Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 70120
anaconda incorrectly sets the display driver of NVidia card to "vesa" instead of "nv"
Last modified: 2014-03-16 22:29:24 EDT
Anaconda correctly detected my graphics card (NVIDIA GeForce 4), but after installation i noticed that it didn't set the display driver correctly (X wouldn't start after installation & reboot). /etc/X11/XF86Config had "vesa" set as the display driver instead of the correct "nv" driver. This is with Limbo beta 2
This is probably a problem with our hw database.
It is definately in the hardware database, even with all errata installed, configuring X will choose the Vesa driver for an Nvidia GeForce4. Once you go through the full configuration, choose the real resolution and color depth you want, and skip the test. Once it has finished, edit the /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file and change "vesa" to "nv". StartX and all should work well.
Which particular GeForce4 variant is this?
On my particular instance it is a Visiontek GeForce 4 Ti 4600
I've got an Asus GeForce 4 Ti 4600.
Are you using the stock beta XFree86?
The Nvidia GeForce 4 cards are totally not supported by the "nv" driver in XFree86 4.2.0. Support for GeForce 4 is only available in XFree86 CVS currently. The GeForce 4 support was commited to XFree86 CVS trunk by Mark Vojkovich of Nvidia: 23. GeForce4 support (Mark Vojkovich). The new driver code is dependant on PCI domains code in XFree86 CVS, and a few other CVS enhancements. I've had a look at it in the past and considered trying to backport the minimal amount of code to enable the GeForce 4. It didn't look to be easily doable, but I will have another look tonight. No promises, but cross your fingers. ;o)
I just went over the "nv" CVS head code, and also the initial GeForce 4 support checkin to CVS. The new code is far to entangled with CVS X, and impossible to get just the required code to support GeForce 4 without other random variables entering into the picture. The initial checkin to CVS was not just a GeForce 4 update either, but is littered with random changes to the driver as well. We'll have to wait for 4.3.0 for official XFree86 support. I'm not sure if we should configure it to use the "vga" driver (which would really suck, and be unuseable for the most part anyway), or just disable it entirely, or leave it as is in hopes it works for someone out there. I suppose disabling it entirely makes the most sense.
The only thing i know is that with the default setting (vesa driver), X wouldn't start. Changing that from "vesa" to "nv" allowed X to start without a hitch. I didn't run X too long before switching to the NVidia driver, but it seemed to work fine.
I had the same experience, the nv driver, which ships with limbo, and even the one which ships with Red Hat 7.3 work well with the GeForce 4, no upgrades, only Red Hat shipped code. The only real problem here is the Xconfig tool that Anaconda uses, and Red Hat's set up tool. The driver works, but since the config does not know it works, it will just set it to the vesa driver.
Please attach your working XFree86 config file, X server log, and the full output of: lspci -vvn and also: lspci -vv
Created attachment 70785 [details] lspci -vv output
Created attachment 70786 [details] lspci -vvn output
Created attachment 70787 [details] XF86Config
This is changed in the upcoming version to use the nv driver for GeForce 4, in combination with XFree86 4.2.99+.