Problem With Mandrake and GeForce 4 4200

[Lone Jurist]

Howdy. I just installed mandrake 9.0 as a dual boot on my Win XP box. When I booted it up and tried to start X, I got an error stating that my display driver didn't suport 24-bit depth. :confused: I have a GeForece 4 4200, which certainly does supprot that depth. Nevertheless, I went to NVIDIA's site and downloaded the latest drivers as per their instructions. I still have the same problem. Could someone either tell me how to set X to run with less colors or how to fix my driver?

I'm rather new to Linux and to CLI's in general, so if you tell me to do something with the CLI, please give very specific directions and *speak* *very* *slowly*. Thanks

[mdwatts]

Try manually changing the color depth in your /etc/X11/XF86Config or XF86Config-4 depending on which one Mandrake uses.

In the 'Screen' section


Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Geforce3"
Monitor "Compaq P2200"
DefaultDepth 16 <--- THIS ONE
Subsection "Display"
Depth 32
Modes "1800x1440/70Hz" "640x480"
Virtual 0 0


You will need to be root to make the changes.

Try using the 'vi' text editor.

ls -al /etc/X11 (to look for the filename)

vi /etc/X11/XF86Config or -4

Move down to the Screen Section using the arror key.

Press 'i' to enter insert mode.

Change 24 to 16

Press 'ESC' to enter command mode.

Enter

:wq

to write the file and quit.

[Lone Jurist]

I did what you said and am no longer getting an error about color depth. Instead I get a message saying:

ioctl FBIOPAN_DISPLAY Invalid argument
(II) [GLX]: Calling GlxExtensionInit
Fatal Server error Caught signal 11. Server aborted.

Arghhhhhh!

[mdwatts]

Please post the Device Section of your XF86Config (-4).

It could be you are using fbdev instead of the 'nvidia' driver.


Section "Device"
Identifier "Geforce3"
Driver "nvidia" <--- THIS ONE
VendorName "NVidia"
BoardName "GeForce3 (rev 1)"
BusID "PCI:1:5:0"
EndSection


Did you follow the nvida readme exactly?

My own notes (again)


Edit /etc/X11/XF86Config or XF86Config-4 and change/add/delete

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"

Add

alias char-major-10-175 agpgart
alias char-major-195 NVdriver

to /etc/modules.conf

cd /lib/modules/<kernel version>

depmod -ae

Restart X

[Lone Jurist]

I changed the config and modules files like you suggested. Now, I get a whole new error message!

Failed to intiate the NVDriverkernel module

When Mandrake boots up, I noticed an error saying something like:

PCI Collosion 00 1.f1

Could this be related? Also, I noticed that in the /lib/modules folder there were two kernel files. I just changed the most recent one. (This is a clean install, no upgrade). Should I have done both.

Thanks again for any help

[bwkaz]

The nVidia 3D driver NHF (http://3dguios.resnet.mtu.edu/nVidia-NHF.html)

It's still hosted on my own site, but I'm going to move it off there at some point in the future, and submit it as a real NHF. My guess is that you need to do the "edit modules.conf" part, but read through the whole thing anyway.

That "PCI collision" -- do you have PnP OS turned off in your BIOS?