Nvidia v173 and 180 drivers die under 10.3

English Hardware
1

I have an openSUSE 10.3 system with a GeForce6200 video card that was working just fine up to the most recent kernel update, installed via the Automatic Online Updater. AFAIK, the kernel update worked and I didn’t receive any obvious errors when installing the current IA32 Nvidia drivers from Nvidia. I used the “sh ./NVIDIA…” process as I’ve done before, without a problem. And then the wheels fell off.

Running SaX2 (sax2 -r -m 0=nvidia), I got a grip about the driver and some device not having matching version numbers. After a lot of fiddling around, mostly by removing the Nvidia driver altogether, with the Software Manager, and then following up with the 1-Click process for 10.3, I got rid of the version mismatch gripes but now the SaX2 startup fails with (quoting from /var/log/SaX.log):

    (**) Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
    select returned 1
    select returned 1
    select returned 1
    select returned 1
    select returned 1
    select returned 1
    select returned 1
    select returned 1
    select returned 1
    select returned 1
    select returned 1
    select returned 1
    select returned 1
    select returned 1
    select returned 1
    select returned 1
    select returned 1
    select returned 1
    select returned 1
    select returned 1
    select returned 1
    select returned 1
    select returned 1
    select returned 1
    (II) Mouse[1]: ps2EnableDataReporting: succeeded

    Backtrace:
    0: /usr/sbin/xw(xf86SigHandler+0x81) [0x80ca381]
    1: [0xffffe420]

    Fatal server error:
    Caught signal 11.  Server aborting

]

On the screen the Nvidia splash screen shows up briefly and vanishes as SaX2 fails to start X with the Nvidia driver. Note: the splash screen has “BETA” on it. That can’t be good…

Driver nv works and the system otherwise boot just fine with the present kernel (/proc/version):
Linux version 2.6.22.19-0.2-default (geeko@buildhost) (gcc version 4.2.1 (SUSE Linux)) #1 SMP 2008-12-18 10:17:03 +0100

Just to be sure I had a common set of files, I updated the kernel and Nvidia files with Software Manager and rebooted. No change.

Help!

Added:
The Nvidia update via the repository system gives V173 while V180 is found when going directly to the Nvidia web site. I’ve tried both versions with any change or improvement.

2

Problem sort of fixed - if you call upgrading from 10.3 to 11.1 a fix. :wink: 'Course, now other things have stopped working (AmaroK and the xine engine, for example). :\