Arch Linux

alice

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2007-10-28

Posts: 2

Graphics problem after update ... pain happens

Hi all,
I thought some of you may be able to help me with a problem. Yesterday I ran pacman -Syu to update my system (which I do every few days), and this morning I switched on my machine and X refused to start.
I've actually convinced X to start now, but not without issues -which I'd like to fix-, so here's the story: After X failed to start I checked the xorg log file and found the error. It said something like "FATAL: nvidia module could not be loaded". I'm not sure what the exact error was but it was something like that.
Basically my nvidia drivers weren't starting up. That was rather strange ... seeing as I hadn't been messing around with anything. So I checked the installed modules and there was nearly no sign of any nvidia stuff at all! So in a panic, I ran pacman -S nvidia and after it downloaded pacman moaned at me that the files were already on my system. So somewhere pacman must've got confused.
Then I ran pacman -Sf nvidia (naughty I know) and it splurged it's way through and upgraded the files. So I ran startx ... Lo' and behold, X starts up. But now my OpenGL graphics are really jittery, even on simple graphics apps. There's a definite drop in framerate and overall frame stability. I checked nvidia-settings and there was nothing switched on that'd be too demanding for my system.
As I'm a games programming girl, a nice, stable graphics output is rather important to me!

My kernel is 2.6.23 and I'm not sure what other info might be useful. I always install things through pacman, and never manually, just because I'm scared of getting my system dirty and I'm not sure how to uninstall custom compiles.

I understand this is probably a bit of a weird problem, so I'm sorry if the info I've given only serves to confuse people.
Have I done something stupid? And for future reference, is what I did a good way of getting around the problem?

~ Alice
X

funkyou

Member

From: Berlin, DE

Registered: 2006-03-19

Posts: 848

Website

Re: Graphics problem after update ... pain happens

Do you run [testing]?

You can check dmesg if there is any suspicious output about the nvidia module. Also checking the Xorg logfile could be useful... If you dont find the culprit, just post the output/contents of these two here...

You can also try to rebuild the nvidia module manually through abs. At first nvidia-utils, then the kernel module, then reboot...

If none of these helps, check your hardware (BIOS settings, VGA fan)

---

want a modular and tweaked KDE for arch? try kdemod

alice

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2007-10-28

Posts: 2

Re: Graphics problem after update ... pain happens

Hmmm, the problem seems to have fixed itself with the lastest update... Ah well, thanks for your reply anyway funkyou.

~Alice