nVidia Quadro NVS 140M

English Hardware
1

Hi

I’m at my wit’s end with my graphics card. I recently had to remove openSuse from my laptop (mundane reasons - let’s not dwell on them) and have now re-installed it. The only difference between this version and my last version is that I have installed the 32-bit version of 11.0, rather than the 64-bit version, to ensure compatibility with my son’s laptop (32-bit).

My problem is that, no matter what I have tried, I cannot get the nVidia card to work properly with dual monitors. The card is an nVidia Quadro NVS 140M. I’ve tried the one-click install for both current and legacy cards, but cannot get the XServer to start. I am left with a console screen and have to revert to the xorg.conf backup I have. I cannot understand it as the card worked fine with the 64-bit version of openSuse, after using the one-click download.

Does anyone have any ideas how I can solve this? It’s not a show-stopper, but it is annoying to have a dual screen station and to be working on a single display each time.

2

Hi
This is my canned response for doing it the ‘Hard Way’ :slight_smile:

Have you installed the nvidia driver via 1-click? If not I recommend
the hard way, else follow the easy way here;
Nvidia

If you have installed nvidia rpms via the easy way, I suggest removing
the rpms installed and disabling the nvidia repository first.

You can download the driver for your arch from;
Nvidia Unix Drivers

On the download page, check that your card is supported by the driver
your about to download by using the following command;


echo -n "0x" && /sbin/lspci -nv |grep VGA|cut -f4 -d ":"|cut -f1 -d "("

From the above output use the numbers from the output to look at the
Supported Products List (link on the left) to verify your card is
supported by the driver.

You may wish to ensure your system is up to date. The first command
refreshes the repositories, the second lists any updates, the third
will apply the updates.

 
sudo zypper ref
sudo zypper lu
sudo zypper up

NOTE: If the kernel updated, please reboot before continuing :slight_smile:

If you don’t have the kernel source and tools etc installed then


sudo zypper in kernel-source linux-kernel-headers kernel-syms
module-init-tools make gcc

Press ctrl+alt+F1 and login as your user :slight_smile:


su -
init 3

cd to the Nvidia Unix Driver you downloaded


sh NV*.run -q
sax2 -r -m 0=nvidia
init 5 && exit
ctrl+alt+F1
exit
ctrl+alt+F7

The ctrl+alt+F7 gets you back to the GUI (X session).

Now after a kernel update, you don’t need to run the sax2 command, just
the others to get to run level 3, rebuild the driver and exit.

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 11.1 (i586) Kernel 2.6.27.19-3.2-pae
up 12:30, 2 users, load average: 0.18, 0.22, 0.22
ASUS eeePC 1000HE ATOM N280 1.66GHz | GPU Mobile 945GM/GMS/GME

3

Thanks - but it didn’t work! I think that my card (nVidia Quadro NVS 140M) isn’t legacy - it doesn’t appear on the link that you kindly provided.

I have tried the one-click install and, when I use the nVidia icon in my applications, I am told to use the xorg-nVidia command to get it to work. On restart, I am left with the black text/console screen and startX fails, with the error “screens found but no usable configuration” (or similar).

Is there a way of enabling Sax2 to let me have both monitors operating independently? I have the resolution on my laptop fine, but my external monitor shows a clone of my screen, and at the laptop resolution instead of its own.

Frustrating!!!

4

Your card definitely is not supported by the legacy driver.

There’s a couple of remarks to be made:

  • There’s no compatibility reason for installing 32bit. Your son’s laptop doesn’t care about the architecture of yours.
  • Dual screen configuration should be done from sax2, change configuration.
  • Installing different driver versions/packages/installers often generates problems.

I suggest you do a 64bit install, perform online update, install the pattern ‘Linux kernel development’, download the latest driver from ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64 and install that as already described in the wiki.
Next run sax2 -r -m0=nvidia, choose Change Configuration Now you can configure dual monitor support, incl. resolitions