Hey guys...

Kudos - KnoppMyth is great. Thanks much to Cecil and Dale for all their work - now if only I can get my upgrade to complete successfully.

I had KM R5C7 installed, and decided to upgrade to R5D1. I followed the upgrade procedure carefully (e.g. performed mythbackup, then did the auto upgrade, then removed the R5D1 CD and rebooted).

Upon rebooting, the process halts when attempting to start gdm/x. The X server failure log states that module "nvidia" cannot be found. NO big deal, I thought, I have been through this before. I have the 6600LE card, and the generic "nv" driver will not work with it, so I have always had to install the nvidia drivers myself to get x going whenever I installed KnoppMyth.

<soapbox>
Why is it that the 6xxx and 7xxx series nvidia cards seem to suffer from this malady? They are not new anymore, one would think that by now they would be supported by "nv"? A suggestion would be for the KnoppMyth install and upgrade processes to install the nvidia drivers BEFORE attempting to start gdm. That way, every Nvidia card would work as expected and installs and upgrades would work without a hitch.
</soapbox>

However, I need some help installing the nvidia drivers in the current state of my system. I am completely stuck because I have no network connectivity - eth0 is not being configured for some reason when booting after the auto upgrade. Without the network, the nvidia driver packages under /usr/src cannot be installed - they complain that kernel sources are not installed.

I tried booting from the R5D1 CD (since that configures eth0) and tried to run the Nvidia installer after mounting /dev/hda1. However, this still does not work. It complains about the filesystem being read-only, even though I have cd-ed over to /mnt/hda1/usr/src, which is mounted as writable (ASAIK).

Now, I am frustrated and have no more hair to pull...
Can someone give me a suggestion as to how to proceed, be it installing the nvidia drivers or some other way to get gdm /x to start with the current content available after the upgrade install? Thanks in advance!

If your card is properly detected the nvidia install should be done automatically on the first boot. If the driver isn't getting installed then your card isn't being seen for some reason. Try running "lspci | grep VGA" and let us know what you see.

As I noted above it normally does try to do the setup before starting GDM, _if_ it detects a compatible card. For the newer cards it really ought to end up running:

Which you can do by hand. For the read only problem, you should be able to find the directions by searching for "mount" and "chroot" in the forums. It's simply down to how you do the mount, this thread shows one way http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=9554&highlight=mount+chroot

Thanks tjc,



So, since you said the nvidia card should have been detected and the drivers installed prior to starting gdm, I am now thinking this is an automation issue perhaps with the install/upgrade process. Here is the output seen in the console (paraphrased in places - I cannot cut an paste without network connection/SSH):



after this line, the screen blinks three times - evidently trying to start X. Then a text based blue screen pops up saying that the X Server failed to start. The log states "cannot load module "nvidia". drivers not found".

OK, now for the lspci output:



The hotplug ignores the video card - I have seen this before, so am I not sure if that is OK. Another issue is that the card is in slot 05:0.0. In the XF86Config-4 file that KnoppMyth generates, I seem to recall seeing a 01:0.0 address being used instead. Maybe that is also something of concern.

If memory serves, the video device is being detected better with this kernel than before. I seem to remember the output saying something like "unknown device - nvidia" in previous versions. But the drivers did get installed by the R5C7 install (I just had a problem with lilo.conf having to be edited before the machine would boot linux. )

So, what is different now? I have not made any other attempts to fix the problem, in case the KnoppMyth folks want me to provide any more data so that it can be fixed in the future.

Please advise...

Thanks,
Trevor

So force install the drivers as I already described, set the pci address in the XF86Config-4 file to "PCI:5:0:0", and restart GDM...

tjc,

I tried your suggestion, and ran into similar problems to those encountered with my previous attempts.

First I booted from the R5D1 cd, quit to the prompt, then typed:



First off, I had network connectivity before performing mount/chroot. I lost it after doing so. This is a problem - see the rest of the output of the install script:



From here, the screen "blinks" a few times, trying to start X, but fails with the text pop up message I saw before.

It looks like content is not available on the filesystem, and that combined with no network connection is a bad combination.

Can anyone shed any light on this situation? If it makes any difference, I launched the CD with the "dragon" option when I ran the auto-upgrade, because I have a machine that I built using the dragon specs from mythic.tv (or close to them anyway).

