Hello, all. I need some help getting the official NVIDIA driver installed
for my GeForce 8600gt.

I have tried what feels like everything. Instructions of every sort
and kind. Command Line Only, GUI tools only, combos of both, tools with
the distro, the Nvidia way, the debain way, scripts from users from all
over, everything. Followed instructions to the letter from a fresh
install, toyed with instructions myself to see if any of a million
variations would work. Edited Xorg.conf myself sometimes, had it done
by the computer sometimes. Nothing helped.

Now I am at the point where there are two specific roadblocks to my next
two tactics. If anyone could help me overcome them it would be most
appreciated.

Here are some details about the system I am using:
(Memory measurements are binary.)

-Asus M2N-E Motherboard
-1 x 2 Gigabyte DDR2 667 RAM module
-1 x 320 Gigabyte SATA hard Drive with root (60 GB, reiserfs), home (259
GB, reiserfs) and swap (1 GB, linux swap) partitions.
-1 x 250 Gigabyte SATA hard Drive with a 60 GB partition and a 190 GB
partition. This drive has been untouched except for partitioning and will
be sued for Windows latter. (Hopefully not used much.)
-1 IDE DVD-ROM drive.
-AMD Athlon 64 x 2 dual core 64-bit CPU
-BFG Tech GeForce 8600gt GPU card

I installed Mepis 7.0 64-bit.


With Mepis you are likely to suggest I use the X-Windows Assistant
or Synaptic. Neither worked. The X-Windows assistant came close one time:
The machine would boot up, but the display was very messed up. 3 or 4
colours only, screen would redraw around a small square area that followed
the pointer, and the same part of the screen would sometimes have
different stuff on it then it did a moment before if you moved the pointer
back onto it.


One of my current tactics is to try Envy. My research shows that some
people did get the Debian version to work with Mepis 7.0. the roadblock is
that Envy will not install unless Python 2.5 is on the system. I installed
Python 2.5. Still did not work. I followed the instructions for using the
command line to chnage the default version. pycentral and so on. Different
ways of doing it were tried, but every time it came back that the default
was still 2.4. Even tried editing a python related text file that has all
that info. (Forget the name right now sorry.)

Any advice how to get this solved so I can give Envy a go would be
helpfull.


There was a set of instructions involving the console and the official
Nvidia installer. It sounds like it might work for me in the end, but the
process is interrupted. When I get to the part where the installer says it
is building the kernel module it hangs at 100%. I let it go for 22 minutes
once. Still hung. I tried letting it go for over 10 minutes then hitting
control-c. It droped to console, but no driver joy. Went through the
xorf.conf file and did what I thought might help (but I do not fully
understand the xorg.conf file and how it works).

The GCC compiler installed on my system is the same as the one used to
build the kernel. Kernel stuff like the headers, source code, etc, etc was
on the machine when I tried the Nvidia installer.

Any advice on how to get past that hurdle is also appreciated.


Maybe if I have to I will switch distros, but I would rather avoid that,
and I already tried and failed. :-) Studio 64 and Sabayon crapped out
during installation for no explicable reason. Sabayon live DVD (CD?) mode
booted though. And it did so with 3D Desktop effects enabled. All CDs/DVDs
I have used had MD5 sums checked and data verfified.


Thanks for any help you can provide.

On Wed, 30 Jan 2008 02:45:52 +0000, davros wrote:

> Hello, all. I need some help getting the official NVIDIA driver
> installed for my GeForce 8600gt.
>
> I have tried what feels like everything. Instructions of every sort

[snip]

> I installed Python 2.5. Still did not work.

I think we need more specific error messages to diagnose your troubles.

You have tried many things, and we don't know what state the machine is
in.

[snip]

> There was a set of instructions involving the console and the official
> Nvidia installer. It sounds like it might work for me in the end, but
> the process is interrupted. When I get to the part where the installer
> says it is building the kernel module it hangs at 100%.

(We reserve the word "interrupted" for cases where you press control-c
and the running process quits. "Hangs" is different. It either does some
(aparently) infinite processing - perhaps an infinite loop - or it waits
for something to happen, like two processes each waiting for the other to
write something on a pipe.)

