nvidia driver works w/ new kernel and inittab 3, but not 5

[Clint Harshaw]

> Unfortunately you did less to find out the cause of the problem. It is
> no effort to blame you! Seeing the situation you describe you will have
> to ask yourself: what might be the reason that directly after the driver
> compilation it is loaded running kernel .2179 while after a reboot the
> system does not find the nvidia.o module. That is the point and not
> whether rebooting to runlevel 3 or 5.
> 
> So lets gather some data. I suggest you do the following tasks to
> discover what's going wrong.
> 
> 1) Compile the NVidia driver. It will be loaded then. Find out where it
> is by running "find /lib/modules -name nvidia.o". It should be
> "/lib/modules/2.4.22-1.2179.nptl/kernel/drivers/video/nvidia.o". If the
> module is not in the kernel module's directory you see already the
> reason for the failure.
> Then check all nvidia.o modules the find run printed out for their
> dates. One of them must have the current date. Will it be compiled for
> the old .2174 kernel? Then follow the advise to uninstall the old kernel
> source.
> Check also that /etc/modules.conf contains a line "alias char-major-195
> nvidia".
> 
> 
>>and
>>
>>- nvidia driver and module work fine when booting into 2174.
> 
> 
>>Clint
> 
> 
> Alexander
> 
> 
> 


Success!

When I ran "find /lib/modules -name nvidia.o" I noted these pieces of 
relevant info:

/lib/modules/2.4.22-1.2179.nptl/kernel/drivers/video/nvidia.o
/lib/modules/2.4.18-18.8.0/kernel/drivers/video/nvidia.o
/lib/modules/2.4.18-19.8.0/kernel/drivers/video/nvidia.o
/lib/modules/2.4.22-1.2174.nptl/kernel/drivers/video/nvidia/nvidia.o

Since I knew things were working in .2174, I figured it was worth a shot 
to simply copy the .2179 module to a similarly named directory for 
.2179. So I went to

/lib/modules/2.4.22-1.2179.nptl/kernel/drivers/video/

and ran "mkdir nvidia", "cd ./nvidia", followed by "cp nvidia.o ./nvidia"

and rebooted. It works! The message indicates "OK" when the nvidia 
module is loaded, and the nvidia splash screen comes right up before 
getting the login screen. glxgears, tux racer, and all the other GL 
goodies are working well.

Before I celebrate too much, I must ask: Is there anything I've 
overlooked? Any further considerations before getting back to work? Will 
this workaround cause any problems?

Thank you, thank you, thank you to all the people who generously offered 
their time both on the list and off-list! I sincerely appreciate your 
willingness to help this new guy. I owe you each a "refreshing beverage"!

Clint
-- 
Clint Harshaw  <clint at penguinsolutions.org>