Arch Linux

brain0

Developer

From: Aachen - Germany

Registered: 2005-01-03

Posts: 1,382

NVIDIA beta drivers

NVIDIA has released beta 9625 drivers. According to the website, these are the highlights:

Release Highlights

    * Added initial support for GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap.
    * Added new "Display Configuration" page in nvidia-settings.
    * Improved workstation OpenGL performance in Xinerama.
    * Added support for NVIDIA Quadro Plex.
    * Added support for Quad SLI.
    * Improved X driver error recovery.
    * Improved workstation overlay performance.
    * Added SMBus functionality to the Linux/i2c interface.
    * Fixed DFP scaling support.
    * Added support for OpenGL 2.1.
    * Added new "TwinViewXineramaInfoOrder" X configuration option to control the order of display devices when in TwinView.

I have created a repo with these drivers. To use them with kernel26, you need the version 2.6.18-ARCH from testing. There is also a nvidia-beyond for kernel26beyond 2.6.17-beyond from current and a nvidia-suspend2 package for kernel26suspend2 2.6.18-suspend2 from community.

To use them, add these lines to the top of your pacman.conf file (above testing and extra):

[nvidia-beta]
Server = http://box.decemplex.net/~thomas/nvidia-beta/

PKGBUILDs are available at http://box.decemplex.net/~thomas/nvidia-beta/PKGBUILDs/

Have fun. Report any problems here.

Pierre

Developer

From: Bonn

Registered: 2004-07-05

Posts: 1,964

Website

Re: NVIDIA beta drivers

Nice, I uploaded them just before I saw your posting. So if you are using kernel from current you might want to use the packages which can be found here: http://www.archlinux.de/~pierre/packages/

This is the first driver which comutes my tft-resolution correctly.

I hope there will be a release of beryl soon. :-)

---

3E80 CA1A 8B89 F69C BA57  D98A 76A5 EF90 5444 9A5C

Mikos

Member

From: Prague, Czech Republic

Registered: 2005-05-03

Posts: 228

Website

Re: NVIDIA beta drivers

Is this patch (from NVidia) included? It disables broken I2C/SMBUS support in the new driver, so it is really important for this beta.

brain0

Developer

From: Aachen - Germany

Registered: 2005-01-03

Posts: 1,382

Re: NVIDIA beta drivers

I didn't include it. Thanks for the hint.

If there is enough interest, I could add a nvidia-2.6.17 package as well.

Mikos

Member

From: Prague, Czech Republic

Registered: 2005-05-03

Posts: 228

Website

Re: NVIDIA beta drivers

Ok, so please tell me when you update your packages (with this patch), I want to test it :-) I started editing nvidia PKGBUILDs, but then I have found this thread, so I don't want to duplicate work ;-)

brain0

Developer

From: Aachen - Germany

Registered: 2005-01-03

Posts: 1,382

Re: NVIDIA beta drivers

Not right now, I am too lazy. Just edit my PKGBUILD from the URL above.

test1000

Member

Registered: 2005-04-03

Posts: 834

Re: NVIDIA beta drivers

the patch is not important unless 12c is buggy for you; i would think that it should not be included at all but commented out in the PKGBUILD.

you guys really need to check out: http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=14 (at the top of the stickies and at the bottom of the stickies)

---

KISS = "It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience." - Albert Einstein

iphitus

Forum Fellow

From: Melbourne, Australia

Registered: 2004-10-09

Posts: 4,927

Re: NVIDIA beta drivers

get the patch in there when you can. without it it causes lockups on X startup for many people.

the patch only removes the *new* functionality of this beta release, not any of the prior functionality, so there shouldnt be any problem adding the patch.

temporary workaround is to rmmod eeprom before starting X.

And after that.... still not working for me, X doesnt start, bails out:
http://iphitus.loudas.com/Xorg.log.txt

James

brain0

Developer

From: Aachen - Germany

Registered: 2005-01-03

Posts: 1,382

Re: NVIDIA beta drivers

Okay, so what? Does anyone want to use this smbus stuff? I can live with or without the patch, so I don't really care. And what about modules for 2.6.17-ARCH? Does anyone want/need them?

shadowhand

Member

From: MN, USA

Registered: 2004-02-19

Posts: 1,142

Website

Re: NVIDIA beta drivers

Broke my widescreen resolution, so I went back to 8xxx series.

