ABI change in xorg 1.9 breaks legacy nvidia-96 drivers in Maverick

Any update on nvidia-96 and maverick (10.10)? The 10.10 release date is drawing near & still no working nvidia-96 in maverick. Quite a few legacy cards will be affected by this issue:

====
http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux-display-ia32-96.43.18-driver.html
GeForce 4 MX series:
MX 440, MX 440 (AGP 8X), MX 420 (AGP 8X), MX 420, MX 440-SE, MX
Integrated GPU, MX 460, MX 440SE (AGP 8X), MX 4000

Quadro NVS series:
NVS 285, NVS 55/280 PCI, NVS 210, NVS 420, NVS 450, NVS 50, NVS 295, NVS
280, NVS 440, NVS 290

Quadro 4 Go series:
500 GoGL, 550 XGL, 700 GoGL

Quadro 2 Go series:
MXR/EX/Go

GeForce 4 Ti series:
Ti 4800, Ti 4800 SE, Ti 4400, Ti 4200 (AGP 8X), Ti 4200, Ti 4600

GeForce 2 series:
Ti 200, GeForce3, Ti 500

Quadro 2 MXR series:
Quadro2 MXR/EX/Go
====

Including my machines with nVidia NV25GL [Quadro4 900 XGL] cards in them.

I confirm too. Last working version with the nvidia-96 is: xserver-xorg-core 2:1.8.1.902-0ubuntu2.
The solution is downgrade to that package but it breaks some dependencies...

Breaking 3D acceleration needs a big fat warning for anyone upgrading...

As a note: 260.xx beta drivers on Nvidia site incorrectly stated as being compatible with GeForce 5 series, at least with AGP cards....

Wish there was an easy menu so I could choose my driver... e.g. NV, Nvidia, Nouveau, Vesa etc

Going to try and downgrade xorg trick..

>[ 562.979] (II) LoadModule: "nvidia"
>[ 562.980] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/extra-modules/nvidia_drv.so
>[ 563.018] dlopen: /usr/lib/xorg/extra-modules/nvidia_drv.so: undefined symbol: miEmptyData
>[ 563.018] (EE) Failed to load /usr/lib/xorg/extra-modules/nvidia_drv.so
>[ 563.018] (II) UnloadModule: "nvidia"
>[ 563.018] (EE) Failed to load module "nvidia" (loader failed, 7)
>[ 563.018] (EE) No drivers available.

THe Same Problem would be IF I Upgrade to Maverick... I Hope it doesnt take so long to fix it, because there alot people with such Cards... Just Like me and my Geforce 4 Ti 4200 AGP :D

If I only knew about that problem before upgrade I have just made few hours ago :( (10.04.1->10.10) Now I'm stuck with nv driver, as nouveau is so slow on my machine, that even moving mouse pointer over menus makes lag. That's really bad, I hope nvidia-96 binary drivers will work with Ubuntu 10.10 as soon as possible.

Here is what Xorg.0.log says:

[ 241.130] (II) LoadModule: "nvidia"
[ 241.130] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/extra-modules/nvidia_drv.so
[ 241.131] dlopen: /usr/lib/xorg/extra-modules/nvidia_drv.so: undefined symbol: miEmptyData
[ 241.131] (EE) Failed to load /usr/lib/xorg/extra-modules/nvidia_drv.so
[ 241.131] (II) UnloadModule: "nvidia"
[ 241.131] (EE) Failed to load module "nvidia" (loader failed, 7)
[ 241.131] (EE) No drivers available.
[ 241.131]
Fatal server error:
[ 241.131] no screens found

An NVIDIA staffer said that the nvidia-173 drivers are being updated for X.org 1.9 here:

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=2325872&postcount=2

On 09/30/2010 01:35 PM, Darik Horn wrote:
> An NVIDIA staffer said that the nvidia-173 drivers are being updated for
> X.org 1.9 here:
>
> http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=2325872&postcount=2
>

Unfortunately it's very quiet on the 96 front:
<http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=154895&highlight=xorg+1.9>

And nvidia-173 drivers are updated..

    * Added support for X.Org xserver 1.9.
    * Updated nvidia-installer to detect the nouveau kernel module and fail with an appropriate error message.

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=2326225

Fortunately not "very" quiet:)
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=155622

I now have 173.14.28 running in Maverick, Xserver 1.9 with Geforce FX5700 Ultra.

As noted in a post from Mytonn, the drivers are from http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=2326225 .

Kudos to Aaron at Nvidia for providing excellent ongoing Linux support.

I don't see the new 173.14.28 driver in the Ubuntu x-swat queue, so I updated the nvidia-173 package and put it here:

  https://launchpad.net/~dajhorn/+archive/x-updates/

This updated Nvidia driver is compatible with my 32-bit Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick RC computer where I have older hardware. The 64-bit build installs cleanly, but I haven't tested it.

An updated nvidia-96 driver isn't yet availabe on the upstream FTP server.

As reported in:

Ubuntu “nvidia-graphics-drivers-173” package Bugs Bug #626918
"Nvidia 173 driver does not work with xserver 1.9 "

nvidia-graphics-drivers-173 (173.14.28-0ubuntu1) maverick

has now been released. I can confirm that it is now included in the most recent set of updates for maverick.

A regular aptitude upgrade installed the updated nvida-173-modaliases and has made my maverick machine useless. I get a black screen after starting X. No gdm/login appears. /var/log/Xorg.0.log indicates no problems at all; it reaches "enabled".

Maverick/GeForce GT 330M/Sony Vaio f-series

auxbuss > You should use package nvidia-current, not NVidia-173. I'm not even sure your card is supported by driver nvidia-173...

To be honest, looking at the nvidia package installed, I'm not clear what I should or should not have. I've not had problems here before, so I've never looked. For background, this machine was upgraded from Lucid. I have the following installed:

nvidia-173-modaliases
nvidia-96-modaliases
nvidia-common
nvidia-current
nvidia-current-modaliases
nvidia-settings

It looks like 173, 96, and common can go, so I'll try that and leave this bug alone. Apologies.

got an older model with geforce 4-mx which is affected.
however, my quadcore with the nvidia 9600GTX isn't affected, it works fine on that machine.

I experience non-working drivers with a "geforce 4200 ti"

I have a newer Nvidia GTS250, Ubuntu 10.10 final boot CD just gives me screen with big green squares after 20-30 seconds of choosing an option from the grub. Have been facing this issue since the beta and sadly the issue exists even in the final version.

Here's a video of what I see. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKiks45jMEU

Hardeep, you should file a new bug report for that. It's not related to this bug.

@Hardeep: Please file a bug against xserver-xorg-video-nouveau as ubuntu uses nouveau until you install the proprietary nvidia driver yourself. (Meaning the live disk uses nouveau)

Confirmed still not working with my
HP GFX PCA GeForce4 MX440-8X 64MB DDR w/comp TV (part no. 5187-3706)

even with nvidia-current drivers installed

Xebozone, your card will use nvidia-96, which hasn't been fixed by the Nvidia guys yet (unless something has changed I'm not aware of). Until they issue a fix this bug can't be fixed. We are waiting on them to supply the fix.

I recently upgraded from 10.4 to 10.10 x64 and found out the hard way that 10.10 has issues with nVidia GeForce8400 due to newer version of Xorg 1.9. I had the nVidia driver 'current' working with my nVidia GeForce 8400 when I performed the upgrade from 10.4, and after rebooting found that the system booted to a purple background image with no login prompt. I tried booting into recovery mode by holding shift while booting and disabling the nVidia driver and rebooting.

Now with the driver removed the system boots to purple background screen with the ubuntu status indicators (dots) and makes the drum sound normally followed by the login prompt, but I'm unable to see it and none of the function keys work to drop to a console. However if I perform the reboot again with the drivers removed I'm able to hold down the shift key while booting and enter recovery mode again and then select safe graphics mode to access the system, and this seems to work ok, but I cannot get the system to boot without performing these manual steps.

Mutineer612, this bug has nothing to do with your problem, it is for older cards using the nvidia-96 drivers. If you think you've found a bug and can't find it reported in Launchpad then please create a new bug report.

Confirmed. Affect me too :( after upgrade from 10.04.
GF5200 AGP, Ubu 10.10, Xorg 1.9

Same here with nvidia gt240. When trying to install I get pixel-ed screen in 10.10 and cut-off window screen in 10.04 LTS.

