Plymouth Graphical Boot disappeared after loading Nvidia driver.

bwilliam · #1 23rd September 2010, 08:47 AM

I have successfully installed the Nvidia driver on my FC13 system that is using an Nvidia NV44 (Ge 6200) card. It seems to be working as I see the nvidia driver when I do a lsmod | grep nvidia and the glxgears program works as well as the nvidia-settings program.

Basically, I did the following:

Code:

 yum install kmod-nvidia-PAE

 new-kernel-pkg --mkinitrd --dracut --update $(rpm -q --queryformat="%{version}-%{release}.%{arch}\n" kernel | tail -n 1)

 Reboot

However, the nice Plymouth Graphical Boot has disappeared (or at least changed) from the nice high resolution screen with the "Tear drop" that slowly fills up in the middle of the screen and then becomes the Fedora "F" logo. Instead, I get a low resolution display with a lame marching rectangle across the bottom of the screen.

I'm thinking that the new-kernel-pkg command blew the Plymouth stuff out of the initrd image. I've tried using

Code:

   plymouth-set-default-theme -R

to put back the Plymouth graphical boot into the initrd image but that doesn't seem to help.

I also tried rerunning the new-kernel-pkg command with the --add-plymouth-initrd switch and that doesn't seem to work either.

The documentation on Plymouth at http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/...-Plymouth.html implies that the graphic driver has to support modeset for the Plymouth Graphical Boot to work. Maybe that's the problem and the Nvidia PAE driver doesn't yet support modeset. (Does any know if that's the case?)

I know this is a minor cosmetic thing but I'd like to figure out how to get the nice Plymouth graphical bootup to work again.

Thanks in advance.

oxala · #2 23rd September 2010, 02:10 PM

Hello,

You will want to add "vga=<MODE>" to your boot options. Since the proprietary driver does not use kernel modesetting, you must manually specify a mode that is high enough in resolution for plymouth to run.

Example:

Code:

kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.34.7-56.fc13.i686.PAE root=/dev/mapper/dolphin-root2 ro rd_LVM_LV=dolphin/root2 rd_MD_UUID=224aa24a:8d2b2d73:4fa6bae4:438fc5b1 rd_LVM_LV=dolphin/swap rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_DM LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=us rhgb quiet nouveau.modeset=0 rdblacklist=nouveau vga=0x369

Enjoy!

oxala

bwilliam · #3 23rd September 2010, 05:01 PM

It seems that the system doesn't like "vga=0x369". (I'm not sure what mode that is.) Used "vga=840" (i.e. hex 0x348 which is mode 1400x1050x16) and that does the trick.

Now just out of curiosity, how would I back out the nvidia driver if I had to for some reason? It appears you can't just do a yum remove *nvidia*, take out the rdblacklist=nouveau command from grub.conf and build a new initrd image with new-kernel-pkg. I actually tried that and you still see the nvidia driver when you do a lsmod.

Thanks for the help.

oxala · #4 23rd September 2010, 05:21 PM

Hello,

I have NOT tried this yet, but I imagine that you could dual boot between nouveau and nvidia drivers by doing the opposite of the current boot options. Blacklist nvidia and specicify nouveau, but with modeset enabled.

In a running system, removing the package may not unload the module from memory. To this, you would need to use "rmmod <MODULE>".

Have fun!

oxala

PS "vga=0x369" was intended as an example, I should have used a more common mode, I'm glad you found a working mode!

bwilliam · #5 23rd September 2010, 05:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by oxala

I have NOT tried this yet, but I imagine that you could dual boot between nouveau and nvidia drivers by doing the opposite of the current boot options. Blacklist nvidia and specicify nouveau, but with modeset enabled.

I assume I would need another entry in grub.conf that had rdblacklist=nvidia but I'm not sure how to "specify" nouveau in grub.conf entry.

Beau

oxala · #6 23rd September 2010, 07:40 PM

Hello,

This is my current grub entry:

Code:

title Fedora (2.6.34.7-56.fc13.i686.PAE)
    root (hd1,0)
    kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.34.7-56.fc13.i686.PAE root=/dev/mapper/dolphin-root2 ro rd_LVM_LV=dolphin/root2 rd_MD_UUID=224aa24a:8d2b2d73:4fa6bae4:438fc5b1 rd_LVM_LV=dolphin/swap rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_DM LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=us rhgb quiet nouveau.modeset=0 rdblacklist=nouveau vga=0x369
    initrd /initramfs-2.6.34.7-56.fc13.i686.PAE.img

Enjoy!

oxala

my_linux · #7 24th September 2010, 12:03 PM

You can use vga=ask to verify what modes are supported with the Nvidia driver. Once confirmed you can then add a compatible mode to grub.conf and Plymouth should work.

If you are using RPMFusion's Nvidia drivers see; http://rpmfusion.org/Howto/nVidia