Debian sarge (kernel 2.6.9) & nvidia driver 1.0-6629

[Void Main]

I just ordered the XFX GeForce 6600 GT AGP. I picked that one because it appears to run a little cooler than most of the other brands. Of course it will be a few days before it gets here so...

[Membrax]

Relax, relax.
As long as my VESA mode offers me the ability to have a kind of gfx possibility, I'm safe.

Take care.

[Void Main]

Well, my new XFX 6600 GT AGP was sitting in my chair in it's FedEx box when I got home an hour ago. I pulled my MX 4000 PCI card out, stuck the new AGP card in and plugged in the extra HD power cable, turned the computer on and everything worked perfectly. Doom 3 screams with this card. Here's my lspci -vv output (run as root):

Code: Select all

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV43 [GeForce 6600/GeForce 6600 GT] (rev a2) (prog-if 00 [VGA])
        Subsystem: Unknown device 1682:2119
        Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
        Status: Cap+ 66Mhz+ UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
        Latency: 248 (1250ns min, 250ns max)
        Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 11
        Region 0: Memory at e4000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
        Region 1: Memory at d0000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
        Region 2: Memory at e5000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
        Capabilities: [60] Power Management version 2
                Flags: PMEClk- DSI- D1- D2- AuxCurrent=0mA PME(D0-,D1-,D2-,D3hot-,D3cold-)
                Status: D0 PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=0 PME-
        Capabilities: [44] AGP version 3.0
                Status: RQ=256 Iso- ArqSz=0 Cal=3 SBA+ ITACoh- GART64- HTrans- 64bit- FW+ AGP3+ Rate=x4,x8
                Command: RQ=32 ArqSz=0 Cal=0 SBA+ AGP+ GART64- 64bit- FW- Rate=x8


Here is my xorg.conf and my Xorg.0.log:
http://voidmain.is-a-geek.net/files/6600GT/

Of course I am running Xorg and kernel 2.6.9 on Fedora Core 3 so our systems aren't quite configured the same. At least we know the card should work with the nVidia Linux driver. If I get some time I might try and install a small installation of Sarge and see if I can come up with a working config.

[Void Main]

Ok, just installed Sarge on my Athlon desktop system, installed the 2.6.8-1 kernel and headers, installed the nVidia driver, changed the conf driver to nvidia and it seems to work just fine. Here's my conf:

http://voidmain.is-a-geek.net/files/6600GT/XF86Config-4

You might want to try to reinstall the nVidia driver if that doesn't work. If none of this works then I don't know what to say other than wonder if the card is broke.

I must also say that Sarge doesn't like my Athlon system very much. I used the network install CD to install my system and my NIC didn't work with the default 2.4.27 kernel on the install. It also comes with a 2.6.8 kernel so I did install that after the base install finished and my network card worked with it. I was getting some other strange segfault stuff going on with various apps. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it as Red Hat/Fedora has always worked well on it but at least it worked well enough to check the nVidia driver. I didn't use the same kernel version as you though, I suppose I could try that one. Or you could install the 2.6.8-1 kernel and see if that works for you. Also keep in mind I did no config tweaking at all, it's stock. Might want to check the monitor horiz/vert freqs and set to whatever your monitor is capable of before trying it on your system.

[Ice9]

This is unbelievable, but I had a feeling it was gonna go like this ...

We went through a lot of things, reinstalled the driver a couple of times, trying it on different kernels, 2.6.7, 2.6.8 and 2.6.9 and nothing worked!
Vesa is the only option that works with his card!
Maybe like you said it's the card ....

[Membrax]

Needless to say how frustrating this sounds.

My XF86Config-4 is now a perfect copy/paste of yours (for the graphical part) and I'll first try to reinstall the driver as you said.

The funny part is that this card really ROCKS under Win2K (I've such a drive always ready to be plugged ... to play Half-Life2 ...). We can say that the hardware part seems to run without a glitch though.

Okay, I'll try what you've suggested, I'll keep you posted.

Thanks man !!

[Membrax]

It still refuses to boot in graphical mode.

The error message is still the same :
(EE) : No devices detected.

