# PROBLEMS LOADING NVIDIA DRIVERS [SOLVED] My bad!

## MHenry676

Ok, I say solved, but don't like how this has been solved. 

It started when I switched my second system to a mobo with AGP so I could ditch the ATI PCI card, and drag out my old GeForce2 Ti. Both boards were Intel 440BX (P3 500) and I moved all hardware over, except for a small kernel tweak, no prob. My main sys (see my sig) also has a GeForce, no problems there and had been up since last night or this morning (can't remember)

Anyway, I had followed this guide on the gentoo-wiki HARDWARE Nvidia Driver AGP FastWrite and Side Band Addressing. I had done this on my main system without problems like two weeks ago. 

Last night, I made the switch to the new mobo on my second system, tweaked kernel recompiled, rebooted Loaded fine. Nvidia, and alsa failed to load wich needs compiled for the new kernel anyway, no problem there. All other modules loaded fine. BTW, compiled kernel with 

```
make clean && make && make modules_install
```

After emerging the nvidia 74.74 kernel and glx drivers, setting up as the guide showed, again had no probs with it before, rebooted. Then, nvidia failed to load. Hmm.

I decided to try the default level gentoo drivers (66 somethin) still an nogo. Tried uping the kernel from 2.6.15-r1 to 2.6.16-r3, still failed. 

When it did fail, it said check dmesg. I can't remember what it said exactly, but the end was about 10 lines of basicaly can't bind. I even tried reverting before using the guide, still nothing. Not thinking that it was a problem, I checked lsmod. NO AGPGART, INTEL-AGP Odd. 

modprobed them manualy saying it could not find them. Then I tried 

```

modprobe /lib/modules/2.6.15_gentoo_r1/kernel/drivers/char/agp/intel-agp

modprobe /lib/modules/2.6.15_gentoo_r1/kernel/drivers/char/agp/agpgart

```

SUCCESS!

huh?

```

modprobe nvidia

```

SUCCESS!

huh?

modprobed nvidia without the full path, but why the others. All of my other modules for my tvcard, this that and the other thing, all loaded fine. But these two I had to specifi the whole path.

So changed my /etc/modules.d/aliases to read (see the linked HOWTO for ref)

```

#alias char-major-10-175        agpgart

install /lib/modules/2.6.15_gentoo_r1/kernel/drivers/char/agp/nvidia-agp /bin/true

install /lib/modules/2.6.15_gentoo_r1/kernel/drivers/char/agp/agpgart /bin/true

```

Rebooted, and now nvidia loaded. Ok, thought I screwed something up, so said eh, played with getting superkaramba to display my sensors on my main PC.

And this is where I'm thinking there is much more to it.

I rebooted to check my lm_sensors against what the BIOS said, Got my info, rebooted.

nvidia-agp, agpgart, and nvidia failed to load!

WHAT?!?

I did not emerge anything new or change any configuration.

Applied the same fix as I did on the second machine, and I'm typing this in firefox in kde on my main, no probs.

The only thing I can think of is both have been emerge --sync'ed and I had not rebooted the main until I was checking the BIOS temps.

Anyone else having these issues?

I would like to load these modules without the full path, and adding it to my PATH. 

Am I doing something wrong? Is the lastest emerge --sync to blame?[/url]

----------

## HackingM2

Now this is weird.  I ran into a similar problem just yesterday while trying to get the e1000 drivers from the latest bugzilla ebuild to work.

When you run modprobe -l does it get shown?  I was using modprobe -l | grep e1000 and it showed nothing.  ls /lib/modules/2.6.16_gentoo_r2/kernel/drivers/net/ on the other hand showed them perfectly fine.

I didn't manage to modprobe the driver even using the full path.  The error message was the same - file not found.

We must have both done the same thing!    :Rolling Eyes: 

Any ideas what it was yet?    :Smile: 

----------

## dsd

 *MHenry676 wrote:*   

> Then I tried 
> 
> ```
> 
> modprobe /lib/modules/2.6.15_gentoo_r1/kernel/drivers/char/agp/intel-agp
> ...

 

this is the first thing weird about your story - modprobe doesn't accept any form of paths, and i just confirmed that. its a mystery why these commands actually did anything.

as for the actual problem, you need to post kernel logs, which explain why the module is rejected.

so, undo any changes you have made, reboot your computer, run "modprobe nvidia", then post the last few lines from "dmesg" here.

----------

## HackingM2

 *dsd wrote:*   

>  *MHenry676 wrote:*   Then I tried 
> 
> ```
> 
> modprobe /lib/modules/2.6.15_gentoo_r1/kernel/drivers/char/agp/intel-agp
> ...

 

For what it's worth using full paths didn't work for me.  Any idea why modprobe -l wouldn't show it but an ls of the directory in question would though?

----------

## NeddySeagoon

HackingM2,

It sounds like you are not actually running a kernel called 2.6.16_gentoo_r2 if modprobe cannot find your module but its in the path you list.  What does 

```
uname -a
```

 say about your running kernel ?

----------

## HackingM2

 *NeddySeagoon wrote:*   

> HackingM2,
> 
> It sounds like you are not actually running a kernel called 2.6.16_gentoo_r2 if modprobe cannot find your module but its in the path you list.  What does 
> 
> ```
> ...

 

It says 2.6.16_gentoo_r2, as does the path in modprobe -l.    :Rolling Eyes: 

It's been driving me nuts!    :Laughing: 

----------

## NeddySeagoon

HackingM2,

The pathname really has underscores "_" not "-" in it. My uname -a is 

```
Linux spike 2.6.16-gentoo-r3 #1 PREEMPT Sun Apr 23 14:35:01 BST 2006 i686 AMD Athlon(tm) XP 3200+ GNU/Linux
```

No underscores.

ls /lib/modules shows directory names without underscores too.

----------

## HackingM2

 *NeddySeagoon wrote:*   

> My uname -a is Linux spike 2.6.16-gentoo-r3 #1 PREEMPT Sun Apr 23 14:35:01 BST 2006 i686 AMD Athlon(tm) XP 3200+ GNU/Linux No underscores.  ls /lib/modules shows directory names without underscores too.

 

My bad.  So does mine.  It says r3 too.    :Wink: 

My excuse is that I just cut'n'pasted from the post above.

----------

## dsd

...

.

 *dsd wrote:*   

> as for the actual problem, you need to post kernel logs, which explain why the module is rejected.
> 
> so, undo any changes you have made, reboot your computer, run "modprobe nvidia", then post the last few lines from "dmesg" here.

 

----------

## HackingM2

If he was experiencing the same problem as me then dmesg shows nothing as modprobe can't even find the module to try loading it.

I did manage to fix my problem, although recompiling the kernel with module-unloading support shouldn't have fixed anthing as far as I can tell.    :Rolling Eyes: 

----------

## MHenry676

Well, found my problem, though something still should have changed that made it happen. It was not the modprobe statement that I was using. I posted this error hours after it happened. If you follow that guide, the part about changing you /etc/modules.d/aliases to:

```

#alias char-major-10-175        agpgart

install nvidia-agp /bin/true

install agpgart /bin/true

```

Did work before. Not sure what I had done, but I had to change it to this:

```

#alias char-major-10-175        agpgart

install /lib/modules/2.6.15_gentoo_r1/kernel/drivers/char/agp/nvidia-agp /bin/true

install /lib/modules/2.6.15_gentoo_r1/kernel/drivers/char/agp/agpgart /bin/true

```

and it worked. Sorry for the confusion.

----------

