Change graphic driver in OpenSuse 12.1

DJViking · November 24, 2011, 4:11pm

I wish to try out Nvidia own proprietary drivers instead of Nouveau. Since SAX now is gone could anyone give some instructions how to change the driver?
The drivers from Nvidia are installed.

After I upgraded to OpenSuse 12.1 my Linux system is so incredible slow. X is a nightmare to work with and uses a lot of CPU. Opening context menus in KDE with right click scrambles the box area for 2 seconds before the context menu is s howing. Other than that Nouveau works fine, but the the system with KDE was more responsive in OpenSuse 11.4. Changing between desktops and windows are a pain, and jumping to and from X - Console (CTRL+ALT+F#) takes aprox 4 seconds.

I thought first it could have something to do with that I choose to keep my /home from the previous install, but trying out a new X session with a fresh user did not help.

DJViking · November 24, 2011, 4:50pm

Had to reply to my own thread. Could not find Edit.

How do I find out which graphics driver OpenSuse now uses?

After I installed NVidia graphics driver and restarted KDE it is behaving much better. Have it automatically gone and used the nvidia drivers now that they are installed? X is now much less CPU intensive. There is however some minor things. My graphic cards temperature sensor is gone and when I open the logout/restart dialog box the folder desktop plasma widget flickers 1-2 seconds while the color turns gray.

jdmcdaniel3 · November 24, 2011, 5:30pm

May I suggest you look at my blog on the subject here:

Installing the nVIDIA Video Driver the Hard Way - Blogs - openSUSE Forums

The kernel driver for nVIDIA is called: nouveau and in order to install the proprietary nVIDIA video driver, you must add in the kernel load option: nomodeset AND after the install you should blacklist the nouveau driver to prevent it from loading and disable Kernel Mode Switching in your /ect/sysconfig settings. Read about it all in my blog.

Thank You,

martin_helm · November 24, 2011, 5:30pm

Am 24.11.2011 16:56, schrieb DJViking:
>
> Had to reply to my own thread. Could not find Edit.
>
> How do I find out which graphics driver OpenSuse now uses?
>
> After I installed NVidia graphics driver and restarted KDE it is
> behaving much better. Have it automatically gone and used the nvidia
> drivers now that they are installed? X is now much less CPU intensive.
> There is however some minor things. My graphic cards temperature sensor
> is gone and when I open the logout/restart dialog box the folder desktop
> plasma widget flickers 1-2 seconds while the color turns gray.
>
>
There are several possibilities:
When i am lazy (and most of the time I am) then I just fire up a
terminal (gnome-terminal, xterm, konsole, whatever you like) and type


glxinfo | grep -i opengl

which gives in the nvidia case some output similar to this


OpenGL vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
OpenGL renderer string: ION/PCI/SSE2
OpenGL version string: 3.3.0 NVIDIA 285.05.09
OpenGL extensions:

I see from that the proprietary driver is used with version 285.05.09.

DJViking · November 24, 2011, 5:43pm

xxxxxxxxx@linux-1wa3:~> glxinfo | grep -i opengl
OpenGL vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
OpenGL renderer string: GeForce 9500 GT/PCI/SSE2
OpenGL version string: 3.3.0 NVIDIA 285.05.09
OpenGL extensions:

Seems it is using nvidia proprietary drivers, but I have not done anything but installing them.

deano_ferrari · November 24, 2011, 7:21pm

If you installed by repo, then you probably won’t need to take any other steps IIRC. If you do need to make any post-configuration changes, you can use the ‘nvidia-settings’ utility.

deano_ferrari · November 24, 2011, 7:33pm

BTW, you may find the nvclock utility useful for monitoring your NVIDIA card performance and temperature. There are openSUSE packages available for 11.4, but i didn’t yet see one for 12.1. (I’m guessing that the 11.4 version would install ok though).

stubble · November 25, 2011, 1:15pm

I’m experiencing the same problems as the OP. I’m also using Nouveau on 12.1. I think it’s the cause of all my problems similar to OP. Is there an NVidia driver for 12.1? What repo is it in? (typing this in 11.4 so can’t check)

deano_ferrari · November 25, 2011, 8:33pm

Is there an NVidia driver for 12.1? What repo is it in?

SDB:NVIDIA drivers - openSUSE

ftp://download.nvidia.com/opensuse/12.1/

stubble · November 27, 2011, 6:22am

OK, thanks. I downloaded them, but still my sysinfo is still showing

Vendor: nVidia Corporation
Model: GeForce 6100 nForce 430
2D driver: nouveau

How to replace the nouveau driver with the nvidia driver?

