[plug] Installing opengl on Mandrake 10.0

[Jim Householder]

Innis Cunningham wrote:
> Hi All
> Has anyone installed opengl on mandrake 10.0 or
> greater on a system using Nvidia drivers.As I am
> new to linux I am a little confused as to what I have
> on my system.According to what I read Mandrake
> changed from using XFree86 to X11 with the 10.0
> release.Now I am not sure what this means but if you have
> installed opengl on Mandrake 10 or aboveif you could tell me any
> tips or pit falls I would be most greatful.
> I have run glxgears and I don't have opengl.
> I have a fx5200 nvidia card running on a 2gig atholon with 512meg of ram.
> Any help you can give would be most appreciated.
> 
> Cheers
> Innis
> 
I'll give it a shot.

I'm running MDK 10.1 Official and have an nvidia NV17 GeForce4 MMX 440-SE card.

Nvidia have a one-size-fits-all driver module which can be downloaded from their website.  Be sure to get the file for GeForce cards (not nForce).  To install it, you will need to have X not running.  Either boot to the command line (there should be a safe or rescue option in your boot menu), or I think from a shell window you can enter (as root?)
# init 2   (or 3)

Then 
sh nvidia-linux-x86-1.0-6629-pkg1.run

It will check if it contains a pre-built driver module.  Then it will ask to check the internet, and finally it will build a new module.  Obviously success at any stage will stop there.

For this to work you will need kernel headers installed.  I usually get the complete source tree, but I think for this that's overkill.

The documentation installed with the build describes how to modify your /etc/X11/XF86Config file.  Basically, in the Module Section you remove  Load "glcore"  and  Load "dri", and add Load "glx", and in the Device Section change Driver "nv" to Driver "nvidia".  Also make sure the HorizSync and VertRefresh numbers are correct for your monitor.  If they are too low you may not get the higher resolutions.

Regarding said file, Mandrake has switched from XFree86 to xorg due to changes in licencing.  The configuration file is now xorg.conf IIRC which for now is a link to XF86Config.  The reason you might encounter XF86Config-4 (or references thereto) is that the latest release of XFree86 uses a slightly different configuration file compared to previous releases.

I had no problems at all with MDK 10.0.  However with 10.1 the configuration files for module-loading were not updated.  As I have not worked out how to make the change needed, at this time I'm manually 'modprobe nvidia' when I boot.  Perhaps someone can point me in the right direction.  I've found the man pages less than helpful.

I think (maybe that's my problem) that the glcore driver provides gl function in software.  

Then in the package manager search for gl and see what looks interesting...

HTH
Jim