This bug affects my Geforce MX440. But I fear that this bug won't be fix one day because the nvidia's guys don't care about our old graphics cards :(

Same problem for me with my GeForce 8500 GT and the nvidia-173(current) after a fresh install of 10.10

For what it's worth - I have a GeForce 7300 and am running the Current driver (UbuntoStudio). I can boot into the generic kernel fine, but trying to boot into either 2.6.35-20-Low Latency, or 2.6.33-29-Realtime gives me only a command prompt. Unfortunately, I must have one of these kernels working for music production...

Yeah, this is a huge problem for people with legacy cards (which is a great deal of people running Linux). I had huge problems even setting the correct resolution (which wasn't detected correctly).

Running a Geforce MX 440 (AGP 8X) here.

Affects my PCI Express 2 Quadro FX 580. I didn't even think this was all that old of a card (it's still available).

Too bad, affect my Geforce2 MX400 too.

As a temporary solution, I edit xorg.conf, and change:

From

 Driver "nv"

To

 Driver "vesa"

At least, we can run xWindows ^_^

If you're not sure if your card uses a legacy Nvidia driver or not, please see this list:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_32667.html

It looks like this bug report is specifically for nvidia-96 and nvidia-173 drivers. So if your card (or its PCI ID) isn't on the above list underneath the 173.14.xx or 96.43.xx sections then unfortunately you won't find much help in this bug report; somebody out there please correct me if I'm wrong :)

And since 173.14.xx has already been fixed it looks like we're basically waiting on 96.43.xx drivers, which I'm guessing will be out in about a week or so.

Maybe this helps someone.
Its from OMG website.
Thnx to "saurabhneo23"
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/10/nvidia-96-driver-ubuntu-10-10-fix/#comment-86227499

--

"If you can't fix it then downgrade it " :D

Well those who couldn't get their Nvidia drivers working with Ubuntu 10.10 due to newer version of Xorg-Xserver try to do the following : (it worked for me ;))

1) Remove any form of Nvidia drivers , configuration files and anything related to it. I dropped to vesa drivers but that is not necessary.
1) Backup /etc/apt/sources.lst and change all instances of "maverick" for "lucid"
2) In Synaptic, remove xserver-xorg
3) Reload/update the sources and install xorg
4) Install the Nvidia driver which you know worked with Lucid. In my case it is 195.36.24
5) change the sources.lst back to maverick
6) Reconfigure the xserver: sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg
7 ) Now run these commands one after the another :
-- sudo update-alternatives --config gl_conf
-- sudo ldconfig
-- sudo update-initramfs -u
-- sudo nvidia-xconfig
8) Now using synaptic lock the version of these downgraded packages (xorg, nvidia-current, etc ) so that they don't get upgraded automatically
9) Restart.

@ludwigmace
Thanks for that link. Looks like I have a different problem (albeit having the same net effect) thus a different bug.

Anyway, for anyone wondering what the PCI ID of their Nvidia card is but not knowing where to look, try

 lspci -d 10de: -nn

(to filter out everything by Nvidia)

or just:

 lspci -nn

(if you want to see all your PCI hardware by every manufacturer.)

The PCI ID is the XXXX in the [10de:XXXX] that follows the manufacturer and product names

Infocenter has the info too, but you've got to dig through a few layers and didn't immediately pop out at me.

Oh Man!

instead of warning you or downgrading the driver to something without acceleration that works, they let you run into that known trap! I'm really disappointed. Luckily Linux is only a hobby for me.

R

I ran into this issue while upgrading from 10.4 to 10.10 on my 6 years old Dell Inspiron 8600.

According to lspci, my card is:
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV28 [GeForce4 Ti 4200 Go AGP 8x] (rev a1)

If I try to use the nvidia driver in my Xorg configuration file, then X windows fails to start. If I comment out the driver line, then I think I was getting a generic driver, but the resolution was awkward, and I didn't the proper aspect ratio (the screen was compressed) and I couldn't get nice resolution).

So I removed the proprietary driver, and now X Windows is able to start, and the resolution is as usual. I think this is due to the "NOUVEAU" driver that comes by default (I saw that in /var/logs/Xorg.0.log).

The main drawback: all the animated icons and windows decorations look very awful. It is like the bitmaps are off or something like it. I still prefer this option over the bad aspect/resolution, or downgrading Xorg.

Hopefully the Nvidia 96 driver will be updated to fix the issue with Xorg, or the nouveau driver will be updated to remove the annoying bitmap effects (I don't know how else to describe this).

To be fair, the issue touches several software components, and it is not easy to convince all of them to march towards the same release schedule.

Update:

--
1) Remove any form of Nvidia drivers , configuration files and anything related to it. I dropped to vesa drivers but that is not necessary.
1) Backup /etc/apt/sources.lst and change all instances of "maverick" for "lucid"
2) In Synaptic, remove xserver-xorg and jockey-gtk
3) Reload/update the sources: sudo apt-get update and install xorg and jockey
There may be needed reboot.
4) Install the Nvidia driver which you know worked with Lucid. In my case it is 195.36.24
5) change the sources.lst back to maverick
6) Reconfigure the xserver: sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg
7 ) Now run these commands one after the another :
-- sudo update-alternatives --config gl_conf
-- sudo ldconfig
-- sudo update-initramfs -u
-- sudo nvidia-xconfig
8) Now using synaptic lock the version of these downgraded packages (xorg, nvidia-current, etc ) so that they don't get upgraded automatically
9) Restart.

Third update to the fix:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=9874780&postcount=12

nvidia-173 drivers

This bug was fixed in the package nvidia-graphics-drivers-173 (173.14.28-0ubuntu1), see bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nvidia-graphics-drivers-173/+bug/626918

nvidia-96 drivers

This bug wasn't fixed yet, see duplicated bug:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nvidia-graphics-drivers-96/+bug/616394

Fixed? So why this ***$#^#^$%$^&&*** don't work?
:/

And why, oh why, my bug got marked as duplicate :( (see https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nvidia-graphics-drivers-96/+bug/616394/comments/33 )

As a quick temporary solution, use VESA driver la!
Just need to edit 1 line in xorg.conf.

I am using VESA driver now, don't feel much different (though cannot run 3D games).

I have a Nvidia MX-400/440 video card running on a Athlon XP2100 with 512 ram. After upgrading to 10.10 I've experienced a really annoying wrong resolution (1024x768 instead of 1440x900) but is now working properly. I don't know what I did exactly. I really tried a lot of suggestions I've found on the web, like uninstalling e installing again some packs. If someone is interested on the current configuration of any file, please let me know.

Same problem for me.

I wonder if "normal" people could have found the "dlopen: /usr/lib/xorg/extra-modules/nvidia_drv.so: undefined symbol: miEmptyData" source of their problem. Because starting 10.10 on a black&white console is far from sexy (not mentioning irritating). Having to dig the logs is something my mother wouldn't have been able to.

A warning prior upgrade would have been nice...

-- Written from my brand new 10.10 Ubuntu on a 800*600 über-ugly resolution

Thanks to eMcE's hack, I succeeded in getting my screen back.

Still, there one glitch : Upon restarting, it went on the console, because it could not find the nvidia driver. I guess it was because I installed nvidia-current alongside nvidia-96. The solution was to choose nvidia-96 driver instead of nvidia-current (for my video card, I use the "96" driver).

Please note that before eMcE's last step (Restart), I did edit my xorg.conf file to put it back the configuration that worked for me on Ubuntu 10.04.

The steps were:

1. Start Ubuntu on recovery mode
2. On the ugly menu, choose "failsafe mode for one session only"
3. When logged in, go to Menu -> System -> Administration ->Hardware Drivers
4. You should see two drivers, the "NVIDIA accelerated graphic drivers (version current)" (which is "green", i.e., "in use", and the "NVIDIA accelerated graphic drivers (version 96) [Recommended]" which is not used.
5. Select "NVIDIA accelerated graphic drivers (version 96) [Recommended]" and Activate it (the button on the down right of the window)
6. Restart
7. Enjoy the purple screen

-- Written from my brand new 10.10 Ubuntu on a 1900*1200 über-cool resolution

P.S.: BTW, I hate those left-handed "à la MacOS" buttons, but the new font is really cool !!!

@paercebal..
Im not the autor of this, I just repost solution here, and add some updates.
If this works for You than I'm glad :)

I'm also affected by this bug and have exactly the same error message (found in Xorg log) :

    14.301] (II) LoadModule: "nvidia"
[ 14.301] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/extra-modules/nvidia_drv.so
[ 14.302] dlopen: /usr/lib/xorg/extra-modules/nvidia_drv.so: undefined symbol: miEmptyData
[ 14.302] (EE) Failed to load /usr/lib/xorg/extra-modules/nvidia_drv.so
[ 14.302] (II) UnloadModule: "nvidia"
[ 14.302] (EE) Failed to load module "nvidia" (loader failed, 7)
[ 14.302] (EE) No drivers available.
[ 14.303]
Fatal server error:
[ 14.303] no screens found
[ 14.303]

I hope a patch will be published quickly :-/

I'm waiting for this to be fixed so I can upgrade my HP laptop, which is using nvidia-173.
Although I'm willing to fix it another way if someone makes a laptop with upgradable graphics cards.

