Error setting Video server

[Sabong]

I used to be a fan of Mandriva and when the company had issues... I sort of went elsewhere. I'm back with Mageia and liking it.

My initial install of Mageia 4 was a bit plagued though.

1st... Let me say I checked the MD5SUM on my download and far as I can tell I got a good burn. When I installed, I ended up with a failure to install Grub...

I tried it 2 times and got the same error, and sorry, I don't have a log of it. I simply fixed because i noted the 2nd time I tried to install it saw Mageia 4 as installed. By they way, using the install DVD. Not any of the lives. I prefer Xfce or E17 so was going custom.

I just did an update grub... from my Debian system that is my main. Then it found Mageia 4. I booted into it and surprise! It did boot into it but... no X. So I used the depricated "startx" command and got dumped into Razor qt which I also installed to have a look at. From there, Mageia control center... put a session manager... think it was slim? Whatever it is that is used for Openbox i think. (being lazy I admit I could look in control center now.)

Then I was back in Xfce, etc etc. Restart and... no X! I did check that part really i did...

WEll I had read the errata and about putting in the actual manual in "40" in Grub 2. SO onward to install media. Install software... then install GRUB. Then Mageia control panel and I installed Grub 2 to this partition and everything has been normal since...

except my topic. I am not able to get the Nvidia driver to give me 3D effects etc.

It's not really complicated hardware I'm using here... generic Hasee Chinese brand computer. Sorry, been workine here for a few years. GT240 Nvidia Notebook graphics card... but everytime in Control Center when I try to 'set' video... when I test it gives me an error. Why? It installed the Nvidia components it says it needed... anyone have an idea what's missing?

I tried to setup the 3D graphics and it says of course that my system isn't able to suppor it.

I've read through here and there's an issue now with the current Nvidia proprietary driver? How's the open source driver working with this rather simple card then? If it'll do the job how do I switch back to it?

Thanks if anyone can give me some answers...

[wintpe]

cant speak for M4, but the GT240 is still a reasonably recent card, so i would "guess" that the M4 nvidia driver supports it.
but dont take my word for it check the version of the driver against nvidias site, they will tell you what is supported and what is not.

i was suprised when M3 dropped my older 6800GT , which is still a very capable card for desktop effects.

to be sure if you are running the nvidia proprietry

Code: Select all

[root@xxxx ~]# lsmod|grep nvidia
nvidia               9451888  39
drm                   294244  2 nvidia
i2c_core               40536  4 drm,i2c_piix4,nvidia,videodev


also check Xorg.conf

Driver "nvidia"


regards peter

[Sabong]

Thanks, let me check that out... are they 'dropping' card support now on some of the cards? I haven't been keeping up. I'll go back to Nvidia site and check again...

What do you use? Nouveu?

I checked it's 'not' using the "nvidia" driver. I should probably make a further comment about that... I should have considered that.

It wouldn't be. When it does the 'test' and tells me it has a 'fatal server' error, I back out so of course it's not using the nvidia driver. 'fatal error' server indicates to me that if I let it make the changes I'll just end up with a broken X server so... I back
out of it...

This is the exact message I get after test:

An error occurred:
(EE)
Fatal server error:

Try to change some parameters

I click it and it says there's a proprietary driver that will offer more features do I wish to use it... I click yes... it does it's setup then when it does the test... I get that message above.

SO I back out and leave it alone for the moment because I don't know 'why'. There seems to be lack of additonal information to indicate what's happening.

[doktor5000]

i was suprised when M3 dropped my older 6800GT , which is still a very capable card for desktop effects.

Surprised to hear that, as it's still officially supported by the "legacy" series driver which is especially for the 6 and 7 series older cards: http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux-disp ... river.html

@Sabong: Don't do the test, that feature is broken, as for nearly all drivers the graphics card will be in use already, so cannot be tested.
Reboot and see, then switch to another tty and copy away or take a look at /var/log/Xorg.0.log to see why X server doesn't work.

[Sabong]

Aha!! Ok... I did wonder about that... :p I really did. I wondered if the test was broken because this Nvidia works on my Debian.

OK... yeah... I'll set it and when I do, doesn't it copy the current Xorg.config to Xorg.config.d?

SO I can always revert back if there are some issues?

Of course to be safe i think I'll just back it up manually and if it acts up cranky I'll use one of the other distros to replace it back to what's working now...

Thanks for the heads up... the TEST is dead... Ok... then I'll set it.

AS I know my card is still supported... what do you use for your card now? Is there an Nvidia driver for it?

[Sabong]

Well, i enabled "nvidia" driver. No X. I got a nice warning which I went to get a pen and write down the module it said might need to be enabled or else X server will fail to start.

Unfortunately... it didn't wait. It clearly had a 'yes' there which I didn' click so I thought it would wait.

It started anyway giving me no X. So I just reverted back to the old settings...

