On Opensuse 12.3 KDE4.something with an Nvidia 8400GS graphics card which was working ok with driver 319.32. Yesterday the system tray updater offered 331.20, I suspect from the Nvidia repository, which I accepted and now on boot it halts at the command line saying something like “graphical terminal reached”. I went into yast using ncurses and tried to first revert the Nvidia driver to the original 319.32 but couldn’t see how to pick a different version to that installed. So I removed the three Nvidia packages hoping the Nouvou driver would get me back to a working desktop. Adding nomodeset to the grub entry restored the desktop but with slow screen drawing. I then tried using a browser to one click install 319.32 again, thinking it was a bad install, by downloading a ymp? file but that broke it again.
I’m now thinking that 331.20 is no good for the graphics card I have, even though the updater offered it, and that I need to go back to 319.32 by downloading direct from the Nvidia site and doing a “hard way update” of the driver.
Hope this all makes sense and any help/suggestions appreciated.
The old version is not available anymore in the repo.
So I removed the three Nvidia packages hoping the Nouvou driver would get me back to a working desktop. Adding nomodeset to the grub entry restored the desktop but with slow screen drawing.
By adding “nomodeset” to the grub entry you disabled the use of nouveau, so you’re using the fbdev driver now. Of course that is slow.
I’m now thinking that 331.20 is no good for the graphics card I have, even though the updater offered it, and that I need to go back to 319.32 by downloading direct from the Nvidia site and doing a “hard way update” of the driver.
Well, as you said yourself, the 331.20 actually should support your card according to the nvidia page. No idea why it doesn’t work for you then. Maybe a bug in the driver?
I would suggest to install the G02 driver from the repo instead, if the latest G03 driver doesn’t work for you.
G02 does support your card as well.
I have an 8400GS and it’s working fine with the 331.40 driver on 12.3 with KDE 4.10. My previous driver was the 304, but I don’t think that could be the reason for the difference, unless maybe you had configured some special settings under the 319 driver that the new driver doesn’t like. You could try deleting the .nvidia-settings-rc file from your home directory. What I do think could be the difference is that I upgraded through YaST. I uninstalled Apper long ago–it’s too buggy. If I read your post correctly, you uninstalled the 331 driver via YaST, but never tried installing it that way. That’s what I would try.
That’s a configuration file for the nvidia-settings application. It doesn’t affect the driver at all!
Such settings would be in /etc/X11/xorg.conf, if that exists it could help to remove it.
What I do think could be the difference is that I upgraded through YaST. I uninstalled Apper long ago–it’s too buggy.
That should not matter as Apper (PackageKit to be precise) use the same as YaST or zypper does for actually installing the packages: libzypp.
If I read your post correctly, you uninstalled the 331 driver via YaST, but never tried installing it that way. That’s what I would try.
He said he tried the 1-click install, that one does use YaST.
But what could have happened is that the wrong kernel module package (nvidia-gfxG0X-kmp-*) has been installed. This can happen especially if you uninstalled the driver before because the correct kmp package will then be added to libzypp’s SoftLocks list so it doesn’t get installed again automatically.
So please explicitely select in YaST the matching kmp for the kernel you use.
And Apper isn’t very buggy. The libzypp backend was, but most of the bugs should be fixed for a long time…
He said he tried to 1-click install the 319 driver to get it back. My reading of his post is that he never tried to reinstall the 331 driver with YaST, 1-click or otherwise.
Yes, but if he clicked on the 1-click install now, it would install the 331.20 driver, because the 319.xx one is not in the repo anymore. The 1-click install doesn’t pick a specific driver version.
After adding nomodeset to the grub entry I should have said that I went to SDB:NVIDIA drivers - openSUSE page and clicked the top Install Nvidia via 1-click button. Sorry for the confusion.
Am I right in thinking that entries 2,3 and 4 are the nvidia binary packages?
Entry 1 is the nouveau driver which is used if the binary ones are not installed? As I seem to have the binary ones installed why is this showing?
xf86-video-nv isn’t that also sometimes used if the nvidia binaries are not installed? Should this be listed?
Once again thanks for the advice on getting me working.
Entry 1 is the nouveau driver which is used if the binary ones are not installed?
Yes, if you don’t have “nomodeset” or “nouveua.modeset=0” added to your boot options, or explicitely set another driver in /etc/X11/xorg.conf or /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d.
As I seem to have the binary ones installed why is this showing?
Because it is installed.
But there’s no need to uninstall it.
xf86-video-nv isn’t that also sometimes used if the nvidia binaries are not installed?
Yes, if nouveau is not installed/cannot be used.
But I don’t know which cards that one still supports as it is quite old.
And it has absolutely no 3D support.
Should this be listed?
Not necessarily. I think it is not installed by default anymore.
But you can of course install it if you want to, but I guess this only would make sense if you uninstalled nvidia and nouveau.
I would not really advise to use nv though. The proprietary nvidia driver is the best choice anyway…
Once again thanks for the advice on getting me working.
I think I know now why the G03 driver did not work for you:
The bug from 12.3 that you don’t have sufficient rights for direct rendering by default, reappeared in 13.1 unfortunately (apparently they added the wrong patch to the Factory systemd package, which didn’t work on many systems).
I’ve just reopened it: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=808319
If you’re using the proprietary nvidia driver (doesn’t matter if it’s G02 or G03), you should add your user to the “video” group therefore. I guess the G03 driver would work then as well for you, with G02 you may just be lucky that it works without direct rendering…
I’m fully aware of the need to log-out and then back in. The problem is with the driver, which kicks me to text mode upon restart.
I’m pretty sure the correct files were downloaded and installed, as the nvidia repo automatically selects packages for install. That said, I tried a number of packages and none of them work.
I actually reinstalled 13.1 and then the nvidia driver. Upon restart, I only have text mode. As I stated earlier, I allowed the nvidia repo to automatically select the driver packages for me.
When I experimented with different G03 packages, I always deleted the old one via Yast first.
How do I check to see if KMS is enabled, and how do I enable it if I need to?