Same problem here with my Geforce2 MX400 card which uses the v96.xx driver. Had to revert to Ubuntu 10.04 to get the driver installed correctly.

Hoping for a fix soon so I can upgrade to Meerkat.

I'm having the problem, too. One of the reasons I installed Ubuntu on this old PC was that Linux is supposed to run better on older equipment. I had several major problems with my update from 10.04 to 10.10: first, my grub config got messed up and I had to restore it, losing my multi-boot in the process. Second, I had to do the "quick and dirty" fix to load the vesa driver, since my nvidia-96 driver is not supported. Overall, the upgrade to 10.10 has been a disaster. I'm afraid I was lulled into thinking that Ubuntu was more sophisticated than it is. In the future, I'll be sure to wait a couple of months before upgrading versions to make sure that bugs like this are ironed out first.

Ubuntu wants to appeal to the masses, but that won't fly until upgrades become reliable.

My PC also uses the GeForce2 MX/MX 400 (rev b2) card, so it looks like I'm stuck until they release a fix for the v96 driver. I'm afraid I agree with Larry's comment on Oct 16: upgrades need to be smoother. I've no idea how easy it is to revert back to 10.04.

Larry,

While upgrades have their share of issues, this is also not the forum to complain about the Ubuntu upgrade process.

Had you read the release notes, you would have done better to avoid upgrading until a better solution arose.

Troy

With proprietary drivers 173.14.28 from mesa can´t enable desktop effects but glx is functioning.

Troy,

You're right this is not the forum to complain about the upgrade process. And you're correct that if I had read the release notes, I might have discovered that it would be better to wait. On the other hand, if a release has significant bugs, it might be better to delay the release, or change the upgrade process to deal with the missing components in a more graceful manner.

For the most part, the point I'm making is that many of us have fallen into the trap of thinking that Ubuntu has become a mainstream operating system vs. a hobbyist OS. Clearly, it's not ready to be a mainstream OS and is still better suited to hobbyists than a general audience. This is more of an observation than a complaint.

Hi Guys,

It's always good to help improve communication, understanding and cooperation - anytime and anywhere...

FWIW, I see many people dropping Windows (even though it's a very solid OS these days,) and moving to MACs and PCs running Ubuntu. In fact Ubuntu is now a mainstream operating system and, after years of major re-writing, Kubuntu is rapidly getting there too! You may have noticed news article after article from corporations and governments, going back as far as 10 years, announcing that they are supporting Ubuntu and, more recently, installing it by default on new PCs.

It's a good idea to review, though, why some people are having trouble and others, like me, are tickled pink:

There's an obvious scheduling problem with so many distros and projects being so disconnected from the manufacturers. The manufacturers would surely like to be able to provide the proper support and the distros would like to be able to work more closely with the manufacturers and the programmers involved in the various projects - but the business process is evolving with many problems remaining to be solved.

Canonical is making progress in this area and I think you'll find that all interested project leaders are paying attention - so we are marching forward on the learning curve and things are getting better in general. Also the cost of entry for new projects is going up - which will reduce the number of new projects and improve the quality of the successful projects as time goes on.

For now, though, people with production servers and workstations need to be more patient about major upgrades.

In my case I upgraded a few systems on the basis of the excellent work that I was seeing in the previous beta releases - but then I found that there are some serious instabilities in 10.10 (mysterious crashes that bring down everything including the kernel.) This is normal for a new release and I knew it - so I will try next time to wait a bit before upgrading my production environments. On the other hand it's hard for me to be patient because I want so much to make use of all the excellent product that is in the upgrades!

(My thanks and congratulations again to the many wonderful people who make all this good stuff possible!)

I hope that more people will take the time to review and discuss (and hopefully explain) what's going on in more detail as time permits. More discussion will Improve the level of knowledge and understanding which will help more people to properly benefit and enjoy all this great work that's being done.

Have a great day,
Take care,
Sam.

I have same trouble with nvidia-96 on 10.10 fresh install.

I can see both viewpoints. I know people that upgraded to Windows 7 and found older peripherals no longer worked and had to be replaced, so it does happen with “mainstream” OS. However there is a definite perception that Linux generally is more usable on older hardware, so incompatibilities (especially for something that worked in last few releases only a few months ago) are a little unexpected.

There is also the frequency of updates, whilst Windows only has a new release every 3 years or so and thus people expect larger changes, Ubuntu is effectively re-released every 6 months so people expect things that worked 6 months ago to still work. (I know there are LTS releases that are the most stable, but still people like to get the latest if its available).

Despite all this what is the expected solution. The issue was first raised nearly 2 months ago on 2010-08-30 and still hasn't been resolved (and may have been known about months before that), so is it likely to be resolved soon or should we be looking at other options. Is there a possibility that it will never be resolved (ie. hardware deemed too old so won’t bother trying to get drivers to work)? Will Nouveau ever get to the same capability and if so when. Would be good to know the expectations and timing so people can decide what to do, like roll-back to pseudo 10.04 or buy a new card.

I've pulled the xserver-xorg packages from Lucid, and used the Maverick nvidia-96 package. Pinned xorg, xserver-xorg on the Lucid release using "aptitude hold xserver-xorg". Working nvidia drivers again for the old system.

I'm not on that machine at present, sorry to not post specific versions. Can someone at least post a nvidia-96 and perhaps nvidia-glx-96 update that require the old xserver-xorg? This should stop people from installing the new xorg and breaking things again.

Current Requires lists: x11-common (>= 1:7.0.0) which perhaps should also state < 1:9.0.0 ?

Temporarily solution

Before NVIDIA drivers installation do:

sudo apt-get purge xserver-xorg-core

sudo sed -i 's/maverick/lucid/g' /etc/apt/sources.list

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-core

echo "xserver-xorg-core hold" | sudo dpkg --set-selections

sudo sed -i 's/lucid/maverick/g' /etc/apt/sources.list

sudo apt-get update

@angandrob: As far as I know this bug cannot be fixed until NVidia releases xorg 1.9 compatible binary driver. And NVidia has told via its forum that they will release nvidia-96 driver for xorg 1.9, but it is low priority issue for them. So all we can do now is sit back, relax and enjoy our nv/vesa/nouveau drivers.

Same issue here on fresh maverick install. All GPU demanding applications are unusable.

Now running ...
$ lspci -v
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV11 [GeForce2 MX/MX 400] (rev b2) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
 Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 16
 Memory at ee000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
 Memory at f0000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=128M]
 Expansion ROM at efff0000 [disabled] [size=64K]
 Capabilities: <access denied>
 Kernel driver in use: nouveau
 Kernel modules: nouveau, nvidiafb, rivafb

The nouveau hardware accelerated 3-d driver works fairly well in Maverick on my GeForce 4 MX 4000 card. Googleearth works pretty much as it did with the proprietary driver, including 3-d buildings, except that when the view moves close to horizontal and the horizon comes into view, the photographic view of the earth sometimes suddenly disappears. Otherwise, the 3-d effect works fine. Stellarium works at the same speed as with the proprietary driver, but the sunlight illumination doesn't appear on the planets (i.e., they appear in shadow from all sides). Foobillard billiards simulation game works fine except that there's an annoying moving shadow pattern on the table top. I haven't had any crashes.

I can't turn on desktop effects--I get the message that I need the proprietary driver.

According to the nouveau website, if you've got an nvidia card with a nv30 or later chip and want to try the 3-d hardware accelerated driver, you need nouveau_dri.so driver, which is in the libgl1-mesa-dri-experimental package in maverick universe. If you've got a nv20 or earlier chip, you need nouveau_vieux_dri.so, which seems to have been removed from the maverick repositories before final release, but I got it from the xorg-edgers ppa maverick repository. It's in the libgl1-mesa-dri package (not the experimental package). All I did was add the repository, update the package, shutdown the power and reboot.

