Trouble with nvidia driver or ENVY solved

[joebobwilson]

I am trying Mint KDE and have had this happen to me twice now. I get it installed and booted and then update everything and use envy to install nvidia drivers. Not sure is it happens on the next boot, but X will not start and says that it cannot find part of the nvidia driver. Also says that it detects a screen, but no usable configuration to operate it. Anybody have any ideas? I love this distro, but this is obviously a show stopper.

Thanks in advance!

[Boo]

with the update of mint it would have updated the kernel.
then you used envy to install the nvidia driver but this would have done it against the loaded kernel (old) and not the new one.
you have to reboot after installing a new/updated kernel.
then you can compile against it, ie install the nvidia driver using envy.
so if you are at a terminal window login just login and run envy in terminal mode:

> sudo envy -t

Boo

[Kadanoo]

Hello, I have the same problem.
I started Envy and it seemed as the NVidia file was corrupt (it stopped at about 60% downloaded). Also apt-get didn't work, so I downloaded it from the NVidia homepage.
I installed the driver (6200), it told me that I had to update the kernel of something and so I did, and enabled Compiz Fusion. Everything worked.
Then I rebooted and got the same errors as joebobwilson.
xorg.0.log says:

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(EE) NVIDIA(0): Failed to initialize the NVIDIA kernel module! Please ensure
(EE) NVIDIA(0):     that there is a supported NVIDIA GPU in this system, and
(EE) NVIDIA(0):     that the NVIDIA device files have been created properly. 
(EE) NVIDIA(0):     Please consult the NVIDIA README for details.
(EE) NVIDIA(0):  *** Aborting ***
(II) UnloadModule: "nvidia"
(II) UnloadModule: "wfb"
(II) UnloadModule: "fb"
(EE) Screen(s) found, but none have a usable configuration.

Fatal server error:
no screens found

So I booted Mint Celena with gnome and edited the xorg.conf file ("nvidia" driver back to "nv"). It worked again, but since then I was not able to activate the driver again.
So do I need to uninstall the NVidia driver and install it again with Envy? Will it work now?

[joebobwilson]

Boo,
That did the trick. Don't recall having this trouble with regular mint, but I may have not replicated the conditions. Will I have trouble in the future when the kernel upgrades?

[Boo]

whenever you upgrade the kernel you will have to recompile the nvidia module for the new kernel.
and if you choose an older kernel at boot you will also have the same problem since the module is kept in the same place for all kernels.

Boo

[Husse]

@ Kadano
I'm not sure what you have hit and Envy is normally straightforward
First remove Envy completely

Code: Select all

sudo envy --uninstall-all

Then open Synaptic (or use apt) to uninstall all packages where the name begins with nvidia (except possibly nvidia settings)
Search for nvidia in Synaptic
Packages may be broken - use the command in the error message in that case (with sudo if that's not mentioned)
You may have to delete linux-restricted-modules-2.6.22-14-generic, but please don't do that unless absolutely necessary as this will more or less break your system. This is not for a newbie
After this you will still have the "nv" driver
Go to Envy's home page and download the latest version
http://www.albertomilone.com/nvidia_scripts1.html
It's the legacy version you should use
Install (you download a .deb file so that's just to double click)
Then launch Envy from the menu, as you've had problems take your time.
All this is of course not necessary in the normal case