Precise 543 nouveau on nv34 on k8n athlon 64 = bad menu font

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galen

Precise 543 nouveau on nv34 on k8n athlon 64 = bad menu font

#1 Post by galen »

I run several Athlon 64 machines with nv34 video cards, and nouveau seems to be my nemesis.

Computer:
K8N nvidia2
AMI bios
ACPI 1 / 2
DDR1 (even tested at lower speeds)
nv34 GeForce5200 AGP
LCD Monitor with native resolution: 1680x1050

O/S: Precise 543

boot option to enable an usable session: puppy acpi=off
defaults give bad menu font rendering

http://www.flightsimhq.org/pub/?d=linux/puppy/543bugs

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OscarTalks
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Joined: Mon 06 Feb 2012, 00:58
Location: London, England

#2 Post by OscarTalks »

Yes, I'm afraid the nouveau driver with the nVidia GeForce FX5200 gives this problem of missing menus and other graphics artifacts. I suppose it is really up to the nouveau developers to address this.

For anyone trying to get a machine with this card to work with Puppy there are a couple of things to try.

With recent Puppies like Precise you can try booting with the option nouveau.modeset=0 and see if that loads a different driver like nv or vesa and from there see if you can get a suitable screen resolution. If that works then go to /etc/modprobe.d/nouveau.conf and change the modeset=1 to modeset=0

I have found that the best solution (which also gives the best graphics performance) is to download the driver installer from the nVidia website. It will be a file called something like:-

NVIDIA-Linux-x86-173.14.36-pkg1.run

This installs relatively easily. What I did was place it in /root then exit to prompt.

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cd /root
sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-173.14.36-pkg1.run
If the nouveau driver is loaded the installer won't complete, but it offers the option to disable it for you. Accept this. Exit the installer and reboot. Enter the boot option puppy pfix=nox to make sure you are back to a prompt screen again and then repeat the above code to run the installer again. This time it should all complete including the option to set up the nVidia driver config which you accept.

Reboot and you should have the proprietary nVidia driver installed and running now. You may need to run fixmenus and jwm -reload in order to get the nVidia config to appear in your menu. The installer file can now be deleted from /root.

Oh by the way, you do of course need devx and kernel sources loaded in order to be able to do this.
Oscar in England
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ETP
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Precise 543 nouveau on nv34 on k8n athlon 64 = bad menu font

#3 Post by ETP »

Hi galen

Before you take OscarTalks’s wise advice you may just want to give another of the included GTK & JWM themes a quick try to see if it resolves the problem. I suspect that the default themes have a few problems.
Quick and easy to do so worth a try.
Regards ETP
[url=http://tinyurl.com/pxzq8o9][img]https://s17.postimg.cc/tl19y14y7/You_Tube_signature80px.png[/img][/url]
[url=http://tinyurl.com/kennels2/]Kennels[/url]

galen

#4 Post by galen »

yes I have tried other themes; same result.
I really hate nouveau, it is forced on us and bug reports are ignored and the performance is worse than old nv drivers. I've had lots of experience with nvidia drivers, mostly very good.
I have no problems with FATDOG64 (fast 3D) or wary 5.3 (nv driver)

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01micko
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#5 Post by 01micko »

I found an interesting kernel line the other day to do with nouveau. It may or may not help with NV-3X cards (including fx-5200).

There are a few ways to implement it.

If booting pfix=ram:

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puppy pfix=ram nouveau.noaccel=1
If adding to kernel line: (example, edit as necessary)

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kernel (hd0,0) /puppy54/vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0 pmedia=atahd psubdir=puppy54 nouveau.noaccel=1
This will vary considerably depending on your system and bootloader.

Replace /etc/modprobe.d/nouveau.conf:

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options nouveau noaccel=1 
YMMV

ref: http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Nouveau
Puppy Linux Blog - contact me for access

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OscarTalks
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Location: London, England

#6 Post by OscarTalks »

@ 01micko

Thanks for taking the time to post about this.

Test of my Dell Dimension 4600 with nvidia FX 5200 card.

Booting Live CD of Slacko 5.4

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puppy pfix=ram nouveau.noaccel=1
Boots to a satisfactory desktop, all menus and graphics present and correct.

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Report Video 1.4 - Fri 1 Feb 2013 on Slacko Puppy 5.4 - Linux 3.2.33-4g i686
   
  Chip description:
    0.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV34 [GeForce FX 5200] (rev a1)  
    oem: NVIDIA
    product: NV34 Board - p162-1nz Chip Rev
   
  X Server: Xorg  Driver used: nouveau
  X.Org version: 1.12.3
    dimensions:    1280x1024 pixels (338x270 millimeters)
    depth of root window:    24 planes


Then went into xorgwizard to change to a lower resolution for larger images and all went OK

Code: Select all

Report Video 1.4 - Fri 1 Feb 2013 on Slacko Puppy 5.4 - Linux 3.2.33-4g i686
   
  Chip description:
    0.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV34 [GeForce FX 5200] (rev a1)  
    oem: NVIDIA
    product: NV34 Board - p162-1nz Chip Rev
   
  X Server: Xorg  Driver used: nouveau
  X.Org version: 1.12.3
    dimensions:    1024x768 pixels (270x203 millimeters)
    depth of root window:    24 planes
Running glxgears shows around 210 FPS

Of course it does still mean having to input that kernel line manually but at least the nouveau driver loads and works. Can you enter this parameter in as default or would that be silly for the vast majority of users?

Hope this test was helpful in some way.
Oscar in England
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galen

#7 Post by galen »

I'd suggest looking at fatdog's nouveau implementation, it works great.

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