In order to determine whether you need the nouveau_dri or the nouveau_vieux_dri driver, consult the table at: http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/CodeNames

In my prior email running down how various 3-d programs work with the nouveau dri driver, I meant to say that celestia (not stellarium) works but without showing sunlight on planets. Stellarium crashes with error message: nv10_render.c:104: get_hw_format: Assertion `0' failed.
Aborted

Robert Hooker on 2010-10-19
summary: - ABI change in xorg 1.9 breaks legacy nvidia-96 and nvidia-173 drivers in
- Maverick
+ ABI change in xorg 1.9 breaks legacy nvidia-96 drivers in Maverick

I don't understand the meaning of the above change on 10-19. Does it mean that the original Ubuntu release does work with nvidia-173, that there is a modified version which works with nvidia-173, or that there is a different bug for the nvidia-173 problems?

SEWilco: NVidia updated their 173 drivers already. The 96 code is still outstanding.

It becomes apparent that NVidia couldn't care less about us people who bought their products when they were a fairly new company, so I guess when it become time to replace my graphics card I'm going to be spending my money elsewhere.

The bug was first reported on 2010-08-30 and it's now 2010-10-27 with still no fix in sight. Thanks a lot NVidia!

Seems that the 96 drivers have been updated every few months, with the longest delays being 5 and 8 months. This is an older legacy chipset so I'm OK with the fact that they don't update their drivers immediately whenever a Linux distribution updates its graphics packages. Last update was 7/15 to hopefully we'll see something fairly soon.

You can keep an eye on the drivers here:
ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/

They're working on it !
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=155622&page=2

Please give 96.43.19 a try. It was just released, so it might be a while before somebody packages it for Ubuntu.

Good job!
Thank you NVIDIA team!
Somebody can asign this to Alberto Milone...

[SOLVED] Installing nvidia 96.43.19 drivers

as you see here: http://www.microsmeta.com/dblog/articolo.asp?articolo=976 (Italian)

as explained here: ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/96.43.19/ (English)

Look here for the 64bit version:
ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/96.43.19/

Good job guys !
Thank you

Any chance for a deb?

Really would like the opportunity to install Ubuntu 10.10 on my old box with a GeForce MX-400/440 card...hope that this new driver can be packaged soon :)

Yay. Reverting xorg back to lucid has been working pretty well for me so far, but I do appreciate the fix. Thanks nvidia!

Thanks, Aaron !

Installed the new driver, unpinned x-server, upgraded and all is working well.

Many thanks NVIDIA team and many thanks to ludwigmace for posting the ftp link. That README is so very helpful :-)

 Option "UseEvents" "True"
 Option "TripleBuffer" "boolean"

in xorg.conf solved a couple of long-standing annoyances.

I installed the new driver and all seems to be working well now. Thanks guys for pushing this through.

Tried to install the new drivers can get 2d but I can't get compiz to work, any instructions on installing under Ubuntu?

Hi,
I add the related branch, I guess that this is the correct way to inform Alberto Milone... or at least to I believe so :)

I had the same problem as James Kittsmiller. I successfully installed the driver,but still the compiz didn't work. Besides, I can't play video any more.

I still unable to install the driver..any help

No, this is the correct way:)

nvidia-96 drivers are updated:
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=2341157

Hi... Iǘe tried installing the 96.43.19 drivers from the .RUN package but something is conflicting.... can someone create a .deb?

the nvidia-96 drivers need to be packaged otherwise every time there is kernel chnage you will have to re-run the nvidia .RUN script. A PITA

I have solved my problems. Maybe there would be some help for James Kittsmiller.
1. Can't play video. It's the mplayer issue.
The cause was the mplayer couldn't find libvdpau.so.1. Just re-install libvdpau in synaptic and it goes well.
2. The compiz issue.
Just check the version of the compiz. It may be too high(like 0.9.0). Downgrade it and everything will be fine.
The packages are as below:
compiz
compiz-core
compiz-plugins
compiz-gnome
compizconfig-backend-gconf
compiz-fusion-plugins-main
compiz-fusion-plugins-extra
compiz-fusion-bcop
Totally remove them, and re-install them,then reboot and enjoy your 3D effects.

Nvidia 8600M GT on 10.10 MM, same problem!

They work fine over here. I have a Geforce 2 MX 32MB and I can enable effects through compiz and the extra effects from the appearance menu.

I followed the instructions by luk1don (post 45) on this page. It asked me something about some preinstall script but I just said continue.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=10082431

Then to enable effects I just followed the instructions from the Italian website posted earlier here. First run sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and save a backup somewhere. Then just add the two lines below to xorg.conf anywhere under the Screen section.
Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"
Option "DisableGLXRootClipping" "True"

On 11/07/2010 04:46 PM, baracus2k wrote:
> They work fine over here. I have a Geforce 2 MX 32MB and I can
> enable effects through compiz and the extra effects from the
> appearance menu.
>
> I followed the instructions by luk1don (post 45) on this page. It
> asked me something about some preinstall script but I just said
> continue. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=10082431
>
> Then to enable effects I just followed the instructions from the
> Italian website posted earlier here. First run sudo gedit
> /etc/X11/xorg.conf and save a backup somewhere. Then just add the two
> lines below to xorg.conf anywhere under the Screen section. Option
> "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True" Option "DisableGLXRootClipping" "True"
>

However, several days following nVidia's fix/update
(https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nvidia-graphics-drivers-96/+bug/626974/comments/71)
and no action from Ubuntu.

Loading the driver manually will cause it to break with kernel updates.
The driver needs to be fixed in Ubuntu so that those of us with older
nVidia cards can upgrade/install properly.

@Giuseppe Calaprice - your Geforce 8600 doesn't use the nvidia-96 drivers .....

You should use nvidia-current driver - I have a geforce 8500 and it works totally fine...

@yossarian_uk - I tried to install nvidia-current driver but I have the same trouble! Did you fix it or it works totally fine since the first installation?

I think the new driver should be packaged and the package released asap, and this bug report should be updated. Now it seems that we're all waiting that somebody does something, but nobody does anything. That makes, IMO, Ubuntu in whole look bad.

I've packaged the new nvidia-96 driver for Maverick in this PPA:

  https://launchpad.net/~dajhorn/+archive/nvidia-96/

I tried your PPA installed the driver and after reboot nvidia-setting says driver not running, jockey says activated but not in use, and there is no xorg.conf file. What did I do wrong?

Darik: Your packaging works for me, got nvidia running *thumbs up*. The only issue I ran into was X's driver autodetection, which seems to select VESA even if there are all nv, nouveau and nvidia to choose from. Setting driver to "nvidia" in xorg.conf seems to solve that, and I think it is bug somewhere in X and not in nvidia driver.

yes, but in previous releases, the Nvidia driver package would add an xorg.conf to load the driver. X has never auto detected the proprietary drivers when they are loaded.

James: You must `sudo ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86-*.run --uninstall` the package that you got from the Nvidia web site before installing the deb package. If you installed both, then uninstall both before reinstalling the deb.

DKMS improperly clobbers the local nvidia.ko module and you'll get version mismatches and a mangled configuration. If you want to regenerate the xorg.conf file, then run `sudo nvidia-xconfig` at a terminal prompt. Also note that the Jockey driver manager doesn't recognize the oldest and newest Nvidia drivers but they still work properly. Ignore he warning.

This ticket is the wrong place to do technical support. The best place to ask is the PPA page, the IRC channel, or the forums.

Great stuff! Hope to see in the official mirror soon!

@Darik Horn

This was a fresh install of 10.10, I never installed the binary package this time around, just used your PPA, that is why I asked here. I searched around the net till I found the xorg.conf that gets installed by default with jockeys 96.43.17 on 10.04 and copied it to my own file.

I reverted the patch in jockey that ignores nvidia-96 and put it into the PPA.

If jockey still doesn't automatically update the xorg.conf file then do this:

1. Ensure that the nvidia-common package is installed. Jockey needs nvidia-common to detect nvidia-96 and nvidia-173 hardware.

2. Backup and delete the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file.

3. Toggle the driver in System -> Administration -> Additional Drivers. (eg: Deactivate, Activate)

4. Check the /var/log/jockey.log file for warnings and errors. This log file is usually empty unless something is glitched.

That's much better, worked like a charm now if we could only get a commit from a developer.

I meant to the main repositories.

@Darik Horn's ppa worked a treat with my Nvidia GeForce 4 MX 400 card on an old box with Lubuntu 10.10 installed.

Many thanks for packaging this new nvidia driver :)

@Darik Horn: Thanks for packaging this.

Ubuntu 10.10 (fully updated)

*-display
       description: VGA compatible controller
       product: NV25GL [Quadro4 900 XGL]
       vendor: nVidia Corporation

Shows up in Jockey properly, cannot enable desktop effects (System|Preferences|Appearance|Visual Effects - Extra) until:
$ sudo nvidia-xconfig
and reboot.

Afterwards I am able to set desktop effects. However none of the compiz settings (using the compiz settings manager) work.

