using NVidia's graphics card drivers

[JetCowBoB]

Does anyone know how to go about remastering Knoppix such that if you have an Nvidia graphics card, it will use the Nvidia drivers instead of the built in generic nv driver? Ive installed the driver before under a regular debian install, however, I had to have the source kernel source code from the original installation to do so... I dont believe that is available to us with Knoppix. Any suggestions? Has anyone done this?
-Matt

[roberto]

i happen to be looking for the same thing... i run a geforce 2 MX, i hope someone can help with this... the game TUX racer looks like crap and runs REALLY slow on my comp. i want to enable hardware acceleration. need/want to load nvidias drivers.... thx

[dvessey]

I'd also like to know how to do this.

What I've tried, is to get the source .tar.gz's for the drivers and compiled them in when chrooted.
When I did burn that CD though, X wouldn't work at all, with any X driver. I'd get as far as it popping up the nvidia splash screen, then dumping me back at the CLI saying it can't open default font 'fixed'. as far as I know, i didn't remove any necessary font packages. Any ideas?

[rcook]

the new release seems much cleaner. My screens were breaking up when I used the mouse in 12-12. In 1-1 this no longer happens.

[dvessey]

I installed the 41.91 drivers on my HD install, and into my knxsource too.. so once I rebuild, I'll find out if they work or not...

[Knoppix]

Could you tell how you compiled them ?
I cannot load nvidia.o since it complains about a lot of "missing ..." errors.

What kernel package did you use ?

[dvessey]

What I did to get it to work with knoppix 12/12 was to just download the nvidia drivers from nvidia themselves(the .tar.gz's). I used my knoppix hd install to compile them, and I had to set the IGNORE_CC_MISMATCH environement variable. other than that, just did "make" with both directorys(nvidia_kernel and nvidia_glx).

I re-mastered it, burnt it, and it all works fine :) haven't tried any open gl stuff yet though

[JetCowBoB]

Heya Ya'll-
I stumbled accross this tutorial for installing the nvidia drivers and other OpenGL & 3D type stuff...
http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/tutorials/3154/1/
Im lazy though. It would be really neat if somehow the next version of knoppix automagically installed these drivers if you have an nvidia card. Or even cooler if there was a script that took the most recent version and installed them to the Knoppix hd install.
Ive used the tutorial above to get my own system working with knoppix, but upon a reinstall it would stink to have to redo all that again.. much less remember everything. If anyone writes a script to do it, that would be cool.

[3R4Z0R]

How did you "set the IGNORE_CC_MISMATCH environement variable"?
Thanks in advance for any help

[dvessey]

ok, in a root shell, type:
"IGNORE_CC_MISMATCH=1" then
"export IGNORE_CC_MISMATCH"

that should let it compile, at least it worked for me! you'll probably have to start up knoppix in runlevel two though, and then edit /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 to NOT load "GLcore", and to us "nvidia" instead of "nv" as the driver module.

[drfreak]

I don't know what the legal issues might be in auto-installing NVidia's drivers. If we ask really nicely, they might just say yes :) Heck, they might even put a 'LATEST_IS' file on their ftp servers so our scripts can download the most current driver. It couldn't hurt to ask. They just might do it in exchange for a nvidia framebuffer logo during boot or something.

But if you want to reimage your own CD with the drivers on it, I can't see the harm as long as you don't re-distribute it.

I haven't tested it, but all you would need to do is to copy the NVidia_kernel and NVidia_GLX source directories to somewhere in your Knoppix image source directory, and then put a conditional in /etc/init.d/knoppix-autoconfig which checks if the 'nvidia' module has been picked to put in XF86Config-4, and then replace the 'nvidia' with 'nv' and run 'make install' in the source folders.

The problem is that the NVidia driver needs to replace the stock GLX libraries in /usr/X11R6/lib, which is not possible because they are read-only on the Knoppix CD. A fix for this may be to put a path on the ramdisk in ld.so.conf with a place in the search path above /usr/X11R6/lib, and modify the NVidia_GLX Makefile to install there instead.

