Arch Linux

kvanderslice

Member

Registered: 2007-07-25

Posts: 8

Nvidia woes - and a few questions

Greetings!

I've recently made the switch to Linux full time.  This isn't the first time I've used Linux, although I'm admittedly no "guru".  A few months back I dabbled with Gentoo, which I really liked the customizable style of.  I've been playing around with Archlinux, and I've fallen in love with it, simply because it offers the same customization options without the micromanaging required by Gentoo.  Props to the Arch team

Enough gushing, what I'm trying to accomplish is to configure a fully working Gnome environment using Compiz-fusion.  I've had no issues setting the operating system up using the guides in the Wiki, although when it comes to enabling graphics acceleration and such for Xorg, I seem to be running into a few issues.

My video card is a single eVGA Nvidia Geforce 8800 GTS, 640mb, and I've tried (unsuccessfully) with both Ubuntu and Arch to install and enable the driver.  I've tried both the proprietary Nvidia and open source drivers, both without any luck.  I've tried using the install guide in the Wiki for the official Nvidia driver (the one downloaded from Nvidia) and the open source one as well. 

I have been able to get into Gnome, although when I try to run XGL or another graphical program, the screen turns completely white.  When I try to access the Nvidia control panel applet (through the offical driver), I get a message something along the lines of "It doesn't appear that you are currently running the Nvidia driver..." (I'm at work so I don't have access to the actual message)

A few questions I have -

Would not adding the NVidia module to /etc/rc.conf cause this issue?  I'm almost 100% certain I followed the guide word for word, but anything is possible and I can't recall clearly if I did this or not.

If I plan on running XGL, the NVidia driver creates some GL files, causing XGL to not fully install when using pacman.

Its my understanding that XGL is required for Compiz-Fusion.  Am I correct in assuming this?

For anyone who has had experience installing Linux with the 8800 - which method worked best for you?  Am I better off using the official driver or the open source one?

Thanks in advance.  I know it's a rather large amount of text to read, any help or insight would be extremely helpful.

Last edited by kvanderslice (2007-07-27 16:56:05)

test1000

Member

Registered: 2005-04-03

Posts: 834

Re: Nvidia woes - and a few questions

you not supposed to use XGL with nvidia. You are supposed to use the regular xorg as support for all the nifty compiz-fusion stuff nvidia driver have built in. so uninstall xgl completely and install the normal x server. then search for the compiz-fusion repo here on bbs and use that.

and the official driver are the one your supposed to use...

Last edited by test1000 (2007-07-26 13:59:23)

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kvanderslice

Member

Registered: 2007-07-25

Posts: 8

Re: Nvidia woes - and a few questions

Thanks.  One last question to add - would anyone be willing to post an /etc/X11/xorg.conf file (preferably one that uses an Nvidia 8800 card) so I could compare it with my own?

brebs

Member

Registered: 2007-04-03

Posts: 3,742

Re: Nvidia woes - and a few questions

Here's mine, with tons of comments of varying usefulness. Works fine with an Nvidia 8800GTS and nvidia-drivers-100.14.11

kvanderslice

Member

Registered: 2007-07-25

Posts: 8

Re: Nvidia woes - and a few questions

Much obliged!

kvanderslice

Member

Registered: 2007-07-25

Posts: 8

Re: Nvidia woes - and a few questions

Erm, the link is dead at the moment and I didn't get a chance to download it at home (I was previously at work), would you mind reposting it brebs?

Thanks!

quaaack

Member

Registered: 2007-07-06

Posts: 17

Re: Nvidia woes - and a few questions

X -configure , then nvidia-xconfig usually gets you a pretty good xorg.conf

I personally use "nvidia-xconfig --composite --render-accel --allow-glx-with-composite --add-argb-glx-visuals" for a few optimizations

Last edited by quaaack (2007-07-26 20:18:27)

kvanderslice

Member

Registered: 2007-07-25

Posts: 8

Re: Nvidia woes - and a few questions

Alrighty, I'll try that.  Thanks a lot.  Anyone else can feel free to post some more recommendations, inquiring minds want to know!

Borosai

Member

From: Sandy Appendix, U.S.A.

Registered: 2006-06-15

Posts: 227

Re: Nvidia woes - and a few questions

I used the instructions in the following link to add any missing lines to my xorg.conf (http://compiz.org/NVidia). Just skip down to the part titled Modifying your xorg.conf file.

kvanderslice

Member

Registered: 2007-07-25

Posts: 8

Re: Nvidia woes - and a few questions

Thanks!  Up and running great and writing this from my new installation.   Although it's "less" user friendly, I've found Arch to be much easier to set up than even Ubuntu or Fedora, so I'm sticking with it.

A few more questions (instead of making a bunch of annoying newbie posts, I'll keep it in one ), any pacman binaries I've tried to install - Amarok, VLC, etc, that seem to use a "libgl" type depend comes back with this at the end of the pacman:

/sbin/ldconfig: libraries libGL.so.1.2 and libGL.so.100.14.11 in directory /usr/lib have same soname but different type.
/sbin/ldconfig: libraries libGL.so.1.2 and libGL.so.100.14.11 in directory /usr/lib have same soname but different type.

Is this something to worry about?  At first, the packages wouldn't install, saying that there were certain libGL files in /usr/lib/ that already had exsisted.  There were also ones in /usr/lib/xorg/modules/extras (going by memory, not sure if that's the correct path) that it would not overwrite either.  What I ended up doing was moving the GL files there (I assume that were created by Nvidia) into a backup folder within the same folder, and ran the install again.

Edit: I did just try to run the Nvidia Gnome app, and it was unable to query the GL server, it said.  I'm going to try reinstalling the driver again, feel free to stop me if I'm completely destroying my system.

Edit: That restored OpenGL support again, which is good, although will the package message keep persisting?

Last edited by kvanderslice (2007-07-27 02:21:33)

kvanderslice

Member

Registered: 2007-07-25

Posts: 8

Re: Nvidia woes - and a few questions

Slight bump for the working forum troll individuals - as well as some more questions!

Still wondering if that /sbin/ldconfig libGL.so.1.2 warning is anything to worry about, or if I should be okay anyway.  I also had my desktop up and running using Compiz-Fusion, it was slightly slow, although I attribute that to it being beta quality and I've seen multiple posts on the Compiz forums regarding my same setup.

Fonts in Gnome look slightly blurry to me, is there a simple way to make them look clear on a 1920x1200 resolution?

Thanks again, I know it must be annoying having to answer such questions all the time, but user based support is one of the reasons I like Linux so much!

brebs

Member

Registered: 2007-04-03

Posts: 3,742

Re: Nvidia woes - and a few questions

For fonts, see thread.