Arch Linux

virati

Member

Registered: 2008-04-14

Posts: 83

Nvidia driver->system messup

After i install nvidia (pacman -S nvidia) I'm unable to startx. I've tried using the nvidia xconfig tool and tried tinkering a little myself. When I restart after installing the nvidia drivers, my eth0 card is not detected/enabled on startup.

A possible reason I considered was that whenever I tried to install the nvidia package I would get a file conflict with /etc/initiorc/hook/keymap (initiorc may not be what it's called but it's distinctive) and /etc/initiorc/install/keymap. What i end up doing is just renaming those two files and allowing nvidia to create it's own keymap files. Not entirely sure why there's a conflict in the first place but is that the reason my xserver and ethernet card would be messing up? Thanks.

brebs

Member

Registered: 2007-04-03

Posts: 3,742

Re: Nvidia driver->system messup

Look for error messages in /var/log/Xorg.0.log

virati

Member

Registered: 2008-04-14

Posts: 83

Re: Nvidia driver->system messup

Nothing there. No Xorg.0.log

Happened again. I reinstalled Arch and went ahead and installed xorg, mesa and nvidia. Upon restart, eth0 couldn't be found, plenty of errors i couldn't catch (i'm assuming they're in some log file, I'm looking). Is there any known problem with any of those three that I installed? Thanks.

attila

Member

Registered: 2006-11-14

Posts: 293

Re: Nvidia driver->system messup

Take a look in the file /var/log/nvidia-installer.log if you have one.

Look what is in /sys/class/net because perhaps you have more than one eth* or modprobe your module and see again in this directory. Or look in /etc/modprobe.conf for a "alias eth0" entry and check if it is the right module.

Good luck.

kumico

Member

Registered: 2007-09-28

Posts: 224

Website

Re: Nvidia driver->system messup

afaics, there is no such file in the nvidia pkg.

[[rkb] ~]$ }} pacman -Q nvidia
nvidia 169.12-2
[[rkb] ~]$ }} pacman -Ql nvidia | grep keymap
[[rkb] ~]$ }} pacman -Qo /etc/initiorc/hook/keymap
error: failed to read file '/etc/initiorc/hook/keymap': No such file or directory

and to be honest, i've never even heard of such a file(/etc/initiorc) before ...
have you done a `pacman -Syu` yet?

virati

Member

Registered: 2008-04-14

Posts: 83

Re: Nvidia driver->system messup

Didn't find any log files. Anyone know where the startup log files are?

Went ahead and reinstalled Arch. This time, installed xorg, firefox, mesa, etc etc no problem. Restarts fine, no problem with eth0 whatsoever. No mention of it even.

Tried to install nvidia -> wrote down the real problem (tried to allude to it in my original post, apparently not well enough).

----------
File Conflict: klibc-kbd: /lib/initcpio/hooks/keymap
                  klibc-kbd: /lib/initcpio/install/keymap

Install aborted
----------

any ideas? Already tried pacman -Sf nvidia => just messes up my startup by not detecting eth0 and my keyboard stops working too. Thanks for the help.

brebs

Member

Registered: 2007-04-03

Posts: 3,742

Re: Nvidia driver->system messup

Has this PC ever worked with nvidia? Sounds like a nasty conflict, maybe BIOS-related.

virati

Member

Registered: 2008-04-14

Posts: 83

Re: Nvidia driver->system messup

I've got Windows running on here (for 4 years) no problems; Dual monitor works.
Have Slackware installed; nvidia and nview work just fine.
Have Sabayon installed; nvidia and nview worked immediately after install.

I'm finding it really odd that Arch is having this much trouble.

attila

Member

Registered: 2006-11-14

Posts: 293

Re: Nvidia driver->system messup

@virati Have you ever used a package or  the driver from nvidia.com under Slackware or Sabayon? If you have used NVIDIA-*.run in the past than use it under archlinux too before getting crazy

Llama

Banned

From: St.-Petersburg, Russia

Registered: 2008-03-03

Posts: 1,379

Re: Nvidia driver->system messup

FWIW.

For me it worked this way (Beginner's Guide):

# pacman -S xorg nvidia
# Xorg -configure
# X -config  /root/xorg.conf.new
# mv /root/xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf
# nvidia-xconfig --composite --add-argb-glx-visuals

Other alternatives, though they seem to be harmless, DID NOT work for me.

By the way, nvidia-xconfig, according to xorg.conf,  neither detected the monitor nor set any screen resolution, but that seems to be no trouble at all.

Last edited by Llama (2008-04-23 15:05:39)

virati

Member

Registered: 2008-04-14

Posts: 83

Re: Nvidia driver->system messup

@virati Have you ever used a package or  the driver from nvidia.com under Slackware or Sabayon? If you have used NVIDIA-*.run in the past than use it under archlinux too before getting crazy

Yeah, I use it in Slackware to install the Nvidia drivers. I'll go ahead and try that the next time; I completely forgot about that option after reading the new user's guide. Thanks for reminding me.

virati

Member

Registered: 2008-04-14

Posts: 83

Re: Nvidia driver->system messup

That seemed to have done it. Everything installed no problem. What does this mean later on down the line though, since I didn't install the package? Updates are going to have to be manual I'm guessing but will I be having any compatibility/conflict issues?

brebs

Member

Registered: 2007-04-03

Posts: 3,742

Re: Nvidia driver->system messup

You might have, due to the way xorg *detects* and uses the orphaned library files (i.e. outside of pacman's control), which can be in several places.

But the mystery is how your PC got so messed up

virati

Member

Registered: 2008-04-14

Posts: 83

Re: Nvidia driver->system messup

You might have, due to the way xorg *detects* and uses the orphaned library files (i.e. outside of pacman's control), which can be in several places.

But the mystery is how your PC got so messed up

Ehh, I'm not too sure. I'd much rather install nvidia drivers with pacman but so far it's working? I just have to do the dummy libgl package now and I'm reading up on ABS. I pretty much kept everything during install with the defaults and installed all the packages available. Maybe that was the problem?