NVIDIA Accelerated Linux Driver Set README and Installation Guide NVIDIA Corporation Last Updated: 2005/11/13 Most Recent Driver Version: 1.0-8764 ______________________________________________________________________________ Preface ______________________________________________________________________________ The NVIDIA Accelerated Linux Driver Set brings accelerated 2D functionality and high-performance OpenGL support to Linux x86 with the use of NVIDIA graphics processing units (GPUs). These drivers provide optimized hardware acceleration for OpenGL and X applications and support nearly all recent NVIDIA graphics chips (please see Appendix A for a complete list of supported chips). TwinView, TV-Out and flat panel displays are also supported. This README describes how to install, configure, and use the NVIDIA Accelerated Linux Driver Set. Answers to frequently asked questions and problem diagnoses for common issues are also provided. These pages are posted on NVIDIA's web site (http://www.nvidia.com), and are installed in '/usr/share/doc/NVIDIA_GLX-1.0/'. ______________________________________________________________________________ Introduction ______________________________________________________________________________ This document provides instructions for the installation and use of the NVIDIA Accelerated Linux Driver Set. Chapter 1, Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 walk the user through the process of downloading, installing and configuring the driver. Chapter 4 addresses frequently asked questions about the installation process, and Chapter 5 provides solutions to common problems. In case additional information is required, Chapter 6 provides contact information for NVIDIA Linux driver resources, and Chapter 7 provides a brief listing of external resources. It is assumed that the user has at least a basic understanding of Linux techniques and terminology. However, Chapter 8 provides details on parts of the installation process that new users may find helpful. Additional information is presented in several Appendices. These include supported hardware and system requirements, comprehensive lists of options for various utilities associated with the driver, setup details for specific configurations, and advanced topics and features. CONTENTS: Preface Introduction I. Installation Instructions 1. Selecting and Downloading the NVIDIA Packages for Your System 2. Installing the NVIDIA Driver 3. Configuring X for the NVIDIA Driver II. Additional Information 4. Frequently Asked Questions 5. Common Problems 6. NVIDIA Contact Info 7. Additional Resources 8. Tips for New Linux Users 9. Acknowledgements III. Appendices A. Supported NVIDIA Graphics Chips B. Minimum Software Requirements C. Installed Components D. X Config Options E. OpenGL Environment Variable Settings F. Configuring AGP G. Configuring TwinView H. Configuring TV-Out I. Configuring a Laptop J. Programming Modes K. Flipping and UBB L. Known Issues M. Proc Interface N. XvMC Support O. GLX Support P. Configuring Multiple X Screens on One Card Q. Power Management Support R. Display Device Names S. The X Composite Extension T. The nvidia-settings Utility U. The XRandR Extension V. Support for GLX in Xinerama W. SLI FrameRendering X. Frame Lock and Genlock Y. Dots Per Inch ______________________________________________________________________________ Chapter 1. Selecting and Downloading the NVIDIA Packages for Your System ______________________________________________________________________________ NVIDIA drivers can be downloaded from the NVIDIA website (http://www.nvidia.com). The NVIDIA driver follows a Unified Architecture Model in which a single driver set is used for all supported NVIDIA graphics chips (please see Appendix A for a list of supported chips). The burden of selecting the correct driver is removed from the user, and the driver set is downloaded as a single file named 'NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8764-pkg1.run' The package suffix ('-pkg#') is used to distinguish between packages containing the same driver, but with different precompiled kernel interfaces. The file with the highest package number is suitable for most installations. Support for "legacy" GPUs has been removed from the unified driver. These legacy GPUs will continue to be maintained through special legacy GPU driver releases. Please see Appendix A for a list of legacy GPUs. The downloaded file is a self-extracting installer, and you may place it anywhere on your system. ______________________________________________________________________________ Chapter 2. Installing the NVIDIA Driver ______________________________________________________________________________ This chapter provides instructions for installing the NVIDIA driver. Note that after installation, but prior to using the driver, you must complete the steps described in Chapter 3. Additional details that may be helpful for the new Linux user are provided in Chapter 8. BEFORE YOU BEGIN Prior to beginning the installation, you should exit the X server and kill all OpenGL applications (note that it is possible that some OpenGL applications persist even after the X server has stopped). You should also set the default run level on your system such that it will boot to a VGA console, and not directly to X. Doing so will make it easier to recover if there is a problem during the installation process. Please see Chapter 8 for details. STARTING THE INSTALLER After you have downloaded the file 'NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8764-pkg#.run', change to the directory containing the downloaded file, and as the 'root' user run the executable: # cd yourdirectory # sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8764-pkg#.run The '.run' file is a self-extracting archive. When executed, it extracts the contents of the archive and runs the contained 'nvidia-installer' utility, which provides an interactive interface to walk you through the installation. 'nvidia-installer' will also install itself to '/usr/bin/nvidia-installer', which may be used at some later time to uninstall drivers, auto-download updated drivers, etc. The use of this utility is detailed later in this chapter. You may also supply command line options to the '.run' file. Some of the more common options are listed below. Common '.run' Options --info Print embedded info about the '.run' file and exit. --check Check integrity of the archive and exit. --extract-only Extract the contents of './NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8764.run', but do not run 'nvidia-installer'. --help Print usage information for the common commandline options and exit. --advanced-options Print usage information for common command line options as well as the advanced options, and then exit. INSTALLING THE KERNEL INTERFACE The NVIDIA kernel module has a kernel interface layer that must be compiled specifically for each kernel. NVIDIA distributes the source code to this kernel interface layer, as well as precompiled versions for many of the kernels provided by popular Linux distributions. When the installer is run, it will determine if it has a precompiled kernel interface for the kernel you are running. If it does not have one, it will check if there is one on the NVIDIA FTP site (assuming you have an Internet connection), and download it. If one cannot be downloaded, either because the FTP site cannot be reached or because one is not provided, the installer will check your system for the required kernel sources and compile the interface for you. You must have the source code for your kernel installed for compilation to work. On most systems, this means that you will need to locate and install the correct kernel-source or kernel-headers package; on some newer distributions, no additional packages are required (e.g. Fedora Core 3, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4). Note that linking of the kernel interface (in the case that the interface was downloaded or compiled at installation) requires you to have a linker installed on your system. The linker, usually '/usr/bin/ld', is part of the binutils package. If a precompiled kernel interface is not found, you must install a linker prior to installing the NVIDIA driver. FEATURES OF THE INSTALLER Without options, the '.run' file executes the installer after unpacking it. The installer can be run as a separate step in the process, or can be run at a later time to get updates, etc. Some of the more important commandline options of 'nvidia-installer' are: 'nvidia-installer' options --uninstall During installation, the installer will make backups of any conflicting files and record the installation of new files. The uninstall option undoes an install, restoring the system to its pre-install state. --latest Connect to NVIDIA's FTP site, and report the latest driver version and the url to the latest driver file. --update Connect to NVIDIA's FTP site, download the most recent driver file, and install it. --ui=none The installer uses an ncurses-based user interface if it is able to locate the correct ncurses library. Otherwise, it will fall back to a simple commandline user interface. This option disables the use of the ncurses library. Note that, as suggested by the options, the installer has the ability to download updated precompiled kernel interfaces from the NVIDIA FTP site (for kernels that were released after the NVIDIA driver release). ______________________________________________________________________________ Chapter 3. Configuring X for the NVIDIA Driver ______________________________________________________________________________ The X configuration file provides a means to configure the X server. This section describes the settings necessary to enable the NVIDIA driver. A comprehensive list of parameters is provided in Appendix D. The NVIDIA Driver includes a utility called nvidia-xconfig, which is designed to make editing the X configuration file easy. You can also edit it by hand. USING NVIDIA-XCONFIG TO CONFIGURE THE X SERVER nvidia-xconfig will find the X configuration file and modify it to use the NVIDIA X driver. In most cases, you can simply answer "Yes" when the installer asks if it should run it. If you need to reconfigure your X server later, you can run nvidia-xconfig again from a terminal. nvidia-xconfig will make a backup copy of your configuration file before modifying it. Note that the X server must be restarted for any changes to its configuration file to take effect. More information about nvidia-xconfig can be found in the nvidia-xconfig manual page by running. % man nvidia-xconfig EDITING THE CONFIGURATION FILE BY HAND In April 2004 the X.org Foundation released an X server based on the XFree86 server. While your release may use the X.org X server, rather than XFree86, the differences between the two should have no impact on NVIDIA Linux users with two exceptions: o The X.org configuration file is '/etc/X11/xorg.conf' while the XFree86 configuration file is '/etc/X11/XF86Config'. The files use the same syntax. This document refers to both files as "the X config file". o The X.org log file is '/var/log/Xorg.