I have a laptop MSI GX600 which has an Nvidia Geforce 8600m GT graphics card. I used to run ubuntu 11.10 and it worked fine on that one, then stopped working when I upgraded to Ubuntu 12.04. I thought that was a problem with Ubuntu so I switched to OpenSUSE. However the problem persists. (I still stuck with OpenSUSE though… I liked it better :D)
The card works with the nouveau driver however I would like to use the Nvidia drivers as they work better. When I install the Nvidia drivers (using the repo method) I cannot get into a graphical login screen anymore. It does work with the nouveau driver though. This sucks as the card does not perform well using the Nouveau driver at all. The Xorg.0.log file shows the error near the end “Screen(s) found, but none have a usable configuration”. I compared the log file from when I had the nvidia driver installed to the one working with nouveau. It seems that in the nvidia one I cannot see any modelines as in the nouveau one. I don’t know if this is significant or not as I am not very familiar with X. Here are the Xorg.0.log file for the nouveau driver, and the Nvidia driver respectively. Any help would be appreciated.
Nouveau: Xorg.0.log - Nouveau - Pastebin.com
Nvidia: Xorg.0.log - Nvidia - Pastebin.com
Any help would be greatly appreciated
BTW cos I forgot to mention. I’m running OpenSUSE 12.1
Sorry cant say I have any solution for you other then the question have you read chapter 8 of the read me and tried those?
I’m quite the newbie on linux so sorry that I cant be of to much help, but I thought we could join together as we have problem with the same piece of hardware and forums often look down on those how starts similar threads.
My problem with Nvidia for the moment, is that I can’t install the drivers from Nvidias FTP as it complains about the MD5sum being wrong on the files. I’m using 11.4 atm with a Nvidia 8800 GTX card, anyone with more linux experience then me that know how to fix this problem?
Regards
/David
For anyone that may want to install or attempt to install the nVIDIA driver the hard way, have a look at my blogs on the subject. In order to get the driver to install the hard way, make sure you have removed the nVIDIA drivers installed from YaST and the nVIDIA repository. It is OK to keep the nvidia-settings program installed from YaST. If you can’t get into a graphical session, yast can be run from the terminal (CLI for Command Line Interface) as root. To get the driver to install properly you must use the **nomodeset **kernel load command and be in run level 3. You can actually enter the command **nomodeset 3 **in the grub legacy boot loader used by openSUSE 12.1 and 11.4 where you will be placed at the terminal prompt (no graphical desktop loaded) once the kernel has finished loading. The **nomodeset **command needs to be made a normal load option in your grub legacy menu.lst file or you need to set the kernel option called No KMS in Initrd where KMS=Kernel Mode Setting and can be done using YaST - System - /etc/sysconfig Editor - System - Kernel - NO_KMS_IN_INITRD = Yes. Lastly you would blacklist the nouveau driver to prevent it from loading. Here is my blog and a bash utility that can load the nVIDIA driver for you.
Installing the nVIDIA Video Driver the Hard Way - Blogs - openSUSE Forums
LNVHW - Load NVIDIA (driver the) Hard Way from runlevel 3 - Version 1.46 - Blogs - openSUSE Forums
Thank You,
Vrig (?) I have a couple of older laptops using an nvidia card and I have seen exactly the same symptoms. Get a blank screen instead of the gdm graphical login. If I enter my password and then CR, it loads up the session! Still can’t see anything on the screen though. Now, ctl-alt-backspace to kill the window manager and… bingo! into the gdm graphical login. Weird. Anyhow, try adding the boot options “nopat” and “nomodeset” - that cured the problem for me. Now happily using the (much better) nvidia prop driver and all works normally. Cheers - AK