How to Fix nVidia acceleration in Feisty (nVidia 8800 and legacy users)

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The restricted drivers manager has made things a mess for a lot of people with newer and older nVidia cards.The restricted modules are getting load priority over the nvidia-installed module.

If you want to fix this follow this procedure

sudo apt-get install build-essential

sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-dev

sudo vi /etc/default/linux-restricted-modules*

Change the DISABLED_MODULES="" to DISABLED_MODULES="nv"

Save the file and exit.Now you need to reboot your machine.

After reboot, download the proper driver package from the nVidia website and save it somewhere where you can easily access it.

Now you need to press Ctrl-Alt-F2 to open up a console and login

Use the following command to shutdown Xorg

sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop

Now run the following command from the location where you saved the nV file.

sudo sh NV*

Run through the installer and tell it to update your xorg.conf for you.

Reboot once again (just type reboot at the console) and you should have full nVidia acceleration.

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22 Responses

  1. Andrew says:

    Thank you very much for this fix, worked for me.

  2. Chad K. says:

    You are the F’in Mn! Thanks!

  3. Nicholas Orr says:

    OMG! I thought Gentoo was bit of a pain in the ass!
    Xubuntu is way more painful.

    Thankfully I stumbled here and now have the latest nVidia driver(100.14.03) installed and appears to be working.

    Thanks mate!

    8800GTS amd64

    lots of xorg.conf editing entailed, but once you get into the gui just sudo nvidia-settings and do the rest from there. Doing this also gives you a more complete config if your not to sure on the options you need. I now have Dual Screens again 🙂

  4. shEd says:

    Good tut for a newbie like me! Install went well without any problems just that the installer did not update my xorg.conf as it told me it would got me wondering.

  5. monkeymeetsrobot says:

    thank you thank you thank you. i’ve tried a dozen different things and this worked!

  6. jaims says:

    Hey dude, u saved my life!

    It works fine

    Thanx!

  7. Charles says:

    I tried this with 6600GT and it seemed to have messed up my system.

    I’m getting a “X Server is now disabled. Restart GDM when it is configured correctly” when I boot up.

    I was able to recover by loading the vesa driver via Recovery Mode >> “sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg”

    I tried loading the restricted driver back the way it was before I attemted the above procedure resulting in the same error during bootup. So, it appears I managed to jack things up pretty good. Is there anything I can do to revert my system back to how it was before I attempted the above procesure?

    Any help would be great. Thanks.

  8. Patrick says:

    I tried this a few days ago after the Nvidia-new drivers from the Ubuntu repositories killed Gnome and all I got was xterm. When I installed the nvidia drivers it worked fine, better than fine actually.

    But after a clean install I followed these instructions and now the decoration (eg title bar, x for close etc) are missing!

    Any fix for that?

  9. Victor says:

    After following your steps i got into X easily, but glx seems to be broken:

    extension “GLX” missing on display “:0.0”.

  10. Rubin says:

    ok everything works till i get to the part where i have to change to DISABLED_MODULES=”nv”

    my system seems to not recognize my keyboard anymore i only get beeps and a error…

    exactly HOW should i change this cause just typing it in the wont get me there since my keyboard won’t respond like it should..

    trying to get my 8800 GTX working ..

    thanx in advance

  11. Freyr Gunnar Ólafsson says:

    Where is says “vi” instead type “nano -w”. That should make it much more esier for you. Also you should do a google search for “vi howto”. Trust me, it is necessary to know vi/vim.
    Also if you are stuck in vi do the following:
    1. Press escape once
    2. type “:” without the quotemarks once.
    3. type “q!” qithout the quotemarks an press enter.

    Cheers and good luck

  12. mark says:

    nothing works, everything starts out with “you don’t have an nvidia graphics card”????????

