NVIDIA Install Question - Abandoned

[p310don]

Is there a link to a step by step to get proprietary Nvidia graphics working in FD903?

I keep either getting no desktop or Nouveau. I'm sure I'm doing something super simple wrong, but I just can't get it to work.

[mikewalsh]

@p310don :-

I don't know whether Jim's scripting includes 'black-listing' for the 'nouveau' driver.....which IS necessary for the official driver to function. If so, perhaps just a re-boot?

Without knowing more, it's hard to say....

(*shrug...*)

Mike.

[p310don]

@mikewalsh the default install has a boot option to blacklist nouveau. That's not my problem. I don't really know what my problem is, but that's not it

[Clarity]

Try what is posted here

[p310don]

Nothing works....

I suspect I know why

Following @Clarity's tip to follow @don570's instructions, I selected the Nvidia driver SFS for my machine. It doesn't work. I suspect it's because the driver in the SFS manager is for Kernel 6.1.46 and FD903 runs Kernel 6.10.2

Booting with the SFS loaded just gives me a low res screen which nothing clicks on. If I exit to prompt and run xorgwizard, select Nvidia, then it won't load the desktop.

Tried following JB's instructions here: https://www.lightofdawn.org/wiki/wiki.c ... aDriverSFS. That also doesn't work, failing on the compile stage.

Might "upgrade" to 902 to see if the kernel matches the repo SFSes.

What really frustrates me, is this is a very old machine that is going to be a TV streaming box. It used to run Puppy 5.25. Getting nvidia to run on that was a breeze. I don't think this should be so hard

[Clarity]

I have a sneaking suspicion that the upcoming version of FD will auto-select nvidia for your PC. There are a couple of current forum distros that auto-select nvidia at boot time that you might want to review. The beauty of these is there is no user effort necessary to attain OOTB video-audio over HDMI to a TV. I have tested both on 2 different test PCs I have to the 60inch TV.

From the forum's DOGs thread this is one from @gumanzoy
From the forum's KLs thread this is one from @Sofiya
From the forum's Derivatives this is one from @mistfire
Enjoy

[mikewalsh]

@p310don :-

Heh. Um.....yeah. O-kayyyy.....

Using a driver complied for a different kernel isn't helping in the first place. What's gradually becoming more widely-known is that - for whatever reason! - the 6-series kernels are an unmitigated pig to compile nVidia drivers against. You have to jump through a lot more hoops to get things functional.....and nVidia themselves aren't helping, because they're steadily dropping support for older cards.

What are you using this box FOR, exactly? Is it critical that you use an up-to-date kernel/driver combo?

I ask, because support for my GT 710 was dropped after the 480-series drivers. Doesn't stop me using it, though (I run a mixture of older nVidia drivers). Notwithstanding the fact that I run mostly older Puppies anyway, what few I use with newer, k6-series kernels I simply leave on "nouveau". I don't specifically NEED the official driver, anyway (I'm not a gamer or anything like that). This GT 710 was the very first discrete GPU I've ever had.....I bought it when I got the HP desktop rig at the beginning of COVID, before GPU prices went stupid due to the crypto craze. More than anything, I just wanted to be able to "tick the box" - cross it off my 'bucket list', if you like - just so's I could say to myself "Been there, done that".

TBH, the on-board Intel UHD 610 iGPU is perfectly adequate for my requirements, so this is more for my own personal satisfaction than owt else!

==============================

A suggestion (you don't have to try it if you don't want to). You could swap to Fossapup64's original k5.4.53 kernel (along with matching zdrv/fdrv, natch). Phil B built a mid-450-series nVidia driver for this Puppy, along with included auto-blacklisting. I've experimented with this combo on a few Pups; so long as the glibc is the same (or higher) - I've seriously upgraded most of my Pups in this respect - these two seem to work well with a broad range of different Puppies. Anything that's not Slackware, that is.....due to the differing lib64/x86_64-linux-gnu file-system structures between Slackware & Debian/Ubuntu.

It goes without saying, of course; don't try this on your daily driver itself. Either clone it, then experiment there.....or do a thorough backup first, so you have something you can revert to if things don't pan out.

Mike.

[p310don]

So further study has another theory....

My old card is just crap

Seems new kernels and old drivers don't mix. This is an Nvidia ION, basically 200 series card built into the MoBo. This might have to become abandoned.

TBH, I'm surprised FatDog worked on this PC, it is very ancient, so getting Nvidia (in particular VDPAU) to work on it with modern OS was stretching things.

Might get a blood rush one day and install an OLD Pup to see how it goes.

