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[Solved] MX-16, nouveau, and GeForce4, confusion

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seaken64
Posts: 819
Joined: Wed Jan 02, 2019 2:43 pm

Re: MX-16, nouveau, and GeForce4, confusion

#11 Post by seaken64 »

Wow, thanks for all of these tips! I have hope! I was beginning to feel defeated.

I went ahead and put that machine into service today and it is now at my office and I don't have it here at home to do these tests. But I will try these tips when I get into the office. I do have my old P-III here that is having similar issues so I can try these things on that machine. I will let you know what happens.

And the lsmod output is in the text above, after the inxi output. I did check the blacklisted files and did not find nouveau blacklisted. But I did not blacklist the nvidiafb. I will do that.

Seaken64
MX21-64 XFCE & W11 on Lenovo 330S LT. MX21-KDE & MX21-XFCE on Live USB.
MX18-64 & W7, Fedora on HP Core2 DT
MX21-32 XFCE w/ MX-Fluxbox on P4HT DT w/ antiX21, SUSE Tumbleweed, Q4OS, WXP
antiX21 on Compaq PIII 1 Ghz DT, w/ Debian, MX18FB, W2K

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seaken64
Posts: 819
Joined: Wed Jan 02, 2019 2:43 pm

Re: MX-16, nouveau, and GeForce4, confusion

#12 Post by seaken64 »

Is there a difference in using cheat codes and boot parameters from the installed grub line versus the Live USB?

I tried entering these cheat codes on the grub line for my installed antiX-17 on my P-III but it is not making any difference. That PC does not boot from USB. I need to use CD or DVD. When I boot the live DVD I don't get a usable mouse.

On a positive note, I tried booting my Live USB on the HP Athlon laptop and it loaded the nouveau driver just fine. I will try the Live MX-16 USB next and see if it also works with the nouveau driver.

Anyway, I was wondering if I am barking up the wrong tree trying to use the installed grub lines for the cheat codes.

Thanks,
Seaken64
MX21-64 XFCE & W11 on Lenovo 330S LT. MX21-KDE & MX21-XFCE on Live USB.
MX18-64 & W7, Fedora on HP Core2 DT
MX21-32 XFCE w/ MX-Fluxbox on P4HT DT w/ antiX21, SUSE Tumbleweed, Q4OS, WXP
antiX21 on Compaq PIII 1 Ghz DT, w/ Debian, MX18FB, W2K

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seaken64
Posts: 819
Joined: Wed Jan 02, 2019 2:43 pm

Re: MX-16, nouveau, and GeForce4, confusion

#13 Post by seaken64 »

On the P-III I tried using the command to make the xorg.conf file with the nouveau driver. When I did that the system would not boot to the X. I boot to the text console and can login. I used inxi -G to look at the graphics and lsmod. The nouveau is driver is loaded, but no X.

I'm thinking maybe I need to prepare a full and proper xorg.conf file. It's been a while since I've done that. But do you think that I am right about that? Will a properly formatted xorg.conf file work for me? Os Xorg better off without that file now?

Seaken64
MX21-64 XFCE & W11 on Lenovo 330S LT. MX21-KDE & MX21-XFCE on Live USB.
MX18-64 & W7, Fedora on HP Core2 DT
MX21-32 XFCE w/ MX-Fluxbox on P4HT DT w/ antiX21, SUSE Tumbleweed, Q4OS, WXP
antiX21 on Compaq PIII 1 Ghz DT, w/ Debian, MX18FB, W2K

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seaken64
Posts: 819
Joined: Wed Jan 02, 2019 2:43 pm

Re: MX-16, nouveau, and GeForce4, confusion

#14 Post by seaken64 »

Just to keep it clear, I am using two different computers to try these tips. I haven't been able to sit in front of the MX-16 system so I am using my antiX-17 system on my P-III. I will get back to the original MX-16 laptop that I started this thread on and update this thread when I get results. I was just wondering about a couple things as I am experimenting on the P-III. Sorry if anyone is getting confused.

