Nvidia Drivers not working

[cjamesstuart]

For the past 12 hours, I have tried everything I can think of to make nvidia drivers work. Installed from Nvidia web-site, Synaptic, apt-get, all I get is a black screen or errors. I installed the correct kernel source for 2.6.19, installed pkg-config and x.org sdk dev package, used dpkg-reconfigure and nvidia-xconfig ... every time get error that no usable screens are found - or just get black screen. Currently have installed Nvidia x86 v.1.0-9746, using 2.6.19 kernel and Nvidia GeForce 6200 card, Knoppix 5.1.1 installed to hdd

At last boot, typed startx - got black screen, rebooted, edited xorg.conf changed driver from nvidia to nv, startx
now getting several errors such as usr/lib/libnvidia-cfg.so.1 is not an ELF file, it has wrong magic bytes at start ... huh? I'm kinda new to linux ... didn't realize there were magic bytes. If anybody can help me, it would be greatly appreciated.

CJ

[hal8000]

Hi, have a look at this tutorial for help:

http://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers

I now have Nvidia acceleration but all I did was run synaptic then installed following packages:
nvidia-kernel-source
nvidia-settings
nvidia-glx
nvidia-kernel (matched against my kernel version)

You will find that synaptic automatically fills in the dependencies for you.

After that I manually edited my /etc/X11/xorg.conf file with changes as follows

--in module section--
Load "dbe" # Double Buffering Extension, very important.
Load "glx" # GLX Extension.


--in device section change driver from nv to nvidia as below

Section "Device"

### Available Driver options are:-
# sw_cursor is needed for some ati and radeon cards
# The following line is auto-generated by KNOPPIX mkxf86config
# Driver "nvidia"
# BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
Identifier "Card0"
Driver "nvidia"
VendorName "Sparkle"
BoardName "Geforce 5700 Ultra"
EndSection


Restarted X server.

When things go wrong, look for clues in var/log/Xorg.0.log or /var/log/messages, chances are the nvidia module may not have been loaded.
You can also try modprobe nvidia (as root) to prove this and
lsmod | grep nvidia
(to check if nvidia module has loaded)
Hope that helps

[cjamesstuart]

Thanks for your help, however, I attempted to load the drivers with Synaptic, but wasn't offered the correct kernel version ... only 2.6.18.45 - which I did install only to get the same results. Spent most of today recovering from a hard drive error of unknown origin, was finally able to recover my partitions and boot the PC. Now, after exhausting all ideas, I cannot even get X to start. I install Nvidia drivers, use nvidia-xconfig ... or edit xorg.conf manually, or use dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg ... no difference, screen goes black and freezes. I un-install nvidia drivers, change xorg.conf back, startx screen still goes black and freezes. I restored the xorg.conf file from a previous installation of Knoppix 5.1.1, didn't make any difference. Is there some other file I need to edit or is there a way to completely re-install X?? I don't want to re-install as I have lots of software and files on the drive and it took a long time to get settings tuned properly.
Thanks in advance for any advice.


Update ... I ran the script to determine which glx drivers I needed and the result was: no Nvidia card detected. That may be the source of the problem.

[Elysium444]

I am using knoppix 5.1.1 with kernel 2.6.19 I cant find the source kernel with apt-get. Where do i find the kernel source?

[Aleu]

I am using knoppix 5.1.1 with kernel 2.6.19 I cant find the source kernel with apt-get. Where do i find the kernel source?

It is stored in /usr/src directory on Knoppix DVD edition (Knoppix uses customized vanilla kernel).