Bug 6128

Summary:	Mageia 2 installation : cannot start X due to bad graphic driver on a laptop with NVIDIA Geforce GTS 360M
Product:	Mageia	Reporter:	JeanClaude Garaud <garaud>
Component:	RPM Packages	Assignee:	Mageia Bug Squad <bugsquad>
Status:	RESOLVED DUPLICATE	QA Contact:
Severity:	normal
Priority:	Normal	CC:	sysadmin-bugs
Version:	2
Target Milestone:	---
Hardware:	x86_64
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Source RPM:		CVE:
Status comment:

Description JeanClaude Garaud 2012-05-28 10:43:27 CEST

Description of problem:

After Mageia 2 installation either from the 64 bit DVD or a network installation with the CD + non-free firmware I have been unable to start X: the system freeze.

Hardware :
Toshiba Qosmio X500 with NVIDIA GeForce GTS 360M (1GB)
(on the same laptop, Mageia 1 runs with the NVIDIA proprietary graphic driver without any problem)

1st installation :
---------
I installed Mageia 2 from the DVD-64 bits: the graphic card apparently
detected well (NVIDIA GeForce 6100 to GeForce 360) but when starting X the
system hung, Not really surprising as the DVD only contains free drivers. In this occurrence it would be nice if you could provide a basic VGA driver to allow us to try to solve the problem in graphic mode instead of the command line. Anyway I rebooted in failsafe mode, got a root prompt, started the network (ifup eth0) and installed the nonfree sources with urpmi.addmedia. As a result XFdrake proposed to install the NVIDIA proprietary driver. But it was unsuccessful: a message said that screen resolution was too low for the driver! Certainly a bug, as the resolution of this screen goes up to 1680 x 945. I tried several resolutions and always got the same error.

2nd installation:
-----------------
At the bottom of www.mageia.org/fr/downloads I found a network installation
CD + non-free firmware. Hurrah, that was certainly going to work. Alas after
installation and reboot the system hung exactly as with the DVD_64
installation. I started the failsafe mode, launched XFdrake, but it didn't
suggest to install the propriety driver. I thought that nonfree sources were
missing (weird for a "CD + non-free firmware), so I installed/updated them this time with urpmi.update nonfree. But again XFdrake did not suggest to install the proprietary driver.
I also tried to install the proprietary driver (NVIDIA-Linux-
x86_64-295.53.run) from the NVIDIA site, but an error message said that a
driver was already present. I tried to remove it
(/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf, blacklist nouveau; urpme xorg-x11-drv-
nouveau) without success.

Can you help ?
Thank you
Jean-Claude

Comment 1 Manuel Hiebel 2012-05-28 12:37:24 CEST

did you read the errata ?

Comment 2 JeanClaude Garaud 2012-05-28 17:35:36 CEST

Of course, but I didn't notice that I could use the Vesa driver.
Now it works.
Wh
But it concerns only the live CD

Comment 3 JeanClaude Garaud 2012-05-28 17:58:53 CEST

Of course, but I didn't notice that I could use the Vesa driver.
Now it works.

What I did:
Boot in failsafe mode
Start the network (ifup eth0)
Start XFdrake
Select Xorg/vesa driver
Reboot, now with a graphic display (much easier)
Start mcc
Select the nonfree sources (they were present but not activated !)
Start XFdrake
Select the correct NVIDIA driver (i.e. NVIDIA GeForce 6100 to GeForce 360)
When asked to use the proprietary NVIDIA driver, choose "Yes"
The system installs about a dozen packets
Reboot, it works!

Notice that in XFdrake pressing the "test" results in a grey screen : same bug in Mageia 1

Thank you very much for your help.

Cheers
Jean-Claude

Comment 4 Manuel Hiebel 2012-05-29 00:29:28 CEST

ok so a duplicate (but i don't remember the good bug)

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 5462 ***

Status: NEW => RESOLVED
Component: Release (media or process) => RPM Packages
Resolution: (none) => DUPLICATE