Debian Squeeze

[koffiejunkie]

I don't remember having to do anything fancy with the nVidia driver. I just ran the binary blob, let it do its thing. I had to specify the GCC version because the kernel was built with 4.3 and 4.4 was the default on the box, so:

CC=gcc-4.3 ./NVIDIA-blah

After that, start up X, run the nVidia control panel, and you're done.

for what it's worth, X can start up without an x11.conf file these days. You can blow it away, and it will autodetect its way into a default config, from where you can load up the nVidia control panel.

 

[koffiejunkie]

Big-Al, have you tried Photivo?

 

[BigAl-sa]

Big-Al, have you tried Photivo?

Looks interesting, but I must be really dof as I can't find a link to the linux source

 

[BigAl-sa]

for what it's worth, X can start up without an x11.conf file these days. You can blow it away, and it will autodetect its way into a default config, from where you can load up the nVidia control panel.

After doing the "Debian way" install I only had a console. If I fiddled with xorg.conf, I even lost the console (last time that happened to me was with one of the Ubuntu v8s). I was fortunate that I could get into the Debian partition from Ubuntu to change xorg.conf back to what it was, so that I could at least get the console back. That sgfxi script really saved my bacon.

 

[koffiejunkie]

Looks interesting, but I must be really dof as I can't find a link to the linux source

Looks like this bit:

hg clone https://photivo.googlecode.com/hg/ photivo
cd photivo
hg update default
qmake
make
sudo make install

I'm not sure where one is supposed to get 'hg' from though. I'd rather go for the debian packages. That way I can dpkg -P the lot if it's a mess

http://www.flickr.com/groups/photivo/discuss/72157626170578959/

 

[koffiejunkie]

Aah, "apt-get install mercurial" gets you hg.

 

[milomak]

Well, I broke my wheezy GUI yesterday by trying to install the nVidia drivers using the Debian nVidia howto. For anyone wanting to install the non-free nVidia drivers do not use this wiki. The nVidia drivers in the testing repo are broken at the moment. Rather use the sgfxi script to build and install the drivers direct from nVidia (or ATi if you have an ATi card). The script does pretty much what the envy script used to do in older Ubuntu versions.

I spent the better part of yesterday afternoon and evening trying to get the GUI back, until I found a rather obscure reference to sgfxi. I'll post more later as to why I wanted to install the non-free nVidia drivers when I've had a chance to check whether GLX is actually working properly.

before using the wiki, had you uninstalled the nvidia drivers from the previous process you used? when it comes to the nvidia driver i always advocate choosing the debian or nvidia way and sticking with your choice. chopping and changing can lead to problems if you do not check how you previously installed your drivers.

in essence you should only need to install nvidia-kernel-dkms and its dependencies for the nvidia drivers to work.

 

[BigAl-sa]

before using the wiki, had you uninstalled the nvidia drivers from the previous process you used? when it comes to the nvidia driver i always advocate choosing the debian or nvidia way and sticking with your choice. chopping and changing can lead to problems if you do not check how you previously installed your drivers.

in essence you should only need to install nvidia-kernel-dkms and its dependencies for the nvidia drivers to work.

Up until I tried this, I had the default nouveau drivers installed.

wrt the "debian way", I came across numerous posts that the nvidia drivers in the wheezy repo are broken at the moment (iirc, since the beginning of June).

Using the sgfxi script to install the drivers directly from nvidia fixed everything, so I assume it overwrote all the drivers installed through the "debian way".

 

[BigAl-sa]

Really chuffed with everything so far. Spent some time with Civ4 under wine and the proprietry nvidia drivers and it's not streets ahead of my old PC, it's like being on a different planet

 

[BigAl-sa]

Really chuffed with everything so far. Spent some time with Civ4 under wine and the proprietry nvidia drivers and it's not streets ahead of my old PC, it's like being on a different planet

Very sad, a Civ4 game only lasts for a while, then the game board goes black - everything else works

Looks like there's a bug in the way wine handles the dx drivers for this game:

fixme:d3d:resource_check_usage Unhandled usage flags 0x8

is the common message.

The sad thing is, all the saved games also have the black game board once the game hits this point.