#.log' while the XFree86 log file is '/var/log/XFree86.#.log' (where '#' is the server number -- usually 0). The format of the log files is nearly identical. This document refers to both files as "the X log file". In order for any changes to be read into the X server, you must edit the file used by the server. While it is not unreasonable to simply edit both files, it is easy to determine the correct file by searching for the line (==) Using config file: in the X log file. This line indicates the name of the X config file in use. If you do not have a working X config file, there are a few different ways to obtain one. A sample config file is included both with the XFree86 distribution and with the NVIDIA driver package (at '/usr/share/doc/NVIDIA_GLX-1.0/'). Tools for generating a config file (such as 'xf86config') are generally included with Linux. Additional information on the X config syntax can be found in the XF86Config manual page (`man XF86Config` or `man xorg.conf`). If you have a working X config file for a different driver (such as the "nv" or "vesa" driver), then simply edit the file as follows. Remove the line: Driver "nv" (or Driver "vesa") (or Driver "fbdev") and replace it with the line: Driver "nvidia" Remove the following lines: Load "dri" Load "GLCore" In the "Module" section of the file, add the line (if it does not already exist): Load "glx" There are numerous options that may be added to the X config file to tune the NVIDIA X driver. Please see Appendix D for a complete list of these options. Once you have completed these edits to the X config file, you may restart X and begin using the accelerated OpenGL libraries. After restarting X, any OpenGL application should automatically use the new NVIDIA libraries. If you encounter any problems, please see Chapter 5 for common problem diagnoses. ______________________________________________________________________________ Chapter 4. Frequently Asked Questions ______________________________________________________________________________ This section provides answers to frequently asked questions associated with the NVIDIA Linux x86 Driver and its installation. Common problem diagnoses can be found in Chapter 5 and tips for new users can be found in Chapter 8. Also, detailed information for specific setups is provided in the Appendices. NVIDIA-INSTALLER Q. How do I extract the contents of the '.run' without actually installing the driver? A. Run the installer as follows: # sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8764-pkg1.run --extract-only This will create the directory NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8764-pkg1, containing the uncompressed contents of the '.run' file. Q. How can I see the source code to the kernel interface layer? A. The source files to the kernel interface layer are in the usr/src/nv directory of the extracted .run file. To get to these sources, run: # sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-6629-pkg1.run --extract-only # cd NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-6629-pkg1/usr/src/nv/ Q. How and when are the the NVIDIA device files created? A. Depending on the target system's configuration, the NVIDIA device files used to be created in one of three different ways: o at installation time, using mknod o at module load time, via devfs (Linux device file system) o at module load time, via hotplug/udev With current NVIDIA driver releases, device files are created or modified by the X driver when the X server is started. By default, the NVIDIA driver will attempt to create device files with the following attributes: UID: 0 - 'root' GID: 0 - 'root' Mode: 0666 - 'rw-rw-rw-' Existing device files are changed if their attributes don't match these defaults. If you want the NVIDIA driver to create the device files with different attributes, you can specify them with the "NVreg_DeviceFileUID" (user), "NVreg_DeviceFileGID" (group) and "NVreg_DeviceFileMode" NVIDIA Linux kernel module parameters. For example, the NVIDIA driver can be instructed to create device files with UID=0 (root), GID=44 (video) and Mode=0660 by passing the following module parameters to the NVIDIA Linux kernel module: NVreg_DeviceFileUID=0 NVreg_DeviceFileGID=44 NVreg_DeviceFileMode=0660 The "NVreg_ModifyDeviceFiles" NVIDIA kernel module parameter will disable dynamic device file management, if set to 0. Q. I just upgraded my kernel, and now the NVIDIA kernel module will not load. What is wrong? A. The kernel interface layer of the NVIDIA kernel module must be compiled specifically for the configuration and version of your kernel. If you upgrade your kernel, then the simplest solution is to reinstall the driver. ADVANCED: You can install the NVIDIA kernel module for a non running kernel (for example: in the situation where you just built and installed a new kernel, but have not rebooted yet) with a command line such as this: # sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8764-pkg1.run --kernel-name='KERNEL_NAME' Where 'KERNEL_NAME' is what 'uname -r' would report if the target kernel were running. Q. Why does NVIDIA not provide RPMs anymore? A. Not every Linux distribution uses RPM, and NVIDIA wanted a single solution that would work across all Linux distributions. As indicated in the NVIDIA Software License, Linux distributions are welcome to repackage and redistribute the NVIDIA Linux driver in whatever package format they wish. Q. Can the nvidia-installer use a proxy server? A. Yes, because the FTP support in nvidia-installer is based on snarf, it will honor the 'FTP_PROXY', 'SNARF_PROXY', and 'PROXY' environment variables. Q. What is the significance of the 'pkg#' suffix on the '.run' file? A. The 'pkg#' suffix is used to distinguish between '.run' files containing the same driver, but different sets of precompiled kernel interfaces. If a distribution releases a new kernel after an NVIDIA driver is released, the current NVIDIA driver can be repackaged to include a precompiled kernel interface for that newer kernel (in addition to all the precompiled kernel interfaces that were included in the previous package of the driver). '.run' files with the same version number, but different pkg numbers, only differ in what precompiled kernel interfaces are included. Additionally, '.run' files with higher pkg numbers will contain everything the '.run' files with lower pkg numbers contain. Q. I have already installed NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8764-pkg1.run, but I see that NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8764-pkg2.run was just posted on the NVIDIA Linux driver download page. Should I download and install NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8764-pkg2.run? A. This is not necessary. The driver contained within all 1.0-8764 '.run' files will be identical. There is no need to reinstall. Q. Can I add my own precompiled kernel interfaces to a '.run' file? A. Yes, the --add-this-kernel '.run' file option will unpack the '.run' file, build a precompiled kernel interface for the currently running kernel, and repackage the '.run' file, appending '-custom' to the filename. This may be useful, for example. if you administer multiple Linux machines, each running the same kernel. Q. Where can I find the source code for the 'nvidia-installer' utility? A. The 'nvidia-installer' utility is released under the GPL. The latest source code for it is available at: ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/nvidia-installer NVIDIA DRIVER Q. Where should I start when diagnosing display problems? A. One of the most useful tools for diagnosing problems is the X log file in '/var/log'. Lines that begin with "(II)" are information, "(WW)" are warnings, and "(EE)" are errors. You should make sure that the correct config file (i.e. the config file you are editing) is being used; look for the line that begins with: (==) Using config file: Also make sure that the NVIDIA driver is being used, rather than the "nv" or "vesa" driver. Search for (II) LoadModule: "nvidia" Lines from the driver should begin with: (II) NVIDIA(0) Q. How can I increase the amount of data printed in the X log file? A. By default, the NVIDIA X driver prints relatively few messages to stderr and the X log file. If you need to troubleshoot, then it may be helpful to enable more verbose output by using the X command line options -verbose and -logverbose, which can be used to set the verbosity level for the 'stderr' and log file messages, respectively. The NVIDIA X driver will output more messages when the verbosity level is at or above 5 (X defaults to verbosity level 1 for 'stderr' and level 3 for the log file). So, to enable verbose messaging from the NVIDIA X driver to both the log file and 'stderr', you could start X by doing the following % startx -- -verbose 5 -logverbose 5 Q. Where can I get 'gl.h' or 'glx.h' so I can compile OpenGL programs? A. Most systems come with these header files preinstalled. However, NVIDIA provides its own 'gl.h' and 'glx.h' files, which get installed by default as part of driver installation. If you prefer that the NVIDIA-distributed OpenGL header files not be installed, you can pass the --no-opengl-headers option to the 'NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8764-pkg1.run' file during installation. Q. Can I receive email notification of new NVIDIA Accelerated Linux Driver Set releases? A. Yes. Fill out the form at: http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?FO=driver_update Q. What is NVIDIA's policy towards development series Linux kernels? A. NVIDIA does not officially support development series kernels. However, all the kernel module source code that interfaces with the Linux kernel is available in the 'usr/src/nv/' directory of the '.run' file. NVIDIA encourages members of the Linux community to develop patches to these source files to support development series kernels. A web search will most likely yield several community supported patches. Q. Why does X use so much memory? A. When measuring any application's memory usage, you must be careful to distinguish between physical system RAM used and virtual mappings of shared resources. For example, most shared libraries exist only once in physical memory but are mapped into multiple processes. This memory should only be counted once when computing total memory usage. In the same way, the