Installing nVidia/PNY Graphics Driver

[EchoLynx]

Story: My HDD is currently checked into the ICU... but being the RuneScape addict that I am - and with the new High Detail update - I really want to use my main computers graphics card to play instead of playing low detail on my ancient laptop. I need Java and my graphics driver to play. I already tried Ubuntu, but nobody responded to the errors I was having while installing Java, so I thought that I would just go with a distro that supports Java by default; hence Linux Mint.

After downloading and installing, I went to the RuneScape website and fired up the applet... which crashed at "Starting 3D Models" with the following error:

Error_game_caps - Graphics card does not have minimum required features.


Runescape was unable to start because the graphics card in your machine indicated it didn't have the features needed to play RuneScape in high detail mode.

To resolve this:

# You may get this message if you have your webbrowser minimised or non-visible whilst the game is loading. Please make sure that whilst the game is loading, you keep the webbrowser window visible and don't minimise it.

# Ensure you have the latest drivers for your graphics card installed. You can typically download the most recent drivers by visiting the card manufacturers website.

# If your webbrowser wasn't minimised during loading AND you already have the latest drivers, but you are still getting this message, then it may be your graphics card simply isn't capable enough. You can probably still play, just not in high detail mode. Please go back to the detail select page, and select 'standard detail' instead.

If problems persist then please refer to our technical FAQ which can be found in the FAQ section of our website.

It wasn't minimized, so it has to be the driver. I have a PNY GeForce 8500 GT 512MB. In the Administration menu of Linux Mint there is a "Hardware Drivers" program and it told me "No proprietary drivers are installed on your system." and I am pretty sure nVidia drivers are proprietary...
[Question]
So how do I install the nVidia Driver?

[Progress]
- Installed nvidia-glx-envy (NVIDIA binary XFree86 4.x/X.Org driver) via synaptic but no luck... downloaded the driver from the PNY website and tried to install it but it said it had to disable X- which I have no idea how to do.
- Discovered the Envy tool... installed the drivers but it still wont work and I don't think it will work without a restart- and if I restart the installation might as well never happened as I can only boot from CD- no HDD.

-Ian

[67GTA]

You have to have a hard drive for that. Ubuntu/Mint live CD's aren't persistent. You could use Sabayon. They set up the nvidia/ati drivers in the live DVD. Distros like Sabayon, or the exact opposite Puppy Linux are made to be run as live CD's. Most distro's need to be installed to a HDD to fully work.

[EchoLynx]

I was afraid of that... is there a way that you can install Mint onto a USB HDD?

Also- to those who were on the IRC helping me, ctrl+alt+bkspce did go to a commandline like thing but nothing happened when I put any commands in just a blinking _. I ctrl alt deleted and rebooted- then the cleaning ladies arrived and I had to get out of there so they could do their thing. I am on the basement computer now, but I will be back on as soon as they are done with that room.

-Ian

EDIT- What is the information for the linux mint irc chat, mabye I can catch up with you guys from dows.

[67GTA]

If your PC supports booting from USB, you should be able to boot the CD with the USB stick plugged in, and tell the installer to install to it.

[EchoLynx]

If your PC supports booting from USB, you should be able to boot the CD with the USB stick plugged in, and tell the installer to install to it.

I think I will try this, but if I do install to USB doesn't it write to my normal hard disk with a bootloader?

I am sorry but you have to restart your computer to enable NVidia proprietary drivers, so you cannot enable 3-D from a Live CD environment.

With that said, if you could install the NVidia driver succesfully, then the file please try to load the nvidia module manually with "sudo modprobe nvidia" and restart X server with: "Ctrl+Alt+BackSpace". I doubt it will work, though.

Octy92 tried to walk me through it VIA IRC, but unfortunately I had to ctrl+alt+delete to get out. So no, it doesn't work. I will try installing VIA USB instead...

[EchoLynx]

It's pointless to try and make sense of the problems that I have been having as the hard drive is NOT 30GB but 80GB- meaning the drive is bad.

Okay, I wiped the old 30GB hdd and let Mint do it's thing... everything went fine till at the end I got this error message midway through:

An error occurred while installing packages:

E:Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

The following packages are in a broken state:



This may be due to using an old installer image, or it may be due to a bug in some of the packages listed above. More details may be found in /var/log/syslog. The installer will try to continue anyway, but may fail at a later point, and will not be able to install or remove other packages (possibly including itself) from the installed system. You should first look for newer versions of your installer image, or failing that report the problem to your distributor.

After that it just went on with the next thing (Installing language packs, setting hardware clock, etc.)

Is it bad this happened? Or just kind of fluff?

EDIT Just got this:

subprocess dpkg-split returned error exit status 2

Hit okay for it about 5 times before it went away. Then I got this :

An error occurred while installing packages:

E:Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

The following packages are in a broken state:



This may be due to using an old installer image, or it may be due to a bug in some of the packages listed above. More details may be found in /var/log/syslog. The installer will try to continue anyway, but may fail at a later point, and will not be able to install or remove other packages (possibly including itself) from the installed system. You should first look for newer versions of your installer image, or failing that report the problem to your distributor.

It ended with a progress bar about 3/4ths of the way saying 126%. Then it was done. Perhaps this was caused by the Repos being down?

EDIT
I tried to boot from the USB drive as is and got GRUB error 2:

2 : "Selected disk doesn't exist"

This error is returned if the device part of a device- or full filename refers to a disk or BIOS device that is not present or not recognized by the BIOS in the system.

From: http://www.uruk.org/orig-grub/errors.html#stage2