to use a fraction of it's processing power. This is an old, worn out problem that can be fixed by simply giving the user some basic choice on system install. Solutions please.

[doktor5000]

I get a black screen with a mouse pointer that can move. I cannot make out from this thread how I can get the "nouveau" driver working. How do you achieve this without a screen?

Same issue here with an Nvidia GTX465. Installing proprietary Nvidia drivers fails every time. Every version of Linux I have tried that comes with only Noveau drivers on the DVD and no video driver set-up utility are pure poison video wise.

For both of you, those issues are documented in https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Mageia_2_Err ... rd_drivers
Graphics driver can be easily changed from failsafe mode via drakx11. Also video driver can be selected during summary step of installation, at least for free dvd&dualarch cd.

Documentation for installer is available online at http://doc.mageia.org/content/misc-params.html and http://doc.mageia.org/content/setupX.html
Seems both of you have some reading to do

[Erik]

Dear Doktor5000,

thank you for your advice. I did read the workaround, but I did not know how to follow the advice, I am just an enduser:

Depending on your card you may add in the grub (f6)

How do I "add in the grub", and what about "f6"? Without a screen?

I read about the new nVidia driver 295 and found that my card is no longer supported in it. So I gave up and bought an old Ati card that is still supported. Problem solved, no not solved but worked around.

Thanks and greetings,

Erik Jan.

[doktor5000]

grub is the boot menu, where you select which entry to boot, long before the desktop loads. F6 is the function key on your keyboard, and "add to grub" means adding this to the kernel boot options. You can just press F6 in the boot menu (shown as F6 "Kernel Option" in the boot menu) select Default and append the options mentioned in Errata to boot options.

BTW: Your graphics card was only supported by the nvidia legacy driver (175 series or 96 series, not sure) as those older nvidia drivers receive no support/updates seldomly ny nvidia themselves, and are not compatible with the more recent xserver version which Mageia 2 uses.

[doktor5000]

Just take a look at

Bildschirmfoto2.png (268.83 KiB) Viewed 7142 times

and

Bildschirmfoto2_1.png (273.74 KiB) Viewed 7142 times

I've added added an option there, can you see? Is that more clear?

[Erik]

thank you,

I never looked at the boot options, since I do not know the syntax that is needed. Whenver something like this happens again, I will have a serious look at the options.

Thanks for your patience and help.

Erik Jan.

[willie]

I tried again to use Mageia 2, the line "xdriver=nouveau" didn't work, "xdriver=nvidia" works only with the live sesion.
After installing Mageia 2 on my comp the only thing i see is a black screen with a cursor.
Why is it working with a live sesion and if i installed Mageia 2, has it to do with kernel 3. because open suse has the same problem.
Mandriva 2011 with kernel 2.6 has the problem not

[alf]

Mageia has no legacy-driver for older nvidia-cards. You've to download it form Nvidia-HP. To boot into graphical environment press F3 at the bootscreen and add

Code: Select all

xdriver=nv

or

Code: Select all

xdriver=vesa

to the kernel commandline.

[willie]

But still remains the question why "xdriver=nvidia" works in a live session and not when Mageia is installed