However, technically speaking, the core hardware is seen but not "activated". With other words, it "sees" that there's a nvidia chipset and identifies it as "0x000f1" which is the correct nvidia ID for 6600 GT chipsets.

It also sees the chipset revision, which is rev 129.

So here's my guess :
My MSI 6600GT uses a "too new" chipset revision and this prevents the current nvidia module to completely identify the card. That doubt makes the driver generate a "No devices detected" error message.

Of course I'm absolutely not sure of that, it's my saturday's guess.

I can hardly wait for a "new" nvidia .run package which would consider "other" chipset revisions as well. Let's hope this is the right explanation.
Inbetween I'll keep on living with the VESA mode.

Anyway let me clearly tell how you all wonder us !
Doing all that stuff (getting a 6600 + installing Sarge) really impresses us (don't you think so Ice9 ?).
Few people would spend so much time in putting themselves in the same environment just to look after what's going wrong for someone else's system.
And for that I'm really thankful !

Have a nice weekend!

[Ice9]

Membrax, I tried to call you a couple of times today but you don't pick up your phone
Did you already tweak your system extensively?
If not I would consider doing a clean install of sarge with the 6600GT in your system at install time ...

My guess is that you probably selected something at the install stage that now conflicts with the nvidia kernel module.
Anyway, it would be interesting to see if you can get the card to work with a new install, after all it only takes 30 minutes or so ...

[Membrax]

Yeah Ice, got your message this ...eeer... morning / afternoon [ pick what fits best ]

But I still stick to my idea.

What about pluging my MSI 6600 in your Sarge system one of these days ?

This would avoid me that install process and could eliminate some possibilities in our thinking process.

[Void Main]

One other thing. Make sure you don't have the rivafb module loaded. To see if it's loaded do this:

/sbin/lsmod | grep riva

I also uploaded my XFree86.0.log if you wanted to see where ours differ:
http://voidmain.is-a-geek.net/files/660 ... ee86.0.log

I think our chip versions are the same so if it works for me it should work for you (generally). Other factors that may have something to do with it is the main board that it's plugged in to, surely our hardware is different but I don't think that should be a problem either. I'll boot back into Debian now and capture the output of an "lspci -vvv" (as root) so you can compare the differences in the nVidia section.

Don't give me so much credit for going out and buying a card like yours just to help you out (although I would love to be able to afford to do that). :) I ended up with that exact card because I got my son a copy of Doom 3 for Christmas (there's gotta be something wrong with that somewhere) and it was as slow as molasses in January. I did a lot of searching around and I had a price point I needed to stay under and I almost ordered a 5700. Then I decided to ask around at the nvnews forums for advice on the card purchase and realized the 6600GT was the best card for the money and only went about $30 over the absolute maximum I wanted to spend. :) I did have in mind that I could also try and better help you out though before purchasing. If another card had been a better fit for me I would have gone with it though.

EDIT: I think I figured out the strange segfaults I was getting in Sarge earlier. At the same time I was installing Sarge I set the system from "normal" to "fast" in the BIOS (some sort of overclocking stuff). Setting it back to normal seems to have cleared it all up (posting from Sarge right now with the nvidia driver). I also had a lockup in FC3 with it on fast so that sparked the idea that it was also probably causing my Sarge problems, which it was.

Back on topic, here's my "lspci -vvv":
http://voidmain.is-a-geek.net/files/6600GT/lspcivvv.log

I just compared and our outputs are nearly identical (I have some sort of additional unknown subsystem though). I think if you run an "lspci -vvv" (as root) you might come up with the identical info I have (except for memory address locations).

Also, another note that you might check, after I rebooted the nvidia kernel driver did not automatically load so X wouldn't start and gave the same message you see. After logging in and typing "modprobe nvidia" then "startx" X starts. So if that is your problem then we just need to find the appropriate place to get your module loaded on startup.

[Ice9]

Membrax wrote:

Yeah Ice, got your message this ...eeer... morning / afternoon [ pick what fits best ]

But I still stick to my idea.

What about pluging my MSI 6600 in your Sarge system one of these days ?

This would avoid me that install process and could eliminate some possibilities in our thinking process.