[JetCowBoB]

I don't know what the legal issues might be in auto-installing NVidia's drivers. If we ask really nicely, they might just say yes :) Heck, they might even put a 'LATEST_IS' file on their ftp servers so our scripts can download the most current driver. It couldn't hurt to ask. They just might do it in exchange for a nvidia framebuffer logo during boot or something.

But if you want to reimage your own CD with the drivers on it, I can't see the harm as long as you don't re-distribute it.

I haven't tested it, but all you would need to do is to copy the NVidia_kernel and NVidia_GLX source directories to somewhere in your Knoppix image source directory, and then put a conditional in /etc/init.d/knoppix-autoconfig which checks if the 'nvidia' module has been picked to put in XF86Config-4, and then replace the 'nvidia' with 'nv' and run 'make install' in the source folders.

The problem is that the NVidia driver needs to replace the stock GLX libraries in /usr/X11R6/lib, which is not possible because they are read-only on the Knoppix CD. A fix for this may be to put a path on the ramdisk in ld.so.conf with a place in the search path above /usr/X11R6/lib, and modify the NVidia_GLX Makefile to install there instead.


So how do we get the ball started rolling to get a knoppix version with nvidia drivers automatically installing? I would like this very much. =) I can help write letters to nvidia if someone wants to spearhead this.

[dvessey]

I really don't think that's a possibility, what with the licensing issues. I'm quite happy to set it up on my own CD, but I'm not quite sure how to make it us nvidia instead of nv

[JetCowBoB]

I really don't think that's a possibility, what with the licensing issues. I'm quite happy to set it up on my own CD, but I'm not quite sure how to make it us nvidia instead of nv

What do ya'll think about an extra script to acompany the hd install script that would apt-get the nvidia drivers, and install them? The user would have to run the script, and the drivers are already avaialable through apt-get.. I dont see anything illegal about this.

[dvessey]

I really don't think that's a possibility, what with the licensing issues. I'm quite happy to set it up on my own CD, but I'm not quite sure how to make it us nvidia instead of nv

What do ya'll think about an extra script to acompany the hd install script that would apt-get the nvidia drivers, and install them? The user would have to run the script, and the drivers are already avaialable through apt-get.. I dont see anything illegal about this.

yeah, there wouldn't be anything illegal about this, although CAN you apt get stuff on a Knoppix cd? hmm.. something to test out..

[drfreak]

I really don't think that's a possibility, what with the licensing issues. I'm quite happy to set it up on my own CD, but I'm not quite sure how to make it us nvidia instead of nv

What do ya'll think about an extra script to acompany the hd install script that would apt-get the nvidia drivers, and install them? The user would have to run the script, and the drivers are already avaialable through apt-get.. I dont see anything illegal about this.

yeah, there wouldn't be anything illegal about this, although CAN you apt get stuff on a Knoppix cd? hmm.. something to test out..

No, you can't apt-get in a running knoppix, but there is no reason why you need the debs, they just contain the code which still needs to be compiled/linked. probably easier just to auto-ftp the newest driver.

[Alextreme]

Hmm, stumbled on this problem too, already tried asking nicely but NVidia's linux email adres appears to be bouncing. Mandrake had a script to auto-install nvidia drivers, if nvidia doesn't give in i'll probably add some menuitem for nvidia-users so they can download, install and restart X.

Always respected the individual's right to licence software, but this is getting quite frustrating...

[Alextreme]

Well, it appears that there is an exception voor distro's, i've uploaded a modified GameMod iso that should (hopefully) use the nvidia kernelmodule from CD. Still needs testing though, got a few 'volunteers' busy playing with it :)

For the brave, it's in the incoming/ dir

[god]

What I did to get it to work with knoppix 12/12 was to just download the nvidia drivers from nvidia themselves(the .tar.gz's). I used my knoppix hd install to compile them, and I had to set the IGNORE_CC_MISMATCH environement variable. other than that, just did "make" with both directorys(nvidia_kernel and nvidia_glx).

