Graphics problem with Cinnamon (and nVidia)

[jasper.kreeke]

Hi all,

I am 15 years old and completely new to Linux. I installed Linux Mint 15 Cinnamon last week as a dual-boot on my 9 year old HP-d530 (yes, I know it's an old one) for the first time. Linux is installed on one drive and WinXP on the other. My basic hardware properties are

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$ inxi
CPU~Single core Intel Pentium 4 CPU (-UP-) clocked at 2793.022 Mhz Kernel~3.8.0-19-generic i686 Up~2 min Mem~153.5/1002.6MB HDD~203.9GB(2.0% used) Procs~134 Client~Shell inxi~1.8.4

When I installed Linux for the first time, I had a Silicon Image Carrera Sil 164 graphics card. Unexpectedly it ran only with 256 colors in Linux and Firefox flash content looked messed up – and Cinnamon reported "Cinnamon just crashed. You are currently running in Fallback Mode.". Then, I bought an nVidia GeForce 4 mx 440 graphics card to solve this problem. Well, then I got only 16 colors and a smaller resolution and everything was weirdly colored and hardly decipherable. However, Cinnamon ran fast and could start all its components (looked like 3D-mode). Then I installed the proprietary nVidia driver and the original problems of 256 colors and with flash content had gone, but Cinnamon ran into fallback mode again. After some configuring of X and nVidia (as I remember), I got Cinnamon to work with software rendering. Cinnamon showed this by acting very slowly and showing a message on the Cinnamon desktop which was something like "Cinnamon is currently running without hardware acceleration. …". A clean install did not change anything (same error as earlier, see attachment). At this stage, the terminal says:

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$ cinnamon
Xlib:  extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0".
libEGL warning: GLX/DRI2 is not supported
libEGL warning: DRI2: failed to authenticate

(cinnamon:2476): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_strsplit: assertion `string != NULL' failed

(cinnamon:2476): Clutter-CRITICAL **: Unable to initialize Clutter: The OpenGL version could not be determined
Window manager error: Unable to initialize Clutter.

while my graphics, described by "inxi -Gx", are

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$ inxi -Gx
Graphics:  Card: NVIDIA NV18 [GeForce4 MX 440 AGP 8x] bus-ID: 01:00.0 
           X.Org: 1.13.3 drivers: vesa (unloaded: fbdev) FAILED: nvidia,nouveau Resolution: 1280x1024@0.0hz 
           GLX Renderer: N/A GLX Version: N/A Direct Rendering: N/A

I have a 1680x1050 display, but Mint does not recognize this, as I see in the Preferences -> System Settings -> Display Settings in the application menu in the fallback mode.

I have no idea what to do next (and my father even less). If anybody recognizes this problem or could help me: Great!
Thanks and best wishes from Berlin / Jasper

[passerby]

I don't have a solution for your problem, but considering the age and specs of your machine I strongly recommend using a different desktop environment, such as MATE or XFCE.

[jasper.kreeke]

OK, thank you for your reply, passerby. I will try KDE or XFCE indeed if there is no solution for my problem. On the other hand, in a [url=http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=102602]related topic[/url] I read about rendering problems with the older nVidia 96 drivers and newer versions of X. The recommended solution there is to downgrade X and I think I will try that, too. Anybody another suggestion?

[Protheus]

What drivers are installed?

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dpkg -l | grep nvidia

What does

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cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log

say? Probably Xorg.1.log

How does your Xorg.conf look like?

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cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf

[jasper.kreeke]

I made a clean install yesterday again, but things are basically unchanged. Here the current configuration:

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$ inxi -Gx
Graphics:  Card: NVIDIA NV18 [GeForce4 MX 440 AGP 8x] bus-ID: 01:00.0 
           X.Org: 1.13.3 drivers: vesa,nouveau (unloaded: fbdev) FAILED: nvidia Resolution: 640x480@0.0hz 
           GLX Renderer: N/A GLX Version: N/A Direct Rendering: N/A

I tried to install the nVidia driver "NVIDIA-Linux-x86-96.43.18-pkg1.run" and the "NVIDIA-Linux-x86-96.43.23-pkg1.run" by [url=http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=102602#p626319]Aaron Plattner[/url], but both could not find a precompiled kernel interface and compiling it failed ('source not correctly configured'). Then I tried to install the proprietary nVidia driver by "sudo apt-get install nvidia-current". Now I am in fallback mode again. You can find the outputs you asked for at [url=http://pastebin.com/JLv6Q6MQ]http://pastebin.com/JLv6Q6MQ[/url], [url=http://pastebin.com/GVe74iCR]http://pastebin.com/GVe74iCR[/url] and [url=http://pastebin.com/FEqMPyCk]http://pastebin.com/FEqMPyCk[/url]. Any idea?