Thanks for any help - I am eager to be enlightened on how to fix this if possible.

Thanks,
Trevor

Use the other technique for booting in single user mode described here:
http://www.knoppmythwiki.org/index.php? ... terInstall

OBTW - Go into your BIOS and set the video priority there so that the PCI card is king.

Thanks for your help and suggestions. I really appreciate it, just so you know...

However...

I tried the single user login that you suggested, but I have no network with that approach either. The netcardconfig utility does not work for either, it claims no supported devices are found. Furthermore, I checked my machine BIOS, and the Video Card preference setting is given to the first PCIe slot already. Trying the driver install only results in the same failure as previously reported.

I did put the XF86Config-4 file that KnoppMyth generated back into place, though.

The only other thing I can think of is that is different about this install than my original R5C7 install is that I originally installed R5C7 with a VGA monitor connected to the VGA port of the video card. The card is dual head (VGA + DVI), BTW. The R5D1 upgrade was done with my HDTV connected to the DVI port. Just for ease (and so my wife can watch TV), I have now connected the VGA monitor back up to the system.

At this point, I am wondering if repeating the upgrade again might be an option? Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Trevor

Reupgrading with the VGA monitor in place is certainly worth a shot. Other than that I'd say it's back to R5C7...

Another approach would be to use a usb stick. Since your saying that the nvidia driver is hosed and you also have access to another machine that has internet access. You could try reinstalling the nvidia driver. Here is what to do. I had to do this on my board prior to R5D1 because the video, sound, and nic would not get detected properly.

First, plug in the stick to the machine that you have access to the web.
Download the latest drivers for video card to the stick
Then plug the stick into your knoppmyth box
Next,

su
Mount /dev/sda1 /usbdrive
create /nvidia (on your knoppmyth box)
cp /usbdrive/driver /nvidia
chmod 700 *.run
sh (use the name of the nvidia package that you downloaded)
reboot

hopefully X will start.

Thanks for the tip about using USB... Actually the nvidia installers are already on the HD, under /usr/src/, so there is no need to transfer them from one computer to another.

I tried upgrading again with just the VGA monitor connected, but the same exact failures prevented it from working. I have made a few more discoveries, though, and it appears the problems are twofold:

1) Files appear to be missing from the filesystem that the post upgrade process looks for - at least there are warnings and fatal errors when the system reboots after the upgrade (I wish I had a way to capture all that output so you all could see it). So, this appears to be an install problem. In fact, I noticed when typing "uname -r" that the linux version on hda1 is 2.6.15 - not 2.6.17 that R5D1 states it uses - that is bizarre!

I verified the MD5SUM of the ISO file for R5D1, and then after burning it to CD I had Nero perform a data validation, so I know the install media is good. I used the torrent posted by mythic.tv. Is there any other explanation for how the install could have gone so wrong?

2) I think that the post upgrade process is attempting to install the nvidia drivers. The problem is that the install script must download kernel sources and perform other actions that require a network connection, and for some unknown reason, there is no network connection on the box after the upgrade.

This is very frustrating to me. Mainly because R5C7 installed so well without any major issues like this on the exact same hardware that I have now.

I did read another thread in which the author had to pull certain hardware out of the machine before an install would complete. I do have some USB devices plugged in now that were not there when I originally installed, and I thought as a last ditch attempt I could unplug those and try again. I doubt it would make a difference though.

If the KnoppMyth maintainers have seen this thread and can share any information that would be great. I am not as advanced in my linux knowledge yet as I want to be, and so I appreciate everyone's help thus far.

Reboot that CD and use the testcd option. If the drive you burned and checked in is a different one than the one youre installing with, they may have very different opinions as to the "goodness" of the media.

Honestly. I'd say throw the cd away and burn another one. Don't waste your time...Cd's are dirt cheap and your Kernel uname -r of 2.6.15 when it should be 2.6.17-chw-8 is not good sign.

My experience on R5D1 has been excellent. The cd works fine or me. It found the NVDIA 6150 for the first time and that was nice not to manual add all the drivers for video, nic, and sound...

As for the point of the usb stick I consider it a mechanism to move files to a machine when the nic is not working. It very handy in this capacity.

You are not alone.

http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=11311

Seems like the work around is to downgrade and not upgrade until the problem is fixed.

