xorg won't start on nvida 6600 card due to nv driver not supporting 6600's

[Hidde Brugmans]

I just installed my new pc
AMD 64 3500+
ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe mainboard
XFX 6600GT PCI-E graphics card
For the record, I'm not trying to run SLI

Running hoary/xorg/i386 fully dist-upgraded as of today

Long story short: My old pc crashed while I connected a cd-burner to burn an iso
for my new pc

So I installed an old warty amd64 image.
X wouldn't come up, try a few times, then give a polite error message and quit
Formatted, installed warty i386
X wouldn't come up either, so I dist-upgraded to hoary

Attached is the xorg.conf which just gives an error
If I comment the option "use FBdev TRUE" then xorg will come up and present me
with a hard to kill psychedelic x window in gray/green/red

[Hidde Brugmans (hcbrugmans-deactivatedaccount)]

Created an attachment (id=1937)
xorg.conf

[Hidde Brugmans (hcbrugmans-deactivatedaccount)]

Created an attachment (id=1939)
Xorg.0.log

[Hidde Brugmans (hcbrugmans-deactivatedaccount)]

From the forum I gathered that 6600's are not supported by nv driver yet, and
followed their advice to change to nvidia drivers
This got me into X. :)

[Hidde Brugmans (hcbrugmans-deactivatedaccount)]

(In reply to comment #3)
> From the forum I gathered that 6600's are not supported by nv driver yet, and
> followed their advice to change to nvidia drivers
> This got me into X. :)

The possible solution:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=15311&highlight=nvidia+6600+xorg

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

Why is it that you're using i386 rather than amd64, when you have an amd64 system?

[Hidde Brugmans (hcbrugmans-deactivatedaccount)]

(In reply to comment #5)
> Why is it that you're using i386 rather than amd64, when you have an amd64 system?

I feel unsure about the stability of the AMD64 platform.
I'd like to use OO.o, macromedia and codecs closed-source drivers etc without
hasstle.
Linux is enough of a hurdle if all your study-mates and university are sending
you .doc and .ppt every other minute, I didn't feel the need to complicate
matters more.

The other reason is I couldn't find anything that could prove to me that AMD64
is actually faster then i386
Will install AMD64 on a secondary partition for devel work.

[Daniel Stone (daniels)]

Why are you specifying the amount of video RAM in the first place?

[Hidde Brugmans (hcbrugmans-deactivatedaccount)]

(In reply to comment #7)
> Why are you specifying the amount of video RAM in the first place?

I ran dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg and it asked me.

[Rich Jennings (richard-r-jennings)]

Just wanted to add an independent confirmation on this one. I have a similar
configuration (AGP rather than PCIe) and had the same problem. I have yet to
see any Linux distribution configure the NV43 6600 cards properly unless they
use vesa or fbdev driver. BTW, I also used i386 rather than amd64 on AMD64
platform for stability (beaten path) issues.

[Hidde Brugmans (hcbrugmans-deactivatedaccount)]

nv driver works as of colony3.
nvidia binary driver hardlocks.

[Daniel Stone (daniels)]

thanks for the feedback

[folkoy (pluron)]

During Ubuntu 7.04 Beta1 installation, Geforce 6600 been detected and assigned video driver "nv" in /etc/xorg.conf

After reboot xorg start and video is garbled. Switching to console (CTRL-ALT-F1) and doing "telinit 1". You can change (sudo vi /etc/xorg.conf ) the video driver from "nv" to "vesa". Invoking "telinit 2" and thus restarting xorg will be fine.

Processor used: Pentium 4
Videocard: BFG Geforce 6600 GT OC 128Meg (AGP video card)

seems the "nv" driver is broken.

Ubuntu should have assigned the "vesa" driver for that videocard.

[Hidde Brugmans (hcbrugmans-deactivatedaccount)]

Sorry to say that by now the nv _and_ the nvidia driver both work for me.
Also my card is on pci-e, not agp. Perhaps that is the difference.

[folkoy (pluron)]

Where should I report that the driver nv don't work for Geforce 6600 AGP?

[Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)]

folkoy: open a new bug _if_ the latest updates don't fix your issues.

[folkoy (pluron)]

Problem still there. Reported the bug and number is bug # 102683

P.S. I clicked by mistake on a button that makes bug 14762 being reported to "kubuntu-default-settings (Ubuntu)". Unfortunately, there is no undo button... Please ignore the "kubuntu-default-settings (Ubuntu)"...

[Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)]

Please test a recent Gutsy live-cd if it's fixed there.

[folkoy (pluron)]

unfortunately, the Gusty Tribes 5 live CD fails the same way. When it launches the GUI, the screen becomes garbled and the only thing to do is to reset. In the previous Ubuntu release, adding the line below in Xorg.conf, fixed the problem . Doing "man nv" in a shell shows what the parameter is used for.

line to add in xorg.conf in the "nv" driver section to make Geforce 6600 work properly;
 Option "CrtcNumber" "0"

Thank Timo for looking into this.

[Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)]

Try setting 'Option "HWCursor" "false"' in the Device section.

[Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)]

Closing as fixed, since it works for the original reporter.