Ahh, sounds like something I went through long time ago. I have an amd64
based laptop running debian. I see that Mepis is debian-based. In my case
the standard xorg packages did work, kind of, but once I managed to
install the ati driver (my laptop has ati radeon, not nvidia) the
graphics resolution seemed much sharper, and I was able to use much
smaller fonts - fitting way more info on the screen.

Unfortunately I don't remember exactly what I did, and it would not apply
to your case anyway, since you have nvidia.

I fear that there are not so many people who know exactly what you need
to do, so you will have to find out by diagnosing and debugging. There
are far more people who can help with that. However, for that you must
concentrate on one tactic at the time, and provide exact error messages
and everything else we need to understand what is happening.

In what form does the nvidia thing come? Is it a deb file? A shell script
that unpacks a contained source tree and a binary blob, and tries to run
a module build?

What kernel version do you have? (uname -a)

What kernel-related packages do you have installed?

In this way you give the helpers something to reason about.

[snip]

> The GCC compiler installed on my system is the same as the one used to
> build the kernel.

Good

> Kernel stuff like the headers, source code, etc, etc
> was on the machine when I tried the Nvidia installer.

Good, but I would like to have more specific data. So, did you install
kernel header and source packages, or did you untar a kernel source from
kernel.org?

Are you working in virtual consoles? Do you have X running, as I had?

When it hangs, can you do "ps -ef" in a different terminal? Can you
determine the processes that belong to the installation process? Can you
install "strace", and run "strace -p 1234" where 1234 is the process id
of the hanging process? That will tell something about what the process
is doing. If you get a niagara of output, just control-c. That detaches
the strace process from the other one, and leaves the other running as
before.

Regards

Thanks to those who posted replies to my request for help all those
months back. Sorry I did not continue the thread. Work makes months pass
by like minutes. Way too busy.

To the person who said if I did not follow the Nvidia instructions I did
not "try anything" I did try those, hence the comment in my original post
where I stated that I tried those.

Enrique: Your post is the only one that has not scrolled off of my
usenet server, so you are the only one I can thank directly.

I do know the difference between hanging and interruption, I just mixed
up the real world with the computer world. I meant the computer process
hanging interrupted my attempts to get the driver installed. Until I read
your post though it did not occur to me that I should be clearer drawing
a distinction between the two in general.

My post lacked many of the details you asked for because my first
thought was that someone would simply know a procedure for the problem of
Mepis 7.0 not working with series 8000 Nvidia graphics cards as it is a
general problem with the distro, not just my machine. That is just an
explanation, I of course realize now that I should have done exactly what
you said, posting more details for each thing I went through, messages,
etc.

Thanks.


After a short while I got desperate and felt rushed, so I installed
another distro. I installed Sabyon and it ran perfectly instantly. then I
experinced Portage and it really started to annoy the piss out of me.
Soon after I was convenience to install Ubuntu. I tried Ubuntu when it
was super new and _hated_ it. It took some convincing, but I did put it
on my machine. I am actually liking 8.04 quite a bit.

Still think Mepis is a little bit better, and I miss it. Might go back
when I get a different video card or if a future version work with the
series 8 cards.

Again, thanks to those who were willing to help.

Sorry to those who were reading that thread wanting to know if I found
an answer.

On Tue, 14 Oct 2008 11:01:52 +0000, John McKenzie wrote:

