Fedora Core 6 - GeForce3 Ti 200

I upgraded my main home computer to Fedora Core 6 (FC6) this past weekend. It has faithfully run Fedora Core 3 for the last couple of years, however, I was so impressed with FC6 on my laptop I decided to update the main computer as well.

After completing the installation I usually look to The Unofficial Fedora FAQ for answers on the usual little quirks that come with each release, however, they appear to have not updated the site for FC6. Instead, I turned to Fedora Core 6 Tips and Tricks for quick references to installing the most popular free add-on software packages.

The first thing I always do after a fresh install is update my yum configuration to include the livna and freshrpms repositories,

rpm -ihv http://ayo.freshrpms.net/fedora/linux/6/i386/RPMS.freshrpms/freshrpms-release-1.1-1.fc.noarch.rpm
rpm -ihv http://rpm.livna.org/fedora/6/i386/livna-release-6-1.noarch.rpm

Installing Xine DVD Player
With the above repositories setup, installing the Xine Video Player is as simple as entering the following yum statement,

yum install xine xine-lib-extras-nonfree libdvdcss

and letting it resolve the other package dependencies. The libdvdcss library is what allows one to play commercial DVD movies.

Installing the Nvidia Drivers
One of my other motivations for upgrading to FC6 was the new OpenGL accelerated desktop effects provided by Compiz. Upon grabbing the latest drivers from Nvidia I discovered that my video card is now listed as "legacy" and is no longer supported in the most recent driver downloads. I read that Compiz needs at least version 96xx of the Nvidia drivers to work. I had to try several different ones until I found that the NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-9631-pkg1.run package worked correctly.

My final modified xorg.conf configuration file is below which contains the necessary entries to add the Nvidia OpenGL drivers as well as the transparency effects.

# Xorg configuration created by system-config-display

Section "ServerLayout"
        Identifier     "single head configuration"
        Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
        InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "Module"
        Load  "dbe"
        Load  "extmod"
        Load  "type1"
        Load  "freetype"
        Load  "glx"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier  "Keyboard0"
        Driver      "kbd"
        Option      "XkbModel" "pc105"
        Option      "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Section "Device"
        Identifier  "Videocard0"
        Driver      "nvidia"
        VendorName  "NVIDIA Corporation"
        Option      "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
        Identifier "Screen0"
        Device     "Videocard0"
        DefaultDepth     24
        SubSection "Display"
                Viewport   0 0
                Depth     24
        EndSubSection
EndSection

I am still amazed it runs as well as it does on my aging Pentium III 866 Mhz.

Fedora Core 3 and Nvidia

I have had the Fedora Core 3 CDs burned almost since they came out and have been waiting for an ideal time to upgrade the Fedora Core 1 install on my desktop. Since there never is an ideal time to do a system upgrade I decided to let it run while working on my laptop today.

If you are doing the same for the first time I strongly recommend you follow the Fedora Core 3 Installation Notes as it is a valuable reference and can help you avoid a few pitfalls. I had the page bookmarked and never bothered to read it until after I had installed FC3. Read the notes before you install. Seriously.

The install went great and I immediately downloaded the latest Nvidia linux display driver 1.0-6629, read their installation notes and proceeded. After rebooting the result was a system that would hang on the message, "Configuring kernel parameters." If left alone the system would eventually boot to a login prompt. After a brief panicked search on Google I found this reference which mostly worked for me.

What I did to solve the problem and get FC3 back into a graphical state was modify the above to this:

1. Interrupt GRUB from booting by pressing any key, edit the bootparameters by pressing the "e"-key, and remove the "rhgb"-parameter from the boot parameters. Then continue booting normally. (This will skip the graphical boot in Fedora.)
2. Fedora might complain about not being able to the graphical display, however, ignore it and cancel all questions until you get to the login prompt.
3. Login as root, and enter "/sbin/modprobe nvidia" to load the nvidia-module.
4. Enter "cp -a /dev/nvidia* /etc/udev/devices/"
5. Finally, modify the /etc/rc.local file using a text editor (eg. "vi /etc/rc.local") and at the end of the file add the line, "/sbin/modprobe nvidia" This should fix the boot problem.
6. Save and exit and you should be back at the command prompt.
7. Reboot the system and you should be back in business

I have seen posts in the meantime that suggest using RedHat's up2date to update the udev packages before applying the Nvidia driver solve a lot of the problems and should make the above unnecessary especially step 4 above as that is the only way to make the changes stick through a reboot.