Beta 0810 and nvidia drivers

[l3mce]

So I had 710 running flawlessly on an asus M3n78-EM (nvidia GeForce 8300 using driver 185.18.36) with alpha 2 and all that jazz.

8.10... not so much. Opening the restricted drivers from taskbar icon typically locks the system... nvidia 170, 185 and 190 exist.

1.9 WILL bring KDE up... however linuxmce will not load X for wizard.

Briefly, this is what I have done.

FROM DVD:

Installed kubuntu with last option "Linuxmce install"
Checked for updates
Installed updates (NOT upgrade) 14 exist.
ran nvidia-xconfig

This boots to KDE in higher res using native detected 190.35 drivers. AVWizard will not load.

Clean install, same as before, but no nvidia-xconfig
AVWizard boots and loads MCE in plain UI.

Run nvidia-xconfig, and no dice. Revert.

Manually loaded 185 restricted driver. Will not start x.
Manually loaded 190. Will not start x.

Used envyng to auto-configure nvidia/x

Will load kde login manager but on login breaks and reboots login mgr.

I would love to make this hardware work in 8.10, but if I need to move on, I will take suggestions as well. Thanks in advance.

[struggler]

try to do lsmod | grep nvidia and then remove all loaded nvidia kernel modules with
rmmod <module> command.

After all modules removed try to install manually the nvidia drivers and start X. Worked for me.

Hope it helps.

[wombiroller]

Hi l3mce,

I have had the same problems. Have tried a few Beta installs but they all had issues.  I also tried the rmmod a while ago but couldn't get the packages removed (it said it couldn't find them when I tried to remove or some such??)...

I started trying to dl the internet install on Sat but I think that failed to get a few of the larger items (it was up to Get 140 something this morning... still going).


I think the Beta 2 might solve these issues but I am not sure how far away that is (from DVD)...

[l3mce]

I should preface this with the fact that I am not really sure the version I am on now as the lmce install came from a wiki which STATES that it is for 0810 beta, yet verbiage on the scripts is "latest_alpha". If someone could tell me how to check the version that would be keen.

So, by following the instructions on this wiki
http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/LinuxMCE-0810_beta
I was able to get most of the way through the main install, crashing at mythtv-backend download in a loop. ctrl c out, run the post installer. On first load after reboot I see that it is downloading myth backend. Nice. Maybe it will be ok. Brings me up, eventually, with everything skinning really nicely in A2. The flicker script which caused me nightmares on the 7.10 seemed to be behaving.

I go to KDE and there is a noticeable element missing. That little control panel which allowed you to do a myriad of useful things, not the least of which is get back to lmce, is not there. Everything in desktop is glitchy and slow. Turns out this is, at least in part, again due to the flickr script background... which is less easy to get rid of for me. It now just strobes white, causing the same irregularity. I will go at it again with inept fingers. On 7.10 I had to disable (which seems to do nothing) remove, and then reload before it would go away. It had to go away because if it ran in the background, when you added multiple layers through the menu or alerts, it would hang. Now it isn't there, but it is strobing and causing hangups. The desktop freezes every 5 seconds. Its pretty awesome.

I assume I just have a broken install and that there is some way to control lmce functions outside of the admin site within KDE. If anyone with working beta can tell me if there is some tool missing which allows you to reload routers, start orbiter, etc. Or if someone knows the .sh which would bring it up I'd be grateful.

At this point I am running an onboard and a pci NIC. Not going to bother with more until I can kill flickr.

This is my experience thus far with this board on beta 1 (maybe). I remain optimistic.

Also, if anyone could tell me how to kill lmce from console that would be swell.

[tschak909]

Thanks so much for testing.

We do agree that this beta has a number of bugs. We're trying to fix them as much as we can before doing another beta release.

One thing that we did do, was remove the original launch manager, as it was not directly portable. It has since been rewritten to be a background app. I am working on a desktop agent to be able to bring back the Orbiter, and a few other basic things, soon.

As for the video drivers, we are trying to move to the most recent NVIDIA drivers available, and are still working on trying to get everything integrated for this pass (VDPAU et al.).

Any help that anybody could give us in resolving some of these bugs would be most appreciated, as what we're experiencing now could be resolved by having more people experienced with distribution maintenance.