video memory on a graphics card or register memory on any device can be mapped into multiple processes. These mappings do not consume normal system RAM. This has been a frequently discussed topic on XFree86 mailing lists; see, for example: http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=xfree-xpert&m=96835767116567&w=2 The 'pmap' utility described in the above thread is available here: http://web.hexapodia.org/~adi/pmap.c and is a useful tool in distinguishing between types of memory mappings. For example, while 'top' may indicate that X is using several hundred MB of memory, the last line of output from pmap: mapped: 287020 KB writable/private: 9932 KB shared: 264656 KB reveals that X is really only using roughly 10MB of system RAM (the "writable/private" value). Note, also, that X must allocate resources on behalf of X clients (the window manager, your web browser, etc); X's memory usage will increase as more clients request resources such as pixmaps, and decrease as you close X applications. Q. Where can I find the tarballs? A. Plain tarballs are no longer available. The '.run' file is a tarball with a shell script prepended. You can execute the '.run' file with the --extract-only option to unpack the tarball. Q. Where can I find older driver versions? A. Please visit ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86_40/ Q. I want to use Valgrind with OpenGL applications, but my distribution uses ELF TLS, and Valgrind cannot yet deal with NVIDIA's ELF TLS OpenGL. What do I do? A. You can set the environment variable 'LD_ASSUME_KERNEL' to something below "2.3.99" (e.g. 2.3.98). Please see the new user guide, Chapter 8, for more tips on setting environment variables. NVIDIA's OpenGL libraries contain an OS ABI ELF note that indicates the minimum kernel version that is required to use the library. The ELF TLS OpenGL libraries have an OS ABI of 2.3.99 (the first Linux kernel that contained the necessary LDT support for ELF TLS), while the non ELF TLS OpenGL libraries contain an OS ABI of 2.2.5. The run-time loader will not load libraries with an OS ABI greater than the current kernel version. The 'LD_ASSUME_KERNEL' environment variable can be used to override the kernel version that the run-time loader uses in this test. By setting 'LD_ASSUME_KERNEL' to any kernel version below 2.3.99, you can force the loader to not use the ELF TLS OpenGL libraries, and fall back to the regular OpenGL libraries. If, for some reason, you need to remove this OS ABI note from the NVIDIA OpenGL libraries, you can do so by passing the '.run' file the --no-abi-note option during installation. Q. What is SELinux and how does it interact with the NVIDIA driver ? A. Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux) is a set of modifications applied to the Linux kernel and utilities that implement a security policy architecture. When in use it requires that the security type on all shared libraries be set to 'shlib_t'. The installer detects when to set the security type, and sets it on all shared libraries it installs. The option --force-selinux passed to the '.run' file overrides the detection of when to set the security type. Q. Using GNOME configuration utilities, I am unable to get a resolution above 800x600. What is wrong? A. The installation of GNOME provided in distributions such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 contain several competing interfaces for specifying resolution: 'System Settings' -> 'Display' which will update the X configuration file, and 'Applications' -> 'Preferences' -> 'Screen Resolution' which will update the per-user screen resolution using the XRandR extension. Your desktop resolution will be limited to the smaller of the two settings. Please be sure to check the setting of each. Q. Why do applications that use DGA graphics fail? A. The NVIDIA driver does not support the graphics component of the XFree86-DGA (Direct Graphics Access) extension. Applications can use the XDGASelectInput() function to acquire relative pointer motion, but graphics-related functions such as XDGASetMode() and XDGAOpenFramebuffer() will fail. The graphics component of XFree86-DGA is not supported because it requires a CPU mapping of framebuffer memory. As graphics boards ship with increasing quantities of video memory, the NVIDIA X driver has had to switch to a more dynamic memory mapping scheme that is incompatible with DGA. Furthermore, DGA does not cooperate with other graphics rendering libraries such as Xlib and OpenGL because it accesses GPU resources directly. It is recommended that applications use OpenGL or Xlib, rather than DGA, for graphics rendering. Using rendering libraries other than DGA will yield better performance and improve interoperability with other X applications. Q. My kernel log contains messages that are prefixed with "Xid"; what do these messages mean? A. "Xid" messages indicate that a general GPU error occurred, most often due to the driver misprogramming the GPU or to corruption of the commands sent to the GPU. These messages provide diagnostic information that can be used by NVIDIA to aid in debugging reported problems. Q. On what NVIDIA hardware is the EXT_framebuffer_object OpenGL extension supported? A. EXT_framebuffer_object is supported on GeForce FX, Quadro FX, and newer GPUs. ______________________________________________________________________________ Chapter 5. Common Problems ______________________________________________________________________________ This section provides solutions to common problems associated with the NVIDIA Linux x86 Driver. Q. My X server fails to start, and my X log file contains the error: (EE) NVIDIA(0): The NVIDIA kernel module does not appear to be receiving (EE) NVIDIA(0): interrupts generated by the NVIDIA graphics device. (EE) NVIDIA(0): Please see the FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS section in (EE) NVIDIA(0): the README for additional information. A. This can be caused by a variety of problems, such as PCI IRQ routing errors, I/O APIC problems or conflicts with other devices sharing the IRQ (or their drivers). If possible, configure your system such that your graphics card does not share its IRQ with other devices (try moving the graphics card to another slot if applicable, unload/disable the driver(s) for the device(s) sharing the card's IRQ, or remove/disable the device(s)). Depending on the nature of the problem, one of (or a combination of) these kernel parameters might also help: Parameter Behavior -------------- --------------------------------------------------- pci=noacpi don't use ACPI for PCI IRQ routing pci=biosirq use PCI BIOS calls to retrieve the IRQ routing table noapic don't use I/O APICs present in the system acpi=off disable ACPI Q. X starts for me, but OpenGL applications terminate immediately. A. If X starts but you have trouble with OpenGL, you most likely have a problem with other libraries in the way, or there are stale symlinks. See Appendix C for details. Sometimes, all it takes is to rerun 'ldconfig'. You should also check that the correct extensions are present; % xdpyinfo should show the "GLX" and "NV-GLX" extensions present. If these two extensions are not present, then there is most likely a problem loading the glx module, or it is unable to implicitly load GLcore. Check your X config file and make sure that you are loading glx (see Chapter 3). If your X config file is correct, then check the X log file for warnings/errors pertaining to GLX. Also check that all of the necessary symlinks are in place (refer to Appendix C). Q. When Xinerama is enabled, my stereo glasses are shuttering only when the stereo application is displayed on one specific X screen. When the application is displayed on the other X screens, the stereo glasses stop shuttering. A. This problem occurs with DDC and "blue line" stereo glasses, that get the stereo signal from one video port of the graphics card. When a X screen does not display any stereo drawable the stereo signal is disabled on the associated video port. Forcing stereo flipping allows the stereo glasses to shutter continuously. This can be done by enabling the OpenGL control "Force Stereo Flipping" in nvidia-settings, or by setting the X configuration option "ForceStereoFlipping" to "1". Q. My X server fails to start, and my X log file contains the error: (EE) NVIDIA(0): Failed to load the NVIDIA kernel module! A. The X driver will abort with this error message if the NVIDIA kernel module fails to load. If you receive this error, you should check the output of `dmesg` for kernel error messages and/or attempt to load the kernel module explicitly with `modprobe nvidia`. If unresolved symbols are reported, then the kernel module was most likely built against a Linux kernel source tree (or kernel headers) for a kernel revision or configuration that doesn't match the running kernel. You can specify the location of the kernel source tree (or headers) when you install the NVIDIA driver using the --kernel-source-path command line option (see `sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8764-pkg1.run --advanced-options` for details). Old versions of the module-init-tools include `modprobe` binaries that report an error when instructed to load a module that's already loaded into the kernel. Please upgrade your module-init-tools if you receive an error message to this effect. The X server reads '/proc/sys/kernel/modprobe' to determine the path to the `modprobe` utility and falls back to '/sbin/modprobe' if the file doesn't exist. Please make sure that this path is valid and refers to a `modprobe` binary compatible with the Linux kernel running on your system. The "LoadKernelModule" X driver option can be used to change the default behavior and disable kernel module auto-loading. Q. Installing the NVIDIA kernel module gives an error message like: #error Modules should never use kernel-headers system headers #error but headers from an appropriate kernel-source A. You need to install the source for the Linux kernel. In most situations you can fix this problem by installing the kernel-source package for your distribution Q. OpenGL applications crash and print out the following warning: WARNING: Your system is running with a buggy dynamic loader. This may cause crashes in certain applications. If you experience crashes you can try setting the environment variable __GL_SINGLE_THREADED to 1. For more information please consult the FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS section in the file /usr/share/doc/NVIDIA_GLX-1.0/README.txt. A. The dynamic loader on your system has a bug which will cause applications linked with pthreads, and that dlopen() libGL multiple times, to crash. This bug is present in older versions of the dynamic