X server will not start after enabling restricted nvidia drivers
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Jockey |
Fix Released
|
Undecided
|
Unassigned | ||
jockey (Ubuntu) |
Fix Released
|
High
|
Martin Pitt | ||
Hardy |
Fix Released
|
High
|
Martin Pitt | ||
Intrepid |
Fix Released
|
High
|
Martin Pitt |
Bug Description
I have an NVidia graphics card "NV18 [GeForce4 MX - nForce GPU]". When I first installed Hardy beta the resolution would not go any higher than 800x600, so I went to System > Administration > Hardware Drivers, and selected to enable the restricted nvidia drivers. It installs the nvidia-glx package and then tells me I need to restart the system. However once I restart the system, the X server no longer starts and I am dropped to the text console. And I thought the new X server was supposed to be "bulletproof".
After trying to start the X server manually, I found the error in the console output:
(==) Using config file: "/etc/X11/
Parse error on line 4 of section Device in file /etc/X11/xorg.conf
This section must have an Identifier line.
(EE) Problem parsing the config file
(EE) Error parsing the config file
Before I enabled the restricted drivers, there was no xorg.conf file. But now that it needed to request the restricted nvidia graphics driver, it created a new xorg.conf file. This file is what was causing the X server to crash. After I added:
Identifier "Default Device"
to the Device section and:
Identifier "Default Screen"
to the Screen section, the X server worked perfectly.
I have attached below the original xorg.conf file that was created by enabling the restricted nvidia drivers (named "xorg.conf.broken") and the file modified by me which works perfectly "xorg.conf.fixed"). With this modified file the nvidia drivers work and that has fixed both my resolution problems and allows compiz to work.
Changed in jockey: | |
milestone: | ubuntu-8.04.1 → none |
assignee: | nobody → pitti |
importance: | Undecided → High |
milestone: | none → ubuntu-8.04.1 |
status: | New → In Progress |
Here is a patch that fixes the issue for me. Now in the case that there is no Screen or Device section in the xorg.conf, instead of just creating a new section, it creates a new section and sets the identifier to "Default Screen" and "Default Device" respectively.
I have tested and verified that this fixes the bug for my Nvidia card. In the patch I have also fixed the code for the fglrx driver, however since I do not have an ati card, I cannot test this. I do believe it will work fine simply because the code is nearly identical for both and I simply copied over the code that worked for nvidia.