Seaken64
MX21-64 XFCE & W11 on Lenovo 330S LT. MX21-KDE & MX21-XFCE on Live USB.
MX18-64 & W7, Fedora on HP Core2 DT
MX21-32 XFCE w/ MX-Fluxbox on P4HT DT w/ antiX21, SUSE Tumbleweed, Q4OS, WXP
antiX21 on Compaq PIII 1 Ghz DT, w/ Debian, MX18FB, W2K

User avatar
seaken64
Posts: 819
Joined: Wed Jan 02, 2019 2:43 pm

Re: MX-16, nouveau, and GeForce4, confusion

#15 Post by seaken64 »

Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who helped me on this thread here and also on the antiX forum. I finally got it to work!

Here's what I did:

I created a new USB with MX-16 and booted it live. I entered the cheat code as suggested of xorg=nouveau. It came up with everthing working fine. I looked at the inxi, lsmod, and Xorg log and all the telltale signs were there that the nouveau driver was setup in X.

I wanted to see what would happen if I just booted with no extra boot codes so I rebooted and didn't touch anything. It booted and to my surprise it also has the nouveau driver setup in X and was working fine. So why was I having so much trouble before?

With your teaching me about the the cheat codes and boot parameters I took a more careful look at my grub line in the installed MX-16 that was failing for me and I noticed I had an entry of acpi=off. I deleted it and booted. It worked! So, apparently that boot code disables the proper loading of the nouveau driver into X.

This laptop has a quirk with the network device. Sometimes the wireless doesn't work and I have to plug in the ethernet cable to the ethernet port. This causes an error at boot time that says "Resource Confilct - PCI Network Controller on Motherboard Bus:02, Device:02, Function:00 Press <F1> to resume". When I press <F1> it resumes and seems to work fine. Sometimes if I use a USB wifi and unplug the ethernet the error does not come up. Weird, but not fatal. I just ignore it. But I think I used the F4 key when I used my first MX-16 USB and selected "acpi=off" and the F7 key to choose "1024x768". It booted fine and everything looked fine so I installed it. I later discovered that the video was bad and traced it to the nouveau driver not being properly installed. And that led to this thread.

So, it appears that the problem was me, not the MX-16 installer. If I just let MX-16 do it's thing it works fine. By entering the wrong boot codes I caused the problem.

Now, after learning a little more about these boot codes I decided to go ahead and boot a live USB for MX-17. It works! I installed it and am using it now to type this forum entry. So, I now have MX-17 installed as my main OS and also MX-15/16 in another partition (which was my fall-back system since I had a bad install of MX-16 but probably no longer needed now that I have MX-17 working) and antiX-17 in a third partition. Everything is looking good on this old Athlon XP machine. I'm blown away at how well this old kit is working with MX and antiX! Thank again.

I will now close this thread and call it SOLVED. I will start another thread for more info on the P-III system I was cross-testing on.

Seaken64
Last edited by seaken64 on Sun Jan 20, 2019 8:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.
MX21-64 XFCE & W11 on Lenovo 330S LT. MX21-KDE & MX21-XFCE on Live USB.
MX18-64 & W7, Fedora on HP Core2 DT
MX21-32 XFCE w/ MX-Fluxbox on P4HT DT w/ antiX21, SUSE Tumbleweed, Q4OS, WXP
antiX21 on Compaq PIII 1 Ghz DT, w/ Debian, MX18FB, W2K

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richb
Administrator
Posts: 10306
Joined: Wed Jul 12, 2006 2:17 pm

Re: MX-16, nouveau, and GeForce4, confusion

#16 Post by richb »

You can mark it [Solved] by adding that to the title of your first post.
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richb Administrator
System: MX 23 KDE
AMD A8 7600 FM2+ CPU R7 Graphics, 16 GIG Mem. Three Samsung EVO SSD's 250 GB