I re-mastered it, burnt it, and it all works fine :) haven't tried any open gl stuff yet though

two questions for you... is there any way i can hook up with this iso? and how does glx work (in order of importance...)

[Alextreme]

I'll hopefully throw new iso's up tomorrow, the last iso has a number of problems :?

[underland]

Hi.

I've just finished a custom knoppix remastering with the nvidia drivers enabled (with autodetection).

If someone is interested, here's the complete procedure, step by step.

First of all change into the source chroot environment as described in the KnoppixRemasteringHowto.
Make sure some basic development packages are installed in the
chrooted environment (gcc, make, kernel-headers, dpkg-dev...).

Then download the nvidia source debs and build the binary debs following these steps:

* Download the latest nvidia source debs (the newest are in debian unstable):
http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/nvidia-kernel-src.html
http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/nvidia-glx-src.html
(nvidia-kernel-src_1.0.4191-2_i386.deb and nvidia-glx-src_1.0.4191-1_i386.deb)


* Build the binary kernel module (in the chrooted environment)


# dpkg -i nvidia-kernel-src_1.0.4191-2_i386.deb
# export KSRC=/usr/src/linux
# export KVERS=2.4.20-xfs
# cd /usr/src
# tar zxvf nvidia-kernel-src.tar.gz
# cd modules/nvidia-kernel-1.0.4191
# debian/rules binary_modules


Now, if you want, it is possible to apply a tweak. Edit NVIDIA_kernel-1.0.4191/os-registry.c
and set NVreg_EnableAGPSBA and NVreg_EnableAGPFW to 1, then run
debian/rules binary_modules again.

* Build nvidia-glx


# dpkg -i nvidia-glx-src_1.0.4191-1_i386.deb
# cd /usr/src/nvidia-glx_1.0.4191
# dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc


If all went well you can install the binary debs now (still in the chrooted environment).


# dpkg -i nvidia-kernel-2.4.20-xfs_1.0.4191-2+_i386.deb
# dpkg -i nvidia-glx_1.0.4191-1_i386.deb


To clean up you can remove the source debs as they are no longer necessary (dpkg -P).

If the Linux kernel is replaced you also have to rebuild nvidia-kernel-src after the new kernel is installed
(if the kernel versionnumber is the same then it's enough to just
reinstall the binary nvidia-kernel deb).

--

Now to the fun part. Hack Klaus knopper's scripts to use the nvidia module
instead of nv for all graphic cards supported by the nvidia driver.

Basically here is what I changed:

In the file /usr/share/hwdata/Cards replace "DRIVER nv" with "DRIVER nvidia" for all
supported cards (RIVA TNT, RIVA TNT2, RIVA Ultra TNT2, NVIDIA GeForce, NVIDIA GeForce 256
(generic), NVIDIA GeForce DDR (generic), NVIDIA GeForce 2 (generic), NVIDIA GeForce 3 (generic),
NVIDIA GeForce 4 (generic), NVIDIA Quadro 4 (generic)). Also, if it exists, remove the
line "SERVER SVGA" for the cards that use the nvidia driver. Leave RIVA128 with the nv
driver, the RIVA128 cards are not supported by the nvidia driver.

In the file /usr/share/hwdata/pcitable change the strings "Server:XFree86(nv)"
to "Server:XFree86(nvidia)" for all supported pci id's (there are also a couple of
"Server:XFree86(vesa)" lines that can be changed to nvidia). Look at the linux driver
page at nvidias homepage for a list of pci id's that are supported by the driver,
http://download.nvidia.com/XFree86_40/1.0-4191/README, the list is in APPENDIX A.