> Thanks to those who posted replies to my request for help all those
> months back. Sorry I did not continue the thread. Work makes months pass
> by like minutes. Way too busy.
>
> To the person who said if I did not follow the Nvidia instructions I
> did
> not "try anything" I did try those, hence the comment in my original
> post where I stated that I tried those.
>
> Enrique: Your post is the only one that has not scrolled off of my
> usenet server, so you are the only one I can thank directly.
>
> I do know the difference between hanging and interruption, I just mixed
> up the real world with the computer world. I meant the computer process
> hanging interrupted my attempts to get the driver installed. Until I
> read your post though it did not occur to me that I should be clearer
> drawing a distinction between the two in general.
>
> My post lacked many of the details you asked for because my first
> thought was that someone would simply know a procedure for the problem
> of Mepis 7.0 not working with series 8000 Nvidia graphics cards as it is
> a general problem with the distro, not just my machine. That is just an
> explanation, I of course realize now that I should have done exactly
> what you said, posting more details for each thing I went through,
> messages, etc.
>
> Thanks.
>
>
> After a short while I got desperate and felt rushed, so I installed
> another distro. I installed Sabyon and it ran perfectly instantly. then
> I experinced Portage and it really started to annoy the piss out of me.
> Soon after I was convenience to install Ubuntu. I tried Ubuntu when it
> was super new and _hated_ it. It took some convincing, but I did put it
> on my machine. I am actually liking 8.04 quite a bit.
>
> Still think Mepis is a little bit better, and I miss it. Might go back
> when I get a different video card or if a future version work with the
> series 8 cards.
>
> Again, thanks to those who were willing to help.
>
> Sorry to those who were reading that thread wanting to know if I found
> an answer.

* * *
John,

Seems that every distro is different, one install nice, but does not have
a friendly update system or not a large software repository... The next
one has a interface that is not as nice as the last one.

Then there is the Gentoo school that only installs a bare minimum, and
you add the software and dependencies you desire, with a very good
complier system...

I happen to enjoy the KDE 3.xx interface, and run Mepis 7 with a ATI
video card. I like Mepis because it is a rolling release, that is a
different philosophy than Ubunta that seems to releases an entirely new
distro every six months. What I like most is the stability I find with
Mepis, getting comfortable with the release, and having the continuing
software updates via the active mepisLovers.com community when you want
the update...

Sorry you were unable to get your video card installed, but just keeping
you informed, Mepis 8 beta 2 has been released and you might want to have
a look when time permits.

JR the postman

I very, very much liked Mepis when I ran it on my Nvidia 6800. News of
an impending version 8.0 release is most welcome. When it is final I will
have to try it out. One of the many great things about it is the Live CD
aspect making it easy to try.

On Wed, 15 Oct 2008 04:57:37 +0000, John McKenzie wrote:

> I very, very much liked Mepis when I ran it on my Nvidia 6800. News of
> an impending version 8.0 release is most welcome. When it is final I
> will have to try it out. One of the many great things about it is the
> Live CD aspect making it easy to try.

* * *
John,

In Mepis7, the live CD found and configured my on-board 6100 Nvidia
video, It also did that with the Mepis8 beta1. I tried the Mepis8 beta2
Live CD, and it was to the right 10-20 pixels just enough to hide the x
and scroll bars... I tried BlueWhite64 Live DVD a week ago and it did
the same right shift.

Tis annoying that right shift, but doing an install of beta2 on a new
500 gig $45 hard drive I open the Mepis tools, chose the Mepis x-window
assistant and clicked on the (New Nvidia) radio button and every thing
was made right in the blink of an eye, it configured the 2001 LCD
Envision monitor connected to the system also...

New boot menu item for the Mepis8 beta2 Live CD

Default <---- I have always used this in Mepis 6.5.02 & 7
For LCD monitors <--- A new addition and I had to use this one to get a
decent screen placement

Stable... every thing I see in the beta is pleasing.

KDE 4: I am not thrilled about the oversize font and boxes after box,
after box, after box menu I see in KDE 4... The call it a sliding menu,
but it is worse than windows Vista menu in my opinion... I understand
the KDE team needed to make a new menu, but someone went overboard on the
box idea... Tis far slower and difficult to navigate than the present
menu system in KDE3...

Then I could not get the list/spreadsheet view in Amarok, it appears the
newer version has gone for the screwed-up Ipod appearance... I want a
list, I do not want artwork, or to navigate icons. That might work for a
person with 4 albums, but if you have one or two songs from 50 albums it
is only a time wasted effort to try and navigate a new and different play
list every other day...

In my opinion the people that did Itunes, and this new icon based Amarok
were high on bad drugs to conceive the idea the average users wants Icons
for navigation... Right shift screen, Menu, and Amarok disappointment
were all I had time to toy with on KDE4 last weekend.

JR the postman