How to install nvidia drivers for 2.6.23.15-137 kernel?

Gene Heskett gene.heskett at verizon.net
Tue May 13 00:23:17 UTC 2008


On Monday 12 May 2008, John Thompson wrote:
>On 2008-05-11, Chris G <cl at isbd.net> wrote:
>> I am running Fedora 8 with kernel 2.6.23.15-137, I want to stay with
>> this kernel version for vmware and various other regions.
>>
>> I'd like to use the proprietary Nvidia drivers and they are available
>> for this kernel from the livna repository:-
>>
>>     kmod-nvidia-2.6.23.15-137.fc8.x86_64     169.09-7.lvn8          livna
>>
>> but there isn't any matching xorg-x11-drv-nvidia.x86_64.
>>
>> Is there any way I can stay with my existing kernel and get the Nvidia
>> drivers installed?
>
>Download the package from nVidia:
>
>http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/169.12/NVIDIA-Linux-x86_6
>4-169.12-pkg2.run
>
>
>Drop to runlevel three, run (as root) the package:
>
>  #sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-169.12-pkg2.run
>
>And it will build and install the modules you need and then install the
>driver.
>
Which is exactly how I was doing it, with that same .run file, till the last 
blowup wasted the boot drive totally.

Also that applies ONLY to kernels < 2.6.25-rc1, and I'm sorry, but explaining 
the difference is getting a little tedious with its many repeats.  But here 
goes:

The kernel's video interface has changed at >=2.6.25-rc1, probably to poison 
nvidia, and nvidia has indicated several times that they do not feel its up 
to them to fix it.  I read that as a screw you attitude on both sides of the 
fence.

Since the middle of that argument is not something I want to get into, I went 
out and bought an ATI 2400HD, but found the radeonhd driver was still pretty 
slow, so I switched to the radeon driver which was no faster, so I shutdown 
and put an older ATI card in, a 9200SE-128 (rv280 chipset) which tripled the 
glxgears speed to the middle 750 fps range and runs tvtime and such just 
fine.  If and when I install f9, I'll try the other 2400HD card and the 
radeonhd driver again as I see there seems to be a steady stream of small 
patches going into radeonhd.

I'm not an action gamer, so this 9200SE is generally fast enough for me.  I 
might change my mind if in the next 6 months, something wipes the boot drives 
LSN0 clean, which happened to me twice while running the nvidia blob in the 
last 15 months, the second time completely destroying a 200GB WD drive that 
was about a month out of warranty.  If such as that doesn't happen while 
running an ATI card and open drivers, that's just another 20mg of cialis in 
the finger pointing at nvidia.

>Bring up runlevel 5 again and enjoy.
>
Yes, that would be nice, very nice, if it worked with newer kernels, but it 
doesn't, and the patch that has been suggested right here in this thread 
doesn't even begin to apply to NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-169.12-pkg2.run.\

Humm, where did you get NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-169.12-pkg2.run?  Whats visible on 
their download page right now is NVIDIA-Linux-x86-169.12.pkg1.run.

>--
>
>John (john at os2.dhs.org)



-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Niska: "Do you know the writings of Shan Yu?"

Mal: "You starting a book club."
				--Episode #10, "War Stories"




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