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#1 2012-06-29 20:22:07

*nixer
Member
Registered: 2011-11-11
Posts: 56

[Solved] AUR: Nvidia legacy drivers for MX4000 not working?

Hi.

I'm attempting to turn an old Dell machine I've acquired into a 720p HTPC. I've already tested XBMC out on this machine via WinXP, and considering I've always gotten better video playback through Linux, I thought I'd try out a minimal Arch XBMC install.

Problem is that this card, the Geforce 4 MX 4000 (128MB AGP x4), is no longer supported in the current Nvidia packaging.

After reading the wiki, I configured my makepkg with the native parameter, built, and installed the AUR's 173xx Nvidia package.

When attempting to load X after configuring, I noticed in the output that it recognized the card, but notified me that I was only supported under the lagacy 96xx packaging. I then installed the nvidia-96xx, and nvidia-96xx-utils, packages from the aur.

After attempting either a non-configured X, or with one, I'm getting the message that my card isn't recognized. This is despite the fact that the vesa, and nouveau, drivers see it just fine. FYI - I boot the kernel with the 'vga=792' parameter in case that makes a difference.

The messages received when Xorg fails were something like the following.

WARNING
This server has a video driver ABI version of 12.0 that is not supported by this driver

AND

Fatal server error:
no screens found

I'm posting this from Windows, and I can't give you any net feedback while in Arch.

Last edited by *nixer (2012-06-29 23:23:27)

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#2 2012-06-29 20:29:15

Gusar
Member
Registered: 2009-08-25
Posts: 3,605

Re: [Solved] AUR: Nvidia legacy drivers for MX4000 not working?

You're not getting a message that the card isn't recognized. The driver just works fine. The message shows that the driver doesn't support your version of X. You need to downgrade X to 1.10 I think.

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#3 2012-06-29 20:57:28

*nixer
Member
Registered: 2011-11-11
Posts: 56

Re: [Solved] AUR: Nvidia legacy drivers for MX4000 not working?

Is that even possible without downgrading the kernel? By the AUR package requirement, I need kernel 3.4 or 3.5.

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#4 2012-06-29 21:10:04

Gusar
Member
Registered: 2009-08-25
Posts: 3,605

Re: [Solved] AUR: Nvidia legacy drivers for MX4000 not working?

X has nothing to do with the kernel (well, it's more complicated than that, but they are not directly connected). You do need to downgrade, or recompile, the xf86-input-* packages you use.

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#5 2012-06-29 21:22:34

Darksoul71
Member
Registered: 2010-04-12
Posts: 319

Re: [Solved] AUR: Nvidia legacy drivers for MX4000 not working?

Hm, I do not know if arch is really mandatory.
Debian 6.0 still includes this very version of the NVidia driver. A stress-free way to set up a HTPC with your hardware would be a vanilla Debian 6.0 installation plus nvidia-96x plus XBMC. I used Debian 6.0 for quite some time with a GeForce 4 Ti 4400 and the named NVidia driver.

Not shure if downgrading X is really worth the hassle.

Just my 2 cents,
D$


My archlinux x86_64 host:
AMD E350 (2x1.6GHz) / 8GB DDR3 RAM / GeForce 9500GT (passive) / Arch running from 16GB USB Stick

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#6 2012-06-29 21:27:30

Gusar
Member
Registered: 2009-08-25
Posts: 3,605

Re: [Solved] AUR: Nvidia legacy drivers for MX4000 not working?

There is no hassle in downgrading X. Install an old version of xorg-server, recompile xf86-input-evdev and, if you use it, xf86-input-synaptics. Done.

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#7 2012-06-29 23:21:56

*nixer
Member
Registered: 2011-11-11
Posts: 56

Re: [Solved] AUR: Nvidia legacy drivers for MX4000 not working?

Well... after doing a more thorough web search, I found the Catalyst unofficial Arch repos here.
- http://catalyst.apocalypsus.net/

I tried first to add them to my pacman.conf and install them, but Arch's new security measures said no-no-no. I have no clue how to add new repos as trusted after the initial pacman-key --init, so I manually downloaded the xorg packages needed.

As I had truly done a minimal net install followed by a 'pacman -S xorg-server xorg-server-utils xorg-xinit xterm', the only incompatibility messages I received were for the xf86-video-vesa and xf86-input-edev packages.

This was what was involved in getting this to work.

- Do core net install of Arch system, and reboot.
- Install minimal xorg from current repos through pacman via...

pacman -S xorg-server xorg-server-utils xorg-xinit

- Manual download, and downgrade to, xorg-server-1.10.4-1, xf86-input-evdev-2.6.0-3, or any other required xorg packages from the Catalyst repo.
- Install nvidia-96xx, and nvidia-96xx-utils, packages from AUR.
- Running 'X -configure' reported missing file error. Do a search for the missing file name minus the '.0' extension, and create a softlink with the extension included.
- Rerun 'X -configure', move xorg.conf.new file to /etc/X11/xorg.conf, run 'nvidia-xconfig'.

BTW - the command line browser 'links' will help a lot before you have a GUI setup. In my case XBMC.

Last edited by *nixer (2012-06-29 23:27:11)

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#8 2012-06-29 23:24:18

karol
Archivist
Registered: 2009-05-06
Posts: 25,440

Re: [Solved] AUR: Nvidia legacy drivers for MX4000 not working?

You can use this [xorg110] repo: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AT … positories

Edit: Ah, I see you've already found it :-)

Last edited by karol (2012-06-29 23:25:13)

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#9 2012-06-30 00:51:26

*nixer
Member
Registered: 2011-11-11
Posts: 56

Re: [Solved] AUR: Nvidia legacy drivers for MX4000 not working?

The reason I'm not trying Debian for this is because I've installed Linux on quite a few older non-64bit PCs. For some reason be it the i386 vs the i686, or the optimized AUR packages, I've gotten better results on Arch. On my current i3-2120, HD6850, 8GB DDR3, the 64bit performance differences between Arch, and Debian, aren't noticeable if even existent.

This particular older PC is a Dell Dimension 8200 with a P4@2GHz, 512MB of RDRAM, Sound Blaster LE, and a Geforce4 MX4000 128MB AGP card. It plays 720p x264 video back smoothly without a hitch in WinXP.

Way back in the day, I had a Pentium 3 850MHz, and a Matrox 16MB GFX card, almost running low bit-rate 720p smoothly due to the awesome xv Matrox Linux backend.

Unfortunately in this case, XBMC was even slower with the Nvidia drivers, and XBMC running on Nouveau was even slower than XBMC running on XP. A bit disappointing, but oh well... moving on.

Last edited by *nixer (2012-06-30 00:52:33)

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