loader. Distributions that shipped with this loader include but are not limited to Red Hat Linux 6.2 and Mandrake Linux 7.1. Version 2.2 and later of the dynamic loader are known to work properly. If the crashing application is single threaded then setting the environment variable '__GL_SINGLE_THREADED' to "1" will prevent the crash. In the bash shell you would enter: % export __GL_SINGLE_THREADED=1 and in csh and derivatives use: % setenv __GL_SINGLE_THREADED 1 Previous releases of the NVIDIA Accelerated Linux Driver Set attempted to work around this problem. Unfortunately, the workaround caused problems with other applications and was removed after version 1.0-1541. Q. Quake3 crashes when changing video modes. A. You are probably experiencing a problem described above. Please check the text output for the "WARNING" message described in the previous hint. Setting '__GL_SINGLE_THREADED' to "1" as will fix the problem. Q. I cannot build the NVIDIA kernel module, or, I can build the NVIDIA kernel module, but modprobe/insmod fails to load the module into my kernel. What is wrong? A. These problems are generally caused by the build using the wrong kernel header files (i.e. header files for a different kernel version than the one you are running). The convention used to be that kernel header files should be stored in '/usr/include/linux/', but that is deprecated in favor of '/lib/modules/RELEASE/build/include' (where RELEASE is the result of 'uname -r'. The 'nvidia-installer' should be able to determine the location on your system; however, if you encounter a problem you can force the build to use certain header files by using the --kernel-include-dir option. For this to work you will of course need the appropriate kernel header files installed on your system. Consult the documentation that came with your distribution; some distributions do not install the kernel header files by default, or they install headers that do not coincide properly with the kernel you are running. Q. There are problems running Heretic II. A. Heretic II installs, by default, a symlink called 'libGL.so' in the application directory. You can remove or rename this symlink, since the system will then find the default 'libGL.so' (which our drivers install in '/usr/lib'). From within Heretic II you can then set your render mode to OpenGL in the video menu. There is also a patch available to Heretic II from lokigames at: http://www.lokigames.com/products/heretic2/updates.php3/ Q. My system hangs when switching to a virtual terminal if I have rivafb enabled. A. Using both rivafb and the NVIDIA kernel module at the same time is currently broken. In general, using two independent software drivers to drive the same piece of hardware is a bad idea. Q. Compiling the NVIDIA kernel module gives this error: You appear to be compiling the NVIDIA kernel module with a compiler different from the one that was used to compile the running kernel. This may be perfectly fine, but there are cases where this can lead to unexpected behavior and system crashes. If you know what you are doing and want to override this check, you can do so by setting IGNORE_CC_MISMATCH. In any other case, set the CC environment variable to the name of the compiler that was used to compile the kernel. A. You should compile the NVIDIA kernel module with the same compiler version that was used to compile your kernel. Some Linux kernel data structures are dependent on the version of gcc used to compile it; for example, in 'include/linux/spinlock.h': ... * Most gcc versions have a nasty bug with empty initializers. */ #if (__GNUC__ > 2) typedef struct { } rwlock_t; #define RW_LOCK_UNLOCKED (rwlock_t) { } #else typedef struct { int gcc_is_buggy; } rwlock_t; #define RW_LOCK_UNLOCKED (rwlock_t) { 0 } #endif If the kernel is compiled with gcc 2.x, but gcc 3.x is used when the kernel interface is compiled (or vice versa), the size of rwlock_t will vary, and things like ioremap will fail. To check what version of gcc was used to compile your kernel, you can examine the output of: % cat /proc/version To check what version of gcc is currently in your '$PATH', you can examine the output of: % gcc -v Q. X fails with error Failed to allocate LUT context DMA A. This is one of the possible consequences of compiling the NVIDIA kernel interface with a different gcc version than used to compile the Linux kernel (see above). Q. I recently updated various libraries on my system using my Linux distributor's update utility, and the NVIDIA graphics driver no longer works. A. Conflicting libraries may have been installed by your distribution's update utility; please see Appendix C for details on how to diagnose this. Q. I have rebuilt the NVIDIA kernel module, but when I try to insert it, I get a message telling me I have unresolved symbols. A. Unresolved symbols are most often caused by a mismatch between your kernel sources and your running kernel. They must match for the NVIDIA kernel module to build correctly. Please make sure your kernel sources are installed and configured to match your running kernel. Q. How do I tell if I have my kernel sources installed? A. If you are running on a distro that uses RPM (Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE, etc), then you can use 'rpm' to tell you. At a shell prompt, type: % rpm -qa | grep kernel and look at the output. You should see a package that corresponds to your kernel (often named something like kernel-2.4.18-3) and a kernel source package with the same version (often named something like kernel-source-2.4.18-3). If none of the lines seem to correspond to a source package, then you will probably need to install it. If the versions listed mismatch (e.g., kernel-2.4.18-10 vs. kernel-source-2.4.18-3), then you will need to update the kernel-source package to match the installed kernel. If you have multiple kernels installed, you need to install the kernel-source package that corresponds to your RUNNING kernel (or make sure your installed source package matches the running kernel). You can do this by looking at the output of 'uname -r' and matching versions. Q. I am unable to load the NVIDIA kernel module that I compiled for the Red Hat Linux 7.3 2.4.18-3bigmem kernel. A. The kernel header files Red Hat Linux distributes for Red Hat Linux 7.3 2.4.18-3bigmem kernel are misconfigured. NVIDIA's precompiled kernel module for this kernel can be loaded, but if you want to compile the NVIDIA kernel interface files yourself for this kernel, then you will need to perform the following: # cd /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build/ # make mrproper # cp configs/kernel-2.4.18-i686-bigmem.config .config # make oldconfig dep Note: Red Hat Linux ships kernel header files that are simultaneously configured for ALL of their kernels for a particular distribution version. A header file generated at boot time sets up a few parameters that select the correct configuration. Rebuilding the kernel headers with the above commands will create header files suitable for the Red Hat Linux 7.3 2.4.18-3bigmem kernel configuration only, thus making the header files for the other configurations unusable. Q. OpenGL applications leak significant amounts of memory on my system! A. If your kernel is making use of the -rmap VM, the system may be leaking memory due to a memory management optimization introduced in -rmap14a. The -rmap VM has been adopted by several popular distributions, the memory leak is known to be present in some of the distribution kernels; it has been fixed in -rmap15e. If you suspect that your system is affected, please try upgrading your kernel or contact your distribution's vendor for assistance. Q. Some OpenGL applications (like Quake3 Arena) crash when I start them on Red Hat Linux 9.0. A. Some versions of the glibc package shipped by Red Hat that support TLS do not properly handle using dlopen() to access shared libraries which use some TLS models. This problem is exhibited, for example, when Quake3 Area dlopen() 's NVIDIA's libGL library. Please obtain at least glibc-2.3.2-11.9 which is available as an update from Red Hat. Q. I have installed the driver, but my Enable 3D Acceleration checkbox is still grayed out. A. Most distribution-provided configuration applets are not aware of the NVIDIA accelerated driver, and consequently will not update themselves when you install the driver. Your driver, if it has been installed properly, should function fine. Q. X does not restore the VGA console when run on a TV. I get this error message in my X log file: Unable to initialize the X int10 module; the console may not be restored correctly on your TV. A. The NVIDIA X driver uses the X Int10 module to save and restore console state on TV out, and will not be able to restore the console correctly if it cannot use the Int10 module. If you have built the X server yourself, please be sure you have built the Int10 module. If you are using a build of the X server provided by a Linux distribution, and are missing the Int10 module, please contact your distributor. Q. When changing settings in games like Quake 3 Arena, or Wolfenstein Enemy Territory, the game crashes and I see this error: ...loading libGL.so.1: QGL_Init: dlopen libGL.so.1 failed: /usr/lib/tls/libGL.so.1: shared object cannot be dlopen()ed: static TLS memory too small A. These games close and reopen the NVIDIA OpenGL driver (via dlopen() / dlclose()) when settings are changed. On some versions of glibc (such as the one shipped with Red Hat Linux 9), there is a bug that leaks static TLS entries. This glibc bug causes subsequent re-loadings of the OpenGL driver to fail. This is fixed in more recent versions of glibc; please see Red Hat bug #89692: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=89692 Q. X crashes during 'startx', and my X log file contains this error message: (EE) NVIDIA(0): Failed to obtain a shared memory identifier. A. The NVIDIA OpenGL driver and the NVIDIA X driver require shared memory to communicate; you must have 'CONFIG_SYSVIPC' enabled in your kernel. Q. When I try to install the driver, the installer claims that X is running, even though I have exited X. A. The installer detects the presence of an X server by checking for X's lock files: '/tmp/.Xn-lock', where 'n' is the number of the X Display (the installer checks for X Displays 0-7). If you have exited X, but one of these files has been left behind, then you will need to manually delete the lock file. DO NOT remove this file if X is still running! Q. My system runs, but seems unstable. What is wrong? A. Your stability problems may be AGP-related. See Appendix F for details. Q. OpenGL applications are running slowly A. The application is probably using a different library still on your system, rather than the NVIDIA