$ cat xorg.conf
# nvidia-xconfig: X configuration file generated by nvidia-xconfig
# nvidia-xconfig: version 1.0 (buildmeister@builder75) Wed Oct 27 19:20:23 PDT 2010

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier "Layout0"
    Screen 0 "Screen0"
    InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    # generated from default
    Identifier "Mouse0"
    Driver "mouse"
    Option "Protocol" "auto"
    Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
    Option "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
    Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    # generated from default
    Identifier "Keyboard0"
    Driver "kbd"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier "Monitor0"
    VendorName "Unknown"
    ModelName "Unknown"
    HorizSync 30.0 - 110.0
    VertRefresh 50.0 - 150.0
    Option "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier "Device0"
    Driver "nvidia"
    VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier "Screen0"
    Device "Device0"
    Monitor "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth 24
    SubSection "Display"
        Depth 24
        Modes "1600x1200" "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Got it working; had to remove the driver via jockey, reinstall compiz, re-enable the driver via jockey, reboot & re-enable 'Visual Effects - Extra', and reset the compiz settings via the compiz settings manager. I now get the expected compiz bells & whistles (rotating desktops etc., etc). Thanks Darik. Perhaps Ubuntu could assign this to you for final packaging?

@Darik Horn: Thank you dearly, I was lost without that package/ppa. So glad to have my compiz plugins back on my Ubuntu 10.10.
I have a GeForce2 MX400 and the ppa worked perfectly after following your troubleshooting instructions.

Thanks a lot Darik Horn, it works perfectly with a Geforce4 TI 4200!

Marking Triaged. All that's left to do is to package it for natty and maverick.

Darik Horn, hello.
I was tried your PPA, but got error.

Why isn't it in the repos? Sure, i am clearly capable of installing binary from nvidia or using someone's ppa.

But this is Ubuntu. Main staff said it's for human beings. Not scripting nerds. Ubuntu released a version without support for older gfx cards without a real warning in the update manager. That's a big fail. (!!)

Now a fix apperead, hooray. But it takes weeks to get it into the repos. Is it just that no one of the devs is interested in releasing it? Better things to do than fixing gfx for 50% of Ubuntuusers? (linux = OS for lowend machines. Of Course high end also ;) )

Sorry for that flame post, but it's too often like this. Developers stop when things work. Work means: do this sh script as root, shutdown x-server and install it by ... I guess i don't have to tell you what my girlfriend would say to that kind of step by step guide..

Maybe we should re-define "working" for Ubuntu and try to improve user experience for unexperienced users! ( the mac way.. clearly visible a successfull way)

apo, you are 100% on target. I could go through all of the gyrations to patch my drivers using the posted solution, but I didn't install Ubuntu because I wanted to spend a lot of time maintaining the machine I use it on. Ubuntu has a great distribution and updating system. It seems pointless and inefficient to have to work around the system in a case like this. This should be rolled into a normal update ASAP and officially available.

On 11/19/2010 03:25 AM, apo wrote:
> Why isn't it in the repos? Sure, i am clearly capable of installing
...
And still unassigned...
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nvidia-graphics-drivers-96
shows:

Maintainer:
    Ubuntu Development Team

Urgency:*
    Low Urgency

Seems to me that failure to use default 3D graphics, compiz, et al
should be something other than "Low Urgency". So let's recap... these
are all the cards/users that are being left behind:

<ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/96.43.19/README/appendix-a.html>

NVIDIA chip name Device PCI ID
GeForce 6800 Ultra 0x0040
GeForce 6800 0x0041
GeForce 6800 XE 0x0043
GeForce 6800 XT 0x0044
GeForce 6800 GT 0x0045
GeForce 6800 GT 0x0046
GeForce 6800 GS 0x0047
GeForce 6800 XT 0x0048
Quadro FX 4000 0x004E
GeForce 7800 GTX 0x0090
GeForce 7800 GTX 0x0091
GeForce 7800 GT 0x0092
GeForce 7800 GS 0x0093
GeForce Go 7800 0x0098
GeForce Go 7800 GTX 0x0099
Quadro FX 4500 0x009D
GeForce 6800 GS 0x00C0
GeForce 6800 0x00C1
GeForce 6800 LE 0x00C2
GeForce 6800 XT 0x00C3
GeForce Go 6800 0x00C8
GeForce Go 6800 Ultra 0x00C9
Quadro FX Go1400 0x00CC
Quadro FX 3450/4000 SDI 0x00CD
Quadro FX 1400 0x00CE
GeForce 6800/GeForce 6800 Ultra 0x00F0
GeForce 6600/GeForce 6600 GT 0x00F1
GeForce 6600 0x00F2
GeForce 6200 0x00F3
GeForce 6600 LE 0x00F4
GeForce 7800 GS 0x00F5
GeForce 6800 GS 0x00F6
Quadro FX 3400/4400 0x00F8
GeForce 6800 Ultra 0x00F9
GeForce PCX 5750 0x00FA
GeForce PCX 5900 0x00FB
Quadro FX 330/GeForce PCX 5300 0x00FC
Quadro NVS 280 PCI-E/Quadro FX 330 0x00FD
Quadro FX 1300 0x00FE
GeForce PCX 4300 0x00FF
GeForce2 MX/MX 400 0x0110
GeForce2 MX 100/200 0x0111
GeForce2 Go 0x0112
Quadro2 MXR/EX/Go 0x0113
GeForce 6600 GT 0x0140
GeForce 6600 0x0141
GeForce 6600 LE 0x0142
GeForce 6600 VE 0x0143
GeForce Go 6600 0x0144
GeForce 6610 XL 0x0145
GeForce Go 6600 TE/6200 TE 0x0146
GeForce Go 6600 0x0148
GeForce Go 6600 GT 0x0149
Quadro NVS 440 0x014A
Quadro FX 550 0x014C
Quadro FX 540 0x014E
GeForce 6200 0x014F
GeForce 6500 0x0160
GeForce 6200 TurboCache(TM) 0x0161
GeForce Go 6200 0x0164
Quadro NVS 285 0x0165
GeForce Go 6400 0x0166
GeForce Go 6200 0x0167
GeForce Go 6400 0x0168
GeForce4 MX 460 0x0170
GeForce4 MX 440 0x0171
GeForce4 MX 420 0x0172
GeForce4 MX 440-SE 0x0173
GeForce4 440 Go 0x0174
GeForce4 420 Go 0x0175
GeForce4 420 Go 32M 0x0176
GeForce4 460 Go 0x0177
Quadro4 550 XGL 0x0178
GeForce4 440 Go 64M 0x0179
Quadro NVS 0x017A
Quadro4 500 GoGL 0x017C
GeForce4 410 Go 16M 0x017D
GeForce4 MX 440 with AGP8X 0x0181
GeForce4 MX 440SE with AGP8X 0x0182
GeForce4 MX 420 with AGP8X 0x0183
GeForce4 MX 4000 0x0185
Quadro4 580 XGL 0x0188
Quadro NVS with AGP8X 0x018A
Quadro4 380 XGL 0x018B
Quadro NVS 50 PCI 0x018C
GeForce2 Integrated GPU 0x01A0
GeForce 7300 LE 0x01D1
Quadro NVS 110M 0x01D7
GeForce Go 7300 0x01D7
GeForce Go 7400 0x01D8
Quadro NVS 110M 0x01DA
Quadro NVS 120M 0x01DB
Quadro FX 350M 0x01DC
Quadro FX 350 0x01DE
GeForce 7300 GS 0x01DF
GeForce4 MX Integrated GPU 0x01F0
GeForce3 0x0200
GeForce3 Ti 200 0x0201
GeForce3 Ti 500 0x0202
Quadro DCC 0x0203
GeForce 6800 0x0211
GeForce 6800 LE 0x0212
GeForce 6800 GT 0x0215
G...

I hate to add a "+1 Me Too" comment, but it is becoming slightly embarrassing that no one has yet put this patch into Ubuntu. The fact is, for years now Ubuntu has been advertised by many people as being the OS that can bring your older hardware back to life. MILLIONS of people must run Ubuntu on old hardware. This problem needs to be fixed ASAP.

+1 Me Too =)

I don't know why patch still not released. What ever, I hope it'll be soon, doesn't it?

SRU request:

The new package (which is now in maverick-proposed, pending for approval) restores compatibility with the X server ABI in Maverick. This update is warmly recommended as there are no (stable) alternatives to Nvidia's -96 3D driver that work with the current X server.

I really meant to say "pending approval"

The attached debdiff re-enabled nvidia-96 in Jockey

And what should we do with this patch? Excuse me, but I don't understand...