[Protheus]

Uninstall the nouveau driver, this workes for me in this case. You should only use one driver to run your card.

[jasper.kreeke]

First I blacklisted nouveau by adding "nouveau.blacklist=1 nomodeset" to /etc/default/grub to the line with Grub default command line options and by putting "blacklist nouveau" into /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-nouveau.conf, but nouveau was still loaded at booting. Then tried to uninstall some nouveau packages with apt-get. Now it still looks like nouveau is being loaded at startup. What am I doing wrong?

[mcbro]

Cinnamon is constantly crashing for me now. (Mint 15). I have an nvidia gtx 280 and I'm running a core i7 with 6 GB of RAm. That should be good enough for cinnamon and indeed it was running perfectly well for a few months. Now it often just crashes and freezes. I've used the driver manager to try the 304, 310 and 313 drivers. In some cases I've had to run
cinnamon --replace every minute or two to get a usable window manger.

I have somewhat better luck with the 304 updates driver, but nemo often doesn't load and so I have no desktop functionality, though the panels still work.

I've even seen problems running lxde with some of these drivers, and I've also tried the apt-get install dist-upgrade to upgrade the kernel. I think there is a problem with some recent changes, perhaps with gnome that affects the drivers. There are a lot of threads about this problem, e.g.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2152518

[nomko]

I am 15 years old and completely new to Linux.

First I blacklisted nouveau by adding "nouveau.blacklist=1 nomodeset" to /etc/default/grub to the line with Grub default command line options and by putting "blacklist nouveau" into /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-nouveau.conf, but nouveau was still loaded at booting. Then tried to uninstall some nouveau packages with apt-get. Now it still looks like nouveau is being loaded at startup. What am I doing wrong?

For a first timer you know pretty well your way around in Linux.... ......

I noticed the FAILED message in the 2nd line:

$ inxi -Gx
Graphics: Card: NVIDIA NV18 [GeForce4 MX 440 AGP 8x] bus-ID: 01:00.0
X.Org: 1.13.3 drivers: vesa,nouveau (unloaded: fbdev) FAILED: nvidia Resolution: 640x480@0.0hz
GLX Renderer: N/A GLX Version: N/A Direct Rendering: N/A

Did you executed this terminal command:

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sudo nvidia-xconfig

[jasper.kreeke]

Many thanks for your help. Of course ran "sudo nvidia-xconfig" on Mint 15, but nothing.

Then I read [url=http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=136966]this[/url] which suggested to install Mint 13, so I did, but Cinnamon went into a fallback again. Then upgraded my system with apt-get and installed the nvidia-96 driver via "Additional Packages". Ran "sudo nvidia-xconfig" and rebooted, but still Cinnamon could not start. I reinstalled lots of Cinnamon packages and ran "sudo cinnamon --replace", but Cinnamon always ran into Fallback Mode.

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$ inxi -Gx
Graphics:  Card: NVIDIA NV18 [GeForce4 MX 440 AGP 8x] bus-ID: 01:00.0 
           X.Org: 1.11.3 driver: nvidia Resolution: 1680x1050@50.0hz 
           GLX Renderer: GeForce4 MX 440 with AGP8X/AGP/SSE2 GLX Version: 1.5.8 NVIDIA 96.43.23 Direct Rendering: Yes

Hmm …, so the nvidia driver and GLX are loaded. I have pasted further outputs of some commands I ran on [url=http://pastebin.com/jz2FHjqT]http://pastebin.com/jz2FHjqT[/url], [url=http://pastebin.com/9R0f93zi]http://pastebin.com/9R0f93zi[/url], [url=http://pastebin.com/L39chNfC]http://pastebin.com/L39chNfC[/url]. Any idea?

EDIT: I tried glxgears and it runs perfectly at 730 FPS, so the nVidia driver seems to be installed properly. Maybe it is something else why Cinnamon is not running on my computer. Although it should!

[jasper.kreeke]

Dear all: thanks for your ideas. I could not get Cinnamon to work even under Mint 13, I have given up. I am now using KDE, which works fine. Best wishes from Berlin again.