supplied OpenGL library. Please see Appendix C for details. Q. There are problems running Quake2. A. Quake2 requires some minor setup to get it going. First, in the Quake2 directory, the install creates a symlink called 'libGL.so' that points at 'libMesaGL.so'. This symlink should be removed or renamed. Second, in order to run Quake2 in OpenGL mode, you must type % quake2 +set vid_ref glx +set gl_driver libGL.so Quake2 does not seem to support any kind of full-screen mode, but you can run your X server at the same resolution as Quake2 to emulate full-screen mode. Q. I am using either nForce of nForce2 internal graphics, and I see warnings like this in my X log file: Not using mode "1600x1200" (exceeds valid memory bandwidth usage) A. Integrated graphics have more strict memory bandwidth limitations that limit the resolution and refresh rate of the modes you request. To work around this, you can reduce the maximum refresh rate by lowering the upper value of the VertRefresh range in the 'Monitor' section of your X config file. Though not recommended, you can disable the memory bandwidth test with the NoBandWidthTest X config file option. Q. X takes a long time to start (possibly several minutes). A. Most of the startx delay problems we have found are caused by incorrect data in video BIOSes about what display devices are possibly connected or what i2c port should be used for detection. You can work around these problems with the X config option IgnoreDisplayDevices (please see the description in Appendix D). Q. Fonts are incorrectly sized after installing the NVIDIA driver. A. Incorrectly sized fonts are generally caused by incorrect DPI (Dots Per Inch) information. You can check what X thinks the physical size of your monitor is, by running: % xdpyinfo | grep dimensions This will report the size in pixels, and in millimeters. If these numbers are wrong, you can correct them by modifying the X server's DPI setting. See Appendix Y for details. Q. General problems with ALi chipsets A. There are some known timing and signal integrity issues on ALi chipsets. The following tips may help stabilize problematic ALI systems: o Disable TURBO AGP MODE in the BIOS. o When using a P5A upgrade to BIOS Revision 1002 BETA 2. o When using 1007, 1007A or 1009 adjust the IO Recovery Time to 4 cycles. o AGP is disabled by default on some ALi chipsets (ALi1541, ALi1647) to work around severe system stability problems with these chipsets. See the comments for NVreg_EnableALiAGP in 'os-registry.c' to force AGP on anyway. ______________________________________________________________________________ Chapter 6. NVIDIA Contact Info ______________________________________________________________________________ There is an NVIDIA Linux Driver web forum. You can access it by going to http://www.nvnews.net and following the "Forum" and "Linux Discussion Area" links. This is the preferable tool for seeking help; users can post questions, answer other users' questions, and search the archives of previous postings. If all else fails, you can contact NVIDIA for support at: linux-bugs@nvidia.com. But please, only send email to this address after you have explored the Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 chapters of this document, and asked for help on the nvnews.net web forum. When emailing linux-bugs@nvidia.com, please include the 'nvidia-bug-report.log' file generated by the 'nvidia-bug-report.sh' script (which is installed as part of driver installation). ______________________________________________________________________________ Chapter 7. Additional Resources ______________________________________________________________________________ Resources Linux OpenGL ABI http://oss.sgi.com/projects/ogl-sample/ABI/ The XFree86 Project http://www.xfree86.org/ XFree86 Video Timings HOWTO http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/XFree86-Video-Timings-HOWTO/index.html The X.org Foundation http://www.x.org/ OpenGL http://www.opengl.org/ ______________________________________________________________________________ Chapter 8. Tips for New Linux Users ______________________________________________________________________________ This installation guide assumes that the user has at least a basic understanding of Linux techniques and terminology. In this section we provide tips that the new user may find helpful. While the these tips are meant to clarify and assist users in installing and configuring the NVIDIA Linux Driver, it is by no means a tutorial on the use or administration of the Linux operating system. Unlike many desktop operating systems, it is relatively easy to cause irreparable damage to your Linux system. If you are unfamiliar with the use of Linux, we strongly recommend that you seek a tutorial through your distributor before proceeding. THE COMMAND PROMPT While newer releases of Linux bring new desktop interfaces to the user, much of the work in Linux takes place at the command prompt. If you are familiar with the Windows operating system, the Linux command prompt is analogous to the Windows[1] command prompt, although the syntax and use varies somewhat. All of the commands in this section are performed at the command prompt. Some systems are configured to boot into console mode, in which case the user is presented with a prompt at login. Other systems are configured to start the X window system, in which case the user must open a terminal or console window in order to get a command prompt. This can usually be done by searching the desktop menus for a terminal or console program. While it is customizable, the basic prompt usually consists of a short string of information, one of the characters '#', '$', or '%', and a cursor (possibly flashing) that indicates where the user's input will be displayed. NAVIGATING THE DIRECTORY STRUCTURE Linux has a hierarchical directory structure. From anywhere in the directory structure, the 'ls' command will list the contents of that directory. The 'file' command will print the type of files in a directory. For example, % file filename will print the type of the file 'filename'. Changing directories is done with the 'cd' command. % cd dirname will change the current directory to 'dirname'. From anywhere in the directory structure, the command 'pwd' will print the name of the current directory. There are two special directories, '.' and '..', which refer to the current directory and the next directory up the hierarchy, respectively. For any commands that require a file name or directory name as an argument, you may specify the absolute or the relative paths to those elements. An absolute path begins with the "/" character, referring to the top or root of the directory structure. A relative path begins with a directory in the current working directory. The relative path may begin with '.' or '..'. Elements of a path are separated with the "/" character. As an example, if the current directory is '/home/jesse' and the user wants to change to the '/usr/local' directory, he can use either of the following commands to do so: % cd /usr/local or % cd ../../usr/local FILE PERMISSIONS AND OWNERSHIP All files and directories have permissions and ownership associated with them. This is useful for preventing non-administrative users from accidentally (or maliciously) corrupting the system. The permissions and ownership for a file or directory can be determined by passing the -l option to the 'ls' command. For example: % ls -l drwxr-xr-x 2 jesse users 4096 Feb 8 09:32 bin drwxrwxrwx 10 jesse users 4096 Feb 10 12:04 pub -rw-r--r-- 1 jesse users 45 Feb 4 03:55 testfile -rwx------ 1 jesse users 93 Feb 5 06:20 myprogram -rw-rw-rw- 1 jesse users 112 Feb 5 06:20 README % The first character column in the first output field states the file type, where 'd' is a directory and '-' is a regular file. The next nine columns specify the permissions (see below) of the element. The second field indicates the number of files associated with the element, the third field indicates the owner, the fourth field indicates the group that the file is associated with, the fifth field indicates the size of the element in bytes, the sixth, seventh and eighth fields indicate the time at which the file was last modified and the ninth field is the name of the element. As stated, the last nine columns in the first field indicate the permissions of the element. These columns are grouped into threes, the first grouping indicating the permissions for the owner of the element ('jesse' in this case), the second grouping indicating the permissions for the group associated with the element, and the third grouping indicating the permissions associated with the rest of the world. The 'r', 'w', and 'x' indicate read, write and execute permissions, respectively, for each of these associations. For example, user 'jesse' has read and write permissions for 'testfile', users in the group 'users' have read permission only, and the rest of the world also has read permissions only. However, for the file 'myprogram', user 'jesse' has read, write and execute permissions (suggesting that 'myprogram' is a program that can be executed), while the group 'users' and the rest of the world have no permissions (suggesting that the owner doesn't want anyone else to run his program). The permissions, ownership and group associated with an element can be changed with the commands 'chmod', 'chown' and 'chgrp', respectively. If a user with the appropriate permissions wanted to change the user/group ownership of 'README' from jesse/users to joe/admin, he would do the following: # chown joe README # chgrp admin README The syntax for chmod is slightly more complicated and has several variations. The most concise way of setting the permissions for a single element uses a triplet of numbers, one for each of user, group and world. The value for each number in the triplet corresponds to a combination of read, write and execute permissions. Execute only is represented as 1, write only is represented as 2, and read only is represented as 4. Combinations of these permissions are represented as sums of the individual permissions. Read and execute is represented as 5, where as read, write and execute is represented as 7. No permissions is represented as 0. Thus, to give the owner read, write and execute permissions, the group read and execute permissions and the world no permissions, a user would do as follows: % chmod 750 myprogram THE SHELL The shell provides an interface between the user and the operating system. It is the job of the shell to interpret the input that the user gives at the command prompt and call upon the system to do something in response. There are several different shells available, each with somewhat different syntax and capabilities. The two most