# xorg, nvidia & 8.0 stable



## pippo (May 1, 2010)

So far, haven't found any solutions.
This is a fresh installation; monitor is a widescreen LG W2361; driver should be "nvidia" but there is no nvidia.ko for the kernel. 
Supposedly the kernel is out of sync with the src.
How is that? I mean, why wold it be out of sync? The install was from a livefs disk with ftp for installation. Didn't use local /src as it did not exist. Later installed the stable src files. So, what is going on.
There is a lot of info about the nvidia driver but no explanation or any possible solutions that I can see...
Hope someone understands the issue.
I can post whatever you want from the log or other files.
TIA


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## DutchDaemon (May 1, 2010)

Your posts are rather chaotic. The apparent backstory to this is http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=13719, I assume? Maybe you should tackle one subject at the time, because you lost me after three lines.


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## pippo (May 2, 2010)

Quite right, they are chaotic because the installation is getting more and more chaotic by the minute.
I rather think it makes sense to give some background so anyone looking at the problem can understand what has been done to try to rectify it.

Ok, let's tackle problem #1
Can't start Xorg with nvidia driver.
Google & this forum searches were of no help.
BTW, I have never, ever had Xorg start correctly on the first try after running Xorg -configure. The xorg.conf.new file has never (in my experience) worked "out of the box". At best, I had to change the mouse driver from sysmouse to psm0, at worst, I had to tweak a lot of stuff. And that was regardless whether I was using hal and dbus or not.

Now, I have tried starting with xorg.conf.new - black screen, errors: mouse & keyboard disable because AllowEmptyInput is "off": is this the default? I certainly didn't set it to that!

I tried starting with startx - wiggly greenish shimmering screen. Shift/Ctl/F1 and Ctl/C gives error: can't find nvidia.ko or kernel is out of sync. Great, I've seen this in other posts.

So where is this nvidia.ko? Where does it come from? How could the kernel (GENERIC & virgin) be out of sync. Out of sync with the src - but which src ? 8 or 8_0 ? Tried them both, but there is no nvidia.ko in either. And just how would I determine what GENERIC & sync should be?

If this is confusing, tell me how to simplify it...


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## ondra_knezour (May 2, 2010)

pippo said:
			
		

> monitor is a widescreen LG W2361



Connected using D-Sub, HDMI or DVI? Graphics card type used? i386 or amd64 Architecture?



> driver should be "nvidia" but there is no nvidia.ko for the kernel.
> Supposedly the kernel is out of sync with the src.


If I recall right, opensource X driver for nVidia cards is called *nv*. There are several nVidia proprietary binary drivers in ports, looks for directories like /usr/ports/x11/nvidia-driver-*.


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## sossego (May 3, 2010)

Take ondra_knezour's suggestion but start off with

```
uname -a
```
.
Look for the proprietary driver which fits you architecture. 
You may need to build Mesa- I had to for the nvidia card in another computer.

If xorg doesn't exactly work the first time, then try 
	
	



```
Xorg -configure -retro
```
.
This will give you an actual xorg.conf.new file to edit.

I believe there is also a nouveau driver available.


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## SirDice (May 3, 2010)

The nvidia kernel module isn't part of FreeBSD. It's part of the proprietary NVidia driver and gets installed with x11/nvidia-driver.


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## Zare (May 3, 2010)

> Quite right, they are chaotic because the installation is getting more and more chaotic by the minute.



It's chaotic because your approach is chaotic.



> can't find nvidia.ko or kernel is out of sync



This is certainly what autogenerated xorg.conf *wouldn't* put out. You obviously have line _Driver "nvidia"_ in it's device section, which targets nVidia's own proprietary full-accelerated drivers (which aren't installed or aren't configured). Xorg autoconfigures nVidia adapters with _nv_ driver, opensource driver with no HW acceleration.

There are couple of branches of nVidia proprietary drivers in ports tree for you to use, depending what card do you have. The kernel module needs to be loaded, eg. you need to have _nvidia_load="YES"_ line in your /boot/loader.conf .


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## pippo (May 4, 2010)

*solved*

That my approach is chaotic is rather a childish response.
The problem was that there is no information about what driver is correct for the installed card. In order to find it I had to deinstall and reinstall the nvidia-driver (luckily only 1 reinstall did it - without Linux support); that burped out a message that the right drive is the nvidia-driver-173. That did it even with Linux support configured. BTW, the nv did not work in this install no matter what I tried. Probably would have had to try any number of different settings. Anyway, I like the new driver much better than the nv: Geforce FX5600 w. 128mb memory, and the LG W2361 monitor on FreeBSD 8.0-Stable. Still the xorg.conf file had to be tweaked before things started working.
Thanks to all for their kind input.
Pippo


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