In a word... it said something like I needed "nokms" module configured with the Nvidia driver... anyone got a clue about that?

What is it?

Why wasn't it configured when asking me to 'use' that driver? How do I configure it? Is it installed or do i need to get it?

Is the configuratino GUI or command line... no problem with the latter but not sure the moment where I should be looking...

Thanks all for your help...

[Sabong]

Looks like I'm here...

adding "nokmsboot" to your /boot/grub/menu.lst "kernel" line

Now I took a look and maybe because I've installed to a partition, there doesn't appear to be a /boot/grub/menu.lst...

Where should I put that line to enable my Nvidia card and anyone have a clue why it didn't 'set' that up in hardware configuration?

Was it supposed to?

I think once I figure out where to put that boot option I'll be able to run the Nvidia driver like I'm trying to do here...

Thanks.

[Sabong]

It looks like I should put it here:

linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.12.9-desktop-1.mga4 root=UUID=89f9ca5c-8bf8-44fa-aeda-0b74067c8835 ro resume=UUID=eae35382-ad1c-4fb4-9030-78252929a835
initrd /boot/initrd-3.12.9-desktop-1.mga4.img

I mean in the Grub.cfg right there after the: linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.12.9-desktop-1.mga4... etc.

Is that right? Bit of a newb here, never had to fool with boot parameters before now... is this where I'd put the nokmsboot and should I have another paramter as well? From what I've found it seems they're saying this is to prevent the Nouveu from loading which is why my X failed before...

If anyone can comfirm this and put me on the proper path thank you very much... Sorry for the newbie questions.

[doktor5000]

FWIW I've got a GT240M and it works just fine here.

With the default grub you don't need to add "nokmsboot" that is done automatically. Also if you have the default grub, you can easily add boot options in the boot menu via pressing F3 then select -> Default and then append nokmsboot in the input line that appears.
If you got grub.cfg then you have grub2. And usually settings are changed by editing /etc/default/grub.cfg as the other one in /boot is automatically generated.

What would be useful is WHY the X server does not start. So please boot again until it has finished loading, switch to another terminal via Ctrl+Alt+F3 for example and then copy /var/log/Xorg.0.log to your /home directory or so, and afterwards post it here.

[Sabong]

Thanks... I'm using Grub 2. I didn't know the default was legacy grub. When I did the install... it failed. It got halfway... then refused to install a boot loader.

ON my second try i observed that it already thought it was installed and asked me if I wanted to upgrade to Mageia 4. (it was 4 already.)

So when it failed 2nd time I just used the Grub-update command in my primary grub 2 to find Mageia install and fixed from there.

As for why X didn't start... I would imagine it said 'clearly' that it was likely not to start because the nokms was not in the boot parameters... As soon as I switched back to non proprietary there was no problem. From what I've googled... if I do the /var/log/Xorg.0.log there won't be anything because it loaded the nouveu driver and therefore X just didn't do anything... or so similar problems have said...

I installed to a patition because I've got 5 other systems here already. :p

Not being aware that Default grub was legacy and not Grub 2, when I 'fixed' the problem with my install using package manager and control center... I downloaded Grub 2 and not legacy grub... oops!

So it seems I'll need to add that 'nokms' manually...

Is the line I 'think' above the correct line to add boot options in Grub 2?

Thanks...

[Sabong]

Hmmm... don't know why... but there is /etc/default/grub

There however is no /etc/default/grub.cfg

[doktor5000]

Hmmm... don't know why... but there is /etc/default/grub

Did you add the option there, or does it exist there?

You may also look at the second bullet of https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Mageia_4_Errata#Grub2 on how to update grub config afterwards.

[Sabong]

Hi, i found that "update grub" command isn't available.

Likely because it's in the GUI, you can add such things to append

However... since there would be no UPDATE GRUB unless I actually go into control Panel and update it...

I just did a big NO NO and added it at the end of the .cfg file and everything has been happy...

I had some VPN issues here so haven't been online till now.

Another thing, getting Network Manager to take over so I could set up a PPTP VPN connection because CHINA blocks OPEN VPN big time...

WEll they block everything BIG TIME... Be glad when I'm out of here...

Where's the NEXT best place for me to look, about setting up Compiz/3D graphics using Xfce? I turned it on and turned it back off because it was terrible... obviously not setup but I've actually no experience playing with 3D graphics at all and certainly not in combination with Xfce...

Has anyone already posted about this or shall I have to leave another post about 3D graphics? Uh elswhere. Or would that be here too? Video?

[doktor5000]

As a general hint and golden rule: Please only one problem per thread So for your questions about Compiz, please use a separate thread, best in the Video subforum.

About the command, you wrote it with a blank? Check the second bullet at https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Mageia_4_Errata#Grub2
the command should be

Code: Select all

update-grub

or

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update-grub2

and it has to be run as root, obviously.