To make these chages the "correct" way, download the source for hwdata-knoppix from
http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/sources/, unpack (tar zxvf hwdata-knoppix_x.y-z.tar.gz), edit
the files (Cards and pcitable) and rebuild the .deb package with the command:
# debian/rules binary

Then you can install the .deb inside the chrooted environment with dpkg -i.

Well now you would think it's done, but not yet. The nvidia driver needs a change in the file
/etc/X11/XF86Config-4. In Section "Module", comment out the lines Load "GLcore" and
Load "dri" by putting a # sign at the beginning of those two lines.

This change should actually be done in the file /etc/X11/XF86Config-4.in.
To build a modified .deb that does this, download the source for xf86config-knoppix.
Unpack and hack the script mkxf86config.sh so that the # sign is inserted at the
beginning of the lines (Load "GLcore" and Load "dri") _ONLY_ if the variable $XMODULE
is equal to nvidia. Then rebuild as usual
# debian/rules binary
and install inside the chrooted environment (dpkg -i).

The change in mkxf86config.sh is a little tricky, but it can be made, for example, like this:
Find the line SWCURSOR="" (somewhere around line 278). Between the SWCURSOR="" line and the
"sed -e" lines, insert the following 7 lines:



# Remove GLcore and dri modules if the nvidia driver is used
NVGLCORE=""
NVDRI=""
if [ "$XMODULE" = "nvidia" ]; then
NVGLCORE='s|^.*Load.*"GLcore".*$|#Load "GLcore"|g;'
NVDRI='s|^.*Load.*"dri".*$|#Load "dri"|g;'
fi


and a couple of lines down, among the sed -e lines, find the line



-e 's|@@XMODULE@@|'"$XMODULE"'|g;'"$VMWARE""$SERIALMOUSE""$USBMOUSE""$PSMOUSE""$SWCURSOR""$WHEEL" \


and add "$NVGLCORE""$NVDRI" to it:



-e 's|@@XMODULE@@|'"$XMODULE"'|g;'"$VMWARE""$SERIALMOUSE""$USBMOUSE""$PSMOUSE""$SWCURSOR""$WHEEL""$NVGLCORE""$NVDRI" \



That's all, now you should be able to enjoy autodetected hardware-accellerated OpenGL with
NVidia cards and KNOPPIX!

This procedure worked for me and it should work for all cards supported by the nvidia driver.
The license on the nvidia driver is a bit messy though so I don't think these changes, with
a pre-compiled version of the nvidia drivers, can go into a distribution, but that's another
story...


Best Regards!

/Albert "underland" Veli

[Alextreme]

Good work, did about the same for the M-game cd, save for the autodetection, which i must say you solved very nicely! :D

However, i was wondering if this also lets the mesa software drivers peacefully co-exist with the nvidia glx drivers, as this was the big problem i ran into (and needed trans to fix).

Anyway, would you mind if this was integrated with the morphix base? the licence problem isn't that bad, there is an exception for linux-based software. Oh well, good stuff :)

[MichielioZ]

Ok, so as I see it, you have to do a LOT of things to get nvidia drivers to work...
First of all... I'd like to think this could all be simpler, but probably I'm wrong then... ;)
Then, if it really is this hard, could anybody getting the nvidia drivers to work just make a simple script or something ?
A lot of people just don't bother using the nvidia-drivers because of this apparent knowledge you're supposed to have...

[underland]

However, i was wondering if this also lets the mesa software drivers peacefully co-exist with the nvidia glx drivers, as this was the big problem i ran into (and needed trans to fix).


Don't know about that. But perhaps the mesa software drivers somehow
are used if GLcore and dri are loaded by X. Those lines are only removed
at boot if the driver is nvidia. Perhaps that solves it.
I tried the modified Knoppix CD with a computer with a NVidia card and
glxinfo said: direct rendering: Yes. And when I tried it with
another computer with a i810 chip, then it says that Mesa OpenGL is used.

