Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Fedora 14 with nVidia GeForce 7600 GT driver.

Check if you have a PAE kenel installed.
$ uname -r 
2.6.35.6-48.fc14.i686.PAE

Install kernel components and compiler.
# yum install kernel-devel kernel-headers gcc
or
# yum install kernel-PAE-devel kernel-headers gcc

Create copy of your GRUB configuration.
$ cp /boot/grub/grub.conf /boot/grub/grub.conf.back

Check your video card model.
$ lspci
03:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G73 [GeForce 7600 GT] (rev a1)
Your output might be different. It depends on the card model and slot for instance.

Download the correct module (driver) installer for your card from nvidia.com.

Edit grub.conf to disable nouveau module. Add nouveau.modeset=0.
# vim /boot/grub/grub.conf
title Fedora (2.6.35.6-48.fc14.i686.PAE)
    root (hd0,2)
    kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.35.6-48.fc14.i686.PAE ro root=/dev/mapper/vg_grendel-lv_root rd_LVM_LV=vg_grendel/lv_root rd_LVM_LV=vg_grendel/lv_swap rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_MD rd_NO_DM LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYTABLE=uk rhgb quiet nouveau.modeset=0
    initrd /initramfs-2.6.35.6-48.fc14.i686.PAE.img

Edit /etc/inittab and set up the system to boot into the runlevel 3.
Change id:5:initdefault: to id:3:initdefault:

Reboot your system and login as root in runlevel 3.

Run nVidia installer. Installer will compile a new driver for you.
# /path-to-driver/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-260.19.21.run

Once finished edit /etc/inittab again to change back to runlevel 5.
id:5:initdefault:

Reboot and login as user. The screen may not look perfect, do not worry. Open gnome-terminal, change to root and run nvidia-xconfig to generate a new xorg.conf file.

Log out and log in back. All should be done now and you can run System > Preferences > NVIDIA X Server Settings to check or change your settings.

More information about the driver and its settings can be found in /usr/share/doc/NVIDIA_GLX-1.0/ after installation.