Incompatible Restricted drivers offered for Legacy Nvidia Cards
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
jockey (Ubuntu) |
Fix Released
|
High
|
Martin Pitt | ||
Intrepid |
Fix Released
|
High
|
Martin Pitt |
Bug Description
I upgraded from hardy to intrepid today on my desktop machine. It has a nvidia Geforce 2 MX400
I can't remember the exact warning but I think before I did the upgrade it told me GL might not work.
The upgrade finished and I booted into the desktop. I was then told there were restricted drivers I could install. I had a look and it suggested two versions of the nvidia driver, version 71 and version 96. Next to 96 it said 'recommended'.
I picked this option and hit activate.
Rebooted and all was not well. X failed to load and I logged in using the low graphics mode. I then tried the 71 driver. Same story.
Next I looked at the Xorg log and found:
(II) Loading /usr/lib/
dlopen: /usr/lib/
(EE) Failed to load /usr/lib/
Using this I found the reason for the problem. The legacy driver isn't compatible with the Xorg that's in Intrepid.
Now I'm assuming when I did the upgrade it correctly moved me onto the nv driver but surely then recommending me to upgrade to the nvidia driver is a bug.
This is from lspci incase it's of any use:
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV11 [GeForce2 MX/MX 400] (rev b2)
Subsystem: Device 1642:3222
Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 16
Memory at d8000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
Memory at d0000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=128M]
[virtual] Expansion ROM at d9000000 [disabled] [size=64K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel modules: nvidiafb, rivafb
I recognise this incompatibility isn't ubuntu's fault but I think fixing this bug and perhaps a more stern warning about lack of GL in older card before an upgrade will save you from getting bogged down with graphics chip issues on launch day.
Severity high, since this breaks people's boxes, and we prominently advertise those drivers right after installation.