Edited You're right. There seems to be a collision between nvidia-glx and xlibmesa3. I'll investigate it and see if it's possible to
get around it with some boot-script magic...
The files thats causing trouble is /usr/lib/libGL.so.1*
and /usr/X11R6/lib/libGL.so.1*
Perhaps it's possible to make a script that copies the right files at boot
depending on if a nvidia card was detected or not...



Anyway, would you mind if this was integrated with the morphix base? the licence problem isn't that bad, there is an exception for linux-based software. Oh well, good stuff :)


Sure do whatever you like with it. I'm no license expert :-)
And thanx for the compliment :D

I just made the CD as en experiment to see if it is possible to run
Quake III from a live Linux CD (even without a harddisk). The answer
is YES!!! And Q3 even gives better FPS running from the Live CD
than it does with Windows XP on the same computer :p

By the way. The sources at knopper.net are not the latest.
But it's possible to use them as a base, and then copy the latest
files from a machine running the latest official Knoppix CD (3.2).
For example, hwdata-knoppix seems to change fast. It's also possible to
do a dpkg-repack to rebuild a .deb from a running system.
But sometimes there are some troubles with symbolic links to /KNOPPIX
when dpkg-repack is used...



First of all... I'd like to think this could all be simpler, but probably I'm wrong then...
Then, if it really is this hard, could anybody getting the nvidia drivers to work just make a simple script or something ?
A lot of people just don't bother using the nvidia-drivers because of this apparent knowledge you're supposed to have...


I agree that these changes are pretty complicated and that a script would make it
easier. Its really enough if one person creates the modified .deb files and makes them available. Or perhaps even better, makes the whole CD iso available (like morphix) :)

But the libGL collision has to be solved first. Too bad they are in read-only...
How does this trans stuff work?

[Alextreme]

Heh, welcome to the wonder world of translucency ;)

The lkm redirects certain syscalls to a read/write part of the harddisk. This is (simply put) how it works, the details are a lot more complicated. One drawback is that it doesn't work over symlinks, which makes it unusable under regular Knoppix distro's. Morphix however (tada!) doesn't use symlinks but mount --bind's and works chroot-ed from the normal (base) system. In thus way, both are seperated, symlinks are avoided and translucency can be used to write to the whole damn filesystem.

For more info, take a look at http://am.xs4all.nl/phpwiki/index.php/TransMod where i also just added this post (i'm lazy ;))

Anyway, you are free to take a look at how i did it using trans, it's about the same way you describe. I hope to integrate some of your nvidia-detection work into the morphix base, and to provide the accelerated nvidiadriver to all the M-modules. Kewl stuff :D

[Yakumo]

been trying to talk about this in other threads but it's not taken off, this one seems t ohavea while back so maybe people will return..

just thoguht i'd add sometihng aay dug up, redistribution seems possable for nvidia's linux drivers.

someone _please_ sort out a knoppix install script like the recent alsa driver that is works with knoppix boot cd and persistent home dir..

"Linux Exception. Notwithstanding the foregoing terms of Section 2.1.1, SOFTWARE designed exclusively for use on the Linux operating system may be copied and redistributed, provided that the binary files thereof are not modified in any way (except for unzipping of compressed files)."

The entire license agreement is here: http://nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=nv_swlicense"

(ta again aay )
:roll:

[underland]

someone _please_ sort out a knoppix install script like the recent alsa driver that is works with knoppix boot cd and persistent home dir..


Well I finally got it working on my custom remastering. The first part is easy
just do like I described in the earlier post and then spread the custimized .deb files. The hard part is the collision between nvidia-glx and xlibmesa3. I solved it by manually creating some symbolic links. But to make it a deb you have
to mess with diversions, preferably in nvidia-glx.

The files that collide are in:

/usr/X11R6/lib/modules/extensions

So I copied that directory to /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/extensions-org

Then I installed the nvidia-glx .deb. After that I moved the new /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/extensions to /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/extensions-nvidia.