@Antoine: that patch is meant for the ubuntu archive sponsors, not for you (unless you want to build your own jockey package). It'll take some time for all pieces to arrive in maverick updates.

@Philip thanks for your answer, I'm going to wait some time...

I can't find updated package in maverick-proposed. It is expected to be there?

Sebastiano - Philip wrote "It'll take some time for all pieces to arrive in maverick updates." yesterday so I expect that some time could be a week or two!

owise1, I read also that Alberto Milone said that package is now in maverick-proposed. I subscribed to that repository in apt sources, anyway I can't find it!
I'm pretty sure because I also browsed inside main mirror (archive.ubuntu.com - pool) and no updated package for nvidia-96

Alberto's ppa package worked well even on my vintage Geforce2 MX/MX 400 card.
How do we now get a version into the offical package repositories?

Just one remark to Alberto's package contents:
I think the 3 patches in the debian/dkms/patches directory should be removed, because as far as I can see they are already incorporated in the original nvidia package, and trying to apply them during the build process most probably will not work (but should not do any harm).

Thanks Alberto! Please upload the jockey change as well.

Accepted nvidia-graphics-drivers-96 into maverick-proposed, the package will build now and be available in a few hours. Please test and give feedback here. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation how to enable and use -proposed. Thank you in advance!

Ok, I've uploaded Jockey too.

Thanks.

Hi All,

I ran into issues trying to fix my display (MX 440-SE). I tried a few things : downloading a couple of nvidia packages with Synaptic, then ran nvidia-xconfig as root and now my xconf.org is broken. I tried using the backedup one, but even at that X does not start the way it should. In fact for a long while X didn't start at all. I commented out the nvidia section of it and now I get X to sort of start but I get 640X480 (at least I had 1024 X 768 before; that still wasn't good of course but I couldn't go for more).

Should I try reinstalling Ubnutu from scratch (just to make sure all those nvidia packages are gone) or just a clean xorg.conf (url please) would do ? Then should I try Martin's patch ?

I was hoping to steer my teenager from MS windows yesterday ...

TIA.

@Martin & Alberto: I'm not seeing jockey_0.5.10-0ubuntu5.2 yet:
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/jockey
Should I wait for jockey to be upgraded in proposed before testing, or go ahead and use Darik's version? IMO it would be better to test with Alberto's so that we can verify both (nvidia-96 & jockey 5.2) at the same time.

Notice the PPA version, where I used a dot instead of a tilde.

  $ dpkg --compare-versions 0.5.10-0ubuntu5.2 gt 0.5.10-0ubuntu5.dajhorn2
  $ echo $?
  1

My computer already got Alberto's nvidia-96 from maverick-proposed, but it won't get jockey from maverick-proposed if it is published with a regular debchange increment.

Do this to disable the PPA and get the official jockey release if/when it becomes available in maverick-proposed:

  $ sudo apt-add-repository --remove ppa:dajhorn/nvidia-96
  $ sudo apt-get update
  $ sudo apt-get install --reinstall jockey-common jockey-gtk

On 11/22/2010 11:50 AM, Darik Horn wrote:
> Notice the PPA version, where I used a dot instead of a tilde.
>
> $ dpkg --compare-versions 0.5.10-0ubuntu5.2 gt 0.5.10-0ubuntu5.dajhorn2
> $ echo $?
> 1
>
> My computer already got Alberto's nvidia-96 from maverick-proposed, but
> it won't get jockey from maverick-proposed if it is published with a
> regular debchange increment.
>
> Do this to disable the PPA and get the official jockey release if/when
> it becomes available in maverick-proposed:
>
> $ sudo apt-add-repository --remove ppa:dajhorn/nvidia-96
> $ sudo apt-get update
> $ sudo apt-get install --reinstall jockey-common jockey-gtk
>

Aleady did that - thanks :-) I'm just waiting for jockey to build before
I test together. Thanks again Darik for the early PPA build(s).

It works. I installed nvidia-96 from maverick-proposed and ran nvidia-xconfig. I can now play OpenGL games. My card is an nVidia GeFroce 4 Ti 4200. Thanks for your work.

Accepted jockey into maverick-proposed, the package will build now and be available in a few hours. Please test and give feedback here. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation how to enable and use -proposed. Thank you in advance!

Natty jockey fix is in bzr.

Works w/32-bit - partially:

VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV25GL [Quadro4 900 XGL] (rev a3)
2.6.35.23-generic

$ apt-cache policy jockey-common
jockey-common:
  Installed: 0.5.10-0ubuntu5.2
  Candidate: 0.5.10-0ubuntu5.2
  Version table:
 *** 0.5.10-0ubuntu5.2 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick-proposed/main i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     0.5.10-0ubuntu5.1 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick-updates/main i386 Packages
     0.5.10-0ubuntu5 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick/main i386 Packages
maverick@maverick-desktop:~$ apt-cache policy nvidia-96
nvidia-96:
  Installed: 96.43.19-0ubuntu1
  Candidate: 96.43.19-0ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 96.43.19-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick-proposed/restricted i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     96.43.18-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick/restricted i386 Packages

Testing procedure:
1. Uninstalled Derik's repository & installs (purged nvidia* (sudo apt-get purge nvidia*) and jockey-common & jockey-gtk) and reinstalled jockey-common & jockey-gtk 0.5.10-0ubuntu5.2 proposed.
2. Rebooted w/o nvidia in low graphics mode - perhaps because I purged nvidia*?
3. System|Administration|Additional Drivers - jocky does not find the nvidia-96 drivers.
4. Reinstall nvidia-96 manually: sudo apt-get install nvidia-96... reboot. System|Administration|Additional Drivers shows nvidia-96 proprietary driver is activated & currently in use.
5. System|Preferences|Appearance|Visual Effects|Extra - works (basic wobbly windows etc). System|Administration|NVIDIA X Server Settings works.
6. Install compiz-settings-manager. System|Preferences|CompizConfig Settings Manager - cube & rotate cube works.

The only part that bothers me is the initial failure of jockey to recognize & offer to install the nvidia-96 driver. While this may possibly be related to my purging nvidia*, jockey should (IMO) still detect the card following the clean reboot. So, until someone can explain why it does not: nvidia-96 96.43.19-0ubuntu1 works, but jockey 0.5.10-0ubuntu5.2 does not.

@NoOp
That's because you removed nvidia-common (which is what Jockey uses to do hardware detection with nvidia).

In other words I think things are ok. A one-line change in Jockey didn't cause that.

Hey guys, can you help me? I don't know why packages from maverick-proposed repository not worked in my ubuntu.

For the first i was remove dajhorn repository from my repository list by "sudo apt-add-repository --remove ppa:dajhorn/nvidia-96".
After: apt-get update.

Then "apt-cache policy jockey-common" told:

jockey-common:
  Установлен: 0.5.10-0ubuntu5.2
  Кандидат: 0.5.10-0ubuntu5.2
  Таблица версий:
 *** 0.5.10-0ubuntu5.2 0
        500 http://mirror.yandex.ru/ubuntu/ maverick-proposed/main i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     0.5.10-0ubuntu5.1 0
        500 http://mirror.yandex.ru/ubuntu/ maverick-updates/main i386 Packages
     0.5.10-0ubuntu5 0
        500 http://mirror.yandex.ru/ubuntu/ maverick/main i386 Packages

and "apt-cache policy nvidia-96" told:

nvidia-96:
  Установлен: (отсутствует)
  Кандидат: 96.43.19-0ubuntu1
  Таблица версий:
     96.43.19-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://mirror.yandex.ru/ubuntu/ maverick-proposed/restricted i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     96.43.18-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://mirror.yandex.ru/ubuntu/ maverick/restricted i386 Packages

Then tried to install nvidia-96: "sudo apt-get install nvidia-96"

Then rebooted and recieved this:

[ 54.450] (II) NVIDIA(0): Initialized GART.
[ 54.458] (EE) NVIDIA(0): Failed to allocate/map the primary surface!
[ 54.459]
Fatal server error:
[ 54.459] AddScreen/ScreenInit failed for driver 0
[ 54.459]
[ 54.459]
Please consult the The X.Org Foundation support
  at http://wiki.x.org
 for help.
[ 54.461] Please also check the log file at "/var/log/Xorg.3.log" for additional information.
[ 54.461]
[ 54.584] ddxSigGiveUp: Closing log

Why it's not working for me ?

Petr: Delete the /etc/xorg.conf file, toggle the nvidia-96 driver off/on at System -> Administration -> Additional Drivers, and restart the computer.