---

·¬»· i am shadowhand, powered by webfaction

Mikos

Member

From: Prague, Czech Republic

Registered: 2005-05-03

Posts: 228

Website

Re: NVIDIA beta drivers

Okay, so what? Does anyone want to use this smbus stuff? I can live with or without the patch, so I don't really care. And what about modules for 2.6.17-ARCH? Does anyone want/need them?

More people will have problems with that broken I2C/SMBUS stuff and it is not needed at all, so I support including this patch (which will disable it) in your packages.

Tatey

Member

From: Brisbane, Australia

Registered: 2006-04-02

Posts: 66

Website

Re: NVIDIA beta drivers

Drivers work like a charm, I'm using multi-displays with twinview.

---

Check out my website, http://tatey.com

Pierre

Developer

From: Bonn

Registered: 2004-07-05

Posts: 1,964

Website

Re: NVIDIA beta drivers

Which version of compiz works with this driver? I thought I have to use compiz-aiglx from aur, but all I get is a segmentationfault.

---

3E80 CA1A 8B89 F69C BA57  D98A 76A5 EF90 5444 9A5C

lucke

Member

From: Poland

Registered: 2004-11-30

Posts: 4,018

Re: NVIDIA beta drivers

And after that.... still not working for me, X doesnt start, bails out:http://iphitus.loudas.com/Xorg.log.txt

Alas, got the same problem. And no motivation to fiddle with it right now.

brain0

Developer

From: Aachen - Germany

Registered: 2005-01-03

Posts: 1,382

Re: NVIDIA beta drivers

I'm having some problems.  I tried both the beyond driver with the beyond kernel and the 2.16.18 driver with kernel26 from testing, but everytime I tried to start X I would get an error.  It said something like the nvidia kernel driver was number 9625, but the X driver is still at 8774.  Anyone know what I'm doing wrong?  Is there a certain way I'm suppose to install this?

Did you also install nvidia-utils 9652 from the nvidia-beta repo?

Which version of compiz works with this driver? I thought I have to use compiz-aiglx from aur, but all I get is a segmentationfault.

I had thr compiz packages from AqD first, but now I use beryl (it doesn't have all these gnome dependencies). I think beryl isn't in AUR yet, baze made the PKGBUILDs just yesterday.

EDIT: I put beryl-svn in the AUR. Binary packages are available at

[brain0]
Server = http://www-users.rwth-aachen.de/thomas.baechler/arch/brain0/os/i686

Install them all using "pacman -S beryl-svn" (beryl-svn is a package group).

Leffe

Member

Registered: 2006-05-30

Posts: 47

Re: NVIDIA beta drivers

And after that.... still not working for me, X doesnt start, bails out:
http://iphitus.loudas.com/Xorg.log.txt

I managed to get it working by removing the orphaned files in /usr/lib/tls, libnvidia-tls.so.1.0.8178 and the symlink specifically. (I theorized this would work when I looked at the backtrace from mplayer which crashed because of this as well.)

chrismortimore

Member

From: Edinburgh, UK

Registered: 2006-07-15

Posts: 655

Re: NVIDIA beta drivers

Arr, that driver be problematic me hearties.  Talk Like A Pirate day was fun...  I tried the packages from http://www.archlinux.de/~pierre/packages/ running kernel26 from current, and it locked at this line in Xorg.0.log:

(II) NVIDIA(0):     enabled.

Rolled back to 8xxx and it works fine.  Can't be bothered upgrading to kernel 2.6.18 the now, I'll try that later...

---

Desktop: AMD Athlon64 3800+ Venice Core, 2GB PC3200, 2x160GB Maxtor DiamondMax 10, 2x320GB WD Caviar RE, Nvidia 6600GT 256MB
Laptop: Intel Pentium M, 512MB PC2700, 60GB IBM TravelStar, Nvidia 5200Go 64MB

Pierre

Developer

From: Bonn

Registered: 2004-07-05

Posts: 1,964

Website

Re: NVIDIA beta drivers

@batin0: Did you compile beryl against anything from testing?

@chrismortimore:perhaps you are one of the lucky peopls whos smbus is broken?

---

3E80 CA1A 8B89 F69C BA57  D98A 76A5 EF90 5444 9A5C

brain0

Developer

From: Aachen - Germany

Registered: 2005-01-03

Posts: 1,382

Re: NVIDIA beta drivers

@batin0: Did you compile beryl against anything from testing?

Yes, glibc, but it should work well with current glibc.

Beryl (self-built from AUR) works, but I get no window decorations - they're present and I can see the window icon, but they're invisible. Probably missing graphics.

