xorg72.uci and nvidia proprietary driver

Forum: System
Topic: xorg72.uci and nvidia proprietary driver
started by: mikshaw

Posted by mikshaw on May 11 2008,02:13

I just installed the 96.43.05 nvidia driver and have not been successful in using it with xorg72.uci. It works with XFree86.dsl.

Here's what I get in Xorg.0.log when trying to use it:

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(II) LoadModule: "pcidata"
(WW) Warning, couldn't open module pcidata
(II) UnloadModule: "pcidata"
(EE) Failed to load module "pcidata" (module does not exist, 0)

Fatal server error:
Unable to load required base modules, Exiting...

(WW) xf86CloseConsole: KDSETMODE failed: Bad file descriptor
(WW) xf86CloseConsole: VT_GETMODE failed: Bad file descriptor

If I try to use the driver without either manually loading it or including it in the modules directory, X just can't find it. I think that may be just beacuse it tries to use modprobe instead of insmod.

Any thoughts on this? Did I miss something, or is pcidata something that should be included in Xorg? There is a libpcidata.a file included with XFree86.dsl. In xorg72.uci there is libpcidata.so. Do I need to adjust a variable or something?

Xorg.0.log also said

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(**) ModulePath set to "/usr/X11R6/lib/modules"

so maybe this is what needs to be looked at. Maybe i just need to add a module path to xorg.conf

Posted by mikshaw on May 11 2008,02:34

I noticed th module path needed changing. After changing it to the xorg module directory, the pcidata error was fixed, but the nvidia module was not found.

DSL loaded it during boot, but it doesn't seem to be in a place where xorg can find it. /lib is not writable by default, so I have no idea how DSL deals with kernel modules, or how to make xorg find it without running mkwriteable.

Posted by mikshaw on May 11 2008,03:27

After looking into the old nvidia.dsl extension, I see a pile of files that are not directly part of the driver, plus some dev files.
I really hope it's not going to be as complicated as it's starting to appear...seems this might not be possible without running mkwriteable and editing/creating a bunch of other files =op

Posted by Juanito on May 11 2008,03:47

Is the nvidia module you're trying to load a kernel module or a video driver? If it is a kernel module you could place it in ../mydsl/modules to be loaded at boot.

Posted by WDef on May 11 2008,03:50

Is it sensitive to the particular version of Xorg/XFree86? The driver has to speak to XOrg's ABI and that could change with versions.

I notice there is a forum on the NVidia website, there might be some leads there.

Posted by mikshaw on May 11 2008,11:38

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Is the nvidia module you're trying to load a kernel module or a video driver?

I don't know what the difference is between a kernel module and a driver. It requires the kernel headers to build, so i assume it's a kernel module.

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If it is a kernel module you could place it in ../mydsl/modules to be loaded at boot.

Already doing that. DSL loads it, but Xorg can't find it.
I tried running mkwriteable and adding it to /lib/modules/2.4.31/kernel/drivers/video, as it was originally installed, but still van't find it.

I'm getting the feeling that all those other files are necessary. I'm going to try rebuilding it and try again with the proper module path in xorg.conf, *before* rebooting into a "clean" system. I believe that's one thing I haven't tried yet, considering I think it's useless if I can't make it persistent.

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Is it sensitive to the particular version of Xorg/XFree86? The driver has to speak to XOrg's ABI and that could change with versions.

I doubt that very much. I don't believe nvidia would waste time doing anything that specific. Besides, the very same driver works on Xorg in Slackware.

I'm going to temporarily call this a situation in which I did not do all obvious steps in debugging. I have to assume for now that there are more files needed beyond just the nvidia.o file, and build the thing again.

Posted by Juanito on May 11 2008,12:12

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Besides, the very same driver works on Xorg in Slackware.

- if you didn't already, it might be worth having a look at Xorg.0.log from this system to see what got loaded. I guess there might be both a kernel module and an xorg video module to be loaded?

Posted by curaga on May 11 2008,14:02

Yeah, both are needed. The kernel side handles DRM and other 3d stuff, the xorg side does the rest.

Posted by mikshaw on May 16 2008,13:46

Thanks for the responses. I have been off the puter since that last post until just a few minutes ago, so haven't tried rebuilding the module yet. I'll have to make sure I backup all created files this time so I hopefully won't have to build it again.

I'll post whatever results I get here, as they occur.