[gentoo-dev] NVIDIA drivers

[Denis Shcherbakov <deniss@Princeton.EDU>]

Hello...

I have just installed Gentoo and also installed and compiled X and KDE.  I
have a GeForce3 Nvidia chip in my graphics card (64-MB Asus V8200), and so
I thought I'd use the new drivers.

So I followed the instructions to install those, using Code Listings 8
thru 10 in the Desktop Guide, and after I made those modifications, I
started X, only to see

NVIDIA(0): Failed to initialize the NVdriver kernel module

As a result, X did not find any usable screens and died with a fatal
error.

After looking in /var/log/messages, I saw the following message
corresponding to an attempt to load NVdriver module into the kernel:

nvidia: couldn't map registers!

Before I made the modifications to use new Nvidia drivers, X started and
ran just fine from startx.  It gave no errors.

Let me give you some detail about my system.  I've a dual-processor
machine with 2.2GHz Xeons sitting on Tyan 2603 motherboard (Thunder i860
chipset), with 2GB Rambus RDRAM.  I compiled the kernel for it
successfully, and there are no errors at boot.  The graphics card has a
GeForce3 chip with 64MB of video RAM.  I have a Sony flat 21'' monitor,
CPD-G520.  Like I said, my X worked ok before i messed with Nvidia
drivers.

I saw an instruction document for Nvidia on www.gentoo.org, but it was
only in French!!  DOH.  I could really use some help about this.  This
seems like a very common error, and a LOT of people are reporting this
same thing, and yet there seems to be no solution that I could find.

Please advise.  Please let me know what other info you might need.

Best,
Denis