RH 7.3 + GeForce 2 MX w/ a slight twist... possible tough one

[milanuk]

Ok. I have a little twist on the standard RedHat 7.3 vs. GeForce 2 MX400 scenario.

The machine is a Dell OptiPlex GX1 P3-500 w/ 384MB RAM. It comes standard w/ onboard video(AGP ATI Rage Pro w/ 8MB RAM), sound, NIC, etc. The bios is extremely simple, basically only two pages. There are options for disabling the onboard sound, nick, the printer port, etc., but nothing for disabling the onboard video. Repeat, I've checked thoroughly, and there is no apparent way to disable the onboard video or tell it to look at the PCI video card vs. the onboard AGP video.

The card in question is a PNY Technologies GeForce 2 MX400 w/ 64MB RAM. Installation was pretty simple, as the Dell has a removable backplane for the expansion cards. Plugged it in, put everything back together, and fired up Win98 (box is dual boot so that the rest of the family can run things like Printshop Pro or DeltaForce 2). Went thru the process of installing the drivers and DirectX 8.0, and then proceeded to play several hours of Warcraft III, which is the whole reason I'm in this mess to start w/ ( the old ATI wouldn't meet the requirements to run WC3).

I rebooted into my install of RedHat 7.3. Kudzu found the card, and identified it. I proceeded to do the config w/ the RH setup tool, but the X test failed. Rebooted, tried again. Came to the point where X should have started automatically (GDM login), and it just flickered btwn a CLI login prompt and a black screen for a while, until it appeared that X just gave up and quit. Subsequent attempts to run the setup tool just found the old ATI onboard video.

Checked around on IRC, and ended up d/l'ing the nVidia drivers, and installing them, and then editing /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 as per the README. Rebooted, but no change. I did notice when I installed the nVidia kernel RPM, it complained about being unable to insmod correctly. Tried a few other things, but to no avail.

At this point, I have the sneaking suspicion that the problem is rooted in the persistence of the old video system, but from what I understand, X shouldn't care as long as I point it at the new card correctly.

Any thoughts, comments, suggestions? I could really use some help on this one, so I can get my RedHat desktop back and functioning w/o having to swap out video cards to go from Win98 to Linux :(


TIA,

Monte

[bwkaz]

~lart Dell for making users use proprietary BIOS'es.

What you should probably know is that the option does exist in your BIOS setup, but Dell has disabled it from showing. :rolleyes: Don't want those users to hurt themselves, now, do we. :rolleyes:

Usually, if there's a card in the AGP slot, it gets used over the onboard card (if the latter is enabled). But not always, so that might indeed be your problem.

With the nVidia kernel driver installed, if you open a console (if you need, you can revert XF86Config-4 to its previous settings to be able to boot into X) and type (as root) modprobe NVdriver, what happens?

[milanuk]

Don't know if I mentioned it before, but the new card is PCI. I've been out of the whole PC hardware scene for a couple years, and I'm not *real* up on the AGP thing, other than it was an Intel abort^H^H^H^H^H innovation.

I'll have to wait w/ the modprobing til this evening when I'm physically in front of the computer.

Thanks,

Monte

[Icarus]

I"ve gotten the modprobe errors before....when I used the wrong kernel drivers. :)

Did you use the NV tool from their web site to determine which one you should use? My system is so custom I was only able to use the src.rpm. Really this is the best way to install it because it gets built for your machine...get the source RPMs (kernel and GLX) and then

rpm -e NVIDIA_kernel* (to remove the old module)

rpm --rebuild NVIDIA_kernelxx.xx.src.rpm

cd /usr/src/redhat/i386/ (i think that was right...)

rpm -ivh NVIDIA_kernelxx.xx.rpm

THEN LOAD

rpm -ivh NVIDIA_GLXxx.xx.rpm (get the source for this one also and rebuild in simular fasion)

Most cases the GLX won't load without the kernel loaded, but be sure to remove both of them with the rpm -e BEFORE you try to install, could mess things up royally :)

[Timothy L. Miller]

Oooh, bad things. You're system will always see your rage in that case, since you don't have an AGP card to disable the onboard...First thing I'd do is check to see if Dell has an update to the bios that will allow you to disable the onboard, as someone said, it's in there, it's just hidden. It's possible that they've got a newer release where someone at dell realized how stupid that might be...If that doesn't work, you're going to have to install your system as if using 2 video cards, and tell it to use the nvidia as default. I've never done it, but I'm fairly certain I've read other posts of people doing it.

[milanuk]

Ok. here is the complete error message I get when installing the NVIDIA_kernel rpm:

Preparing... ##################################################
NVIDIA_kernel ##################################################
depmod: *** Unresolved symbols in /lib/modules/2.4.18-3/kernel/drivers/video/NVdriver
/lib/modules/2.4.18-3/kernel/drivers/video/NVdriver: unresolved symbol remove_proc_entry_R07e14880
/lib/modules/2.4.18-3/kernel/drivers/video/NVdriver: unresolved symbol register_chrdev_R08f4878a
/lib/modules/2.4.18-3/kernel/drivers/video/NVdriver: unresolved symbol init_mm_Rce95b055
/lib/modules/2.4.18-3/kernel/drivers/video/NVdriver: unresolved symbol irq_stat_Rf315bba4
/lib/modules/2.4.18-3/kernel/drivers/video/NVdriver: unresolved symbol __pollwait_R6df80994
/lib/modules/2.4.18-3/kernel/drivers/video/NVdriver: unresolved symbol proc_root_driver_R14785421
/lib/modules/2.4.18-3/kernel/drivers/video/NVdriver: unresolved symbol create_proc_entry_R9e6e93f4
/lib/modules/2.4.18-3/kernel/drivers/video/NVdriver: unresolved symbol mem_map_Rfc38426d
/lib/modules/2.4.18-3/kernel/drivers/video/NVdriver: unresolved symbol proc_root_R8252fa75
/lib/modules/2.4.18-3/kernel/drivers/video/NVdriver:
Hint: You are trying to load a module without a GPL compatible license
and it has unresolved symbols. Contact the module supplier for
assistance, only they can help you.

/lib/modules/2.4.18-3/kernel/drivers/video/NVdriver: insmod /lib/modules/2.4.18-3/kernel/drivers/video/NVdriver failed
/lib/modules/2.4.18-3/kernel/drivers/video/NVdriver: insmod NVdriver failed

NVdriver installed successfully

I'm thinking that for whatever reason, the drivers aren't loading. Any takers?

TIA,

Monte

[milanuk]

Ok. had to install the kernel-source rpm, then compile the src rpms for NVIDIA_GLX and NVIDIA_kernel. Now X works again, but I have a weird distortion and jitter on the screen. For example, the edges of a dialogbox on the screen is wavering slightly, and hard to focus on. The side of the KDE Kicker bar is curved out on the left and in onthe right slightly ( <1/16th").

Ideas?

TIA,

Monte