X server will not start after enabling restricted nvidia drivers

[Laszlo Pandy]

I have an NVidia graphics card "NV18 [GeForce4 MX - nForce GPU]". When I first installed Hardy beta the resolution would not go any higher than 800x600, so I went to System > Administration > Hardware Drivers, and selected to enable the restricted nvidia drivers. It installs the nvidia-glx package and then tells me I need to restart the system. However once I restart the system, the X server no longer starts and I am dropped to the text console. And I thought the new X server was supposed to be "bulletproof".

After trying to start the X server manually, I found the error in the console output:
(==) Using config file: "/etc/X11/xorg.conf"
Parse error on line 4 of section Device in file /etc/X11/xorg.conf
 This section must have an Identifier line.
(EE) Problem parsing the config file
(EE) Error parsing the config file

Before I enabled the restricted drivers, there was no xorg.conf file. But now that it needed to request the restricted nvidia graphics driver, it created a new xorg.conf file. This file is what was causing the X server to crash. After I added:
    Identifier "Default Device"
to the Device section and:
    Identifier "Default Screen"
to the Screen section, the X server worked perfectly.

I have attached below the original xorg.conf file that was created by enabling the restricted nvidia drivers (named "xorg.conf.broken") and the file modified by me which works perfectly "xorg.conf.fixed"). With this modified file the nvidia drivers work and that has fixed both my resolution problems and allows compiz to work.

[Laszlo Pandy (laszlok)]

Here is a patch that fixes the issue for me. Now in the case that there is no Screen or Device section in the xorg.conf, instead of just creating a new section, it creates a new section and sets the identifier to "Default Screen" and "Default Device" respectively.

I have tested and verified that this fixes the bug for my Nvidia card. In the patch I have also fixed the code for the fglrx driver, however since I do not have an ati card, I cannot test this. I do believe it will work fine simply because the code is nearly identical for both and I simply copied over the code that worked for nvidia.

[Toni Helenius (toni-helenius)]

I upgraded to Kubuntu 8.04 from 7.10 on two machines with NVIDIA. I deleted the xorg.conf and rebooted, still worked fine. Except that I was of course back in NV-drivers. So I used the restricted manager to enable the proprietary NVIDIA driver. It as said created a xorg.cong described here. After reboot I got an error message in really low resolution that I needed to install something like "GTK-display-config", I clicked ok and this error message was repeated. After that it fell back in console :( I removed xorg.conf in the console and the X started again. How I'm supposed to get this working by NOT hacking xorg by hand and not using ages old xorg.confs from previous releases?

I'm not going to install GTK-display-config, maybe QT-display-config? :)

Anyway, thanks for the fist successful upgrade ever!!! Previous upgrades on Kubuntu have always crashed on every machine I operate... And the new Kubuntu seems great in other perspectives too!

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Applied upstream: http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~jockey-hackers/jockey/trunk/revision/282

Thanks, Lazlo!

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

This should be fixed in an SRU for hardy for .1.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

accepted in hardy-proposed, please test.

[Carybielenberg (cary-bielenberg)]

I can confirm this with Qadra 140 Nvidia in Intrepid, I have tried the proprietry drive as well & fails on boot.

Cary

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Carybielenberg, can you please try the jockey package in hardy-proposed?

[Toni Helenius (toni-helenius)]

Just dropped by to say the one in proposed works!! (Kubuntu Hardy running Jockey 0.3.3.0-ubuntu8)
I tried installing the driver -> worked, Adept batch run too, made xorg (attached)
I tried uninstalling the driver -> worked, Adept batch run too, deleted xorg altogether (which was my initial state)

Nice work! But Jockey should say that I need a reboot, now it just disappears, not very user friendly.

And System Settings - Display is all f*ed up. Says driver nv always, and the resolution it reports is plain wrong... I confirmed the driver in use with glxgears. NV got me 700FPS and NVIDIA 1000FPS on GeForce 7300 GO.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Toni, thank you! the xorg.conf looks fine. In GNOME, jockey does produce a reboot notification, but apparently this didn't get ported to adept? Maybe you can file a bug against adept-notifier about this? (Not showing reboot notifications)

System settings is probably some KDE control center issue (also unrelated, and should be filed separately).

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package jockey - 0.3.3-0ubuntu9

---------------
jockey (0.3.3-0ubuntu9) intrepid; urgency=low

  * Upload fixes from hardy-proposed to intrepid.

jockey (0.3.3-0ubuntu8) hardy-proposed; urgency=low

  * fglrx.py: Do not override already installed third-party fglrx driver with
    --check-composite. (LP: #221968)
  * debian/control: Updated Vcs-Bzr: to point to the hardy branch.
  * XorgDriverHandler, nvidia, fglrx: Set identifiers for newly created
    sections, they are invalid without one. Thanks to Laszlo Pandy!
    (LP: #218478)
  * nvidia.py: Fix "enabled" handling: check if the package is installed and
    module not blacklisted. (LP: #216650)
  * OSLib.open_app(): Wait until the subprocess returned, so that we can check
    the system state afterwards. (prerequisite for change below)
  * jockey/ui.py, --check-composite: Re-check the system after attempting to
    enable the driver, and only signal success (exit with 0) if the driver was
    actually enabled. Otherwise, cancelling installation would invalidly
    signal success to the caller. (LP: #208026)

 -- Martin Pitt <email address hidden> Mon, 05 May 2008 20:49:10 +0200

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Copied to hardy-updates.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

The xorg.conf at http://launchpadlibrarian.net/13531435/xorg.conf.broken and attached to this bug is problematic for the following reason:
No Identifier for section Device, position 0, can be found.

[VoaNerges (gotham48)]

Subscribing. I've got debug message:

2010-04-03 18:14:35,473 DEBUG: XorgDriverHandler device sections ({0: ['\tIdentifier\t"Default Device"\n', '\tDriver\t"nvidia"\n']})
2010-04-03 18:14:51,353 DEBUG: XorgDriverHandler device sections ({0: ['\tIdentifier\t"Default Device"\n', '\tOption\t"NoLogo"\t"True"\n', '\tDriver\t"nvidia"\n']})
2010-04-03 18:15:30,827 DEBUG: Shutting down

When installing nvidia drivers via jockey-gtk.