    Then it said i was running xserver, which kills the gui if you shut it off no?
    this/envy/automatix do not work ??? (im a total newb)

    nvidia-installer log file ‘/var/log/nvidia-installer.log’
    creation time: Thu Jun 21 14:24:57 2007

    option status:
    license pre-accepted : false
    update : false
    force update : false
    expert : false
    uninstall : false
    driver info : false
    precompiled interfaces : true
    no ncurses color : false
    query latest version : false
    OpenGL header files : true
    no questions : false
    silent : false
    no recursion : false
    no backup : false
    kernel module only : false
    sanity : false
    add this kernel : false
    no runlevel check : false
    no network : false
    no ABI note : false
    no RPMs : false
    no kernel module : false
    force SELinux : default
    no X server check : false
    force tls : (not specified)
    X install prefix : (not specified)
    X library install path : (not specified)
    X module install path : (not specified)
    OpenGL install prefix : (not specified)
    OpenGL install libdir : (not specified)
    utility install prefix : (not specified)
    utility install libdir : (not specified)
    doc install prefix : (not specified)
    kernel name : (not specified)
    kernel include path : (not specified)
    kernel source path : (not specified)
    kernel output path : (not specified)
    kernel install path : (not specified)
    proc mount point : /proc
    ui : (not specified)
    tmpdir : /tmp
    ftp mirror : ftp://download.nvidia.com
    RPM file list : (not specified)

    Using: nvidia-installer ncurses user interface
    WARNING: You do not appear to have an NVIDIA GPU supported by the 100.14.09
    NVIDIA Linux graphics driver installed in this system. For further
    details, please see the appendix SUPPORTED NVIDIA GRAPHICS CHIPS in
    the README available on the Linux driver download page at
    http://www.nvidia.com.
    -> The file ‘/tmp/.X0-lock’ exists and appears to contain the process ID ‘4540’
    of a runnning X server.
    ERROR: You appear to be running an X server; please exit X before installing.
    For further details, please see the section INSTALLING THE NVIDIA DRIVER
    in the README available on the Linux driver download page at
    http://www.nvidia.com.
    ERROR: Installation has failed. Please see the file
    ‘/var/log/nvidia-installer.log’ for details. You may find suggestions
    on fixing installation problems in the README available on the Linux
    driver download page at http://www.nvidia.com.

  13. Aleksandar Kovik says:

    Tnx, this worked like a charm. NVIDIA GOForce 420 on 2.6.20-15-386.

  14. Paresh Paul says:

    Thanks a lot. I have a 8800GTS. Following your instruction, I was able to get the nvidia drivers working and now I’m enjoying the beauty of Beryl.

  15. sale says:

    im unable to change the line “nv” i cannot eddit it! what do i do now?

  16. Bing says:

    Thanks OP! It works like a charm.
    For anyone who has problems editing vi, check this out: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/vi-guide.xml

  17. Avo says:

    Hi,
    I followed the instructions from the beginning of this thread. Unfortunately I didn’t get expected result. After rebooting I got error message: Failed to initialize the NVIDIA kernel module! Now I cannot use NVIDIA driver. I’m using Ubuntu 8.10 on AMD64.
    Can somebody help, what goes wrong and how to fix it?

  18. Avo says:

    Thanks to NVIDIA support I resolved previous problem: Failed to initialize the NVIDIA kernel module!
    I removed 2 packages: linux-restricted-modules and linux-restricted-modules-common. After that error disappears and system booted up normally.

  19. Mathew Slack says:

    When I get to the line

    sudo vi /etc/default/linux-restricted-modules*

    there is no file by that name

    Im running Ubuntu 8.10 w. 2.6.27-11

  20. Mathew Slack says:

    Cant someone install the Nvidia driver, get it working and make an image? I have been trying to get this driver to work for a week and I have a CS degree!

  21. Mathew Slack says:

    So why doesnt someone fix the Nvidia driver issue and put out a link to a working Ubuntu 8.10 iso ?

  22. whois says:

    Will try this one, hopefully will fix my driver issue.

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