Installing NVIDIA 310.14 on Linux Mint Mate?

[djt]

I'm trying to install the latest Nvidia 310.14 drivers on a fresh reformat with Linux Mint Mate 64-bit and was wondering if someone here could give me the exact install process using the terminal?

[Jamesc359]

I'm not an expert, but this is what I did;
Download the installer from NVidia
sudo init 1
Wait until you're prompted for the root password. Normally this will be the same as yours (unless you've configured it differently.)
cd to the directory where you downloaded the installer.
sh <Installer>
When it yells at you for running at runlevel 1, ignore it and tell it No (you want to continue.)
Accept the agreement.
If it prompts you to uninstall another driver tell it yes.
Continue past the warning about the pre-install script failing.
The next two options are upto you. I chose yes to both.
When it prompts you to run nvidia-xconfig do so.
Now run shutdown -r now

[bassic]

I'm not an expert, but this is what I did;
Download the installer from NVidia
sudo init 1
Wait until you're prompted for the root password. Normally this will be the same as yours (unless you've configured it differently.)
cd to the directory where you downloaded the installer.
sh <Installer>
When it yells at you for running at runlevel 1, ignore it and tell it No (you want to continue.)
Accept the agreement.
If it prompts you to uninstall another driver tell it yes.
Continue past the warning about the pre-install script failing.
The next two options are upto you. I chose yes to both.
When it prompts you to run nvidia-xconfig do so.
Now run shutdown -r now

I did a similar thing and it worked just fine, however I ran into a small issue. The nvidia drivers are certainly the latest and greatest, but they're architecture-specific. In my case I installed the 64 bit drivers and they worked fine, until I ran a game under Wine that used the 32 bit OpenGL libraries. While that may not be an issue to you, it's something to keep in mind. Installing the packaged drivers from Linux Mint solved that problem; despite not being as recent as the drivers directly from Nvidia, they're much easier to manage.

[djt]

Thanks for the help and the response.

I gave it a try and all I get is that it can't run the installer? On a clean install of Linux Mint Mate without any Nvidia driver installed, with the Nvidia driver located on the desktop, what would be the exact procedure in the terminal?

[Dave W.]

Have you considered using the sgfxi script? It is fairly automated and very easy to use.

[djt]

Have you considered using the sgfxi script? It is fairly automated and very easy to use.

Never even heard of it before but would be willing to give it a try. The last time I installed latest Nvidia drivers it was by using the repository (ppa).

[Dave W.]

Sorry about not posting a link or two. I'm out of town and am posting from a kindle fire.
Smxi.org is the official site for sgfxi.
If you search for Mepis wiki and in their search bar type in sgfxi you will be directed to a very abbreviated but good directions.

[djt]

Sorry about not posting a link or two. I'm out of town and am posting from a kindle fire.
Smxi.org is the official site for sgfxi.
If you search for Mepis wiki and in their search bar type in sgfxi you will be directed to a very abbreviated but good directions.

Thanks for trying to help.

After searching the Internet I must have used a half a dozen different ways to try and kill the X server (stop MDM) and then install the 310.14 drivers all without any success, this is ridiculous.

How long do you think it will be before I can try to install them via PPA?

[Dave W.]

For me when I've had trouble dropping out of x I would edit my grub.

As root I would go to etc/default/grub and look for the line that shows a resolution line and change it to 800x600 and remove the #. Then I would save it. Make sure that after you edit grub you do a "sudo update-grub" or your changes won't stick. After that I would do the ctrl alt f1 thing and run sgfxi.

If I don't edit my grub I get "output not supported" floating around on my monitor.

Is this what is happening to you?

After l get my driver installed I would go back to grub as root and reedit that line and put in my maximum supported resolution and get a nice grub screen at boot up.

[Freek]

Can't you just 'killall mdm' as root? (or with sudo)

[djt]

Can't you just 'killall mdm' as root? (or with sudo)

Every time I was able to kill mdm I wasn't able to do anything else after that, just a completely black screen, no cursor.

[Dave W.]

Did you try the grub edit? What did you get when you did ctrl alt f1? Have you tried the grub edit?

[djt]

Did you try the grub edit? What did you get when you did ctrl alt f1? Have you tried the grub edit?

I didn't try the grub edit, I ended up trying to edit the default run level, which according to Nvidia is stored in the file /ect/inittab (which I never found).

When I got the completely black screen after stopping mdm I tried ctrl+c but that didn't do anything. I did not try ctrl alt f1.

[bassic]

I don't recall exactly what I did when I installed the Nvidia drivers manually, however you need to kill the X server and shut down mdm, and make sure you blacklist the Nouveau driver before running the nvidia installer.

Similar steps can be found in another thread: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=96260&f=42

The only difference is that cinnamon doesn't use lightdm (uses mdm instead), so I had to poke around and find another command to stop mdm:

Code: Select all

sudo service mdm stop 

The nvidia installer (is it a shell script?) did complain with a warning about not being able to run some distro-specific setup script, but I ignored it and it worked just fine.

[djt]

I appreciate the help everyone has given here. It looks like this should solve my problem -

http://www.ubuntuupdates.org/ppa/xorg-edgers