[mikewalsh]

@p310don :-

Nvidia ION, huh? Hm. So; mmm.....one of these, yes?

https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/ion.c2164

'Kay. 'Bout the same age as the NVS-140m mobile GPU I had in the old Latitude that now sits on the shelf, gathering dust. It's also around the same time-frame as mine was, at the point when the industry was switching over to lead-free solder. (The early formulation attempts were not that good, being rather brittle.....repeated thermal cycles caused the joints to quickly start cracking, with the resulting loss of display).

Old drivers and new kernels? No. NOT a good mix, at all! Not in MY experience....

Mike.

[p310don]

@mikewalsh yep, that's the one.

I was foolishly thinking that because it worked before, it'd work now. How silly of me.

It works kind of ok with Nouveau, but runs like balls when playing HD video. I know it worked in the past with HD video, like I said, running Pup5.25. Back in the good ol' days

[jamesbond]

@p310don, you can use new Fatdog with old kernels. I think @wognath had a post like what somewhere

[mikewalsh]

@mikewalsh yep, that's the one.

I was foolishly thinking that because it worked before, it'd work now. How silly of me.

It works kind of ok with Nouveau, but runs like balls when playing HD video. I know it worked in the past with HD video, like I said, running Pup5.25. Back in the good ol' days

No worries.

Like I said, the Fossapup kernel/driver .pet suggestion WAS only that.......a suggestion. Thinking about it, however, just because I'm content with it - and it works for ME - doesn't follow that it's one that others would be happy with. If you're streaming, that suggests an internet connection.....and that would indicate the need for the use of newer, more up-to-date and secure items.

I know I often advocate sticking with older items that just "work", but even I prefer keeping internet-facing stuff up-to-date. The Fossapup suggestion probably wouldn't work for Fatdog anyway. It uses the Ubuntu convention of 'x86_64-gnu-linux' for the deps, and as far as I understand, FatDog uses the Slackware convention of plain old 'lib64'. So nothing would be where the system would expect to find it.

"Waffling" again! Sorry for the 'red herring'...

(*shrug...*)

Mike.

[p310don]

I mean, I wrote abandoned on the title. Should I re-open my endeavours?

@jamesbond you know if I figure out how to run a new kernel (which I'm already doing on my new machine) then I'll have to compile the nvidia driver to suit the new (old) kernel. To do that, I'd need the kernel sources & devx to suit. I could go down that rabbit hole, it'd probably involve me harassing you.....

@mikewalsh when I said streaming, I meant streaming local movie / tv show files.

The full story....

I have a "Smart TV". Runs android. Like all good android devices, it regularly does updates that seem to be engineered to slow things down in the name of "latest and greatest security". It got to the point where it actually didn't work. A key press, even to change the volume resulted in up to a minute's delay. So I recently did a factory reset on the TV. It now works flawlessly.
My solution to having a functional TV without the stupid update slowdown is to connect a computer to it and not connect the TV itself to the network. If it's connected to the network & thus the internet, it'll decide it's very old and dangerous and update itself to become useless again, probably so useless it'll need replacing with a newer model.
Despite being a bit of a capitalist myself, I'm not a fan of it being used against me, so I'm looking to subvert the update & upgrade system (aren't we all a bit that way in Puppy land?).

I have a raspberry pi 4 connected to the TV with retropie installed. It isn't used often, but it's good for playing old games. It's not good for playing TV shows. I could figure out how to dual boot the Pi with a regular PiOS which will do what I want it to do. Or I could change over the microSD card from retropie to PiOS as needed. MicroSD cards are kind of like physical save files when you think about it.

But, I have this old PC with the Nvidia ION graphics onboard. It's ancient, I think I bought it in about 2008, but it still works. It works surprisingly well with Fatdog. I can install Chrome and very slowly look up webpages and play low quality videos.
In the past, I ran Pup 5.25 and maybe Saluki or Carolina on it. On all of those old Pups, it could very slowly look up webpages and play low quality videos until I installed the Nvidia driver. Then VDPAU worked, and videos played smoothly, up to Full HD 1080 videos. I'm sure it won't handle 4K, but that's not my goal.

I have a file server (actually just my computer with a samba share), on it is a folder called "Sarah Movies". My wife, Sarah, likes to sit at the table and fold washing, watching movies from the "Sarah Movies" folder using VLC on her phone to connect to my home file server. She's fine doing this, but she is literally sitting in front of the non-functioning 55 inch LCD tv, watching movies on her 5 inch phone. It made sense to me to get this "smart" tv working, even as a big monitor so she can watch her movies on something of decent size.

I think I'll leave this project as abandoned in so far as abandoned from Fatdog 903. I have old ISOs of FD, and I'm sure I've got ISOs of other old Pups or can download them from somewhere. I know I recently sent JB a picture of a FD 6 series CDROM I found laying around. I might see if that runs on it..

I have so much work to do, and so many things going on right now, I do not have time to tinker with a fifteen year old PC. BUT, you know I probably will