I think you hit on it that it might be a migration scripting issue.
When I was on intepid, I was using the restricted nvida driver (do not
remember which one), not -nv and 3D was working perfectly.  The
problem appears to have been that when I performed the dist-grade, it
might have reverted back to the -nv driver; not my intention at all.

I will try what you suggested when I get home, but why would it do
that instead of keeping the driver?  Is that by design as well?

Marc

On 3/24/09, Gaetan Nadon <email address hidden> wrote:
> Marc,
> To answer your question in bug 320671 (my apologies for having misspelled
> your name), the 9100M G motherboard GPU is not supported by the driver.
> http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_geforce_9100m_g_mgpu_us.html
> I am not an expert, but I'll share my experience. I have just installed a
> new nvidia card (gts 250) that was released this month. It's not officially
> supported by anyone, not even nvidia has a driver for it on Linux. However I
> am able to get that card working on both 8.04 and 8.10 using official Ubuntu
> documentation.
>
> All devices on the PCI bus have ids so the driver can make decisions. The
> ids are located in X.org nv_driver.c. Your GPU id is 0x10de0844 where 10de
> identifies nvidia and 0844 identifies the 9100M G chipset. Your 0844 id and
> my 0615 id both aren't there.  If you run lspci -n you should get something
> like this: 01:00.0 0300: 10de:0844. Run lspci -v -s 01:00.0 and you get more
> details, such as:
> 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 0844
> (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
> This means the card is not "recognized". The driver may ignore this can and
> the card may work as it is the case for me on 8.04. The driver may decide to
> quit if it knows that it is not capable of handling the card. This is what
> it seems to happen in your case (Ignoring unsupported device 0x10de0844).
>
> You have 3 choices when it comes to drivers:
> 1) The default open source "nv" driver (2D only) maintained by Ubuntu
> 2) The binary restricted driver (offered by the restricted driver manager -
> nvidia-glx) which comes from nVidia but is packaged (but not supported) by
> Ubuntu. Driver 177 in Intrepid does support your card.
> 3) The binary nVidia driver obtained directly from nVidia.com which is shell
> script installed. This is not supported by Ubuntu
>
> When booting a fresh install with a known GPU, the default nv driver is
> always used. There are no cases where the restricted driver would be
> used. If I understand your case correctly, the default "nv" driver just
> does not work, the X server does not start and you have no desktop.
> There may be a reason why the driver rejected your card, perhaps it
> cannot handle a notebook GPU. It may be a programming error. My card was
> erroneously recognized on Intrepid as another card.
>
> When you have a desktop running using the "nv" driver (which is not your
> case) follow instructions:
> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/Nvidia
>
> When you want to install the nvidia driver from nvidia.com (seems to be your
> only choice) follow instructions:
> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/NvidiaManual
> Driver 177 is recommended and it works for me, while the later driver 180
> does not work. You will need to reinitialize the nvidia driver for each
> kernel upgrade.
>
> Before you do any of this, try this simple action: backup and delete
> /etc/X11/xorg.conf. It's empty on a fresh install and is generated when
> booting. It may get the nv driver working. You said desktop was working
> on Intrepid with default nv driver, and you said Jaunty live CD works
> fine. That leaves only a migration problem in configuration scripts.
>
> --
> -nv reports it does not support GeForce 9100M G
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/333040
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>