common flavors of shells used on Linux stem from the Bourne shell ('sh') and the C-shell ('csh') Different users have preferences and biases towards one shell or the other, and some certainly make it easier (or at least more intuitive) to do some things than others. You can determine your current shell by printing the value of the 'SHELL' environment variable from the command prompt with % echo $SHELL You can start a new shell simply by entering the name of the shell from the command prompt: % csh or % sh and you can run a program from within a specific shell by preceding the name of the executable with the name of the shell in which it will be run: % sh myprogram The user's default shell at login is determined by whoever set up his account. While there are many syntactic differences between shells, perhaps the one that is encountered most frequently is the way in which environment variables are set. SETTING ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES Every session has associated with it environment variables, which consist of name/value pairs and control the way in which the shell and programs run from the shell behave. An example of an environment variable is the 'PATH' variable, which tells the shell which directories to search when trying to locate an executable file that the user has entered at the command line. If you are certain that a command exists, but the shell complains that it cannot be found when you try to execute it, there is likely a problem with the 'PATH' variable. Environment variables are set differently depending on the shell being used. For the Bourne shell ('sh'), it is done as: % export MYVARIABLE="avalue" for the C-shell, it is done as: % setenv MYVARIABLE "avalue" In both cases the quotation marks are only necessary if the value contains spaces. The 'echo' command can be used to examine the value of an environment variable: % echo $MYVARIABLE Commands to set environment variables can also include references to other environment variables (prepended with the "$" character), including themselves. In order to add the path '/usr/local/bin' to the beginning of the search path, and the current directory '.' to the end of the search path, a user would enter % export PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH:. in the Bourne shell, and % setenv PATH /usr/local/bin:${PATH}:. in C-shell. Note the curly braces are required to protect the variable name in C-shell. EDITING TEXT FILES There are several text editors available for the Linux operating system. Some of these editors require the X window system, while others are designed to operate in a console or terminal. It is generally a good thing to be competent with a terminal-based text editor, as there are times when the files necessary for X to run are the ones that must be edited. Three popular editors are 'vi', 'pico' and 'emacs', each of which can be started from the command line, optionally supplying the name of a file to be edited. 'vi' is arguably the most ubiquitous as well as the least intuitive of the three. 'pico' is relatively straightforward for a new user, though not as often installed on systems. If you don't have 'pico', you may have a similar editor called 'nano'. 'emacs' is highly extensible and fairly widely available, but can be somewhat unwieldy in a non-X environment. The newer versions each come with online help, and offline help can be found in the manual and info pages for each (please see the section on Linux Manual and Info pages). Many programs use the 'EDITOR' environment variable to determine which text editor to start when editing is required. ROOT USER Upon installation, almost all distributions set up the default administrative user with the username 'root'. There are many things on the system that only 'root' (or a similarly privileged user) can do, one of which is installing the NVIDIA Linux Driver. WE MUST EMPHASIZE THAT ASSUMING THE IDENTITY OF 'root' IS INHERENTLY RISKY AND AS 'root' IT IS RELATIVELY EASY TO CORRUPT YOUR SYSTEM OR OTHERWISE RENDER IT UNUSABLE. There are three ways to become 'root'. You may log in as 'root' as you would any other user, you may use the switch user command ('su') at the command prompt, or, on some systems, use the 'sudo' utility, which allows users to run programs as 'root' while keeping a log of their actions. This last method is useful in case a user inadvertently causes damage to the system and cannot remember what he has done (or prefers not to admit what he has done). It is generally a good practice to remain 'root' only as long as is necessary to accomplish the task requiring 'root' privileges (another useful feature of the 'sudo' utility). BOOTING TO A DIFFERENT RUNLEVEL Runlevels in Linux dictate which services are started and stopped automatically when the system boots or shuts down. The runlevels typically range from 0 to 6, with runlevel 5 typically starting the X window system as part of the services (runlevel 0 is actually a system halt, and 6 is a system reboot). It is good practice to install the NVIDIA Linux Driver while X is not running, and it is a good idea to prevent X from starting on reboot in case there are problems with the installation (otherwise you may find yourself with a broken system that automatically tries to start X, but then hangs during the startup, preventing you from doing the repairs necessary to fix X). Depending on your network setup, runlevels 1, 2 or 3 should be sufficient for installing the Driver. Level 3 typically includes networking services, so if utilities used by the system during installation depend on a remote filesystem, Levels 1 and 2 will be insufficient. If your system typically boots to a console with a command prompt, you should not need to change anything. If your system typically boots to the X window system with a graphical login and desktop, you must both exit X and change your default runlevel. On most distributions, the default runlevel is stored in the file '/etc/inittab', although you may have to consult the guide for your own distribution. The line that indicates the default runlevel appears as id:n:initdefault: or similar, where "n" indicates the number of the runlevel. '/etc/inittab' must be edited as root. Please read the sections on editing files and root user if you are unfamiliar with this concept. Also, it is recommended that you create a copy of the file prior to editing it, particularly if you are new to Linux text editors, in case you accidentally corrupt the file: # cp /etc/inittab /etc/inittab.original The line should be edited such that an appropriate runlevel is the default (1, 2, or 3 on most systems): id:3:initdefault: After saving the changes, exit X. After the Driver installation is complete, you may revert the default runlevel to its original state, either by editing the '/etc/inittab' again or by moving your backup copy back to its original name. Different distributions provide different ways to exit X. On many systems, the 'init' utility will change the current runlevel. This can be used to change to a runlevel in which X is not running. # init 3 There are other methods by which to exit X. Please consult your distribution. LINUX MANUAL AND INFO PAGES System manual or info pages are usually installed during installation. These pages are typically up-to-date and generally contain a comprehensive listing of the use of programs and utilities on the system. Also, many programs include the --help option, which usually prints a list of common options for that program. To view the manual page for a command, enter % man commandname at the command prompt, where commandname refers to the command in which you are interested. Similarly, entering % info commandname will bring up the info page for the command. Depending on the application, one or the other may be more up-to-date. The interface for the info system is interactive and navigable. If you are unable to locate the man page for the command you are interested in, you may need to add additional elements to your 'MANPATH' environment variable. Please see the section on environment variables. - FOOTNOTES - [1] Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and other countries. ______________________________________________________________________________ Chapter 9. Acknowledgements ______________________________________________________________________________ 'nvidia-installer' was inspired by the 'loki_update' tool: http://www.lokigames.com/development/loki_update.php3/ The FTP and HTTP support in 'nvidia-installer' is based upon 'snarf 7.0': http://www.xach.com/snarf/ The self-extracting archive (aka '.run' file) is generated using 'makeself.sh': http://www.megastep.org/makeself/ ______________________________________________________________________________ Appendix A. Supported NVIDIA Graphics Chips ______________________________________________________________________________ For an up to date list of supported GPUs, please see the "Supported Products List" on the NVIDIA Linux Graphics Driver download page. NVIDIA chip name Device PCI ID ---------------------------------- ---------------------------------- GeForce 6800 Ultra 0x0040 GeForce 6800 0x0041 GeForce 6800 XE 0x0043 GeForce 6800 GT 0x0045 GeForce 6800 GT 0x0046 GeForce 6800 GS 0x0047 GeForce 6800 XT 0x0048 Quadro FX 4000 0x004E GeForce 7800 GTX 0x0090 GeForce 7800 GTX 0x0091 GeForce 7800 GT 0x0092 GeForce 7800 GS 0x0093 GeForce Go 7800 0x0098 GeForce Go 7800 GTX 0x0099 Quadro FX 4500 0x009D GeForce 6800 GS 0x00C0 GeForce 6800 0x00C1 GeForce 6800 LE 0x00C2 GeForce 6800 XT 0x00C3 GeForce Go 6800 0x00C8 GeForce Go 6800 Ultra 0x00C9 Quadro FX Go1400 0x00CC Quadro FX 3450/4000 SDI 0x00CD Quadro FX 1400 0x00CE GeForce 6800/GeForce 6800 Ultra 0x00F0 GeForce 6600/GeForce 6600 GT 0x00F1 GeForce 6600 0x00F2 GeForce 6200 0x00F3 GeForce 6600 LE 0x00F4 GeForce 7800 GS 0x00F5 GeForce 6800 GS 0x00F6 Quadro FX 3400 0x00F8 GeForce 6800 Ultra 0x00F9 GeForce PCX 5750 0x00FA GeForce PCX 5900 0x00FB Quadro FX 330/GeForce PCX 5300 0x00FC Quadro NVS 280 PCI-E/Quadro FX 330 0x00FD Quadro FX 1300 0x00FE GeForce PCX 4300 0x00FF GeForce2 MX/MX 400 0x0110 GeForce2 MX 100/200 0x0111 GeForce2 Go 0x0112 Quadro2 MXR/EX/Go 0x0113 GeForce 6600 GT 0x0140 GeForce 6600 0x0141 GeForce 6600 LE 0x0142 GeForce Go 6600 0x0144 GeForce 6610 XL 0x0145 GeForce Go 6600 TE/6200 TE 0x0146 GeForce Go 6600 0x0148 GeForce Go 6600 GT 0x0149 Quadro NVS 440 0x014A Quadro FX 540 0x014E GeForce 6200 0x014F GeForce 6200 TurboCache(TM) 0x0161 GeForce Go 6200 0x0164 GeForce Go 6400 0x0166 GeForce Go 6200 0x0167 GeForce Go 6400 0x0168 GeForce4 MX 460 0x0170 GeForce4 MX 440 0x0171 GeForce4 MX 420 0x0172 GeForce4 MX 440-SE 0x0173 GeForce4 440 Go 0x0174 GeForce4 420 Go 0x0175 GeForce4 420 Go 32M 0x0176 GeForce4 460 Go 0x0177 