Then I made /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/extensions a symbolic link to
/var/lib/extensions (/var/lib is in writeable ramdisk)

At boot /var/lib/extensions is made a symbolic link to either /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/extensions-org or /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/extensions-nvidia depending on what graphic card was detected.

The second collission is the /usr/lib/libGL.so.1*.
I copied them to a new directory called /usr/lib/libGL-org.
Then I installed nvidia-glx and after that I moved the nvidia libGL.so.1* files to a new directory called /usr/lib/libGL-nvidia.
The nvidia libGLcore.so.1* should also go into that directory.

Then at boot (in the same script as before, /usr/sbin/mkxf86config) I did a

echo "/usr/lib/ligGL-nvidia" >> /etc/ld.so.conf
if a nvidia card was detected or else a
echo "/usr/lib/ligGL-org" >> /etc/ld.so.conf

and at last a ldconfig.

This could all be made automatic by fixing a modified xf86config-knoppix-nvidia deb and a modified nvidia-glx deb. I have fixed the first one but I don't know
how to fix the diversions in the second one...

/Albert

[Yakumo]

well keep posting, some of us dont have your linux knowledge, or the vast amount of HD space you need (& knoppix HD isntall in the first place) to remaster our own CD's :)

good luck sorting those last bits out.

[Entropy42]

Then at boot (in the same script as before, /usr/sbin/mkxf86config) I did a

echo "/usr/lib/ligGL-nvidia" >> /etc/ld.so.conf
if a nvidia card was detected or else a
echo "/usr/lib/ligGL-org" >> /etc/ld.so.conf

and at last a ldconfig.

This could all be made automatic by fixing a modified xf86config-knoppix-nvidia deb and a modified nvidia-glx deb. I have fixed the first one but I don't know
how to fix the diversions in the second one...

/Albert

This didn't work for me, as ld.so.conf is on a read-only filesystem. (i.e. it can't be modified)

I think I've got everything else working right, but not this. Maybe a similar /var/lib trick???

(Burning an image trying that method and I'll let you know how it works)

Edit: It works. Might not even have been necessary, turns out the X problems were something else. (Used mismatching versions of XF86Config-4.in and mkxf86config.sh)

Now to figure out why X hangs on my laptop (GeForce4 Go 440) but not on the machine with a TNT2 system in the lab downstairs.

Edit 2: For compatibility reasons, you might want to use the 31.25 drivers instead of 43.49 - 4349 refused to work on my laptop, 3125 works well. SLIGHT chance it could've been a compiler mismatch, but not likely. Don't know about the 41.whatever series drivers.

[MichielioZ]

Make sure some basic development packages are installed in the
chrooted environment (gcc, make, kernel-headers, dpkg-dev...).
/Albert "underland" Veli

It's been asked over an over again on this forum, but maybe you'd know :
Where to get the necessary kernel-headers for 2.4.20-xfs kernel ??

I'm trying to do it without those, but with very little succes... :(

[Alextreme]

hmm, the recent 0.3-4 release has built-in support for nvidia. Does have the same problems with TNT-based cards, but besides that switching between dri and nvidia works well :)

[Entropy42]

Make sure some basic development packages are installed in the
chrooted environment (gcc, make, kernel-headers, dpkg-dev...).
/Albert "underland" Veli

It's been asked over an over again on this forum, but maybe you'd know :
Where to get the necessary kernel-headers for 2.4.20-xfs kernel ??

I'm trying to do it without those, but with very little succes... :(
I believe the stock CD includes the kernel headers. Unfortunately, Klaus disables module versioning info, so many modules refuse to compile, such as National Instruments' GPIB drivers. As a result, I just compiled a fresh Linus-tree 2.4.20 kernel (no need for XFS), and once that was done removed most of the kernel. I left in the Documentation and Include directories, and all files in the base /usr/src/linux directory. I also removed all of the asm-architecture directories from /usr/src/linux/include except for generic and asm-i386.

