Nvidia Geforce 8600 not recognized in Gutsy and unable to use multimonitor

[Alessandro Polverini]

I've installed Gutsy RC. I have a Nvidia Geforce 8600 with two DVI flat panels Samsung SyncMaster 223BW with 1680x1050 resolution.

These are the problems I'm experiencing:

- the card is not automatically detected and is configured as Vesa 800x600 (single monitor)

- if I select by hand the nv driver I can use the correct resolution but I'm unable to specify a setting for the second monitor (i.e.: there is no option available at all)

- if I install proprietary drivers X does not start anymore and after a few failures it returns to lowres Vesa mode

This is the output from lspci -v:
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GeForce 8600 GT (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA])
        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 24
        Memory at fa000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
        Memory at d0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
        Memory at f8000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=32M]
        I/O ports at cc00 [size=128]
        Expansion ROM at fbbe0000 [disabled] [size=128K]
        Capabilities: [60] Power Management version 2
        Capabilities: [68] Message Signalled Interrupts: Mask- 64bit+ Queue=0/0 Enable-
        Capabilities: [78] Express Endpoint IRQ 0

and lspci -n:
02:00.0 0300: 10de:0402 (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA])

So I'm stuck with a single monitor :(

[Alessandro Polverini (polve)]

I'm sorry I was imprecise in a point: when I enable proprietary nvidia drivers I correctly get the GDM login screen but after I enter my credentials the screen blanks and after a couple of seconds I return to the login screen. So I'm not able to login anymore.

[OAM (onearmed)]

Hi, I am also having problems with an 8600GT and Gutsy. I'm not quite sure where to start so I'll give you the whole run down.

Upgrade from 7.04 --> 7.10 ( which had broken Nvidia binary driver installed ) could not get GDM or X to load unless i used the "nv" or "vesa" drivers.

Downloaded Ubuntu 7.10 Desktop ISO, burn to disk and attempted to boot from disk
           First boot would not give me video when it was trying to load Desktop
           Second boot using "safe video driver mode" seemed to work fine, booted LiveCD, deleted old install , and then did a complete fresh Desktop install.

After fresh install completed, i then rebooted and checked for updates , there were none.

At this stage i then ran the Restricted drivers manager and installed the Restricted Nvidia drivers. this appeared to work correctly. I then rebooted for the new drivers to take effect.

On this boot I had video up to the point when GDM starts to load, at which time my LCD panel went into standby mode with a flashing power LED and that is all. CTRL+ALT+F1 or CTRL+ALT+F11 did not seem to work

I pressed reset and then booted in "recovery mode" , where i then manually edited the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file and changed the driver from "nvidia" , back to the "nv" driver.

I rebooted once more and GDM + X started correctly.

at this stage i then ran the screens and graphics application and attempted to test the "nvidia" driver that was in the drivers list. it appeared to fail with this log file as the output

I will attach other log files in futher posts

[OAM (onearmed)]

lspci -vvv

[OAM (onearmed)]

cat /proc/driver/nvidia/version

got this when i was in recovery mode and the Nvidia driver was still being loaded

[OAM (onearmed)]

first xorg.log file

[OAM (onearmed)]

second xorg.log file

[OAM (onearmed)]

xorg.conf file after installing restricted drivers

[OAM (onearmed)]

If i have missed anything, made a simple mistake , any further information you need or testing that you need me to do , please let me know.

[OAM (onearmed)]

I have been doing some more testing and built a test box at work.

hardware was as follows

Asus P5VD2-VM
2gb DDR2 ram
8600GT

everything seemed to work fine.

but when i got home and tested using the same LiveCD , once again i got no Nvidia drivers.

after a bit more digging around, i think my issue might be caused by an incompatibility with my motherboard.

it is an early socket 939 motherboard that has *both*! AGP and a PCI-e video card socket on the board.

XP works fine with either kind of card, and the P5VD2-VM board ( that is PCI-e only ) appears to work fine with the PCI-e 8600GT and Ubuntu

i will post again as i find out more

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Hi alex-nibbles,

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering is this still an issue for you? Can you try with the latest development release of Ubuntu? (ISOs are available from cdimage.ubuntu.com)

If it remains an issue, could you also attach a new /var/log/Xorg.0.log?
Thanks in advance.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

We're closing this bug since it is has been some time with no response from the original reporter. However, if the issue still exists please feel free to reopen with the requested information. Also, if you could, please test against the latest development version of Ubuntu, since this confirms the bug is one we may be able to pass upstream for help.