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seaken64
Posts: 819
Joined: Wed Jan 02, 2019 2:43 pm

Re: MX-16, nouveau, and GeForce4, confusion

#17 Post by seaken64 »

richb wrote: Sun Jan 20, 2019 8:16 pm You can mark it [Solved] by adding that to the title of your first post.
Thanks. I wondering how to do that!
MX21-64 XFCE & W11 on Lenovo 330S LT. MX21-KDE & MX21-XFCE on Live USB.
MX18-64 & W7, Fedora on HP Core2 DT
MX21-32 XFCE w/ MX-Fluxbox on P4HT DT w/ antiX21, SUSE Tumbleweed, Q4OS, WXP
antiX21 on Compaq PIII 1 Ghz DT, w/ Debian, MX18FB, W2K

User avatar
seaken64
Posts: 819
Joined: Wed Jan 02, 2019 2:43 pm

Re: MX-16, nouveau, and GeForce4, confusion

#18 Post by seaken64 »

BitJam wrote: Tue Jan 15, 2019 2:25 am
If any of these work, please post the output of "lspic -nn" so I can know the pci-id of your graphics card. We will then have the live system select nouveau by default for that card. It is sort of an ongoing battle to clean up after the problems with Xorg creates with its default selections. TBH, I'm still not caught up from last year.

HTH
BitJam,

as I noted above the cheat codes ended up being unnecessary for this HP Athlon XP laptop with MX. But they did end up working for me on my Compaq Pentium-III that I was using to cross test. So you may not need the lspci output from the Athlon laptop but I will post the lspci -nn output from both machines. Maybe they will help.

Code: Select all

From the HP Athlon XP laptop running MX-17:
lspci -nn
00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: NVIDIA Corporation nForce3 Host Bridge [10de:00d1] (rev a4)
00:01.0 ISA bridge [0601]: NVIDIA Corporation nForce3 LPC Bridge [10de:00d0] (rev a6)
00:01.1 SMBus [0c05]: NVIDIA Corporation nForce3 SMBus [10de:00d4] (rev a4)
00:02.0 USB controller [0c03]: NVIDIA Corporation nForce3 USB 1.1 [10de:00d7] (rev a5)
00:02.1 USB controller [0c03]: NVIDIA Corporation nForce3 USB 1.1 [10de:00d7] (rev a5)
00:02.2 USB controller [0c03]: NVIDIA Corporation nForce3 USB 2.0 [10de:00d8] (rev a2)
00:06.0 Multimedia audio controller [0401]: NVIDIA Corporation nForce3 Audio [10de:00da] (rev a2)
00:06.1 Modem [0703]: NVIDIA Corporation nForce3 Audio [10de:00d9] (rev a2)
00:08.0 IDE interface [0101]: NVIDIA Corporation nForce3 IDE [10de:00d5] (rev a5)
00:0a.0 PCI bridge [0604]: NVIDIA Corporation nForce3 PCI Bridge [10de:00dd] (rev a2)
00:0b.0 PCI bridge [0604]: NVIDIA Corporation nForce3 AGP Bridge [10de:00d2] (rev a4)
00:18.0 Host bridge [0600]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration [1022:1100]
00:18.1 Host bridge [0600]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map [1022:1101]
00:18.2 Host bridge [0600]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller [1022:1102]
00:18.3 Host bridge [0600]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control [1022:1103]
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation NV17M [GeForce4 420 Go 32M] [10de:0176] (rev a3)
02:01.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8100/8101L/8139 PCI Fast Ethernet Adapter [10ec:8139] (rev 10)
02:02.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Limited BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller [14e4:4320] (rev 03)
02:04.0 CardBus bridge [0607]: Texas Instruments PCI1620 PC Card Controller [104c:ac54] (rev 01)
02:04.1 CardBus bridge [0607]: Texas Instruments PCI1620 PC Card Controller [104c:ac54] (rev 01)
02:04.2 System peripheral [0880]: Texas Instruments PCI1620 Firmware Loading Function [104c:8201] (rev 01)

