[Kernel_Killer]

Well, I'll start out by saying I started using FreeBSD when 4.5 came out, and then let it go for some odd reason. So I started studying more on Linux. Just recently, my primary system, I had to RMA the CPU making it useless.

After messing with Mandrake enough to piss me off on another machine, I decided to switch OS'es. Knowning that only one Linux distro suited my needs, and never like to use the same OS on two machines, I decided to hit the FreeBSD path.

I went straight to the FreeBSD site, and started downloading 5.0 rc2. Popped it into the Drake box, and removed the the partitions, and started installing. After about an hour of installing the base, I went on to the configuration.

Within a 3 hour period, I started tearing through the configuration, setting up my desktop evironment, adding to the network, configuring the shell, installing other cool packages, recompiling my kernel, and compiling the NVidia drivers (Which work awesome in rc2!!!).

After just this little bit of configuration, I'm more than happy with my FreeBSD box, and think I will stick with it from now on (Not killing the other OS'es though on the other systems). 5.0 definatly made my head turn. Sorry it's not much of a testimonial, but I thought I'd share it.

[|MiNi0n|]

FreeBSD definately kicks arse on the desktop. The ports are phenomenal... speaking of which... maybe one day soon KrUsTy! will get around to posting that how-to he's been talking about to me for ages for using cvsupit and portupgrade to keep your box ultra current.

[v902]

Strange I came upon this thread as I am currently d/ling the ISO's ;)

[bsdjunkie]

and compiling the NVidia drivers (Which work awesome in rc2!!!).

Finally! Ill try it again as a desktop ;) b4, i was only using it with a voodoo3 card, but my main desktop currently has the GF4Ti4400, so its been hard :P

[bsdjunkie]

Ok, i officially gove up with nvidia in freebsd :P can you post your xf86config file? No matter how i configure it, its hosed :(

[Kernel_Killer]

This is how I did it.

In XF86Config I uncommented (might have to add) :

load "glx"

Also, of course changed 'driver "nv" ' to 'driver "nvidia" '.

In the NVIDIA_FreeBSD-1.0-3203/src/nv-freebsd.h file, I had to remove some lines. They were some lines saying that if FreeBSD = > 4.7 then to fail. They were right above:

#include <sys/systm.h>
#include <sys/types.h>

and below:

/*
* This driver relies on a few changes to the FreeBSD kernel that are not
* present in FreeBSD 4.6 or earlier - FreeBSD 5.0/-CURRENT is undergoing
* active development and also unsupported.
*/

In my kernel there was one thing I needed to do. I couldn't load 'options USER_LDT' for some reason, but no big deal I guess (They work :P ). I compiled with INVARIANT_SUPPORT, but uncommented INVARIANTS.

#options DDB #Enable the kernel debugger
#options INVARIANTS #Enable calls of extra sanity checking
options INVARIANT_SUPPORT #Extra sanity checks of internal structu
res, required by INVARIANTS

I guess I could have uncommented INVARIANT_SUPPORT. I guess it's kinda useless w/o the other. Oh well. No harm done. :P

After the re-compile, I did my 'make setup' for the drivers.

One thing I noticed, was having to actually restart the system for 'nvidia.ko' to load.

That is it. Hope that helps.

[bsdjunkie]

Well, no go on what you gave me. USER_LDT failed here as well. removed any lines in the .h file looking for 4.7. Recompiled kernel, and after typing startx, my box rebooted :P :roll:

[Kernel_Killer]

There was another line I added to the kernel for another reason, but maybe it helped.

options COMPAT_AOUT # Enable i386 a.out binary support

I kinda doubt it will, but what do I know? :D

BTW. Did you re-install the drivers after the kernel compile?

[Kernel_Killer]

I don't know if this will make a diff, but here's my XF86Config portion for the video card.

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen 1"
Device "NVIDIA GeForce"
Monitor "My Monitor"
DefaultDepth 24

[bsdjunkie]

I cant see how a.out support will be needed, but i guess i can try =P
I didnt build the drivers until after i had recompiled and built the new kernel.
Elmore told me last nite, that someone else was having the same problem and had X reboot the box as well.

[elmore]

Yeah that was krusty junkie.

[KrUsTy!]

Yup, that was me and my Nvidia geforce2 card with FreeBSD. Type startx and 2 seconds later you are rebooting! Was VERY frustrating, in the end I never did figure out why that was happening. But what fixed it for me was that FreeBSD 4.6 came out and then it just started to work. Problem went away with 4.6. I guess somebody fixed something....

About 6 months ago I bought a new card, an ATI 9000 which was unsupported in X untill just recently.