One thing I noticed was it installed a whole new kernel. I don’t recall that being the case with 11.4, but I might have alzheimers

deano_ferrari · November 27, 2011, 7:50am

Are you sure that the correct nvidia packages are installed?

rpm -qa|grep nvidia

My understanding was that i f installing by repo, it added the nomodeset kernel boot option to the kernel boot entry in /boot/grub/menu.lst for you. Check that this is the case. Then check via YaST >> System >> /etc/sysconfig Editor that the kernel option is set as ‘NO-KMS-IN-INITRD = yes’, and that the nouveau driver is blacklisted in/etc/modprobe.d/
You could always try installing the ‘hard way’ instead (but make sure you remove the nvidia packages first.

LNVHW - Load NVIDIA (driver the) Hard Way from runlevel 3 - Version 1.10 - Blogs - openSUSE Forums

SDB:NVIDIA the hard way - openSUSE

stubble · November 27, 2011, 2:39pm

x11-video-nvidiaG02-285.05.09-15.1.x86_64
x11-video-nvidiaG01-173.14.30-34.1.x86_64
nvidia-gfxG02-kmp-default-285.05.09_k3.1.0_1.2-14.1.x86_64
nvidia-gfxG01-kmp-default-173.14.30_k3.1.0_1.2-33.1.x86_64
nvidia-computeG02-285.05.09-15.1.x86_64

2.1 NO-KMS-IN-INITRD = yes

2.2 nvidia.conf blacklist nouveau

The nomodeset wasn’t added to the boot grub menu, so I added it, but after rebooting my screen was 1024 rather than 1360 and the driver was fbdev rather than nouveau, and not nvidia (as it was in 11.4 with 2D & 3D drivers). This was on the My Computer Screen. Also the font was terrible.

So the question remains how do I turn on the nvidia drivers?

deano_ferrari · November 27, 2011, 8:15pm

You reported that your graphics card is a Model: GeForce 6100 nForce 430, so from

SDB:NVIDIA drivers - openSUSE

it mentions that you need the x11-video-nvidiaG02 package. If I were you I’d remove the x11-video-nvidiaG01-173.14.30-34.1.x86_64 and associated kernel package nvidia-gfxG01-kmp-default-173.14.30_k3.1.0_1.2-33.1.x86_64. They’re not for your card.

stubble · November 28, 2011, 12:55am

OK I deleted the G01 driver…

rpm -qa|grep nvidia
x11-video-nvidiaG02-285.05.09-15.1.x86_64
nvidia-gfxG02-kmp-default-285.05.09_k3.1.0_1.2-14.1.x86_64
nvidia-computeG02-285.05.09-15.1.x86_64

With nomodeset in the menu.lst file I get the nouveau driver, with x11failsafe I get the fbdev driver. (according to My Computer Sysinfo). The screen is again 1024 rather than 1360 (when I remove nomodeset/x11failesafe it goes back to 1360 and the nouveau driver).

stubble · November 28, 2011, 1:23am

Correction the screen is compressed (not full width) when nomodeset/x11failsafe is used, and full screen when not used. My normal resolution is 1600x1360 (full screen). In 11.4 it’s full screen with the nvidia drivers. But I can’t seem to get the right config to get the nvidia drivers installed in 12.1. For example why is my system ignoring the blacklisting of nouveau in /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia.conf?

stubble · November 28, 2011, 5:12am

It’s been a long couple of days. Another correction.

My screen is setup as 1360x768 and in this setup the screen doesn’t cover the whole width of the screen.

stubble · November 28, 2011, 5:25am

It’s been a long couple of days. Another correction.

My screen is setup as 1360x768 and in this setup the screen doesn’t cover the whole width of the screen with nomodeset in menu.lst file. If I remove nomodeset from menu.lst, then the whole screen width is covered, even though the screen setup is still 1360x768 According to Yast Hardware Info. Both occurences I have the nouveau driver installed (according to My Computer Display Info).

Also I noticed that the file I was looking at in /etc/modprobe.d was nvidia.conf. So I also edited 50-blacklist.conf. Now they both have “blacklist nouveau”, but still same result, no nvidia drivers.

stubble · November 28, 2011, 5:45am

Just by way of justification, here is my Display Info from my 11.4 install on the same computer.

Vendor: nVidia Corporation
Model: GeForce 6150SE nForce 430
2D driver: nvidia
3D driver: NVIDIA 270.41.06

It took me a while to get this right too. But it was worth it, imho.

stubble · December 1, 2011, 5:31am

Any further advice would be helpful since it’s still not resolved.

martin_helm · December 1, 2011, 5:51am

Am 28.11.2011 05:46, schrieb stubble:
>
> Just by way of justification, here is my Display Info from my 11.4
> install on the same computer.
>
> Vendor: nVidia Corporation
> Model: GeForce 6150SE nForce 430
> 2D driver: nvidia
> 3D driver: NVIDIA 270.41.06
>
>
This shows a completely different version of the nvidia driver than the
version of the rpm’s you posted (285.05.09) something went wrong here.

Please show the output from


uname -a

Your
nvidia-gfxG02-kmp-default-285.05.09_k3.1.0_1.2-14.1.x86_64
makes me wonder why you have the kernel default and not the kernel
desktop here.