Got GeForce 6600 GT working with mepis nvidia Driver!!!

could you state which version of nvidia driver you are using and which mepis?
this will make it even more useful

Using Mepis 3.3 Final

When I finally got it to work it was with the 1.066? version(whatever was in the repository for 3.3), but this was upgraded to the 1.072? version through the repository yesterday, and this didn't break it. Most cool is that now I can Cedega and lose Windows completely.

I installed SimplyMEPIS 3.3 final last weekend and have been trying to get the nvidia driver to work with my xfx-brand GeForce 6600GT ever since. I'm good with M$-Wincr*p systems but just couldn't stand it any more (with the latest news of new malware in the form of XP-based rootkits out there).

Anyway, I used MEPIS OS Center to install the official nvidia driver, which claimed it was installed correctly. It didn't work. So I copied the section above and took out Load GLCore and Load dri, etc. But it also didn't work.

I used Synaptic and it shows that nvidia-glx is not installed. The only version listed is 1.0.7167-1 and I cannot "force" a specific version, i.e. to install the earlier version, as the "force" function is greyed out. I cannot install the latest version as it depends on nvidia-kernel-1.0.7167 which is "not installable".

Any suggestions?

What command did you use to restart X? When X didn't restart (using CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE), I logged in a root, recovered by X config, and used "startx" and "startkde" instead of rebooting. Is that how it should be done?

Thanks for your help!

I went through a bunch of stuff to try and get my Geforce FX 5500 working; and I (almost) got it. After following a tutorial I found I finally managed to get nvidia-glx installed and nvidia-kernel-1.0.7167 installed, but after rebooting X wouldn't start (even though I'm sure I edited XF86Config-4 correcntly. The error message said something about my kernel version not matching the nvidia-kernel module I installed, so...darn! Anyway, I think something was wrong with the card to begin with so I sent it back, hopefully with the warranty they'll send me a different one. Reason for thinking something was wrong with it? Here's what it was doing. I'd run a liveCD session of ProMepis b.4, and right before the KDM login screen, half of my display would show(divided halfway on the horizontal) the desktop from my previous session. I would then go through and install, reboot, and then once again, right before the login screen, the same thing would happen! It would show half of the liveCD desktop session! When I first got the card, I decided to do a fresh install of Pro b.4, and it installed the nvidia driver, no prob. I used OSCENTER and selected "Official Nvidia driver" and it worked, no complaints. Rebooted and had the nice Nvidia boot screen and everything, openGL 3D worked nice and all. Then after about a month, (a few days ago) had to re-arrange all the partitions on my disc, and upon reinstalling Mepis(same exact installer disc) found it no longer worked, giving me the same "uninstallable" message.

I found the mepis-specific kernel that included version 1.0.7167 and installed that and the corresponding glx but it didn't work. The X server seemed to be running but my screen would go black. I had to switch quickly to another console, login as root, and kill the X server. Then I tried messing with the options found in XF86Config-4.

I finally got my GeForce 6600 GT working but it required more changes to the XF86Config-4 file (I had applied all changes listed in the notes above already). In the Screen section I had to comment out all the nVidia specific option found under the "TwinView" option. These deal with a 2nd monitor, which I don't have. Even though "TwinView" was "false", these options were interfering somehow.

After some struggling i finally got the Nvidia drivers working on Mepis 3.3 final using the 2.6.10 kernel and an Nvidia 6600 GT AGP card.

The issue here was, that the nvidia driver complained about AGP specific commands that werend defined.
Solution: commenting out the long line in
/etc/modprobe.d/agpgart

In other words: Open the agpgart file with a texteditor and put a
#
in front of the line you will see there.

Rebooted the PC and got greeted by the Nvidia logo.

-Lef

P.S.:

I used the XF86Confi-4 example here, btw.

I'm just hoping that your fix works for me as well. I have always found NVidia cards to be very Linux friendly (up to now) but I made the mistake of going for bleeding edge hardware (i.e. MSI K8N Platinum SLI + Asus GT6600 PCI-E graphics card).

On initial kernel load, I get the messages (from dmesg):

PCI: Cannot allocate resource region 3 of device 0000:05:00.0
spurious 8259A interrupt: IRQ7.
pnp: 00:00: ioport range 0x4000-0x407f could not be reserved
pnp: 00:00: ioport range 0x4080-0x40ff has been reserved
pnp: 00:00: ioport range 0x4400-0x447f has been reserved
pnp: 00:00: ioport range 0x4480-0x44ff could not be reserved
pnp: 00:00: ioport range 0x4800-0x487f has been reserved
pnp: 00:00: ioport range 0x4880-0x48ff has been reserved

further down (in dmesg) I find

pci_hotplug: PCI Hot Plug PCI Core version: 0.5
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:0b.0 to 64
pcie_portdrv_probe->Dev[005d:10de] has invalid IRQ. Check vendor BIOS
assign_interrupt_mode Found MSI capability
Allocate Port Service[pcie00]
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:0c.0 to 64
pcie_portdrv_probe->Dev[005d:10de] has invalid IRQ. Check vendor BIOS
assign_interrupt_mode Found MSI capability
Allocate Port Service[pcie00]
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:0d.0 to 64
pcie_portdrv_probe->Dev[005d:10de] has invalid IRQ. Check vendor BIOS
assign_interrupt_mode Found MSI capability
Allocate Port Service[pcie00]
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:0e.0 to 64
pcie_portdrv_probe->Dev[005d:10de] has invalid IRQ. Check vendor BIOS
assign_interrupt_mode Found MSI capability

The PC is currently dual boot (via GRUB) with Windoze. Everything works fine in Bill land (or course) including very fast graphics acceleration. I have loaded the NVidia drivers (from NVidia's site) and X-Windows works fine in 2D but (not surprisingly) as soon as I try 3D based games, the X-Server dies.

This motherboard *is* supposed to be OK according to the HCL. *Sigh*