Cannot activate Nvidia driver

[Endolith]

After upgrading to Intrepid, my video no longer worked.

1. Open Hardware Drivers window
2. It lists "NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (version 173) [Recommended]" and "NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (version 96)" with gray lights next to them, and an "Activate" button with a green light. Clicking on either driver shows "This driver is not activated" at the bottom with another gray light.
3. I select either of the drivers and click the Activate button.
4. Asks for password
5. An "Untitled window" dialog pops up that says "Downloading and installing driver", with an indeterminate-progress indicator.
6. After a long wait, the progress bar starts to fills up, and it acts as though it is installing, though it provides no feedback after it's done; it just disappears
7. The "Activate" button is still lit green, and the lights next to the drivers are still grey.

After a reboot it ends up in low-graphics mode because it's not configured correctly.

I ran this:

  sudo killall jockey-backend
  sudo /usr/share/jockey/jockey-backend --debug -l /tmp/jockey.log

and got the attached log. I tried installing both a few times during this log

Possibly the same as Bug #272474

[Joe Giampaoli (joegiampaoli)]

Have you tried installing NVIDIA with envy?

[Endolith (endolith)]

Does that do the same thing as Jockey?

[Joe Giampaoli (joegiampaoli)]

Not that I'm aware of. I use Hardy at the moment, and activating the drivers with the default ones found on the repos will be older than the ones downloaded by the ENVY application created by Alberto Milone. It even chooses from 3 different drivers automatically depending on your Nvidia card. To get it make sure you enable universe an multiverse in repos.

Then if you are in GNOME do:

sudo apt-get install envyng-gtk

or if in KDE:

sudo apt-get install envyng-qt

then run the application, should be in system tools or open a shell and type sudo envyng-gtk or envyng-qt (depending which of both you installed), when it opens up select Nvidia and make sure automatic hardware selection is activated, let it do it's thing, will take about 3 minutes reboot and let's hope you've got Nvidia drivers up and running. When you update your kernel you will have to do this again (every kernel upgrade), so don't remove it.

the non graphical way of running envy is sudo envyng -t

It's good to know if for example you upgrade your kernel in a future and system fails to boot in graphical mode.

Good Luck.

[Endolith (endolith)]

 ~> envyng
ERROR: you need to provide a parameter:
   "-t" for the textual interface
   "-g" for the GTK frontend (Not yet available)
   "-k" for the QT4 frontend
   "--uninstall-all" to completely remove what EnvyNG has done

"Not yet available"??

 ~> envyng -g
ERROR: Make sure that envyng-qt is installed

I installed the envyng-gtk package, not envyng-qt. That doesn't make any sense.

[Endolith (endolith)]

envy qt did work. Thanks.

xorg.conf is very simple:

----
Section "Screen"
 Identifier "Default Screen"
 DefaultDepth 24
EndSection

Section "Module"
 Load "glx"
 Disable "dri2"
EndSection

Section "Device"
 Identifier "Default Device"
 Driver "nvidia"
EndSection
-----

Ironically enough, Jockey now says the driver is activated, though it seems a bit confused and has expanded to several times its normal width...

Compiz is still unusable because of the black window bug, of course. :)

Now I have to figure out how to enable gsynaptics again so I can turn off touchpad tapping.

Pretty soon I'll be back to the performance I had before I "upgraded" three weeks ago!

[Joe Giampaoli (joegiampaoli)]

ok, still you could also do it in a shell winth envy -t

that would be the "textual mode"

or like a said if you upgrade your kernel and gdm fails you just login in text mode and run it.

good it worked out, since Hardy we are all using the new xorg.conf, it stays very simple.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Endolith,

the "screen widening" attack is bug 278071 and fixed in Jaunty (not yet in intrepid).

Unfortunately the log doesn't tell me any error during jockey's package installation. On a clean system (or with envy/nvidia driver removed), please do the following steps:

 * Copy /etc/X11/xorg.conf to /tmp/xorg.conf.old
 * activate the nvidia 96 driver with jockey, then note what jockey displays (enabled/disabled status)
 * open a Terminal and give me the output of "dpkg -s nvidia-glx-96"
 * copy&paste the output of "sudo dkms status"
 * Attach /tmp/xorg.conf.old and /etc/X11/xorg.conf here.

Thanks!

[Endolith (endolith)]

"activate the nvidia 96 driver with jockey, then note what jockey displays (enabled/disabled status)"

When I did this before, the light next to the driver never lit up, as described.

Also, the driver installed by envy is 173. Should I use that for testing instead?

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

If 173 works for your system, that would indeed be better, since it's a newer driver. Is 173 shown by jockey as well?

However, if jockey displays version 96, it should actually work. Thus the debugging output from comment 8 would be appreciated.

[Endolith (endolith)]

Now when I run Jockey, it works. Instead of just showing a gray light no matter what, it now shows a restart icon and the button changes to "Deactivate". After restarting, it shows a green light and the driver is activated.

I don't know if an update made it work or if envy changed something that made it work. I removed envy's changes using "envyng --uninstall-all" before trying to use Jockey.

> If 173 works for your system, that would indeed be better, since it's a
> newer driver. Is 173 shown by jockey as well?

Yes, both were shown in Jockey, with "Recommended" next to 173. Previously, neither would activate.

[Dimitrios Symeonidis (azimout)]

closing as fix released, as per your last comment