# nvidia driver not attaching after upgrade to 8.1



## omarsidd (Nov 9, 2010)

On a recent upgrade from 7.3-RELEASE to 8.1-RELEASE (i386), nvidia driver (256.53 from ports) no longer attaches to the device, although no errors are generated.  Occurs on both custom kernel and GENERIC.

Consequently Xorg says no supported devices are found.

Unloading/reloading the nvidia.ko module makes no difference.  It's initially loaded via loader.conf.  Tried with and without acpi.

Same driver version was working before (7.3-RELEASE).  No changes to hardware or BIOS.  I've successfully run several versions of nvidia-driver against this particular hardware, and have used permutations of this build for a number of years.  This was a source build/upgrade, everything else is working fine.

Tried 8.1-RELEASE GENERIC and 8.1-STABLE (from yesterday), and various/multiple rebuilds. (rebuilding/reinstalling driver for each kernel change)

Any advice or anything I've not checked yet, before I either revert to 7.x or amd64?

Under FreeBSD 7.3-RELEASE (similar kernel build), this is what I got:

```
Sep  7 00:42:16 mine kernel: vgapci0: <VGA-compatible display> port 0xac00-0xac7f mem 0xfa000000-0xfaffffff,0xd0000000-0xdfffffff,0xf8000000-
0xf9ffffff irq 24 at device 0.0 on pci2
Sep  7 00:42:16 mine kernel: nvidia0: <GeForce 9400 GT> on vgapci0
Sep  7 00:42:16 mine kernel: vgapci0: child nvidia0 requested pci_enable_busmaster
Sep  7 00:42:16 mine kernel: vgapci0: child nvidia0 requested pci_enable_io
Sep  7 00:42:16 mine kernel: vgapci0: child nvidia0 requested pci_enable_io
Sep  7 00:42:16 mine kernel: nvidia0: [ITHREAD]
```

And unloading/reloading (kldunload/kldload) the module under 7.3 would do this:

```
Nov  7 01:49:48 mine kernel: nvidia0: detached
Nov  7 01:51:18 mine kernel: nvidia0: <GeForce 9400 GT> on vgapci0
Nov  7 01:51:18 mine kernel: vgapci0: child nvidia0 requested pci_enable_busmaster
Nov  7 01:51:18 mine kernel: vgapci0: child nvidia0 requested pci_enable_io
Nov  7 01:51:18 mine kernel: vgapci0: child nvidia0 requested pci_enable_io
Nov  7 01:51:18 mine kernel: nvidia0: [ITHREAD]
```

Now, with 8.1 I only have:

```
Nov  9 01:44:05 mine kernel: vgapci0: <VGA-compatible display> port 0xac00-0xac7f mem 0xfa000000-0xfaffffff,0xd0000000-0xdfffffff,0xf8000000-
0xf9ffffff irq 24 at device 0.0 on pci2
```

Even though no errors or log messages at all about nvidia and:

```
> kldstat
Id Refs Address    Size     Name
 1    3 0xc0400000 60d0f0   kernel
 2    1 0xc0a0e000 a4b134   nvidia.ko
 3    1 0xc7caa000 24000    linux.ko
```


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## OH (Nov 9, 2010)

260.19.12 is available at the nvidia website. I'm running it here on 8.1 amd64 with no problems.

The usual warnings about installing software outside ports apply of course.


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## DutchDaemon (Nov 9, 2010)

Did you reinstall all of your ports after switching from FreeBSD 7 to 8? Either that, or run under compat_7 mode unless you've done those reinstalls.


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## omarsidd (Nov 9, 2010)

DutchDaemon said:
			
		

> Did you reinstall all of your ports after switching from FreeBSD 7 to 8? Either that, or run under compat_7 mode unless you've done those reinstalls.



Yup, rebuilt them all, then rebuilt every port vaguely X related a second time to be complete. (tho I'm not sure what in ports-land would stop a kernel driver from attaching)

I did grab the newest (x86-260.19.12) driver from nvidia's site, but make is failing-- will post to the nv forum about that.


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## SirDice (Nov 10, 2010)

Edit the nvidia-driver port's Makefile to change the version number. It should build fine with 260.19.12.

Just edit this line:

```
DISTVERSION?=   260.19.12
```

Then run `# make makesum` and build as you normally would.


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## omarsidd (Nov 12, 2010)

I couldn't have this system remain headless any longer, so I reinstalled with amd64 since several people have reported success with 8.1/amd64 and nvidia drivers (and I wanted to switch over anyway).  Nvidia drivers work as expected now.

I didn't have time to diagnose further, but I speculate it's related to having upgraded from 7.x via a source build.  I did do the "make delete" old and old-libs, but maybe something wasn't in the obsoletes list? 

One (other) forum thread suggested that building with the previous OS' tools might pose an issue, although I don't know why it would not manifest in ANY other way.  I did not try redoing buildworld/installworld from 8.1 itself...


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