Lately I see a lot of posts/threads on NVIDIA cards and disfunctioning desktops. People rely on older posts and howto’s, and run sax2 after driver install (either from repos or “hard way”).
Symptoms also appear after updating 11.1 to 11.2
The problems IME are 99% related to conflicts with an existing /etc/X11/xorg.conf, which in 11.2 has become obsolete, though it will be read and used if it’s (still) there.
On openSUSE 11.2 we have hardware autodetection and -configuration for everything. So no need for an xorg.conf to configure the X-server.
Please, on 11.2, follow this, if NVIDIA driver is installed correctly, but still no proper desktop experience:
Open a terminal window (f.e. konsole)
type:
su -c 'mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.obsolete'
Now, restart your systems ( I know init 3, init 5 should be enough), and you should be OK. Keyboard and mouse behaviour can be configured from the desktop environment now, without conflicting settings in xorg.conf.
Hope this will decrease the number of posts on this matter.
Well for some some screens and nVidia cards (including mine) autodetection simply does NOT work.
So after a new installation of OS 11.2 there will be no xorg.conf by default neither will the nvidia package from the repo create one.
If then XServer does not start it’s in 99% helpful to create a xorg.conf with proper settings. By default even detected input devices settings in xorg.conf will not be used if not explicit allowed.
So in general I’d agree with you not needing a xorg.conf in most cases.
But there are devices that won’t work without.
At least for now
I disagree. I doubt it will decrease the number of posts on this matter if people follow that advice. On the contrary it will double the number of “Input out of range” posts, among others on dual head systems.
As lOtz1009 wrote, input devices settings (using kbd or mouse drivers) will not be used
, unless you turn AllowEmptyInput off and nobody does that.
Nvidia or ATI settings are Nvidia or ATI specific. Either they remain unchanged or will be ignored if obsolete (but it was already the case in previous Xorg releases).
This is true however that some deprecated Xorg options (like RgbPath or ModulePath ) or unsupported modules could prevent the X server from starting. But you will remove them after reading the failures reported in your /var/log/Xorg.0.log
Xorg starting issues with older nvidia cards (using the old legacy nvidia driver) are due to booting in vesa mode rather than having an obsolete xorg.conf.
sax2 is indeed deprecated. So users should be told NOT to use sax2 anymore to configure X (and create a new bad xorg.conf).
Renaming xorg.conf is always worth a try. But It is wrong to pretend that if it’s there it will be used although it is obsolete and should be removed.
On openSUSE 11.2 we have hardware autodetection and -configuration for everything.
In other words, it just uses the ****ing hal daemon.
sax2 is indeed deprecated. So users should be told NOT to use sax2 anymore to configure X (and create a new bad xorg.conf).
But how to create an initial xorg.conf? nvidia-settings don’t create one, do they? when I tried to save the settings into file via “kdesu nvidia-settings” it just did not happen. so I created xorg.conf using sax2 -a and afterwards setting things in nvidia-settings.
I’ve done dozens of 11.2 and NVIDIA installs now. All of them run without xorg.conf, no initial one, none. The cards vary from AGP FX5000’s up to GT240. Must say, the only two multiscreen ones have been setup by the users, I just installed. Some NVIDIA cards needed beta drivers at the time of install.
If xorg.conf is there and events are set, this does result in conflicts. AFAIK, xorg.conf is used when it’s there, not just in case HAL doesn’t know what to do.
@IOtz1009: you don’t create one. HAL will tell the kernel to use the nvidia driver.
Yes, but HAL doesn’t tell XServer not to use the display’s EDID which is a complete mess (corrupt). So I have to disable the use of EDID manually and to create a custom modeline.
Otherwise it will end in “out-of-range”. Or a resolution of 800x600 max.
You see? How should I tell HAL?
Have a close look at xorg.conf, especially the lines “…not used until AllowEmptyInput…”
Not the whole xorg.conf is used if present.
reboot every time found one wich will do the job stop and be happy.
If that does not solve your problem
install X files from 11.1 and sax2 from 11.1
and do the same you did in 11.1
In my case:
Connected display device(s) on GeForce 9500 GT at PCI:5:0:0:
(–) Feb 11 07:31:19 NVIDIA(0): DELL S2209W (DFP-0)
This monitor was not even detected/configured without the nvidia driver and with out the xorg.conf from 11.1 black screen
Botom line:
Dont relay on a distro always backup critical files outside the normal disks on cdrw or usb-stick usb-hd
and keep the dvd from the 4 last releases.
Not sure about the one clicks but I presume you have nvidia-xconfig which will do this.
I have to agree the advice is a little bit to generic, whilst not having an xorg.conf for nvidia maybe generalised to not needed there is a few other bits outside of this scope that may need one.
I would say the best way of wording it is to try first without one, before generating one. Not that using a tool to generate an xorg.conf is wrong. Unless I’m mistaken even in 11.1 unless certain flags where given it would resort to using evdev for kbd and the mouse, and will do in 11.2.
Yep. That’s an old trick. I’ve been using it thousand times, as the fastest way to get Xorg fine tuned on other Linux distros or Unix was to install SuSE first and copy /etc/X11/xorg.conf from there. It used to have by far the best harware recognition. It is not true anymore. Since more an more users came to Linux, it had to become easy to configure … but because those people want to watch movies on wide screen (which resolution increases every month), I’m afraid /etc/X11/xorg.conf time is not over yet.
BTW: I keep a copy of xorg.conf myself, don’t want to calculate the modeline each time again
I put modelines, monitors and video settings in a textfile and wrote my own script to create xorg.conf. I use it on half a dozen Linux distros and all BSDs. Guess the name I gave it?.. makexorgconf! lol!
(To be honnest, I didn’t try).