That thread looks like it's talking about TV-out on a PVR-350, not output from an nVidia card. I apologize if I missed something about nVidia cards in there.

twbutler, it's possible that your video card doesn't work with nVidia's 8774 driver, which was installed from local files when you first booted KM after the upgrade. I wrote code for the KM nVidia installer that uses nVidia's own list of compatible cards to determine whether to install 8774 or the legacy driver, however it's not guaranteed to be complete, since nVidia doesn't include the fingerprint of my workstation's card, for example. There is an exceptions file I maintain for cards that either aren't listed in the "comprehensive" list from nVidia, or they're in the list but won't work with the given version.

You could try the legacy driver to see if it works:

Failing that, try 1.0-8762 or 1.0-8756. Same syntax.

Let me know how that works.

Regarding other things:

What did you have to edit? You mentioned in email that you built your own Dragon but used a different HDD. There's no need to manually edit lilo.conf on a Dragon, and I know Dragon's video card works with the 8774 driver in R5D1. Can you post your full hardware specs so I can see what I'm dealing with?


Eek! Please note that if you do unexpected things like running the nVidia installer in an environment where it wasn't tested, you may get unexpected results.


That should not matter but if the above doesn't help you, give it a shot.


I recommend trying it. The only extra thing I think you will need to do for your particular video card is install an older nVidia driver version. Once X Windows is running, the upgrade process will continue. Once it's working, I'll send you a command to run so I can grab your card's fingerprint and put it in the exceptions file.

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It has been a long weekend without MythTV... but I figured out how to get the R5D1 upgrade to complete successfully.

As I said in a previous post, I had two USB devices plugged into the machine - an APC UPS (Back-UPS ES 500) and a Saitek gamepad (P3000). Well, those devices were not present when I performed my original R5C7 install, so I decided to unplug them and try the upgrade one last time. To my surprise it worked this time! Just to cover all the bases, I used the "testcd" option when I ran the install CD, along with the "dragon" option. The CD tested out OK, then I chose the auto-upgrade menu selection.

When the machine rebooted after copying the files to hda1, I immediately noticed that things were going better than previous attempts. No more "fatal" errors in the console, the NVidia drivers installed without any problems, and gdm/fluxbox started up and I was then prompted for the root password for the post install stuff.

The restore of my database, etc., went well - all my settings were preserved fine. However, I did run into a few other minor issues:

The tv_grab_na_icons script that ran overwrote all my existing tv icons for the stations in my area.

I have a PVR-250 analog tuner card, so I had to delete all my video sources and recreate them as described in tjc's upgrade tips for R5D1

Lastly, I have a second hard drive in this box that is NTFS formatted, and whenever I have ran KN installs/upgrades, the lilo.conf file that is generated has a "part" reference to the second HD its second line, and this leads to problems when the machine attempts to boot. Basically, I got the output "L 99 99 99 99 ..." because lilo was attempting to go to the NTFS drive (hdd) rather than my primary drive where KnoppMyth is installed (hda). Editing lilo.conf and commenting out that second line fixes that problem. I need to reformat that drive and use SAMBA, but in my copius free time...

Also, Human asked for my machine specs:
# CASE: Silverstone LC03 case and 400W PS
# MOTHERBOARD: MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum
# CPU: 90nm AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (socket 939)
# RAM: VS1GBKIT400: Corsair Value Select 1GB PC3200 400MHz DDR DIMM kit (2x512MB)
# CPU HEATSINK: Zalman CNPS7000B-AlCu
# NORTHBRIDGE HEATSINK: Zalman NM-NB47J
# DVD-RW: Pioneer 110D
# HDD: Seagate 300 GB IDE
# GRAPHICS CARD: MSI NX6600LE TD256E
# SOUNDCARD: Chaintech AV-710 with optical S/PDIF
# TUNER CARDS: AirStar-HD5000-PCI, Haupauge PVR-250


So, to any pilgrim who runs across this post, please try unplugging all UDB devices when doing upgrades/installs if you are having problems. I'll leave it to some of the other folks to shed some light on why having USB devices connected could wreck such havoc.

Thanks again to all who stepped up to help! I have some new questions now that I have R5D1 running, but I will check the forum for answers first before posting them here.