[underland]

I believe the stock CD includes the kernel headers. Unfortunately, Klaus disables module versioning info, so many modules refuse to compile, such as National Instruments' GPIB drivers. As a result, I just compiled a fresh Linus-tree 2.4.20 kernel (no need for XFS), and once that was done removed most of the kernel. I left in the Documentation and Include directories, and all files in the base /usr/src/linux directory. I also removed all of the asm-architecture directories from /usr/src/linux/include except for generic and asm-i386.

I compiled a custom kernel too. But I dont think that is necessary except if you use some special non-free modules (like the one above) or want to optimize it in any way (or include Alsa sound drivers).

I've tried standard 2.4.20 without any patches and it works great. The only change I did is to change size of bootparams (COMMAND_LINE_SIZE) from 256 to 512 in the file arch/i386/kernel/setup.c. Thats is what Klaus Knoppers kernel patch does. I've also tried 2.4.21-pre6 and 2.4.21-pre5-ac3 they both work. In fact I think you can use almost any 2.4 kernel or even a 2.5 one if you know what you're doing.
The trick is to start with Klaus .config file. Just copy it from the CD to the directory where the kernel source is. All is described in the http://www.knoppix.net/docs/index.php/KnoppixCustomKernelHowto.

[Entropy42]

I believe the stock CD includes the kernel headers. Unfortunately, Klaus disables module versioning info, so many modules refuse to compile, such as National Instruments' GPIB drivers. As a result, I just compiled a fresh Linus-tree 2.4.20 kernel (no need for XFS), and once that was done removed most of the kernel. I left in the Documentation and Include directories, and all files in the base /usr/src/linux directory. I also removed all of the asm-architecture directories from /usr/src/linux/include except for generic and asm-i386.

I compiled a custom kernel too. But I dont think that is necessary except if you use some special non-free modules (like the one above) or want to optimize it in any way (or include Alsa sound drivers).

I've tried standard 2.4.20 without any patches and it works great. The only change I did is to change size of bootparams (COMMAND_LINE_SIZE) from 256 to 512 in the file arch/i386/kernel/setup.c. Thats is what Klaus Knoppers kernel patch does. I've also tried 2.4.21-pre6 and 2.4.21-pre5-ac3 they both work. In fact I think you can use almost any 2.4 kernel or even a 2.5 one if you know what you're doing.
The trick is to start with Klaus .config file. Just copy it from the CD to the directory where the kernel source is. All is described in the http://www.knoppix.net/docs/index.php/KnoppixCustomKernelHowto.

Yup. Almost exactly what I did. Full summary of changes I made:
Pristine 2.4.20 source
Used Klaus' config, made a few minor tweaks. (Chose i586 instead of i386, I personally won't be running this on anything less than a Pentium, and adding module versioning. I'm not sure, but this may increase module sizes a few percent, which is probably why Klaus left it out, I had to ditch some SCSI modules.), then I applied the command line size patch. Other than that it's a stock 2.4.20 kernel with no patches.

[peenemuendeufo]

Morphix can be installed onto the HD, and has 3D drivers on the CD. It can handle OpenGL as far as I know. :)

[Ghandalfar]

Morphix's NVIDIA minimods works very well and it will soon get ATI fireglx one too :)

[raydj]

In this thread http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8712 you'll find my procedure for installing the nvidia accelerated drivers during a remaster, ending in a KNOPPIX live cd that will start nvidia's drivers instead on 'nv', and behave normally for any other cards.

Hope this helps someone.

[gonzalu]

In the thread pointed out by raydj above, I indeed followed his instructions and I now have a bootable CD that given the right cheat codes, boots to a 1920x1200, accelerated NVIDIA driver X windows... Now left to do is modify the background image (existing one is 1024x768 yuck) and also automatic disabling of DDC (which my LCD panel does not report properly since it is a Dell Laptop)

I am still tweaking and will post an ISO when it is more complete...

Manny