I need help installing Nvidia driver in Fedora 11 64 bit please

[Kaitain]

Yay! An exorcism! I'll fetch the dead chicken if someone else brings the beer...

[Daniel ~]

Originally Posted by Gizmo

Ok, somewhere there should be an option to open particular ports on the router. I want you to configure the router to allow SSH connections to your computer.

BTW, which router is it?

Netgear RT 314 I'm looking now.

I don't see anything pertaining to SSH connections ... sending you an e-mail....

[Daniel ~]

Well well well, just so you know after restoring to a early backup the great Gizmo was able to accomplish our aims and install Nvidia drivers into the recalcitrant and obdurate Fedora 12, we blush at her failings!|!

Many thanks to everyone who lent a hand!!

[ccperf721p]

Maybe 13 will be a good number.. Thanks Gizmo, your efforts do not go unnoticed.

[Gizmo]

Just to bring everyone full circle on what was required to get Daniel up and going:

The first thing that was necessary was to change his /boot/grub/grub.conf to allow the nVidia drivers to take over from the nouveau drivers. His kernel line looked like this:

kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.31.6-166.fc12.x86_64 ro root=/dev/mapper/VolGroup-lv_root LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=us rhgb quiet

To that, we added 'nouveau.modeset=0 vga=0x31B rdblacklist=nouveau', so that his kernel line looked like this:

kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.31.6-166.fc12.x86_64 ro root=/dev/mapper/VolGroup-lv_root LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=us rhgb quiet nouveau.modeset=0 vga=0x31B rdblacklist=nouveau

At this point, the system could still be booted and come up with the graphical bootloader and load the X server. The nouveau.modeset entry turns off kernel modeseting, which basically leaves the video driver in it's default BIOS mode (80x24 character mode). The vga=0x31B then tells the video driver to initialize to 1280x1024x32-bit graphics mode. This entry isn't necessary to boot, but IS necessary to get Plymouth into the graphical mode. Finally, the rdblacklist entry tells the kernel to not use the nouveau driver. I'm not convinced this entry is actually necessary (my system works without out it) but when we finally got things working, I wasn't inclined to go back and play.

Having done that, the next step was to set up a couple of batch files to compile the drivers and remove the drivers, respectively:

/root/nv.sh:

#!/bin/bash
telinit 3
[ ! -d /root/nvidia-drivers ] && mkdir /root/nvidia-drivers
cd /root/nvidia-drivers
cp /home/Daniel/nvidia/NVIDIA-Linux-x86*pkg2.run .
chmod 500 NVIDIA-Linux-x86*pkg2.run
NVIDIA_DRIVERS=$(ls -alt NVIDIA-Linux-x86*-pkg2.run | head -n 1 | awk '{print $8}')
./$NVIDIA_DRIVERS --silent
reboot

/root/nv-remove.sh

#!/bin/bash
telinit 3
[ ! -d /root/nvidia-drivers ] && mkdir /root/nvidia-drivers
cd /root/nvidia-drivers
NVIDIA_DRIVERS=$(ls -alt NVIDIA-Linux-x86*-pkg2.run | head -n 1 | awk '{print $8}')
./$NVIDIA_DRIVERS --uninstall
reboot

both of those have to be chmod'd so that they are executable:

chmod u+x nv*.sh

Next, we bind those scripts to the second and third virtual terminals, respectively, for the root user. We do this by editing the /root/.bashrc file and adding the following lines at the very end:

[ `tty` = "/dev/tty2" ] && ./nv.sh
[ `tty` = "/dev/tty3" ] && ./nv-remove.sh

Now, when he presses CTRL-ALT-F2 and logs in as the root user, it automatically runs the nv.sh script. When he presses CTRL-ALT-F3 and logs in as the root user, it automatically runs the nv-remove.sh script.

In order for EITHER of those scripts to work, though, there have to be drivers. The drivers have to be downloaded from the nVidia site. The way the scripts are set up, the drivers are assumed to be in the /home/Daniel/nvidia directory, and are then copied into /root/nvidia-drivers before being compiled and installed.

That brings us to the next piece: installing the necessary kernel and compiler files to support compiling the drivers:

yum install kernel-devel kernel-headers kernel-firmware gcc

That installs the necessary kernel development files and the GNU C Compiler and support files.

Finally, the default X config on Fedora is to not use a config file (/etc/X11/xorg.conf). So, we have to get the nVidia drivers to make one, which can only be done by doing the first compile manually (the script automates everything, and bypasses generating the necessary X config file).

So, we:

cd /root/nvidia-drivers
cp /home/Daniel/nvidia/NVIDIA* .
chmod 500 NVIDIA*
./NVIDIA*

Accept the license, and then take all of the default selections, until it asks you if you would like to run the configuration tool and generate a config file. The default here is 'no', but you want to select 'yes'.

After that, reboot the system and you'll come up in the nVidia X11 drivers. HOWEVER, in order to use compiz, there is are two more steps required. In a terminal, you type:

compiz --replace&

After that, you can go to the System|Preferences menu, select 'Enable Desktop Effects' and choose 'Enable Compiz' and everything will work. If you don't compiz --replace first, you won't be able to enable the desktop effects.

Took me all of about 10 minutes to actually do the above, but we had to back Daniel down to a previous system backup. Somehow, yum had become convinced it had a compiler dependency on a 32-bit library that didn't exist and wasn't available for a 64-bit system. Using yum, I was not able to determine what package was on the system that was causing that conflict, so Daniel restored to a previous (pre-much-system-configuration-mucking-about) system state, and everything went off without a hitch.

[Daniel ~]

As you can see Chrisbard installing drivers in Fedora is a snap! ":O}

[Daniel ~]

Gizmo, when I'm faced with a Kernel update/upgrade Could you cut and paste you instructions as to What I need to do and in what order I should do it in order not to be blacked out at the boot screen, sorry but I'm still a bit unclear about this.... I have backed Fedora 12 up though! ":O}

[Gizmo]

When you download a new kernel, it would be best to make sure that you have the latest nVidia drivers already downloaded (not necessarily installed, just downloaded to your nvidia folder).

You'll have to reboot and at some point you'll see the screen go blank. You may get a flashing cursor in the upper left corner, and you may even get some rapidly flashing text in the upper left corner, but regardless the screen will be substantially blank.

When that happens, just hit CTRL-ALT-F2. That will switch you to you second virtual terminal, and you'll see the login prompt (it'll say something like 'localhost login:'). That's your terminal login screen. Just enter 'root' (without the quotes). It will ask you for the password; give it your root password.

At that point, the scripts I set up will kick off and automatically compile and install the drivers and reboot the machine, whereupon you will come back up with your graphical interface again.

If that doesn't work, you're screwed.

[Daniel ~]

Much less complicated than I feared! Many thanks Gizmo!

Oh....I should mentioned, screwed is my natural state! ":O}

[Daniel ~]

Just did my first Kernel update, re-booted got Cam shaped Boot screen, then blank screen, hit CTRL-ALT-F2, got longin screen, logged in as root and gave password Then Bang! Gizmo's agents when to work and then restarted me and here I am! Very well done Gizmo!

[Gizmo]

Glad to hear it Daniel. TBH, I was sweating it a little bit.

[chrisbard]

This thread rates higher than anyother, has been tremendous fun reading it, thank you guys !

PS And with happy ending !!!