The "Failed to allocate/map the primary surface" error is caused by a missing AddARGBGLXVisuals option in the xorg.conf file. Jockey creates a correct xorg.conf file.

Some cards don't start if this option is missing, and others get GL artifacts like the desktop wallpaper being used in all transparencies.

> @NoOp
> That's because you removed nvidia-common (which is what Jockey uses to do hardware detection with nvidia).
>
> In other words I think things are ok. A one-line change in Jockey didn't
> cause that.
>

Ah. Got it. That makes sense. Thanks.

Darik Horn, thanks for your advise, but still not working.

petka@petka-ubuntu-pc:~$ cat /var/log/Xorg.1.log
....
[ 49.159] (II) NVIDIA(0): Initialized GART.
[ 49.178] (EE) NVIDIA(0): Failed to allocate/map the primary surface!
[ 49.181]
Fatal server error:
[ 49.183] AddScreen/ScreenInit failed for driver 0
[ 49.183]
[ 49.183]
Please consult the The X.Org Foundation support
  at http://wiki.x.org
 for help.
[ 49.183] Please also check the log file at "/var/log/Xorg.1.log" for additional information.
[ 49.183]
[ 49.369] ddxSigGiveUp: Closing log

petka@petka-ubuntu-pc:~$ cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Section "Screen"
 Identifier "Default Screen"
 DefaultDepth 24
 Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"
EndSection

Section "Module"
 Load "glx"
EndSection

Section "Device"
 Identifier "Default Device"
 Driver "nvidia"
 Option "NoLogo" "True"
EndSection

@Petr: Some ideas:
1. In several messages about problems with the nVidia driver it is recommended to add not only
-> Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"
but also
-> Option "DisableGLXRootClipping" "True"
to the xorg.conf file
Can you try that?
2. you might also try to delete your xorg.conf and re-create it with nvidia-xsettings
3. any error messages related to the video card in your boot logs?

In case having problem, can try to remove compiz first.
At first my Ubuntu always halted with the new driver too!

Petr A. Sokolnikov@
Probably a framebuffer problem. Try options in kernel line, eg.:
vga=794, vga=791, vga=798, ... or some changes in grub configuration.

This bug was fixed in the package jockey - 0.6-0ubuntu1

---------------
jockey (0.6-0ubuntu1) natty; urgency=low

  [ Alberto Milone ]
  * data/handlers/nvidia.py:
    - Re-enable nvidia-96 now that it's compatible with xserver 1.9.
      (LP: #626974).

  [ Martin Pitt ]
  * New upstream release 0.6:
    - Add support and test case for reading modaliases from package headers.
    - Put back "Additional Drivers" progress window title. Thanks Bilal
      Akhtar! (LP: #323815)
    - jockey/detection.py, get_hardware(): Disable printer detection.
      cupshelpers.getDevices() is excruciatingly slow (about 15 seconds), and
      jockey is not normally used directly to install printer drivers.
      Instead, system-config-printer picks up new printers, and calls jockey
      with the device ID, so jockey does not need to detect printers by
      itself.
    - jockey-kde: Use runtime .ui loading instead of pykdeuic4; the latter
      just keeps breaking.
    - gtk/jockey-gtk.ui: Drop obsolete has_separator property; Explicitly set
      topmost GtkVBox fill property to True, as the default changed in GTK 3.0
      (GNOME #634592)
    - Various test suite fixes.
  * debian/control: Drop now obsolete python-{qt4,kde}* build dependencies.
  * debian/jockey-kde.install: Install the KDE *.ui files.
  * jockey/oslib.py, has_repositories(): Greatly speed up (5 seconds →
    negligible) by calling "apt-cache policy" instead of creating an
    apt.Cache() object.
  * Drop data/handlers/b43.py, our linux-firmware package ships the b43
    firmware now. Also, the wl driver is generally a lot better.
  * Add support for putting modalias definitions in driver package's
    debian/control, so that we can replace the /usr/share/jockey/modaliases/*
    lists with lookups in the package database (see blueprint
    hardware-desktop-n-package-field-modaliases). With this we can drop the
    foo-modaliases packages, and shipping third-party driver packages will
    just work in Jockey without any further integration.
    - Add debian/debhelper/dh_jockey: Debhelper program to produce a
      ${modaliases} substvar from scanning .ko files or
      debian/packagename.modaliases.
    - Add debian/debhelper/test_dh_jockey: Automatic test script for
      dh_jockey.
    - Add debian/debhelper/modaliases.pm: dh_auto sequencer for dh_modaliases.
    - debian/control: Add dh-modaliases package.
    - debian/dh-modaliases.install: Install dh_modaliases and modaliases.pm.
    - debian/rules: Create manpage from dh_modaliases POD.
    - jockey/oslib.py: Add apt implementation for package_header_modaliases().
    - tests/oslib.py: Add test case for our package_header_modaliases()
      implementation. This only really tests anything if there is at least one
      package with a "Modaliases:" field in the local apt repository.
  * jockey/oslib.py: Change deprecated apt.apt_pkg.Config.Set() to .set().
  * debian/rules: Drop simple-patchsys.mk, we don't need it (patches are
    inline, maintained in bzr).
 -- Martin Pitt <email address hidden> Thu, 25 Nov 2010 19:49:00 +0100

Still have problems even with new driver version. Reading through X log, it seems that glx module loaded is the one shipped by X.org and not by NVIDIA. is that correct?

X won't start and crashes with a segfault, even if AddARGBGLXVisuals is true in xorg.conf (created from scratch by jockey).
Any idea?

Well, I did it. Browsing a bit through NVIDIA forums, I discovered that I was missing the correct ModulePath in xorg.conf to load libglx of Nvidia, not X.org's one.
Anyway, I'm a bit curious because jockey did create the X.org configuration file for me, and that line was not added.
Is jockey in fault, or on a default system Nvidia glx module will have priority over others?

For the ones who just want to know, in case, how I solved:
in xorg.conf, in section "Files", be sure that the first module path is Nvidia one

....
Section "Files"
        ModulePath "/usr/lib/nvidia-96/xorg/"
 ModulePath "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
.....

@Sebastiano: there's no need to add that line as the alternatives system + our patched xserver should take care of that.

Can you attach the output of the following command, please?

update-alternatives --display gl_conf

Here it is. Strange, seems all ok. I haven't attached Xorg log before the adding of new module path, but crashed clearly because it was loading X.org libglx.so file.

---
sebastiano@oldbuntu:~$ update-alternatives --display gl_conf
gl_conf - auto mode
  link currently points to /usr/lib/nvidia-96/ld.so.conf
/usr/lib/mesa/ld.so.conf - priority 500
  slave xorg_extra_modules: /usr/lib/xorg/x11-extra-modules
/usr/lib/nvidia-96/ld.so.conf - priority 9600
  slave man_nvidiaxconfig.gz: /usr/share/man/man1/alt-nvidia-96-xconfig.1.gz
  slave nvidia-autostart.desktop: /usr/share/nvidia-96/nvidia-autostart.desktop
  slave nvidia-smi.1.gz: /usr/share/man/man1/alt-nvidia-96-smi.1.gz
  slave nvidia_bug_report: /usr/lib/nvidia-96/bin/nvidia-bug-report.sh
  slave nvidia_desktop: /usr/share/nvidia-96/ubuntu-nvidia-settings.desktop
  slave nvidia_drv: /usr/lib/nvidia-96/xorg/nvidia_drv.so
  slave nvidia_modconf: /lib/nvidia-96/modprobe.conf
  slave nvidia_smi: /usr/lib/nvidia-96/bin/nvidia-smi
  slave nvidia_xconfig: /usr/lib/nvidia-96/bin/nvidia-xconfig
  slave xorg_extra_modules: /usr/lib/nvidia-96/xorg
  slave xvmcconfig: /usr/lib/nvidia-96/XvMCConfig
Current 'best' version is '/usr/lib/nvidia-96/ld.so.conf'.

@luk1don,

I was tried different vga modes in /etc/default/grub, but still got error.

dmesg wrote:
[ 99.118023] agpgart-intel 0000:00:00.0: AGP 3.0 bridge
[ 99.118052] agpgart-intel 0000:00:00.0: bridge is in legacy mode, falling back to 2.x
[ 99.118065] agpgart-intel 0000:00:00.0: putting AGP V2 device into 4x mode
[ 99.118119] nvidia 0000:01:00.0: putting AGP V2 device into 4x mode
[ 100.654542] Xorg:1844 conflicting memory types e8000000-e8500000 uncached-minus<->write-combining
[ 100.654552] reserve_memtype failed 0xe8000000-0xe8500000, track write-combining, req write-combining
[ 100.656966] Xorg:1844 conflicting memory types e8000000-e8500000 uncached-minus<->write-combining
[ 100.656975] reserve_memtype failed 0xe8000000-0xe8500000, track write-combining, req write-combining

in Xorg.0.log:

[ 88.122] (EE) NVIDIA(0): Failed to allocate/map the primary surface!
[ 88.123]
Fatal server error:
[ 88.123] AddScreen/ScreenInit failed for driver 0

Please, any idea, how can I fix it?

