Graphic card not supported by new nvidia drivers.[Solved]

[MikeB23930]

I am unable to upgrade to recent packages since the 3.10 nvidia driver that will replace the current nvidia driver installed in my system does not support my old graphics card. I'm guessing that one of the open source drivers would support my card, but when I tried to switch drivers I simply got a black screen. Can some one please tell me how to switch to one of the open source drivers? Please explain in excruciating detail since otherwise I will probably not understand any better than I understood the information about masking I read online.

Thanks for the help.

Mike

[Ryuno-Ki]

Hello,
I stumbled upon the same problem and found a solution for the nvidia-drivers here. You just have to modify the version.
So follow the steps below (modified quote of the mentioned source):

wrote:
Open your favourite konsole/terminal as root, and enter:

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equo remove nvidia-drivers --ask

It should remove the current installed nvidia-driver plus dependencies. (check that...)
Then:

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equo install nvidia-drivers-304.64#$(uname -r) --ask

(also check that the right drivers plus dependencies getting installed, according to the command.)
If everything went well, the new (right) drivers are installed.

Now, when upgrading the System, it probably also wants to upgrade your nvidia-driver,
which you don't want., so you have to mask all future nvidia-drivers it may want to upgrade to...
Enter (while still running the terminal) as root:

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nano -w /etc/entropy/packages/package.mask

Scroll to the end of the list, and enter the following:

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>=x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers-310.19
>=media-video/nvidia-settings-310.19
>=x11-drivers/nvidia-userspace-310.19

Save the file by pressing (CTRL+O) and leave the nano-editor by pressing (CTRL+X).

Next, edit xorg:

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nano -w /etc/X11/xorg.conf

search under: section "device" if the driver is nvidia:

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Section "Device"

    Identifier  "SabayonVga0"
    Driver      "nvidia"
    #BusID    "PCI:01:00"
    #Option "RenderAccel" "on"
    #Option "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps"
    #Option "BusType" "PCI"
    #Option "ColorTiling" "on"
    #Option "EnablePageFlip" "on"
    # UseEvents is causing segmentation faults with
    # NVIDIA 6xxx, 7xxx and >=275.xx.xx drivers
#    #Option "UseEvents" "True"
    Option "LogoPath" "/usr/share/backgrounds/sabayonlinux-nvidia.png"

EndSection

If not, correct it, save, and close the editor.
Restart X:

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/etc/init.d/xdm restart

It closes all programs, the session, and brings you back to login.
Now you should login properly with a working X.

For checking:
My package.mask

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# package.mask example file
#
# In this file you can specify atoms, one per line, that you would mask.
# Masking a package (atom) means that you will deny Entropy to pull in a package even if it's marked as "NOT experimental".

# LINE CONSTRUCTION:
# <atom>
# See examples below

# EXAMPLES:
# >=media-libs/foo-1.2.3
# media-libs/foo
# <media-libs/foo-1.2.3
# media-libs/foo:1
# >=media-libs/foo-1.2.3#2.6.23-sabayon-r1
#
# :1 means package with SLOT="1"
# #2.6.23-sabayon-r1 means package with kernel tag = 2.6.23-sabayon-r1
>=x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers-310.19
>=media-video/nvidia-settings-310.19
>=x11-drivers/nvidia-userspace-310.19


Enjoy!

[MikeB23930]

Thanks, Ryuno-Ki. Worked like a charm with one very small exception at the end. The command

/etc/init.d/xdm restart


brought me back to a command line login screen. I then logged in as root and executed a system restart with

shutdown -r now

and now all is fine.

Thanks so much for your help.

Mike

[Ryuno-Ki]

So, please, mark the thread as solved