Video card basics

From MEPIS Documentation Wiki

Here are a collection of various commands to determine the state of your video cards and drivers. See the "monitor" and 'video card" category links at the bottom of the page for further actions.

All commands are entered in the Konsole.

Contents 1 lspci | grep VGA 2 grep '/usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/' /var/log/Xorg.0.log 3 cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf | grep nvidia 4 glxinfo | egrep "glx (vendor|version)" 5 glxinfo | grep direct 6 glxgears 7 What version of nVidia driver is being used?

lspci | grep VGA

This will give you the type of graphics card / video card you have installed

sample output:

00:0d.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GeForce 6100 nForce 405 (rev a2)

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV34 [GeForce FX 5200] (rev a1)

grep '/usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/' /var/log/Xorg.0.log

This command will show which video drivers remain loaded. In this sample, the 'nv' driver is being used:

(II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/nv_drv.so
(II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/vesa_drv.so
(II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/fbdev_drv.so
(II) Unloading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/vesa_drv.so
(II) Unloading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/fbdev_drv.so

In this sample, 'nvidia' driver is being used:

(II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/nvidia_drv.so

cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf | grep nvidia

This will indicate if the nvidia driver is loaded during boot/start-up
sample output:

Driver "nvidia"

glxinfo | egrep "glx (vendor|version)"

This will give what video driver is being used sample output:

server glx vendor string: SGI
server glx version string: 1.2
client glx vendor string: SGI
client glx version string: 1.4

server glx vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
server glx version string: 1.4
client glx vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
client glx version string: 1.4

glxinfo | grep direct

Will indicate if direct rendering is working
sample output:

direct rendering: Yes

direct rendering: No (If you want to find out why, try setting LIBGL_DEBUG=verbose)

glxgears

This will demonstrate/confirm that your 3-D rendering is working.
After a several seconds, you can close the gears window to stop it.
sample output:

11846 frames in 5.0 seconds = 2369.155 FPS
15168 frames in 5.0 seconds = 3033.408 FPS
15197 frames in 5.0 seconds = 3039.334 FPS
15198 frames in 5.0 seconds = 3039.481 FPS
15164 frames in 5.0 seconds = 3032.757 FPS
15179 frames in 5.0 seconds = 3035.745 FPS

What version of nVidia driver is being used?

Please see the Install nvidia driver page