Code: Select all

From Pentium-III antiX-17
lspci -nn
00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation 82815 815 Chipset Host Bridge and Memory Controller Hub [8086:1130] (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82815 815 Chipset AGP Bridge [8086:1131] (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge [8086:244e] (rev 01)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge [0601]: Intel Corporation 82801BA ISA Bridge (LPC) [8086:2440] (rev 01)
00:1f.1 IDE interface [0101]: Intel Corporation 82801BA IDE U100 Controller [8086:244b] (rev 01)
00:1f.4 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801BA/BAM UHCI USB 1.1 Controller #2 [8086:2444] (rev 01)
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller [0401]: Intel Corporation 82801BA/BAM AC'97 Audio Controller [8086:2445] (rev 01)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation NV11 [GeForce2 MX200] [10de:0111] (rev b2)
02:08.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Intel Corporation 82801BA/BAM/CA/CAM Ethernet Controller [8086:2449] (rev 01)
02:09.0 Multimedia video controller [0400]: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Video Capture [109e:036e] (rev 02)
02:09.1 Multimedia controller [0480]: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Audio Capture [109e:0878] (rev 02)
02:0a.0 USB controller [0c03]: ULi Electronics Inc. USB 1.1 Controller [10b9:5237] (rev 03)
02:0a.1 USB controller [0c03]: ULi Electronics Inc. USB 1.1 Controller [10b9:5237] (rev 03)
02:0a.3 USB controller [0c03]: ULi Electronics Inc. USB 2.0 Controller [10b9:5239] (rev 01)
02:0a.4 FireWire (IEEE 1394) [0c00]: ULi Electronics Inc. M5253 P1394 OHCI 1.1 Controller [10b9:5253]
02:0d.0 Modem [0703]: PCTel Inc HSP MicroModem 56 [134d:7890] (rev 02)
MX21-64 XFCE & W11 on Lenovo 330S LT. MX21-KDE & MX21-XFCE on Live USB.
MX18-64 & W7, Fedora on HP Core2 DT
MX21-32 XFCE w/ MX-Fluxbox on P4HT DT w/ antiX21, SUSE Tumbleweed, Q4OS, WXP
antiX21 on Compaq PIII 1 Ghz DT, w/ Debian, MX18FB, W2K

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BitJam
Developer
Posts: 2283
Joined: Sat Aug 22, 2009 11:36 pm

Re: [Solved] MX-16, nouveau, and GeForce4, confusion

#19 Post by BitJam »

Thanks seaken64! Let's see if I understand. It would be helpful if we defaulted to "xorg=nouveau" on the Pentium-III but not on the HP Athlon XP.
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself -- and you are the easiest person to fool."

-- Richard Feynman

User avatar
seaken64
Posts: 819
Joined: Wed Jan 02, 2019 2:43 pm

Re: [Solved] MX-16, nouveau, and GeForce4, confusion

#20 Post by seaken64 »

BitJam wrote: Mon Jan 21, 2019 12:11 am Thanks seaken64! Let's see if I understand. It would be helpful if we defaulted to "xorg=nouveau" on the Pentium-III but not on the HP Athlon XP.
Yes, that seemed to be what worked best for me.

The P-III has a NV11 and the Athlon laptop has a NV17. They are very close in generation so I don't know why I couldn't get antiX-17 to work on one and not the other. It's beyond me.
MX21-64 XFCE & W11 on Lenovo 330S LT. MX21-KDE & MX21-XFCE on Live USB.
MX18-64 & W7, Fedora on HP Core2 DT
MX21-32 XFCE w/ MX-Fluxbox on P4HT DT w/ antiX21, SUSE Tumbleweed, Q4OS, WXP
antiX21 on Compaq PIII 1 Ghz DT, w/ Debian, MX18FB, W2K

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