So you'd rather have to open your case, pull out your card and drive for 45 minutes to my place, have me open my case, pull out my card and put yours in than trying a new install which is about to take you 30 minutes?
Plus I'm not using Sarge anymore, Im on Sid

there's be something weird about your logic huh!?

[Void Main]

I did learn one thing in this exercise. I learned my web site really does suck. :) I never intended on it being "professional looking" but in the stock configured Mozilla that comes with Debian the fonts and rendering are really different than any other system I've checked the site from. Things are wrapping where they shouldn't be wrapping because I believe the fonts are larger than they should be, probably a minimum font size setting in the browser that is larger than any other. It's not important enough for me to actually check the settings though. :) I supposed some day I just need to do a complete redesign and create a more professional ugly web site, one that looks exactly ugly as I intend on it looking in every browser on every system. :)

[Void Main]

To get the nvidia driver to load at boot time in Debian all you have to do is add it's name "nvidia" to the /etc/modules file. When the kernel module loads it will automatically create the proper device files in /dev so there is no need to copy anything to /etc/udev/devices like on Fedora. Also I am sure you know this but just to make sure did you recompile the nVidia module for each kernel that you have run? Running the nVidia installer while booted in that kernel will build the module.

[Membrax]

Membrax wrote:

Yeah Ice, got your message this ...eeer... morning / afternoon [ pick what fits best ]

But I still stick to my idea.

What about pluging my MSI 6600 in your Sarge system one of these days ?

This would avoid me that install process and could eliminate some possibilities in our thinking process.

So you'd rather have to open your case, pull out your card and drive for 45 minutes to my place, have me open my case, pull out my card and put yours in than trying a new install which is about to take you 30 minutes?
Plus I'm not using Sarge anymore, Im on Sid

there's be something weird about your logic huh!?

...well, just still finding pleasant to see ya sometimes.

[Membrax]

Well Void Main,

/sbin/lsmod | grep riva
gives me ... nothing.

I did compare your log file with mine and what do I see there?

This isn't mentioned in mine :

Line 20 : " Module Loader present "

Line 47 : " (==) ModulePath set to "/usr/X11R6/lib/modules" "

Lines 50 to 69 :
" (II) Module ABI versions:
XFree86 ANSI C Emulation: 0.2
XFree86 Video Driver: 0.6
XFree86 XInput driver : 0.4
XFree86 Server Extension : 0.2
XFree86 Font Renderer : 0.4
(II) Loader running on linux
(II) LoadModule: "bitmap"
(II) Loading /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/fonts/libbitmap.a
(II) Module bitmap: vendor="The XFree86 Project"
compiled for 4.3.0.1, module version = 1.0.0
Module class: XFree86 Font Renderer
ABI class: XFree86 Font Renderer, version 0.4
(II) Loading font Bitmap
(II) LoadModule: "pcidata"
(II) Loading /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/libpcidata.a
(II) Module pcidata: vendor="The XFree86 Project"
compiled for 4.3.0.1, module version = 1.0.0
ABI class: XFree86 Video Driver, version 0.6 "


My /etc/modules :
ide-cd
ide-detect
nvidia


lspci -vvv gives us more or less the same output :
" 0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 00f1 (rev a2) (prog-if 00 [VGA])
Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
Status: Cap+ 66MHz+ UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
Latency: 32 (1250ns min, 250ns max)
Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 169
Region 0: Memory at f8000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
Region 1: Memory at e0000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
Region 2: Memory at f9000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
Capabilities: [60] Power Management version 2
Flags: PMEClk- DSI- D1- D2- AuxCurrent=0mA PME(D0-,D1-,D2-,D3hot-,D3cold-)
Status: D0 PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=0 PME-
Capabilities: [44] AGP version 3.0
Status: RQ=256 Iso- ArqSz=0 Cal=3 SBA+ ITACoh- GART64- HTrans- 64bit- FW+ AGP3+ Rate=x4,x8
Command: RQ=1 ArqSz=0 Cal=0 SBA- AGP- GART64- 64bit- FW- Rate=<none> "


Well, it could be that my nvidia module's not moading correctly.

Wat do we do ?