I thought it was simple...

Okay, so where do I toddle off to to get nVidida display drivers for my wonderful and most worthwile, Linux Mandrake 8.2?

Ive got a GeForce4 Ti 4200 which i wish to use, and i want to update the drivers because the display is a bit laggy at the mo.

Also, once ive got the (right) drivers, i want to know how to install them!

*sigh* i was hoping this was gonig to be easy!

 

http://www.nvidia.com/linux

 

Well, i managed to work out which driver i actually needed, with the little flow diagram thingame..

but ive just noticed... in my control panel thingame whatzit, under graphics cards... mine isnt listed... It only goes up to GeForce 3..... why??

Is there anyway i can update it?

Again, i have Mandrake 8.2

 

I just did this on Red Hat 9, so I can give you complete instructions on how to do it.... but not until tonight. t.t I'm stupid busy this afternoon.

 

i know how to "install" the drivers now, but unfortunatley, its not giving me any performance boost... which it should.....

ty

 

That's odd. The Red Hat generic drivers provided no hardware accelleration, but the nVidia ones did. I saw quite the improvement in Tux Racer.

 

well you see the thing is, i downloaded yanc which was supposed to configure my drivers, but for some reason, it says that either my drivers are too old or arnt instaled properly

I'm going for the not installed properly, but why?
I did this:

telinit 1
./nvidia-linux-yadayada.run
accept, okay, yes,

At the end it says that its installed them properly, then i do this:

telinit 5

which brings me back up to kde level again.

Why oh why?

 

Ok, finally got time to answer this properly. I'm guessing you installed the driver, but you didn't tell X to use it.

Most of this stuff is in the README file, but the thing is massive and convoluted. I'll try to outline the important bits.

I didn't run telinit. Never even heard of that command. Guess that means I brute-forced it. What I did was edit "/etc/inittab" file, and set the run level to 3. My Red Hat inittab file was nicely commented, so it was very easy to tell which run level I should use.

WARNING: Make sure you have a console text editor you know how to use before you reboot. I forgot about that, and was put in the inenviable position of learning vi, remembering how to use emacs, or downloading pine (for pico). Ended up doing the latter, but it is pretty annoying to do from console only.

So, set your run level just low enough so you don't run X, reboot, and login as root.

Next, go to the directory with the nvidia-...run file. you can just run it as a shell script, but I used the --extract-only command. This makes a subdirectory with the contents of the .run file, which is just a self-extracting archive/script.

At this point I ran a "uname -r" and wrote down my kernel version, just in case I needed it. I don't remember if I did or not.

Now the command you want to use is "./nvidia-installer". You might need to make it executable... don't remember. My memory is kinda hazy, but you seem to have gotten through this point ok.

When you finish running this, you have installed the driver, but you haven't configured XFree86 to use it! You have to edit the config file for XFree86, but in order to do that you need to know which config file you're using. Typical Linux run-around.

Change to "/var/log/" and look at the "XFree86.X.log" files (where X is some number). I had three such log file, but they all pointed to the same config file. Look for a line that begins "(==) Using config file:". It should either say "XF86Config-4" or "XF86Config". That's the config file XFree86 is using, and it is located in "/etc/X11/". Open up the config file in your text editor (pico was my choice). Now, I'm just gonna quot the README file:

Code:

If you already have an XF86Config file working with a different driver
(such as the 'nv' or 'vesa' driver), then all you need to do is find
the relevant Device section and replace the line:

        Driver "nv"
    (or Driver "vesa")

with 

        Driver "nvidia"  

In the Module section, make sure you have:

        Load   "glx"

You should also remove the following lines:
      
        Load  "dri"
        Load  "GLcore"

if they exist.  There are also numerous options that can be added to
the XF86Config file to fine-tune the NVIDIA XFree86 driver.  Please see
Appendix D for a complete list of these options.

Now you edit your "/etc/inittab" file back to run level 5, reboot, and hope it works! You should get a nVidia logo before your login screen if you did it right.

This whole process, by the way, made me really realize just how far Linux has to go before it is on-par with Windows.

 

This pretty much confirms you're still using the generic "nv" driver that comes with XFree86. That driver only supports up to GeForce3 directly.

 

A note, vi is universal so you should learn how to use it anyways, usually pico does come with pine but pine has some icky license issues plus you need pine too (unless you use pine of course), if you like pico I'd recommend nano just because the license is better and it probably gets more production.... emacs is... well I'm not gonna start bashing it but when I need to wait like half an hour for it to finish installing there's a problem It has uses, but I can just do things with vi instead and not have that huge thing on my system, learning how to use vi is good in general because many computers (all of mine) only have vi and no joe or ee or what have you... It's universal on all unish systems...

 

"Universal" and "widely available" doesn't make software good. Look at IE.

 

Heh, I like it.... I used to use pico but it allows me to work faster....

 

Okay, thanks loads for the info... i tried to read the readme file, but i kept skipping bits because it was useless stuff (telling me about things that didnt seem important at the time. )

My problem is that i cant find "nv" in my XFreex86 or -4 files!!! its just not there! why?

Oh yes and about Vi, yes it seems a tad complicated, but i think i'll be alright with it.. already used it once or twice.. i think i can do the job...If not i can just go find a guide..

And also, could it be that i need an updated version of XFree?


Anyways, i cant test it right now... away from my PC... but will try it when i get back..

Weilen Dank, Herren!

 

You might have an old version of XFree. You are using an older distro. Mandrake 9.1 is current stable, IIRC.

** scratches head ** I dunno. Mandrake and SuSE are both based off of Red Hat (as opposed to Debian), so the techniques should be reasonably similar.

As for Vi, I'm going to try to use it again. Well, Vim, anyways. A lot of people do like it, so it mush have some redeeming factor. Need to find a good "newbie to vi" guide...

Looking at the README under "(sec-03) EDITING YOUR XF86CONFIG FILE". It suggests you might have 'Driver "vesa"' instead of 'Driver "nv"'. The basic jist is to look in the X86Config file and edit whichever Driver it was pointing at to 'Driver "nvidia"'. I can't look at mine right now. My Linux box is 40 miles away at the moment (and probably will be for a few weeks).

 

Mandrake 8.2 here, but prolly will upgrade at some point...

I have the -4 file... and the non -4 file... neither of them seem to tell me anything... surley if i have the files i wont have an older version?

Is there anyway to re-install it?