Nvidia...again

English Hardware
#1

openSUSE 12.3 64bit KDE 4.10.5

I just performed a zypper “update” and now when I boot I get a text login (level 3). If I boot the grub “failsafe” choice I get a graphic window and KDE starts. I assumed I now have an Nvidia problem, and went through the SDB:NVIDIA drivers zypper installation as follows.

# zypper ar -f ftp://download.nvidia.com/opensuse/12.3/ nvidia

# lspci | grep VGA

# zypper install x11-video-nvidiaG02

Zypper reported…

'x11-video-nvidiaG02' is already installed.
No update candidate for 'x11-video-nvidiaG02-304.119-31.1.x86_64'. The highest available version is already installed.
Resolving package dependencies...

Nothing to do.

Nothing changed. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

#2

If you are getting good video in failsafe mode, then the nvidia driver should be there.

Try adding “nomodeset” to the boot command line (at the grub menu).

#3

I tried that already and it made no difference. I was surprised. But I think this a bigger problem as suddenly smplayer won’t play any videos. White blank screens. Is there a way to revert to my system prior to the “update”?

#4

You can try booting with the previous kernel. It should be one of the advanced boot options.

#5

Another surprise. That made no difference.

#6

How much was updated in your most recent updates?

There was an update a while back, that included some xorg libraries. But these are libraries for which the nvidia driver has its own versions. If you are back to the non-nvidia versions of those libraries, that would cause problems.

Check in “/usr/lib” (for 32-bit) or “/usr/lib64” (for 64-bit). Check the output of:


ls -l libGL*

On my box with nvidia, I get:


lrwxrwxrwx 1 root users     10 Feb  8 11:16 libGL.so -> libGL.so.1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root users     16 Feb  8 11:16 libGL.so.1 -> libGL.so.304.117

plus other lines of output. I’m using nvidia driver 304.117. You can see that the library in an nvidia provided library.

You probably have a different driver. But, as far as I know, nvidia uses a fairly consistent naming scheme so you will be able to recognize whether you are ending up in an nvidia provided library.

#7

On 2014-03-02 02:06, nrickert wrote:

> On my box with nvidia, I get:
>
> Code:
> --------------------
>
> lrwxrwxrwx 1 root users 10 Feb 8 11:16 libGL.so → libGL.so.1
> lrwxrwxrwx 1 root users 16 Feb 8 11:16 libGL.so.1 → libGL.so.304.117
>
> --------------------

Now, that is curious. I don’t, on two installs using the proprietary
nvidia driver.


> cer@Telcontar:~> ls -l /other/Elessar/usr/lib64/libGL.so.1
> lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 Dec 20 17:49 /other/Elessar/usr/lib64/libGL.so.1 -> libGL.so.1.2.0
>
> cer@Telcontar:~> ls -l /usr/lib64/libGL.so.1
> lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 Feb 26 09:15 /usr/lib64/libGL.so.1 -> libGL.so.1.2.0

And, apparently, Nvidia is working correctly on both, at least on X.

However, I do have:


/usr/X11R6/lib/libGL.so.331.49
/usr/X11R6/lib64/libGL.so.331.49

(confused and sleepy).

Mmm… got it, I think - the links are on a different directory:


> cer@Telcontar:~> l /usr/X11R6/lib/libGL*
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root     652 Feb 25 13:47 /usr/X11R6/lib/libGL.la
> lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root      10 Mar  1 12:03 /usr/X11R6/lib/libGL.so -> libGL.so.1*
> lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root      15 Mar  1 12:03 /usr/X11R6/lib/libGL.so.1 -> libGL.so.331.49*
> -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1001752 Feb 25 13:47 /usr/X11R6/lib/libGL.so.331.49*
> lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root      22 Mar  1 12:03 /usr/X11R6/lib/libGLESv1_CM.so.1 -> libGLESv1_CM.so.331.49*
> -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   55312 Feb 25 13:47 /usr/X11R6/lib/libGLESv1_CM.so.331.49*
> lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root      19 Mar  1 12:03 /usr/X11R6/lib/libGLESv2.so.2 -> libGLESv2.so.331.49*
> -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   52208 Feb 25 13:47 /usr/X11R6/lib/libGLESv2.so.331.49*
> cer@Telcontar:~>

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” at Telcontar)

#8

This is because you installed it from the repo, installing it the “hard way” is different, and actually overwrites xorg’s original file in /usr/lib or /usr/lib64,. and it’s not recreated if you uninstall the driver. To get OpenGL back for nouveau one can reinstall xorg-x11-server.

#9

My /usr/lib64 had no nvidia provided libraries in it. So I decided to start from scratch. Using Yast2 I deleted all nvidia references. I checked that nouveau was installed and rebooted. Then I used the one-click nvidia install from https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:NVIDIA_drivers. When I rebooted neither nouveau nor nv, nor nvidia were present when I invoked lsmod. One module called i2c_nforce2 (nforce being an nvidia word) looks highly suspicious. I get to a graphic screen but none of my media players work.

So it looks to me that the one-click method either failed altogether or introduced the i2c_nforce2 module. I would like to avoid a re-install of 12.3. It’s too reminiscent of Windows 3.1 re-installs and one of the reasons I joined the Linux camp. Any further suggestions would be much apprediated.

#10

Go to Yast and be sure you have the NVIDIA repos active. Search for NVIDIA and be sure you have the correct versions of the files for you card and kernel. I don’t fully trust the one click

#11

On 2014-03-02 15:26, hank se wrote:
> This is because you installed it from the repo, installing it the “hard
> way” is different, and actually overwrites xorg’s original file in
> /usr/lib or /usr/lib64,. and it’s not recreated if you uninstall the
> driver. To get OpenGL back for nouveau one can reinstall
> xorg-x11-server.

I see.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” at Telcontar)

#12

The solution turned to be using none of the SDB : Nvidia methods. I browsed to the Nvidia home page, downloaded the specific installation file (*.run) for the 6150 card, made it executable, and ran it as root from a level 3 boot. A reboot brought me back to where I was before the zypper update. I’m going to be a little more cautious next time I update.

Thanks for all the suggestions.