@Petr:
Your problem seems to be the same as bug 605837

As a workaround adding the nopat option to your kernel boot command line should help. Please give it a try.

@Manfred Hampl: Thanks! It work's!

Have tested proposed as outlined in post #137. No issues at all with installation.
Driver works well and I even got my old bugs with non-working Suspend and Hibernate back ;-)

From my end ready for prime time
BRGDS
//Stefan

i'm back to 10.04
:(
X kept breaking... i can't trust 10.10 yet

Got my X working now using the proposed drivers HOWEVER

- Sometimes X will freeze whilst starting GDM and the only solution is to pull the power
- Minimizing applications causes X to freeze for two seconds every time

Running Xubuntu 10.10

lspci:
VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV18 [GeForce4 MX 440 AGP 8x] (rev a2)

If you don't want to enable the proposed-updates repository, and would prefer to install updated the packages manually, this method worked for me and my GeForce 4 Ti 4200:

1. Download and install the new jockey packages.

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/jockey/0.5.10-0ubuntu5.2/+build/2060531

2. Jockey should now offer the nVidia 96 driver. Enable it. This will install version 96.43.18, which won't actually work, so don't reboot yet. However, this step is still useful because it installs dependencies, and makes the necessary configuration changes to enable the driver.

3. Download and install the new driver package.

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nvidia-graphics-drivers-96/96.43.19-0ubuntu1/+build/2057864

4. Reboot.

Still no released fix for this bug!!!

My Ubuntu has been unusable for 3 months now! Starts only to command prompt after upgrading to Maverick. I do not want to go back to playing with command prompt/scripts/whatever of the (very) old MS-DOS days. A computer is a tool for me, not a toy to play with.

Quote from Ubuntu pages: "Users of the official release, in contrast, expect a high degree of stability. They use their Ubuntu system for their day-to-day work, and problems they experience with it can be extremely disruptive. Many of them are less experienced with Ubuntu and with Linux, and expect a reliable system which does not require their intervention."

@Jukka
I thought the package had already been accepted into updates but this doesn't seem to be the case.

You can follow the instructions in comment #137 to enable the -proposed repository and install the new package:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nvidia-graphics-drivers-96/+bug/626974/comments/137

OK Alberto!

Got Maverick "almost" working as per instructions of comment #137. Took a while, though.

There are still some issues in Maverick, however, although they mostly are not related to this bug. There is one thing, however, which might be related to the instructions in #137: The "Software Sources" line has disappeared from the desktop, ie. from System -> Administration. And because #137 instructs to edit the /etc/apt/sources.list, I wonder if the disappearance was caused by that. Copying the back-up file back to sources.list did not help. I can still get to the "Software Sources" through Synaptic (Settings -> Repositories), but the direct link is missing.

Thanks anyway!

Installing the 96.43.19 from maverick-proposed solved the issue on my Dell Latitude D800 oldie (GeForce4 4200 Go card).

FYI:
- I had to use the text install to get the 10.10 installed on this laptop in the first place;
- X worked after reboot, but the mouse cursor had a "shadow" ca. 1 cm apart from the real cursor position (with nv driver, I presume);
- installation of original 10.10 nvidia drivers resulted in text-only mode for a while; and
- the #137 method saved the day (thx).

OK, something is broken now: kpackagekit (I'm on kubuntu) replies "unknown error"on every mouse click. On console output it complains about missing the ibus-daemon...

synaptic work fine, so it's bye-bye kpackagekit...

Installed nvidia-96, jockey-common, and jockey-gtk from maverick-proposed on my Compaq Presario R3000 and rebooted and the problem is now fixed (amd64).

I installed jocky-gtk, jockey-common, nvidia-96, nvidia-96-modaliases from maverick-proposed on my Dell desktop with a Geforce3 Ti 200. Problem solved. However, there was a side effect: now vino-server aborts with "** ERROR **: Failed to register GObject with DBusConnection". Is there something else that I need to update something else to maverick-proposed?

This bug was fixed in the package jockey - 0.5.10-0ubuntu5.2

---------------
jockey (0.5.10-0ubuntu5.2) maverick-proposed; urgency=low

  * data/handlers/nvidia.py:
    - Re-enable nvidia-96 now that it's compatible with xserver 1.9
      (LP: #626974).
 -- Alberto Milone <email address hidden> Mon, 22 Nov 2010 11:46:49 +0100

This bug was fixed in the package nvidia-graphics-drivers-96 - 96.43.19-0ubuntu1

---------------
nvidia-graphics-drivers-96 (96.43.19-0ubuntu1) maverick-proposed; urgency=low

  * New upstream release:
    - Switch to new xsfbs variables to get the server ABI
      (LP: #616214).
    - Add support for X.Org xserver 1.9 (LP: #626974).
  * debian/nvidia-96.postinst{.in}:
    - Call dpkg-trigger with "--by-package".
  * debian/dkms/patches/nvidia-2.6.36-ioctl.patch:
    - Add compatibility with kernel 2.6.3{6|7}.
 -- Alberto Milone <email address hidden> Sat, 20 Nov 2010 17:36:13 +0100

I'm assuming this task was just left open in error and that the issue also is solved in natty's package.

This problem is affecting me too. I have tried:

* installing the PPA ubuntu-x-swat-x-updates-maverick (results in Hash Sum Mismatch when trying to install nvidia driver)
* following suggestions from #36 to downgrade back to Lucid.
* installing driver from maverick-proposed (apt-get install nvidia-current/maverick-proposed => E: Unable to locate package nvidia-graphics-drivers-96)
* installing proprietary driver directly from Nvidia site.

I've been at it all afternoon reading this and other threads and trying suggestions and nothing has worked. Does anybody have a fix for this?

A side-question. How do I know which driver I need for my chipset. lspci says I have NVidia NV44A [GeForce 6200]. Does that need the 96 or 170 driver or something else? I don't even know what those numbers mean. I assume that they must correspond to chipsets. I've been to the nvidia site but don't know what to look for.

I wish there was a clear set of instructions somewhere. Alternately, someone please tell me what kind of card I need to upgrade to for which there are good drivers in Maverick. I'd gladly pay a few extra bucks to have a working system again because I depend on it for my work. What a mess this has been for me and for others!

BTW - I tried running jockey-text (I have only a simple tty console right now) with -u, -c, -l, and it prints only "GtkWarning: could not open display" which doesn't make sense since jockey-text is supposed to be for non-graphics terminals. I know this is probably a separate issue, but I just thought I'd mention it.

@Larry: from ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/260.19.06/README/supportedchips.html it seems to me that you need the 260 (for natty 270) family of drivers, not the 96 one.

Thanks. I finally got the proprietary driver from Nvidia to install and
it's working so I'll leave well enough alone and hope that they fix the
problem in the next Ubuntu release (11.4) so I can go back to the distro
package.

-Larry Siden

The United States is a nation of laws, badly written and randomly enforced.
--Frank Zappa 1940-1993

On Mon, Apr 11, 2011 at 2:10 AM, Manfred Hampl <email address hidden>wrote:

> @Larry: from
>
> ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/260.19.06/README/supportedchips.html
> it seems to me that you need the 260 (for natty 270) family of drivers,
> not the 96 one.
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/626974
>
> Title:
> ABI change in xorg 1.9 breaks legacy nvidia-96 drivers in Maverick
>
> To unsubscribe from this bug, go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-release-notes/+bug/626974/+subscribe
>

I do not think so; I have been trying 11.04 and I have the same problem (a black screen in 10 seconds).

So, what's the current situation? Will these drivers be supported with an update to Maverick now? What does the "invalid" status in xorg-server mean?

As far as I know the current situation is as follows:

There is a working version of the dedicated proprietary nvidia-96 driver for Ubuntu 10.10 - not delivered with the installation or upgrade CD's, but available from the standard repositories for normal package installation.

The issue with Ubuntu 11.04 (there is no working dedicated proprietary nvidia -96 driver for xorg 1.10 available yet) is not the topic of this bug, but dealt with in bug #741930

Setting the status on X.org X server to 'invalid' mens that the changes have to be done / have been done on other packages, and X.org X server is not to be blamed.

It happened again with Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin :(