Debian experiences

[Paul Lussier]

"Ben Scott" <dragonhawk at gmail.com> writes:

> [replying on-list to an off-list reply, with the author's permission]
>
> On 11/3/06, Paul Lussier <p.lussier at comcast.net> wrote:
>>> I picked up a new Dell Precision 380.
>>
>> We've got several of those around here, and they don't seem to have
>> any problems.  We're running with a 2.4.32 kernel, the nVidia kernel
>> stuff, etc.  We haven't had any X problems on them that I know of.
>
>   Lesse.. this is Debian "Etch", most recently with kernel
> 2.6.17-2-686 and xorg 7.1.0-5.  The hardware is a Precision 380 with
> an NVidia Quadro NVS 285 (NV44).

Here's the relevant section from XF86Config-4

   Section "Device"
           Identifier      "Generic Video Card"
           Driver          "nvidia"
           VendorName      "Videocard vendor"
           BoardName       "NVIDIA PCI-Express Quadro FX 1400"
   EndSection

So, we seem to be running with different cards.  lspci reports nothing
useful on the card:

  0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device\
  00ce (rev a2)


cat /proc/driver/nvidia/cards/0 reports:

  Model:           Quadro FX 1400
  IRQ:             11
  Video BIOS:      05.41.02.43.09
  Card Type:       PCI-E

>   The open source "nv" driver causes video corruption around the
> insertion point in many GUI widgets -- most noticeably in Firefox.
> It's especially bad if I use the arrow keys to move point back and
> forth -- I get "cursor droppings" all along the text.
>
>   The binary "nvidia" driver works fine, but it seems like every other
> time I run "apt-get dist-upgrade" it upgrades the X server out of
> existence.  Sometimes it's been that the binary kernel module
> disappeared.  Other times, it's been that the X driver (nvidia-glx)
> has disappeared.  Sometimes I've been able to "fix" things just by
> requesting the proper packages again.  Other times, they're actually
> disappeared from the repository, and I've had to wait a day or two
> before they re-appear.

Hmm, I've not had that happen, but we also run with a locally
maintained repository, and always keep that stuff around.  Probably
for just this reason :)

Here's the nvidia stuff we have installed:

 $ COLUMNS=180 dpkg -l '*nvidia*' | perl -ane '/^ii/ && print substr($F[1] . " " x 40,0,34) . " $F[2]\n"'
 nvidia-glx                         1.0.7174-3
 nvidia-kernel-2.4.31pcore-a.14     1.0.7174-4+1.0
 nvidia-kernel-common               20050829+1

I hope that helps somewhat...

-- 
Seeya,
Paul