Quadro4 550 XGL 0x0178 GeForce4 440 Go 64M 0x0179 Quadro NVS 0x017A Quadro4 500 GoGL 0x017C GeForce4 410 Go 16M 0x017D GeForce4 MX 440 with AGP8X 0x0181 GeForce4 MX 440SE with AGP8X 0x0182 GeForce4 MX 420 with AGP8X 0x0183 GeForce4 MX 4000 0x0185 Quadro4 580 XGL 0x0188 Quadro NVS with AGP8X 0x018A Quadro4 380 XGL 0x018B Quadro NVS 50 PCI 0x018C GeForce2 Integrated GPU 0x01A0 GeForce 7300 LE 0x01D1 Quadro NVS 110M 0x01D7 GeForce Go 7300 0x01D7 GeForce Go 7400 0x01D8 Quadro NVS 110M 0x01DA GeForce 7300 GS 0x01DF GeForce4 MX Integrated GPU 0x01F0 GeForce3 0x0200 GeForce3 Ti 200 0x0201 GeForce3 Ti 500 0x0202 Quadro DCC 0x0203 GeForce 6800 0x0211 GeForce 6800 LE 0x0212 GeForce 6800 GT 0x0215 GeForce 6800 XT 0x0218 GeForce 6150 0x0240 GeForce 6100 0x0242 GeForce4 Ti 4600 0x0250 GeForce4 Ti 4400 0x0251 GeForce4 Ti 4200 0x0253 Quadro4 900 XGL 0x0258 Quadro4 750 XGL 0x0259 Quadro4 700 XGL 0x025B GeForce4 Ti 4800 0x0280 GeForce4 Ti 4200 with AGP8X 0x0281 GeForce4 Ti 4800 SE 0x0282 GeForce4 4200 Go 0x0286 Quadro4 980 XGL 0x0288 Quadro4 780 XGL 0x0289 Quadro4 700 GoGL 0x028C GeForce FX 5800 Ultra 0x0301 GeForce FX 5800 0x0302 Quadro FX 2000 0x0308 Quadro FX 1000 0x0309 GeForce FX 5600 Ultra 0x0311 GeForce FX 5600 0x0312 GeForce FX 5600XT 0x0314 GeForce FX Go5600 0x031A GeForce FX Go5650 0x031B Quadro FX Go700 0x031C GeForce FX 5200 0x0320 GeForce FX 5200 Ultra 0x0321 GeForce FX 5200 0x0322 GeForce FX 5200LE 0x0323 GeForce FX Go5200 0x0324 GeForce FX Go5250 0x0325 GeForce FX 5500 0x0326 GeForce FX 5100 0x0327 GeForce FX Go5200 32M/64M 0x0328 Quadro NVS 280 PCI 0x032A Quadro FX 500/600 PCI 0x032B GeForce FX Go53xx 0x032C GeForce FX Go5100 0x032D GeForce FX 5900 Ultra 0x0330 GeForce FX 5900 0x0331 GeForce FX 5900XT 0x0332 GeForce FX 5950 Ultra 0x0333 GeForce FX 5900ZT 0x0334 Quadro FX 3000 0x0338 Quadro FX 700 0x033F GeForce FX 5700 Ultra 0x0341 GeForce FX 5700 0x0342 GeForce FX 5700LE 0x0343 GeForce FX 5700VE 0x0344 GeForce FX Go5700 0x0347 GeForce FX Go5700 0x0348 Quadro FX Go1000 0x034C Quadro FX 1100 0x034E GeForce Go 7600 0x0398 Below are the legacy GPUs that are no longer supported in the unified driver. These GPUs will continue to be maintained through the special legacy NVIDIA GPU driver releases. NVIDIA chip name Device PCI ID ---------------------------------- ---------------------------------- RIVA TNT 0x0020 RIVA TNT2/TNT2 Pro 0x0028 RIVA TNT2 Ultra 0x0029 Vanta/Vanta LT 0x002C RIVA TNT2 Model 64/Model 64 Pro 0x002D Aladdin TNT2 0x00A0 GeForce 256 0x0100 GeForce DDR 0x0101 Quadro 0x0103 GeForce2 GTS/GeForce2 Pro 0x0150 GeForce2 Ti 0x0151 GeForce2 Ultra 0x0152 Quadro2 Pro 0x0153 ______________________________________________________________________________ Appendix B. Minimum Software Requirements ______________________________________________________________________________ Software Element Min Requirement Check With... --------------------- --------------------- --------------------- Linux kernel 2.4.0 `cat /proc/version` XFree86/Xorg 4.0.1/6.7 `XFree86 -version/Xorg -version` Kernel modutils 2.1.121 `insmod -v` If you need to build the NVIDIA kernel module: Software Element Min Requirement Check With... --------------------- --------------------- --------------------- binutils 2.9.5 `size --version` GNU make 3.77 `make --version` gcc 2.91.66 `gcc --version` glibc 2.0 `ls /lib/libc.so.* > 6` If you build from source RPMs: Required Software Element Check With... ---------------------------------- ---------------------------------- spec-helper rpm `rpm -qi spec-helper` All official stable kernel releases from 2.4.0 and up are supported; "prerelease" versions such as "2.4.3-pre2" are not supported, nor are development series kernels such as 2.3.x or 2.5.x. The Linux kernel can be downloaded from http://www.kernel.org or one of its mirrors. binutils and gcc can be retrieved from http://www.gnu.org or one of its mirrors. If you are using XFree86, but do not have a file '/var/log/XFree86.0.log', then you probably have a 3.x version of XFree86 and must upgrade. If you are setting up XFree86 4.x for the first time, it is often easier to begin with one of the open source drivers that ships with XFree86 (either "nv", "vga" or "vesa"). Once XFree86 is operating properly with the open source driver, you may then switch to the NVIDIA driver. Note that newer NVIDIA GPUs may not work with older versions of the "nv" driver shipped with XFree86. For example, the "nv" driver that shipped with XFree86 version 4.0.1 did not recognize the GeForce2 family and the Quadro2 MXR GPUs. This was fixed in XFree86 version 4.0.2. XFree86 can be retrieved from http://www.xfree86.org. These software packages may also be available through your Linux distributor. ______________________________________________________________________________ Appendix C. Installed Components ______________________________________________________________________________ The NVIDIA Accelerated Linux Driver Set consists of the following components (filenames in parenthesis are the full names of the components after installation; "x.y.z" denotes the current version. In these cases appropriate symlinks are created during installation): o Two X drivers (/usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers/nvidia_drv.o and /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers/nvidia_drv.so); one of these drivers is needed by the X server to use your NVIDIA hardware. The nvidia_drv.o driver is binary compatible with XFree86 4.0.1 and greater, as well as the Xorg X server. The nvidia_drv.so driver is compatible with Xorg 6.8 and greater with "dlloader" support. o A GLX extension module for X (/usr/X11R6/lib/modules/extensions/libglx.so.x.y.z); this module is used by the X server to provide server-side GLX support. o An OpenGL library (/usr/lib/libGL.so.x.y.z); this library provides the API entry points for all OpenGL and GLX function calls. It is linked to at run-time by OpenGL applications. o An OpenGL core library (/usr/lib/libGLcore.so.x.y.z); this library is implicitly used by libGL and by libglx. It contains the core accelerated 3D functionality. You should not explicitly load it in your X config file -- that is taken care of by libglx. o Two XvMC (X-Video Motion Compensation) libraries: a static library and a shared library (/usr/X11R6/lib/libXvMCNVIDIA.a, /usr/X11R6/lib/libXvMCNVIDIA.so.x.y.z); please see Appendix N for details. o A kernel module (/lib/modules/`uname -r`/video/nvidia.o or /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/video/nvidia.o); this kernel module provides low-level access to your NVIDIA hardware for all of the above components. It is generally loaded into the kernel when the X server is started, and is used by the X driver and OpenGL. nvidia.o consists of two pieces: the binary-only core, and a kernel interface that must be compiled specifically for your kernel version. Note that the Linux kernel does not have a consistent binary interface like the X server, so it is important that this kernel interface be matched with the version of the kernel that you are using. This can either be accomplished by compiling yourself, or using precompiled binaries provided for the kernels shipped with some of the more common Linux distributions. o OpenGL and GLX header files (/usr/include/GL/gl.h, /usr/include/GL/glext.h, /usr/include/GL/glx.h, and /usr/include/GL/glext.h); these are also installed in /usr/share/doc/NVIDIA_GLX-1.0/include/GL/. You can request that these files not be included in /usr/include/GL/ by passing the "--no-opengl-headers" option to the .run file during installation. o The nvidia-tls libraries (/usr/lib/libnvidia-tls.so.x.y.z and /usr/lib/tls/libnvidia-tls.so.x.y.z); these files provide thread local storage support for the NVIDIA OpenGL libraries (libGL, libGLcore, and libglx). Each nvidia-tls library provides support for a particular thread local storage model (such as ELF TLS), and the one appropriate for your system will be loaded at run time. o The application nvidia-installer (/usr/bin/nvidia-installer) is NVIDIA's tool for installing and updating NVIDIA drivers. Please see Chapter 2 for a more thorough description. Problems will arise if applications use the wrong version of a library. This can be the case if there are either old libGL libraries or stale symlinks left lying around. If you think there may be something awry in your installation, check that the following files are in place (these are all the files of the NVIDIA Accelerated Linux Driver Set, as well as their symlinks): /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers/nvidia_drv.o /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/extensions/libglx.so.x.y.z /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/extensions/libglx.so -> libglx.so.x.y.z /usr/lib/libGL.so.x.y.z /usr/lib/libGL.so.x -> libGL.so.x.y.z /usr/lib/libGL.so -> libGL.so.x /usr/lib/libGLcore.so.x.y.z /usr/lib/libGLcore.so.x -> libGLcore.so.x.y.z /lib/modules/`uname -r`/video/nvidia.o, or /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/video/nvidia.o If there are other libraries whose "soname" conflicts with that of the NVIDIA libraries, ldconfig may create the wrong symlinks. It is recommended that you manually remove or rename conflicting libraries (be sure to rename clashing libraries to something that ldconfig will not look at -- we have found that prepending "XXX" to a library name generally does the trick), rerun 'ldconfig', and check that the correct symlinks were made. Some libraries that often create conflicts are "/usr/X11R6/lib/libGL.so*" and "/usr/X11R6/lib/libGLcore.so*". If the libraries appear to be correct, then verify that the application is using the correct libraries. For example, to check that the application /usr/X11R6/bin/glxgears is using the NVIDIA libraries, run: % ldd /usr/X11R6/bin/glxgears linux-gate.so.1 => (0xffffe000) libGL.so.1 => /usr/lib/libGL.so.1 (0xb7ed3000) libXp.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXp.so.6 (0xb7eca000) libXext.