Ubuntu 8.10 help

[USS KG5]

Hello All,

I have got Ubuntu 8.10 running on my PC and have got the drivers for my X-Fi card, libraries for DVD playback and so on all working.

However - I can't seem to install the nvidia drivers, when I click "activate" in the little hardware popup after a reboot the system just crashes to the command prompt. When i look at xorg.conf all it says is "default device", "default monitor" etc...

Is there a step I am missing (like running a config script)? I would like the proper drivers but there seems no way to recover the system after this goes wrong - so I'm hesitant to try again and kill my nice linux system!

What happened to the old days when you just changed "nvidia" to "nv" in xorg.conf to go back after installing bad drivers?

Any help you can all give would be greatly appreciated...

 

[USS KG5]

I have two GeForce 7800GT cards in my PC - I've done some looking and apparently this particular card has problems, thoughts anyone?

I thought we had a few Ubuntu/Linux experts here??

 

[CorporalClegg]

You know Ubuntu is one of the few distros I'd actually recommend just installing the binary right from the nvidia website. That auto installer thing they have is really Micky Mouse.

Have you tried

sudo nvidia-xconfig

 

[USS KG5]

Hi, Thanks for the reply.

I tried that when I broke my install yes, it said "No Displays Detected".

Since then I have chickened out as there seems no way to fix my install when it goes wrong and I've invested a lot of time into it.

 

[CorporalClegg]

Well, you need uninstall the driver. For starters, try using whatever method you installed it with (package, installer). After that, you have to make sure you've deleted all of the files.

The problem with nvidia is those files are all over the place. So you need to find them.

so first run

$ updatedb
$ slocate  libGL.* libglx.* libGLcore.*

and remove anything that comes up. (as root)

Then run:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

And I think that should get you back to a clean xorg.conf. I don't know Ubuntu very well (as I really don't like it) and I always back up the file before I make any changes to it.

If you want to try it again I would just try installing the binary from nvidia as I suggested before.

 

[USS KG5]

Well, you need uninstall the driver. For starters, try using whatever method you installed it with (package, installer). After that, you have to make sure you've deleted all of the files.

The problem with nvidia is those files are all over the place. So you need to find them.

so first run

$ updatedb
$ slocate  libGL.* libglx.* libGLcore.*

and remove anything that comes up. (as root)

Then run:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

And I think that should get you back to a clean xorg.conf. I don't know Ubuntu very well (as I really don't like it) and I always back up the file before I make any changes to it.

If you want to try it again I would just try installing the binary from nvidia as I suggested before.

Thanks - I am going to give the nVidia binaries a try now, wish me luck!

 

[CorporalClegg]

You may have to install some libraries and probably the build-essentials package first in order to build the kernel for the driver.

But that kind of thing is distro dependent so you may have to ask on an Ubuntu forum.

 

[USS KG5]

God DAMMIT!!!

Just intalled the nVidia binary from the command line, ran the little config tool to its end, it built a new kernel interface etc and said all successful, and the same damn problem on reboot!!

I will have to try your recovery tips now but if they do not work I think I might try a different distro next, Ubuntu puts a pretty face on things but seems very quirky at times.

 

[CorporalClegg]

Yup. You pretty much summed up Ubunutu in a nutshell.

They dress it up as "user friendly" yet it can even do the simple things. To be perfectly honest, I hate it with a passion.

 

[USS KG5]

Well I can understand why - I think linux eventually will move towards two major groups, enthusiasts distros and those your average Jo gets on their cheap desktop or Netbook to avoid the hell of "Windows 7 Starter Edition" (MS just go back to Home and Professional, or just one goddamn version).

Ubuntu is more for the average user who browses the Web, does a bit of mail etc - it IS good at that, but frustrates a lot of linux pros.

That said I have fixed mine by running the nVidia install script with a "--uninstall" switch, so I will have to settle for no Tuxracer for now!