Again, thanks for testing.
-Thom

[wombiroller]

Thanks Thom. If you guys need any specific testing / hardware info please let us know.

[l3mce]

No, really... thank you guys. I will be testing lots of hardware/configs.

My 710 is a thing of beauty. (-flickr of course)

I haven't actually punched out any code in a long time, but plan on re-familiarizing myself in short order.

I am looking forward to doing a lot of work with the GC-100 series of products for I/O. In a past life I used to code programmable logic controllers (PLC's) for autonomous function. The ultimate goal being to use lmce's event handling to interact with security hardware on a more intimate level. Features like a door bell waking up equipment and switching to camera x on the live orbiters... or zone motion sensing beginning an internet feed/backup to begin with (I am sure others have done this) and much more complicated tasks in the future. Making the GC get up and dance will probably be the area of my focus, and hopefully contribution. In another life I used to write portlets for an enterprise level portal which, in part, interpreted I/O for strange or antiquated systems for control by newer/more common systems. So if you have robotic automotive painting plant, built in '79, and want to control it with a wireless windows laptop, I'm your guy... or... I was... back when the internet made money.

I have a good bit of hardware available in the home automation/security side of things, and though I am pretty much crap in linux, I am a programmer at my core, just rusty. In a few weeks I will be able to afford a few weeks of sleepless testing. Till then, I will test here and there.

I really need to get to a bookstore...

[l3mce]

Flickr dead, (just disable and remove... do not reload) and the desktop is (more) stable. It hangs now and again for a few seconds, but I am pretty sure this is caused or contributed by a cycling attempt to download and install pluto-nvidia-video drivers. I will connect it again tomorrow... er... later today to the internet and see if that goes away (I am used to dev offline... linux likes the internet too much me thinks).

If someone could please tell me how to monitor what LMCE is doing in the background, and frankly opening a debugger... I would like to see if I can actually fix something rather than splice wikis together. Sorry for being so unfamiliar. I don't need my hand held for the ride... but a compass would be really helpful.

[niz23]

As for nVidia drivers things have changed a bit lately.
nVidia have decided to move to a better architecture of their driver.
Which basically mean the have separated vpdau libraries from the actual gpu driver binaries into to separate packages.

In the long run this mean that other vendors may provide vdpau support. Or the other way around.

For us it mean that we have to use Avenard repos or build our own nVidia debs since Ubuntu won´t move to this new architecture
until version 10.04. Other benefits for us is not being locked in to a particular nVidia driver binary. Atm 185 or 190.
Drivers can be updated independently of of libraries that use vdpau.

Atm I have a pretty much working setup of vdpau for lmce media (mythtv have it´s own solution). mplayer still not working.
It might be possible that xine nowadays can handle everything that mplayer could handle earlier.


/niz23

[mactalla]

It hangs now and again for a few seconds,

That sounds suspiciously like an xrandr problem I've seen.  I don't have an 8.10 machine running right now so I can't confirm.  While in KDE, open up System Settings -> Service Manager and look for "Detecting RANDR (monitor) changes" and turn it off if it's running.  xrandr had (has?) a bug that when it queries monitors on the outputs the screen freezes briefly.

HTH.

[niz23]

mactalla,

It hangs now and again for a few seconds,

That sounds suspiciously like an xrandr problem I've seen.  I don't have an 8.10 machine running right now so I can't confirm.  While in KDE, open up System Settings -> Service Manager and look for "Detecting RANDR (monitor) changes" and turn it off if it's running.  xrandr had (has?) a bug that when it queries monitors on the outputs the screen freezes briefly.

HTH.

Do you have a link to more info re the issue you mention?

/niz23

[mactalla]

mactalla,

It hangs now and again for a few seconds,

That sounds suspiciously like an xrandr problem I've seen.  I don't have an 8.10 machine running right now so I can't confirm.  While in KDE, open up System Settings -> Service Manager and look for "Detecting RANDR (monitor) changes" and turn it off if it's running.  xrandr had (has?) a bug that when it queries monitors on the outputs the screen freezes briefly.

HTH.

Do you have a link to more info re the issue you mention?

/niz23

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/kdebase-workspace/+bug/278471  Comment #41 has a nice summary of the issue.  Comment #50 points to the trigger in the code (and the corresponding fix) but looking at the bug status this isn't resolved in Kubuntu proper until 9.04.