Sparky 4 and Nvidia drivers

[Runaway1956]

I'm probably a fringe case - people probably shouldn't take this advice over other advice posted widely across the internet.

I simply could NOT get Nvidia installed on my fresh install of sparky.  Things are rather screwy here - I have TWO graphics cards on my system.

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root@awesome:/home/guy# inxi -G
Graphics:  Card-1: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] ES1000
           Card-2: NVIDIA GK208 [GeForce GT 630 Rev. 2]
           Display Server: X.org 1.17.1 driver: nvidia
           tty size: 80x25 Advanced Data: N/A for root


You may well ask, "Why do you have TWO video devices, one from each major brand?"  Well, I've got a server board, with an onboard ATI graphics controller, plus the GT 630 installed into the PCIe slot.

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root@awesome:/home/guy# inxi -M
Machine:   Mobo: Supermicro model: H8DM8-2 v: 1234567890 serial: 1234567890
           Bios: American Megatrends v: 080014 date: 10/22/2009


Pavroo's DDM failed me, as did a dozen other guides posted in various places.  Each and every time I would get my Nvidia driver installed, I would reboot to a hung screen.  There is no place in the Bios to simply disable that stupid emasculated ATI card.  There is no option to use PCIe first, or exclusively, or anything like that.  I've got the ATI, and that's that, end of story.  If I'm to get my Nvidia working, I've got to somehow work around the ATI.

This is what finally worked for me.  I followed this particular guide, which doesn't seem to be greatly different from several other guides available, with TWO modifications. 

First, I blacklisted the nouveau modeset in grub, according to this page http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/fedora-35/how-to-permanently-blacklist-nouveau-module-in-fedora-17-grub2-4175437409/

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GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="rd.md=0 rd.lvm=0 rd.dm=0 SYSFONT=True  KEYTABLE=us rd.luks=0 LANG=en_US.UTF-8 rhgb quiet rdblacklist=nouveau"
and

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grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg


THEN, I blacklisted the Nouveau driver in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-nouveau.conf

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blacklist nouveau
blacklist lbm-nouveau
options nouveau modeset=0
alias nouveau off
alias lbm-nouveau of


http://linuxconfig.org/nvidia-geforce-driver-installation-on-debian-jessie-linux-8-64bit

Once I had Jessie's current Nvidia driver installed, I rebooted, and joy, joy, joy - I went straight to the graphical login screen!

Not quite content, I decided to switch over to the experimental branch, to see just which driver I might install.  This is my modified sources.list, with appropriate comment lines.

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deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ testing main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ testing main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://www.deb-multimedia.org testing main non-free

## Other repos can be found in /etc/apt/sources.list.d directory ##

## used only to install NVIDIA 346 driver
## may be used again if I find it desirable to update NVIDIA
## deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ experimental main contrib non-free
## deb-src http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ experimental main contrib non-free


Reboot, and I'm good with my Enlightenment desktop!

Final step to get the system I'm looking for, is to install the Liquorix kernel.  Be back in a few minutes to report on that . . .

[Runaway1956]

Well, then - Liquorix no longer supports the 346 driver, so that is out for now.   System I have looks like this now:

