Arch Linux

jeremyrainman

Member

Registered: 2007-06-15

Posts: 34

strange/general xorg problems (nvidia)

I'm posting this from work 20 miles away from the box I'm asking about, so I do not have my xorg.conf nor the error logfile.

I tried until 2 am last night to get X working, following the wiki's advice (which is just basic Linux setup stuff, no different than the old days), but I ran into some strange snags that I cannot easily find an explanation for...

1) The command 'pacman -S hwd' told me repeatedly for hours that hwd doesn't exist in the repository. I find this strange since everyone seems to use it. I never did get it. I am using the x86_64 iso of Arch, so I supposed that was what was making the difference (perhaps it's not ported?) but I wasn't sure and couldn't find any explicit explanation for this.

2) I loaded the nvidia drivers via pacman, even tried the generic nv driver, and each attempt at testing my xorg configuration crashed with the error that the device module "nv" or "nvidia" could not be found or could not be loaded. I found this absolutely bizarre since pacman was supposed to be doing just that, right?

Any general thoughts? When I get home in 3 hours I will have more specific information on this.

mitsoko

Banned

From: In the Coal Chamber

Registered: 2007-05-08

Posts: 143

Re: strange/general xorg problems (nvidia)

you need to install the correct nvidia package .. and the nv modules i s provided by xf86-video-nv

Snowman

Developer/Forum Fellow

From: Montreal, Canada

Registered: 2004-08-20

Posts: 5,212

Re: strange/general xorg problems (nvidia)

1. That's right.  hwd is not ported yet to Arch64. I don't know the specific reason but one of it's depends is also not ported so that could be the reason. I'll give it  a look.

For hardware detection, use hwdetect or lshwd

detox332

Member

From: University of Pittsburgh

Registered: 2007-06-12

Posts: 63

Re: strange/general xorg problems (nvidia)

2. what card do you have? did you install nvidia while running X? did you reboot after installing driver?

---

Arch64
KDE4 user

jeremyrainman

Member

Registered: 2007-06-15

Posts: 34

Re: strange/general xorg problems (nvidia)

you need to install the correct nvidia package .. and the nv modules i s provided by xf86-video-nv

Excellent, that did it for the nv drivers. I obviously made the bad assumption that pacman -Sy xorg would get those packages.

2. what card do you have? did you install nvidia while running X? did you reboot after installing driver?

GeForce 8600 GT (from Frys, I can still exchange it if there's a better chipset to use). I did not install nvidia while running X. I didn't reboot actually.

1. That's right.  hwd is not ported yet to Arch64. I don't know the specific reason but one of it's depends is also not ported so that could be the reason. I'll give it  a look.

For hardware detection, use hwdetect or lshwd

Sleep deprivation obviously got to me. I know I read about hwdetect somewhere and didn't bother to try it. bleh..

Snowman

Developer/Forum Fellow

From: Montreal, Canada

Registered: 2004-08-20

Posts: 5,212

Re: strange/general xorg problems (nvidia)

I gave a look. One of hwd depends, ddcxinfo-arch, doesn't build on Arch64. So better use hwdetect.