openSUSE 11.3 with nouveau anf gnome = garbled screen

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Hi,

I installed 11.3/64 with kde and gnome on my notebook (lenovo t510i with graphic card nVidia GT218 [NVS 3100M] (rev a2)).

When I start with kde, I have no graphic problems now. At first I tried to start 3d effects with simple-ccsm-kde, but that crashed. So I tried simple-ccsm and that worked. There was a warning about an unsupported graphic card but it works fine.

But when I start with gnome, all I get is garbled patterns on the whole screen.
Since I can (and like to) work with kde, this is not a big issue, but still I’d like to know if I can do something about it without switching to the proprietary driver or loosing 3d.

2

Add nomodeset as a boot argument. It is in the release notes.

3

Thanks, I will try, but although I read the release notes, I thought, since it worked with kde, why shouldnt it work with gnome? Its the same xserver with the same modes, right?

4

Ok, I tried nomodeset, but didnt get the expected result: Boot screen and X Login screen are ok, but no matter if I use Gnome or KDE, all I get is a white screen with only a (moving and shape changing) mouse pointer. LX window manager works. But I guess thats just because it is not using compiz?

For the record: thats the error from /var/log/Xorg.0.log:


$ fgrep '(EE)' /var/log/Xorg.0.log
        (WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
   355.686] (EE) Failed to load module "nvidia" (module does not exist, 0)
   355.738] (EE) [drm] failed to open device
   358.610] (EE) No input driver/identifier specified (ignoring)
   358.638] (EE) No input driver/identifier specified (ignoring)
   358.645] (EE) Logitech USB Receiver: failed to initialize for relative axes.
   359.861] (EE) No input driver/identifier specified (ignoring)
   359.877] (EE) ioctl EVIOCGNAME failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device
   359.897] (EE) PreInit returned NULL for "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint"
   359.897] (EE) No input driver/identifier specified (ignoring)
5

Have a look at these 2 threads:
Found A newbie friendly way for nvidia & nouveau

and

nvidia: setting monitor resolution - 11.3 RC2

If you have a working xorg.conf file from a previous version, copy it into /etc/X11 to get you started.

6

Read through (and understood :P) these guides.

Monitor settings are not my problem. Graphics are displayed in the right resolution (and even correct in kde). Thats the part that works.
Nomodeset is not the solution since this falls back to nv driver -> no 3D (right? As statet in 1st post, I dont want this).
I want to avoid the proprietary nvidia driver (although I will use it as fallback #99).
I dont like try and error fiddling, I leave that to windows. I’d like to know where to find relevant nouveau error messages and maybe then fix the issues I currently have with this driver in an informed way. Any help on this appreciated, since the Xorg.0.log doesnt offer much.

7

Sooo, investigated some more and found this in the nouveau wiki as the current driver status:

Any 3-D functionality that might exist is still unsupported. Do not ask for instructions to try it. But you can read GalliumHowto in case you are brave enough.
Very disapointing statement. That means bye bye nouveau. Im back at fallback #99 :frowning:

For anyone interested, I have documented what I did to install the proprietary Nvidia driver here:

Install Nvidia driver with openSUSE 11.3 while there is no repo - Jobapedia

Hope the link works from outside. If not, let me know!