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guy@awesome:~$ inxi -F
System:    Host: awesome Kernel: 4.0.0-2-amd64 x86_64 (64 bit) Desktop: Enlightenment 0.19.99.19943
           Distro: Sparky 4 Tyche
Machine:   Mobo: Supermicro model: H8DM8-2 v: 1234567890
           Bios: American Megatrends v: 080014 date: 10/22/2009
CPU(s):    2 Hexa core Six-Core AMD Opteron 2425 HEs (-HT-MCP-SMP-) cache: 6144 KB
           Clock Speeds: 1: 800 MHz 2: 2100 MHz 3: 1600 MHz 4: 800 MHz 5: 800 MHz 6: 800 MHz
           7: 800 MHz 8: 2100 MHz 9: 1600 MHz 10: 800 MHz 11: 1100 MHz 12: 800 MHz
Graphics:  Card-1: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] ES1000
           Card-2: NVIDIA GK208 [GeForce GT 630 Rev. 2]
           Display Server: X.Org 1.17.1 driver: nvidia Resolution: 1024x768@60.00hz, 1280x1024@75.02hz
           GLX Renderer: GeForce GT 630/PCIe/SSE2 GLX Version: 4.5.0 NVIDIA 346.72
Audio:     Card-1 NVIDIA Device 0e0f driver: snd_hda_intel Sound: ALSA v: k4.0.0-2-amd64
           Card-2 Plantronics driver: USB Audio
Network:   Card-1: NVIDIA MCP55 Ethernet driver: forcedeth
           IF: eth0 state: up speed: 100 Mbps duplex: full mac: 00:30:48:c8:16:72
           Card-2: NVIDIA MCP55 Ethernet driver: forcedeth
           IF: eth1 state: down mac: 00:30:48:c8:16:73
           Card-3: Realtek RTL8187 Wireless Adapter driver: rtl8187
           IF: wlan0 state: down mac: 00:e0:4c:91:8b:9c
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 800.2GB (42.7% used) ID-1: /dev/sda model: MKNSSDCR240GB size: 240.1GB
           ID-2: /dev/sdb model: MKNSSDCR240GB size: 240.1GB
           ID-3: /dev/sdc model: WDC_WD3200AUDX size: 320.1GB
Partition: ID-1: / size: 28G used: 3.7G (15%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda2
           ID-2: /home size: 185G used: 17G (10%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda3
           ID-3: swap-1 size: 11.21GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/sdc1
           ID-4: swap-2 size: 4.91GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/sdb3
           ID-5: swap-3 size: 8.80GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/sda1
Sensors:   None detected - is lm-sensors installed and configured?
Info:      Processes: 238 Uptime: 3 min Memory: 605.8/22164.1MB Client: Shell (bash) inxi: 2.1.28
guy@awesome:~$ inxi -I
Info:      Processes: 238 Uptime: 3 min Memory: 603.4/22164.1MB Client: Shell (bash) inxi: 2.1.28
guy@awesome:~$



I think most of us know that downloading the driver directly from Nvidia creates problems.  First thing it does, is squawk about a driver kernel already being loaded, and demands that kernel be uninstalled using the package manager that installed it. 

If anyone knows how to get a .deb package for Nvidia 349, please let me know!  This is good enough, but I would like to run the optimized kernel!

[GeneC]

I am running Sparky with latest Liquorix kernel and Nvidia.

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gene@sparky:~$ inxi -F
System:    Host: sparky Kernel: 4.1-2.dmz.1-liquorix-amd64 x86_64 (64 bit) Desktop: Xfce 4.12.2
           Distro: SparkyLinux Tyche
Machine:   Mobo: ASUSTeK model: M4A88TD-M/USB3 v: Rev X.0x
           Bios: American Megatrends v: 1501 date: 08/09/2012
CPU:       Quad core AMD Phenom II X4 955 (-MCP-) cache: 2048 KB
           clock speeds: max: 3200 MHz 1: 3200 MHz 2: 2100 MHz 3: 3200 MHz 4: 800 MHz
Graphics:  Card: NVIDIA GF104 [GeForce GTX 460]
           Display Server: X.Org 1.17.2 driver: nvidia Resolution: 1680x1050@59.95hz
           GLX Renderer: GeForce GTX 460/PCIe/SSE2 GLX Version: 4.5.0 NVIDIA 352.21


Kernel and Nvidia  installed using SMXI.

http://smxi.org/

http://smxi.org/site/install.htm

I also have a built in AMD card.  My BIOS allows me to disable it.  You might look into yours to see if that's possible.

[Runaway1956]

I may try it again, Gene, but not today.  Nvidia 352 just gave me the blinky cursor at a black screen.  I don't know if I'm up to the challenge today, but I might end up downloading both 349.16 and 352.21 from experimental, and compiling them myself.  I fully expect to run into dependency problems if I do that.