[mythtv-users] Santa Brought Daddy a new T.V.

[R. G. Newbury]

On 12/28/2010 05:34 AM, agraham wrote:
> On 12/28/2010 01:46 AM, P.J. Trudell wrote:
>> Well it was time for a new TV in the kids play room so I got a 42 in
>> Panasonic. My old front end/back end combo resides there only as a back
>> end, so it was time to recommission the front end on it. I knew that the
>> video card there was bad or going bad because when it was strained with
>> a DVD it ended up losing one of the colors and had a Blue tint until a
>> hard reboot.
>>
>> I did my research and a good 1 gb Nvidia card came up to the front and I
>> got the VGA ZOTAC|ZT-20203-10L GT220 1G R. I figured the hard part would
>> be getting the hdmi sound to work, but I am always up for a challenge.
>>
>> My problem is the video. I cant get it to work. I am running ubuntu
>> 10.10 and when there is not xorg.conf I get graphics, but the screen
>> size is bigger than the monitor. I lose about a inch on all sides so I
>> can not see any of the top applications menu in X. In myth I lose some
>> of the menus also. In this mode Nvidia drivers are not loaded, and I
>> cant seem to figure out how to adjust the screen size.
>>
>> a quick "nvidia-xconfig" gives me a good xorg.conf file and a roobot
>> should give me control and the nvidi driver I installed (ubuntu and via
>> the latest nvidia drivers). No luck. I end up with a text login prompt
>> after gdm fails on a reboot. Bellow is the xorg log showing the reason
>> for the failure:
>>
>> [ 29.878] (II) NVIDIA(0): Support for GLX with the Damage and Composite
>> X extensions is
>> [ 29.878] (II) NVIDIA(0): enabled.
>> [ 30.078] (EE) NVIDIA(0): Failed to initialize the NVIDIA graphics
>> device PCI:1:0:0.
>> [ 30.078] (EE) NVIDIA(0): Please check your system's kernel log for
>> additional error
>> [ 30.078] (EE) NVIDIA(0): messages and refer to Chapter 8: Common
>> Problems in the
>> [ 30.078] (EE) NVIDIA(0): README for additional information.
>> [ 30.078] (EE) NVIDIA(0): Failed to initialize the NVIDIA graphics
>> device!
>>
>>
>> Here is the kern.log
>>
>> Dec 26 21:50:23 myth-server kernel: [ 13.172377] nvidia: module license
>> 'NVIDIA' taints kernel.
>> Dec 26 21:50:23 myth-server kernel: [ 13.172382] Disabling lock
>> debugging due to kernel taint
>> Dec 26 21:50:23 myth-server kernel: [ 14.088530] nvidia 0000:01:00.0:
>> PCI INT A -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16
>> Dec 26 21:50:23 myth-server kernel: [ 14.088538] nvidia 0000:01:00.0:
>> setting latency timer to 64
>> Dec 26 21:50:23 myth-server kernel: [ 14.088543] vgaarb: device changed
>> decodes: PCI:0000:01:00.0,olddecodes=io+mem,decodes=none:owns=io+mem
>> Dec 26 21:50:23 myth-server kernel: [ 14.088668] NVRM: loading NVIDIA
>> UNIX x86 Kernel Module 260.19.06 Mon Sep 13 06:35:06 PDT 2010
>>
>>
>> I googled "gt 220 and Failed to initialize the NVIDIA graphics device"
>> and found a guy with a similar problem, but it was never solved.
>>
>> Well, I figure I gave 2 options. 1. Get a different new video card, or
>> 2. Try a fresh install. Any suggestions. I have tried, new power source,
>> Ubuntu Nvidia driver, Nvidia's driver 260.19.29.
>>
>> Thanks for the help
>> P.J.
>>
>>
>
> On Fedora 13+14 (x64) the Nvidia driver just crashes, if not
> immediately, within a few minutes, however, if I compile my own kernel,
> from kernel.org (and built the nvidia driver from source) it's perfect -
> applies only to x64.
>
> Does lspci show the card at 01:00.0, it may not be finding the card.

2 things: first: try updating to the latest version of the nvidia 
driver, either through your distro's repos, or by installing from the 
.bin file available at NVidia. It may be a problem with the 260.19.29 
version which has since been fixed.

second: I had an obscure error with one nvidia version. The installer 
did not provide a proper sym-link for libGL and startx failed. Check 
that /usr/lib and /usr/lib64 have entries like:

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root       10 2010-09-14 16:59 libGL.so -> libGL.so.1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root       15 2010-09-14 16:59 libGL.so.1 -> 
libGL.so.256.53
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   994424 2010-09-14 16:59 libGL.so.256.53

Not sure of the details now, but the failed version had the .so linked 
to .so.1 but no further. I think that this failure has been corrected in 
later versions, but it is worth checking. If you installed from a repo 
this should not occur.


(Note that /usrlib/ and /usr/lib64 have different versions of the 
libGL.so.256.56 file).

Geoff


              R. Geoffrey Newbury