Nvidia Drivers for Fedora 9

This will probably be fixed by the time Fedora 9 is released, but I had trouble getting the NVidia drivers to work.

I tried the rpm packages from AtRPMS, but I couldn’t get them to work.  First of all, they forced me to downgrade to the kernel version 2.6.25-1 (I was at 2.6.25-8).  Then, they didn’t install the nvidia-settings program and didn’t update xorg.conf.  Finally, when I tried to update xorg.conf, XWindows wouldn’t start.

So, I decided to manually install the drivers.

The latest version that I found on the website was:

NVIDIA-Linux-x86-169.12-pkg1.run

I had to update to the latest kernel release again because I couldn’t find drivers for the one that I was on.  And, when I tried to compile it, I got an error.  Looking in /var/log/nvidia-installer.log, I found:
/tmp/selfgz5981/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-169.12-pkg1/usr/src/nv/nv-vm.c: In function
‘nv_flush_caches’:
/tmp/selfgz5981/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-169.12-pkg1/usr/src/nv/nv-vm.c:364: error:
implicit declaration of function ‘global_flush_tlb’
make[4]: *** [/tmp/selfgz5981/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-169.12-pkg1/usr/src/nv/nv-vm.
o] Error 1
make[3]: *** [_module_/tmp/selfgz5981/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-169.12-pkg1/usr/src/n
v] Error 2
make[2]: *** [sub-make] Error 2
NVIDIA: left KBUILD.
nvidia.ko failed to build!
make[1]: *** [module] Error 1
make: *** [module] Error 2

Then, I found an FTP link where later drivers were listed.  I tried the 173.08 version.  After manually deleting a broken link created by the previous install (/usr/lib/xorg/modules/libwfb.so), it compiled without a problem.  But, I could not start the XWindows.

Here is what I got:
(EE) module ABI major version (0) doesn't match the server's version (1)
(EE) Failed to load module "glx" (module requirement mismatch, 0)
================ WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING ================
This server has a video driver ABI version of 4.0 that this
driver does not officially support. Please check
http://www.nvidia.com/ for driver updates or downgrade to an X
server with a supported driver ABI.
=================================================================
dlopen: /usr/lib/xorg/modules//libwfb.so: undefined symbol: miZeroLineScreenIndex
(EE) Failed to load /usr/lib/xorg/modules//libwfb.so
(EE) Failed to load module "wfb" (loader failed, 7)
(EE) NVIDIA(0): This video driver ABI is not supported.
(EE) NVIDIA(0): Use the -ignoreABI option to override this check.

The best information that I can find so far, is that NVidia does not support the latest version of XWindows yet.

Conclusion

So far, I have determined I have to wait for NVidia to update their drivers.  I am hoping they will have it done in the next couple of weeks only because Fedora 9’s release dates is in 14 days.

Resources

Thread pointing to the latest drivers

Thread on incompatibility

Advanced Driver Search

Another Thread

8 thoughts on “Nvidia Drivers for Fedora 9

  1. apx,

    Thanks for the link.

    But, my problem was not the patch. I used the 173 version that did not need the patch. The problem was not that it was incompatible with the kernel but that it was incompatible with X Windows.

  2. link wrong forgot the .html

    http://www.linuxweather.com/livna-nvidia-install.html

    Sorry, this was adapted from various sources
    To fix the SELinux issue you would need to run

    chcon –reference=/usr/bin/Xorg /usr/bin/Xorg.0

    But works better with SELinux disabled/permissive (if using wireless or router, not a big concern to disable it for now until Nvidia comes out with an official driver)

  3. Brad,

    This acknowledgement is a bit late, but thank you for the information.

    I actually got the workaround to work, but I had a lot of problems with it. For example, when my screen would go blank, the screen would never recover.

    But, all that being said, NVidia has released an official driver and everything seems to work now!

    http://linuxsagas.wordpress.com/2008/05/30/nvidia-fixed/

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