I would suggest that you try the new pre-release version of XFree86 that just came out last week (December 21st). Its the pre-release for 4.3, and its versioned 4.2.99.3. There is a full binary release for FreeBSD 4.x and I loaded it yesterday on my 4.7 box at home and it allowed me to finally use my ATI 9000 card properly and not in Vesa mode, which at 60HZ was getting a bit tiresome... Easy install using the Xinstall.sh script.

Since your card is new, the new release of XFree86 might do the trick. Worked great for my new ati.

ftp://ftp.xfree86.org/pub/XFree86/snapshots/4.2.99.3/binaries/FreeBSD-4.x/

Sorry I couldn't be much more help with the rebooting problem. I feel your pain, because it drove me nuts for a good 4 months! I finally gave up for a while and went back to an old voodoo card as well, untill FreeBSD 4.6 came out. I would load up each new version of FreeBSD and Xfree86 hoping that the problem would be solved somehow and finally 4.6 just worked.

{K}

[KrUsTy!]

I've posted a small how-to for using cvsupit and portupgrade for FreeBSD. Its in the How-to section and the thread is called "CVS and portupgrade, keep your installed FBSD ports current."

Just thought I'd add that to this thread since I got such a thrashing from MiNiOn! :lol:

Hehe, just kidding.

Anyway it was a good way to get me off my arse and do it...

Comments, questions and fixes are welcomed of course!

{K}

[socomm]

Nvidia Drivers wont work at all for me, I've uncommented the sections to allow it to compile under 5.0 also recompiled my kernel with the INVARIANT_SUPPORT, SYSVSHM, though USER_LDT did not work. This the error I receive when start the xserver

nvidia0: rm_init_adapter() failed!
(EE) NVIDIA(0): Failed to initialize the NVdriver kernel module!
(EE) NVIDIA(0): *** Aborting ***
(EE) Screen(s) found, but none have usable configuration.

anyone got some idea how to get around this? By the by my resolution is 1400x1050, 24bpp. Thanks in advance.

[soup4you2]

check your /boot/loader.conf makesure the nvidia stuff is being loaded...

[socomm]

nvidia_load="YES"

Thats not the problem. Also at boot kernel loads nvidia.ko.

[Kernel_Killer]

I didn't even bother with USER_LDT. Just wonuldn't compile with it, but worked fine w/o it.

[socomm]

Kernel_killer would you nice enough to post up your XF86config file i believe problem lies in the configuration since I switched nvidia with nv and it works fine though the mouse works very very sluggish.

[Kernel_Killer]

[code:1:2a20cab13d]
Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Layout0"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "xie"
Load "pex5"
Load "glx"# Load "dri"
Load "dbe"
Load "record"
Load "extmod"
Load "type1"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "MouseSystems"
Option "Device" "/dev/sysmouse"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
HorizSync 31.5 - 82.0
VertRefresh 50.0 - 100.0
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Card0"
Driver "nvidia"
ChipSet "GeForce2 MX/MX 400"
Card "NVidia GeForce2 MX/MX 400 (GeForce2 MX/MX 400)"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Card0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
EndSection

[/code:1:2a20cab13d]

[soup4you2]

here's mine if it helps

[code:1:ddbf791208]
Section "Module"
Load "dbe"
Load "dri"
Load "extmod"
Load "glx"
Load "pex5"
Load "record"
Load "xie"
Load "xtrap"
Load "speedo"
Load "type1"
EndSection
[/code:1:ddbf791208]

[code:1:ddbf791208]
Section "Device"
### Available Driver options are:-
### Values: <i>: integer, <f>: float, <bool>: "True"/"False",
### <string>: "String", <freq>: "<f> Hz/kHz/MHz"
### [arg]: arg optional
#Option "SWcursor" # [<bool>]
#Option "HWcursor" # [<bool>]
#Option "NoAccel" # [<bool>]
#Option "ShowCache" # [<bool>]
#Option "ShadowFB" # [<bool>]
#Option "UseFBDev" # [<bool>]
#Option "Rotate" # [<str>]
#Option "VideoKey" # <i>
#Option "FlatPanel" # [<bool>]
# Option "NvAgp" "3"
Identifier "Card0"
Driver "nvidia"
VendorName "NVIDIA"
BoardName "GeForce3"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Card0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 1
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 4
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 8
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 15
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 16
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
EndSection

[/code:1:ddbf791208]

[socomm]

Thanks, though the drivers still won't work. I've tried all sorta crap even installing 4.7 compiling with all the recommended options and still nothing :x running x with the nv driver its slow, and no glx no dri.