# Installation nvidia drivers



## Petr (May 19, 2012)

Hi all,

I am going install the Nvidia driver. I will use this howto: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/compiz-fusion/nvidia-setup.html.  My graphics card is a GeForce 8600 GTS.


```
pciconf -lv
vgapci0@pci0:1:0:0 class=0x030000 card=0x09501462 chip=0x040010de rev=0xa1
hdr=0x00
vendor                                    = 'nVidia Corporation'
device                                    = 'G84 [GeForce 8600 GTS]'
class                                     = display
subclass                                  = VGA
```

I am a newbie in FreeBSD. I do not know if I can fix any errors. Therefore, I will first write the whole procedure here. Please tell me about errors. A first step will update ports and system.

```
portsnap fetch
portsnap update 
portupgrade -a
```

Second step will be to edit file /boot/loader.conf to add the line 
	
	



```
nvidia_load="YES"
```

Third step will be the instalation of the drivers.


```
#cd /usr/ports/x11/nvidia-driver-71xx
# make 
# make install 
# make clean
```

Fourth step will be the instalallation of the x11/nvidia-xconfig port and creation of an xorg.conf file. In xorg.conf I will change nv to nvidia.YES.

Thanks.

Petr


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## francis (May 20, 2012)

Hi, *Petr*. I also have a NVIDIA graphics card. I use it for a long time without any problems. I see you have a GeForce 8600 GTS card and you are trying to install 71xx driver version, which seems to support older cards. I think you should install the x11/nvidia-driver 295.49 version (see; Display Driver â€“ x86 and SUPPORTED PRODUCTS) from /usr/ports/x11/nvidia-driver/ directory[1], [2]. After a successful compilation/installation, you can (you should?) load a NVIDIA module by using kldload(8) utility.

If I remember correctly - but I could be wrong - to compile the NVIDIA driver, the kernel sources are also needed. There are several ways to get it: great Installing FreeBSD 9 source tutorial by wblock@ etc. Of course you have to update the ports tree before driver build process. I see that you already done this step with portsnap(8) utility. I think, that update of all packages (portupgrade -a in your case), at this point is not needed.

The rest steps are the same as it already mentioned. x11/nvidia-xconfig (see; Configuring X for the NVIDIA Driver, more informations README and Installation Guide) will auto-detect and create (or edit, if already present) the xorg.conf configuration file and modify it to use the NVIDIA X driver. This file should be placed in the /etc/X11/ directory. That's all (some more informations you can find here; X11 Configuration). Of course you can add many more options to this file, such as that allow to not use HAL and Dbus etc.

Please correct me if I wrote something wrong. I compile/install a driver for NVIDIA cards long time ago. I have done this on FreeBSD 8.1 - almost two years ago. As we know there is already 8.3 and 9 RELEASE. However, please here is my complete, old xorg.conf file.

`# cd /usr/ports/x11/nvidia-driver/ && make install clean [color="Blue"][1][/color] [i][color="Gray"]Pay attention for a [I]LINUX=on[/i] option (see below).[/color][/I]`

[2] *Important!* Remember that compiling the NVIDIA driver, the LINUX=on option is enabled by default! It is responsible for support for Linux compatibility. If you choose to use it (personally I never use that option) you must also install one of the available linux_base packages (see e.g. emulators/linux_base-f10, emulators/linux_base-fc4 and so on). 
_If I remember - you will also need to add compat.linux.osrelease: 2.6.16 option to the /etc/sysctl.conf file. Note: CentOS 6 Linux base port is not support this option, please use 2.6.18!_


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