The nv driver and GeForce 7100 (Was: F10 on Homebuilt Box - Absolutely Brutal...!!!!)

[Christopher A. Williams]

On Tue, 2008-11-18 at 16:10 -0500, Adam Jackson wrote:
> On Tue, 2008-11-18 at 10:43 -0700, Christopher A. Williams wrote:
> 
> > > (II) Primary Device is: PCI 00 at 00:10:0
> > > (WW) NV: Ignoring unsupported device 0x10de07e1 (GeForce 7100/nForce
> > > 630i) at 00 at 00:10:0
> > > (WW) Falling back to old probe method for fbdev
> > Unsupported??? (Big, Texas "Hunnnh...?")
> > 
> > After looking at this log in detail (and googling to see others with the
> > same card plus F9/10 and other distros having the identical problem), I
> > guess the real question to ask is why the nv driver seems to support
> > every nVidia card out there _except_ the GeForce 7100 series.
> > 
> > Oversight? If intentional, why, and what can be done to include it?
> 
> Not an oversight, utterly intentional.  You can thank nvidia for this
> one.  Apparently it's slightly weirder than your normal geforce 7, and
> they haven't written the code to support it in the nv driver yet (nor
> told us what needs doing).
> 
> We _ought_ to fall straight back to vesa if we can.  I've stared at this
> code a bit and not figured out why we're not falling back properly, but
> I guess I'll stare more.
> 
> If you're feeling adventurous you could hack out the bit of the nv
> driver that rejects that chip and then bang on things until it works,
> but it's not the sort of thing one can be hand-held through, you really
> will have to poke blindly until it works...

So nVidia strikes again. Sad... Well, as long as we can successfully
fall back to vesa long enough to install the proprietary "nvidia"
driver, it's at least not a show stopper those who are less determined
than I to make it work.

Now - as to the nv driver, someone using it with this card on F9 says it
works if you:

- Booted without "rhgb" on the grub kernel line
- Configured the system (fedora initial configuration)
- ctrl-alt-f1
- login as root
- init 3
- change xorg.conf, device driver to "nv" (originally detected vesa).
- # su - rodolfo (thats my daily username)
- $ startx -- -ignoreABI (started fine)
- end that gnome session
- init 5

I don't see why this would work, but the two people on this mailing list
say that it does. I haven't tried it (and probably won't since I have
the proprietary driver working just fine now). Perhaps it gives a clue
to the weirdness of the GeForce 7100. Link to where I found this is:
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2008-May/msg01891.html 

I have another idea that might help troubleshoot falling back to vesa
though. I'm assuming that since system-config-display launches a session
of X on its own, there must be a log of what happens somewhere. I'll see
what I can come up with...

Cheers,

Chris

--
====================================
"Ninety-nine percent of the failures
come from people who have the habit
of making excuses."

--George Washington Carver