The main problem with Beryl it that it's too slow. I'd guess around 7 to 15 FPS at most. Fiddling around with the options in beryl-settings doesn't help one bit. X's CPU usage hovers at around 6% while not doing anything, and jumps to 100% the instant you move anything around.

It seems like it's reverting to software rendering for some reason. Running glxgears, I get 10000FPS using kwin, and only 30 (!) using Beryl.

I did manage to get a version of compiz (I think a quinnstorm version) working, and it had the same problems as Beryl.

My fps in glxgears also drops from 1.000 to 200, but I sort of expected that. I was recommended to try http://www.compiz.net/topic-4707-nvidia-aiglx-compiz but didn't do it yet. You should disable the "Sync to VBlank" and "Detrect Refreshrate" options as well and then play with the refresh rate and try toggling the slowness fix option.

The problem with the decorations is related to emerald. If I remove $HOME/.emerald it has some sort of default theme - the moment I change the settings everything is invisible. Try installing an emerald theme or creating one. (There are no themes in the packages yet, all is in beta stage).

Mikos

Member

From: Prague, Czech Republic

Registered: 2005-05-03

Posts: 228

Website

Re: NVIDIA beta drivers

The driver itself works fine, and as far as I can tell it runs OpenGL games fine. However, I can't get the Compiz stuff working correctly.

Beryl (self-built from AUR) works, but I get no window decorations - they're present and I can see the window icon, but they're invisible. Probably missing graphics.

The main problem with Beryl it that it's too slow. I'd guess around 7 to 15 FPS at most. Fiddling around with the options in beryl-settings doesn't help one bit. X's CPU usage hovers at around 6% while not doing anything, and jumps to 100% the instant you move anything around.

It seems like it's reverting to software rendering for some reason. Running glxgears, I get 10000FPS using kwin, and only 30 (!) using Beryl.

I did manage to get a version of compiz (I think a quinnstorm version) working, and it had the same problems as Beryl.

Did you changed PKGBUILDs to not use bundled Mesa? It is not needed anymore (with new beta drivers).

iphitus

Forum Fellow

From: Melbourne, Australia

Registered: 2004-10-09

Posts: 4,927

Re: NVIDIA beta drivers

Arr, that driver be problematic me hearties.  Talk Like A Pirate day was fun...  I tried the packages from http://www.archlinux.de/~pierre/packages/ running kernel26 from current, and it locked at this line in Xorg.0.log:

(II) NVIDIA(0):     enabled.

Rolled back to 8xxx and it works fine.  Can't be bothered upgrading to kernel 2.6.18 the now, I'll try that later...

either rmmod eeprom before starting X, or build the driver with the aforementioned patch.

Mikos

Member

From: Prague, Czech Republic

Registered: 2005-05-03

Posts: 228

Website

Re: NVIDIA beta drivers

Thanks for the reply, I forget to install nvidia-utils :oops:.     But I have another question are you using beryl on AIGLX or XGL?

You don't need AIGLX nor Xgl with this new NVidia beta driver. NVidia drivers have supported accelerated indirect rendering for a long time (even before AIGLX was created), the only missing thing for OpenGL compositing window managers was glx_ext_texture_from_pixmap OpenGL extension. The new driver supports it, so you can run Compiz directly on it (without AIGLX or Xgl), simply turn on Composite extension in xorg.conf (and also add option AddARGBGLXVisuals to xorg.conf).

StormBlast

Member

From: Moscow, Russia

Registered: 2006-02-02

Posts: 33

Website

Re: NVIDIA beta drivers

New beta works fine except one thing - TV-Out via separate X screens. TwinView works fine but it's not my choice.

---

:: create while you can ::

iphitus

Forum Fellow

From: Melbourne, Australia

Registered: 2004-10-09

Posts: 4,927

Re: NVIDIA beta drivers

And after that.... still not working for me, X doesnt start, bails out:
http://iphitus.loudas.com/Xorg.log.txt

I managed to get it working by removing the orphaned files in /usr/lib/tls, libnvidia-tls.so.1.0.8178 and the symlink specifically. (I theorized this would work when I looked at the backtrace from mplayer which crashed because of this as well.)

thanks for that! works now!

cdhotfire

Member

From: Ocala, Florida

Registered: 2006-02-13

Posts: 151

Re: NVIDIA beta drivers

New beta works fine except one thing - TV-Out via separate X screens. TwinView works fine but it's not my choice.

Same problem here.

---

[img]http://www.barbarawood.com/guestbook/images/smilies/koolaid.gif[/img]
"Ooooh Yaaaa!"