 

[BigAl-sa]

Very sad, a Civ4 game only lasts for a while, then the game board goes black - everything else works

Looks like there's a bug in the way wine handles the dx drivers for this game:

is the common message.

The sad thing is, all the saved games also have the black game board once the game hits this point.

Looks like I've got it fixed by using winetricks to update directx and msxml

 

[BigAl-sa]

I'm unbelievably frustrated with squeeze. I've just built a new machine (Intel DH61BE mb), and couldn't get the onboard ethernet to work and I couldn't get the driver to compile on another squeeze machine. Earlier in this thread, I mentioned that an install from an Ubuntu 10.04 alternate CD gave me sufficient software to compile the driver (different mb, same ethernet device).

I put another ethernet card in to do the installation. Installed make, kernel headers, etc and tried to compile the drivers - I get the same error as I got on the other squeeze machine:

make[3]: *** No rule to make target `N'. Stop.
make[2]: *** [sub-make] Error 2

Anyone got any ideas here.

Another frustration is I can't get the monitor resolution to the right value. Looks like I'm going to have to find new drivers for the onboard screen card too.

Looks like squeeze is not meant to run with new hardware...

 

[koffiejunkie]

Anyone got any ideas here.

Maybe the driver just doesn't compile? Can you give me a link - I'll see if I have any luck.

Another frustration is I can't get the monitor resolution to the right value. Looks like I'm going to have to find new drivers for the onboard screen card too.

What's the onboard card?

Looks like squeeze is not meant to run with new hardware...

Well, Debian Stable was never meant to be cutting edge. It's meant to be stable. Remember, it's been in package freeze for nine months before it came out. That's why I prefer to run Testing (except shortly after Testing went stable, when major changes happen).

 

[BigAl-sa]

Maybe the driver just doesn't compile? Can you give me a link - I'll see if I have any luck.

Got it to compile. Stupid thing, the flash disk I was using to build the driver had a space in the label, and gnome uses the label as the disk entry in /media. The 'N' was part of the label. I worked it out through running make -k I can't tell you how many hours died on that one

What's the onboard card?

Intel H61 chipset, have no idea what the specific card is - can find no reference to it. I've decided to give up on it and go and buy something with an nVidia 210 chip.

Well, Debian Stable was never meant to be cutting edge. It's meant to be stable. Remember, it's been in package freeze for nine months before it came out. That's why I prefer to run Testing (except shortly after Testing went stable, when major changes happen).

I'm running testing on my desktop, and in the past week there's been 3 major upgrades (more than 1/2GB), which is what I don't want for people I'm trying to help.

Thanks for your comments, I *really* do appreciate it!

 

[koffiejunkie]

Got it to compile. Stupid thing, the flash disk I was using to build the driver had a space in the label, and gnome uses the label as the disk entry in /media. The 'N' was part of the label. I worked it out through running make -k I can't tell you how many hours died on that one

Yeah, I know the feeling. I fix Linux servers for a living...

I've never had issues with the Intel cards.[1] The thing I like about them is their drivers end up being in the kernel sooner or later. I don't know about nVidia - last time I had an nVidia NIC in a computer I still had to download a binary driver. At work we had servers with nForce chipsets, and we had no end of problems with machines freezing up because of issues with the nVidia NICs. The module is called 'forcedeth.ko' which we affectionately pronounced "force-death"

Thanks for your comments, I *really* do appreciate it!

You're welcome.

 

[BigAl-sa]

Got an interesting problem. Firefox 5 hangs intermittently while downloading pages. It hangs for up to two minutes then suddenly continues downloading. This only occurs on my new squeeze box, and only with FF 4 & 5. IceWeasel (FF 3.5.16 that comes with squeeze) works fine. I tried switching off "Use hardware acceleration when available" but this has no effect. I don't have this problem on my wheezy machine with similar hardware.

I have a feeling this is a rendering problem as it only occurred after I loaded the nVidia drivers.

 

[koffiejunkie]

Find out the pid number of the main firefox process (usually the one that uses the most memory) and run strace -p PID while it's hung. That should give you an idea of what it's doing. If that yields nothing, then you're probably right about rendering.