Fedora 14: Framebuffer and Xorg in 1680×1050 with Nvidia Drivers

11. December 2010 · 3 comments · Categories: howto, Linux · Tags: , , ,

So out-of-box, Fedora 14 does a pretty good job handling graphics, but if you want to run with Nvidia’s drivers you need to do a little leg work. Fortunately, it’s very, very easy if you know your way around the system even a little.

First off, you should download the driver binaries from Nvidia’s site. Save them in an easy-to-access place and then do a quick ‘chmod 777′ on the package so you can execute it later. Also, make sure you have the kernel-headers and kernel-devel packages installed, plus gcc so the Nvidia installer can make the kernel module.

Now that the driver is downloaded, we need to disable the Nouveau driver that comes with Fedora. This is a two-step process.

  1. As root, edit ‘/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf’ and add the following lines to the bottom:

    2. # Nouveau
    blacklist nouveau

  2. Now edit ‘/boot/grub/menu.lst’ and add the following to the end of the kernel line:

    3. nouveau.modeset=0
    e.g, “kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.35.9-64.fc14.x86_64 ro root=UUID=00311e4e-0043-498c-8532-7301b19eae76 rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_LVM rd_NO_MD rd_NO_DM LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYTABLE=us rhgb quiet nouveau.modeset=0“

With that done, reboot. As your computer boots, press the Tab key repeatedly before the Fedora splash screen appears to get the Grub Menu to appear. Press ‘a’ to do a one-time edit of the kernel options (you’ll see the line above appear) and add the number ’3′ (no quotes) to the end, like so:

kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.35.9-64.fc14.x86_64 ro root=UUID=00311e4e-0043-498c-8532-7301b19eae76 rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_LVM rd_NO_MD rd_NO_DM LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYTABLE=us rhgb quiet nouveau.modeset=0 3

This will do a one-time boot to Run Level 3, much like adding ‘single’ to the end of the above line would put you in to Single User Mode. Once you’re at the text-mode long prompt (at a really low screen resolution, I might add), login as root and browse to the folder you saved the driver binary to, then run it. Let it go through it’s process and create the files it wants to, and when it finishes, you’re almost done.

The last thing to do is make the framebuffer work on the correct resolution. In my case, my monitor uses 1680×1050 as it’s native resolution, so that’s what I want to set it to.

Reboot the computer again, and do the Tab key trick to get back to the Grub Menu. Once again, press ‘a’ to edit the kernel options and this time add ‘vga=ask’ in addition to the number ’3′ to the end of the line, and then press enter. You should get a list of the framebuffer modes. Find the one that matches your resolution, enter it (and make a note of it), and then press enter. When you get to the login prompt, you should see that everything is the correct size and resolution. If not, try again. For reference, 1680×1050 in 32bit colour for my GeForce 260 is mode 369.

Once you have the correct mode, we’re ready to make it permanent. Login as root and edit the ‘/boot/grub/menu.lst’ file again. Now add the following to the end of the kernel line:

vga=873 video=nvidiafb

eg, kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.35.9-64.fc14.x86_64 ro root=UUID=00311e4e-0043-498c-8532-7301b19eae76 rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_LVM rd_NO_MD rd_NO_DM LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYTABLE=us rhgb quiet nouveau.modeset=0 3 vga=873 video=nvidiafb

Where 873 is the the mode you entered above converted from hex to decimal (369 hex == 873 dec).

Save, reboot, and watch as both the framebuffer and Xorg now work at the proper resolution for your monitor. You’ll also now be able to turn on Desktop Effects in Gnome if you so choose.

MSI Wind/Fedora 12 Beta – Still Pulsing (Updated)

23. October 2009 · Write a comment · Categories: Beta Testing, Linux, Software, Troubleshooting · Tags: , , ,

I like bleeding-edge technology. The newer, the better, as there are usually fun little things to discover and rarely does anything bleeding-edge actually work perfectly, giving me ample opportunity to mess around with things.

Enter Fedora 12. I’ve played with the initial Alpha release, several of the Snap releases, and as of this morning, the Beta release. So far, at least as far as my MSI Wind 123 goes, they’re all unusable.

The biggest problem so far is the display – as soon as GDM kicks in, prior to the login screen loading, the screen starts to ‘pulse’. To be more specific, if you were to tap the ‘Brightness Up’ and ‘Brightness Down’ keys fairly quickly between two different levels, you’d get the same effect. This continues incessantly, and makes it impossible to use the GUI. If I boot in runlevel 3 (direct-to-console), everything is fine, so the issue is restricted to Xorg.

As far as the beta goes, there’s been a little regression. In the Alpha and Snap releases, I was able to get all the way to the desktop, despite the pulsing display. Now, with the beta, it takes just over 2 minutes just to get past the boot animation, and then it stalls before the login screen loads. Whether or not this has anything to do with the fact this is a livecd on a USB stick (made with the Fedora live-usbcreator for Windows, with persistent overlay), I’m not sure. I’ll probably download another spin (maybe the KDE version) and see if I have any more luck.

Update: Progess! On a whim, I removed rhgb from the kernel line when booting (press Tab to cancel automatic boot, and then again to edit boot options) and was actually able to get to the desktop, albeit with no improvement to the speed of things. The screen still pulses, however I did notice something interesting: while the screen pulses (briefly before the login screen appears, then it stops until you choose a user, and then it starts again), if I switch to another terminal (CTRL+ALT+F2, for example), the login name starts to fill with “^@” repeated several times, and then stops. If I then switch back to the GDM terminal (CTRL+ALT+F1), the pulsing stops.

At least that gives me something to go on.

Further Update (Dec 12, 2010): The Wind U123 works perfectly on Fedora 14 with no additional hacks/changes needed.

Fedora 11 on the MSI Wind

02. September 2009 · 2 comments · Categories: Linux, Software · Tags: , , ,

I recently picked up an MSI Wind U123, and have been doing my usual try-every-operating-system-I-can-find-and-see-what-happens tests. Along the way, I’ve tried Windows XP (was installed by MSI, lasted a few minutes before I got rid of it), Windows 7 (worked fine out-of-box, no extra drivers needed), Moblin v2 (not a big fan of the UI, but ran very well from an 8GB SDHC card), Fedora 12 (big issues with this one, but it’s only an Alpha release), and now I’m at Fedora 11.

I dumped the Live image of Fedora 11 (Gnome desktop manager) on to my SD card (the U123 supports booting from SD cards, something my old Acer AspireONE couldn’t do), and installed it in less than 10 minutes, boot times included. Almost everything works out-of-box, however the Gnome UI was horrifically huge. Most windows would fill the screen and beyond, making it impossible to see buttons, let alone click them.

The solution? Change the default DPI. To do this, login, then click the System menu, followed by Preferences and Appearance. In the resulting window, click the Fonts tab, then the Details button at the bottom. In the new window, change Resolution to 96 and hit Enter on your keyboard (as the Close button is just out-of-view). Everything should be back to normal.

In addition to this, I also changed all of the font sizes to 8, but that isn’t strictly necessary – I just like to get as much on the screen as I can.

Beyond that, everything else works perfectly, including sound, wireless, the SD card reader, and even the webcam.

Update (Dec 12, 2010): The Wind U123 works perfectly on Fedora 14 with no additional hacks/changes needed.