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXext.so.6 (0xb7eb9000) libX11.so.6 => /usr/lib/libX11.so.6 (0xb7dd4000) libpthread.so.0 => /lib/libpthread.so.0 (0xb7d82000) libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0xb7d5f000) libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0xb7c47000) libGLcore.so.1 => /usr/lib/libGLcore.so.1 (0xb6c2f000) libnvidia-tls.so.1 => /usr/lib/tls/libnvidia-tls.so.1 (0xb6c2d000) libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0xb6c29000) /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0xb7fb2000) Check the files being used for libGL and libGLcore -- if they are something other than the NVIDIA libraries, then you will need to either remove the libraries that are getting in the way, or adjust your ld search path using the 'LD_LIBRARY_PATH' environment variable. You may wish to consult the man pages for 'ldconfig' and 'ldd'. ______________________________________________________________________________ Appendix D. X Config Options ______________________________________________________________________________ The following driver options are supported by the NVIDIA X driver. They may be specified either in the Screen or Device sections of the X config file. X Config Options Option "NvAGP" "integer" Configure AGP support. Integer argument can be one of: Value Behavior -------------- --------------------------------------------------- 0 disable AGP 1 use NVIDIA's internal AGP support, if possible 2 use AGPGART, if possible 3 use any AGP support (try AGPGART, then NVIDIA's AGP) Please note that NVIDIA's internal AGP support cannot work if AGPGART is either statically compiled into your kernel or is built as a module and loaded into your kernel. Please see Appendix F for details. Default: 3. Option "NoLogo" "boolean" Disable drawing of the NVIDIA logo splash screen at X startup. Default: the logo is drawn. Option "RenderAccel" "boolean" Enable or disable hardware acceleration of the RENDER extension. Default: hardware acceleration of the RENDER extension is enabled. Option "NoRenderExtension" "boolean" Disable the RENDER extension. Other than recompiling it, the X server does not seem to have another way of disabling this. Fortunately, we can control this from the driver so we export this option. This is useful in depth 8 where RENDER would normally steal most of the default colormap. Default: RENDER is offered when possible. Option "UBB" "boolean" Enable or disable the Unified Back Buffer on Quadro-based GPUs (Quadro4 NVS excluded); please see Appendix K for a description of UBB. This option has no effect on non-Quadro chipsets. Default: UBB is on for Quadro chipsets. Option "NoFlip" "boolean" Disable OpenGL flipping; please see Appendix K for a description. Default: OpenGL will swap by flipping when possible. Option "DigitalVibrance" "integer" Enables Digital Vibrance Control. The range of valid values are 0 through 255. This feature is not available on products older than GeForce2. Default: 0. Option "Dac8Bit" "boolean" Most Quadro products by default use a 10-bit color look-up table (LUT); setting this option to TRUE forces these graphics chips to use an 8-bit (LUT). Default: a 10-bit LUT is used, when available. Option "Overlay" "boolean" Enables RGB workstation overlay visuals. This is only supported on Quadro4 and Quadro FX chips (Quadro4 NVS excluded) in depth 24. This option causes the server to advertise the SERVER_OVERLAY_VISUALS root window property and GLX will report single- and double-buffered, Z-buffered 16-bit overlay visuals. The transparency key is pixel 0x0000 (hex). There is no gamma correction support in the overlay plane. This feature requires XFree86 version 4.1.0 or newer, or the Xorg X server. Quadros 500 and 550 XGL have additional restrictions, namely, overlays are not supported in TwinView mode or with virtual desktops wider than 2046 pixels or taller than 2047. Quadro 7xx/9xx and Quadro FX will offer overlay visuals in these modes (TwinView, or virtual desktops larger than 2046x2047), but the overlay will be emulated with a substantial performance penalty. RGB workstation overlays are not supported when the Composite extension is enabled. Default: off. UBB must be enabled when overlays are enabled (this is the default behavior). Option "CIOverlay" "boolean" Enables Color Index workstation overlay visuals with identical restrictions to Option "Overlay" above. The server will offer visuals both with and without a transparency key. These are depth 8 PseudoColor visuals. Enabling Color Index overlays on X servers older than XFree86 4.3 will force the RENDER extension to be disabled due to bugs in the RENDER extension in older X servers. Color Index workstation overlays are not supported when the Composite extension is enabled. Default: off. UBB must be enabled when overlays are enabled (this is the default behavior). Option "TransparentIndex" "integer" When color index overlays are enabled, use this option to choose which pixel is used for the transparent pixel in visuals featuring transparent pixels. This value is clamped between 0 and 255 (Note: some applications such as Alias's Maya require this to be zero in order to work correctly). Default: 0. Option "OverlayDefaultVisual" "boolean" When overlays are used, this option sets the default visual to an overlay visual thereby putting the root window in the overlay. This option is not recommended for RGB overlays. Default: off. Option "RandRRotation" "boolean" Enable rotation support for the XRandR extension. This allows use of the XRandR X server extension for configuring the screen orientation through rotation. This feature is supported on GeForce2 or better hardware using depth 24. This requires an Xorg X 6.8.1 or newer X server. This feature does not work with hardware overlays, and emulated overlays will be used instead at a substantial performance penalty. See Appendix U for details. Default: off. Option "Rotate" "string" Enable static rotation support. Unlike the RandRRotation option above, this option takes effect as soon as the X server is started and will work with older versions of X. This feature is supported on GeForce2 or better hardware using depth 24. This feature does not work with hardware overlays, and emulated overlays will be used instead at a substantial performance penalty. This option is not compatible with the RandR extension. Valid rotations are "normal", "left", "inverted", and "right". Default: off. Option "AllowDDCCI" "boolean" Enables DDC/CI support in the NV-CONTROL X extension. DDC/CI is a mechanism for communication between your computer and your display device. This can be used to set the values normally controlled through your display device's On Screen Display. Please see the DDC/CI NV-CONTROL attributes in 'NVCtrl.h' and functions in 'NVCtrlLib.h' in the 'nvidia-settings' source code. Default: off (DDC/CI is disabled). Option "SWCursor" "boolean" Enable or disable software rendering of the X cursor. Default: off. Option "HWCursor" "boolean" Enable or disable hardware rendering of the X cursor. Default: on. Option "CursorShadow" "boolean" Enable or disable use of a shadow with the hardware accelerated cursor; this is a black translucent replica of your cursor shape at a given offset from the real cursor. Default: off (no cursor shadow). Option "CursorShadowAlpha" "integer" The alpha value to use for the cursor shadow; only applicable if CursorShadow is enabled. This value must be in the range [0, 255] -- 0 is completely transparent; 255 is completely opaque. Default: 64. Option "CursorShadowXOffset" "integer" The offset, in pixels, that the shadow image will be shifted to the right from the real cursor image; only applicable if CursorShadow is enabled. This value must be in the range [0, 32]. Default: 4. Option "CursorShadowYOffset" "integer" The offset, in pixels, that the shadow image will be shifted down from the real cursor image; only applicable if CursorShadow is enabled. This value must be in the range [0, 32]. Default: 2. Option "ConnectedMonitor" "string" Allows you to override what the NVIDIA kernel module detects is connected to your video card. This may be useful, for example, if you use a KVM (keyboard, video, mouse) switch and you are switched away when X is started. In such a situation, the NVIDIA kernel module cannot detect what display devices are connected, and the NVIDIA X driver assumes you have a single CRT. Valid values for this option are "CRT" (cathode ray tube), "DFP" (digital flat panel), or "TV" (television); if using TwinView, this option may be a comma-separated list of display devices; e.g.: "CRT, CRT" or "CRT, DFP". NOTE: anything attached to a 15 pin VGA connector is regarded by the driver as a CRT. "DFP" should only be used to refer to digital flat panels connected via a DVI port. Default: string is NULL (the NVIDIA driver will detect the connected display devices). Option "UseEdidFreqs" "boolean" This option controls whether the NVIDIA X driver will use the HorizSync and VertRefresh ranges given in a display device's EDID, if any. When UseEdidFreqs is set to True, EDID-provided range information will override the HorizSync and VertRefresh ranges specified in the Monitor section. If a display device does not provide an EDID, or the EDID does not specify an hsync or vrefresh range, then the X server will default to the HorizSync and VertRefresh ranges specified in the Monitor section of your X config file. These frequency ranges are used when validating modes for your display device. Default: True (EDID frequencies will be used) Option "IgnoreEDID" "boolean" Disable probing of EDID (Extended Display Identification Data) from your monitor. Requested modes are compared against values gotten from your monitor EDID (if any) during mode validation. Some monitors are known to lie about their own capabilities. Ignoring the values that the monitor gives may help get a certain mode validated. On the other hand, this may be dangerous if you do not know what you are doing. Default: false (use EDID). Option "NoDDC" "boolean" Synonym for "IgnoreEDID" Option "FlatPanelProperties" "string" Requests particular properties of any connected flat panels as a comma-separated list of property=value pairs. Currently, the only two available properties are 'Scaling' and 'Dithering'. The possible values for 'Scaling' are: 'default' (the driver will use whatever scaling state is current), 'native' (the driver will use the flat panel's scaler, if it has one), 'scaled' (the driver will use the NVIDIA scaler, if possible), 'centered' (the driver will center the image, if possible), and 'aspect-scaled' (the driver will scale with the NVIDIA scaler, but keep the aspect ratio correct). The possible values for 'Dithering' are: 'default' (the driver will decide when to dither), 'enabled' (the driver will always dither when possible), and 'disabled' (the driver will never dither). If any property is not specified, its value is 'default'. An example properties string might look like: "Scaling = centered, Dithering = enabled" Option "UseInt10Module" "boolean" Enable use of the X Int10 module to soft-boot all secondary cards, rather than POSTing the cards through the NVIDIA kernel module. Default: off (POSTing is done through the NVIDIA kernel module). Option "TwinView" "boolean" Enable or disable TwinView. Please see Appendix G for details. Default: off (TwinView is disabled). Option "TwinViewOrientation" "string" Controls the relationship between the two display devices when using TwinView. Takes one of the following values: "RightOf" "LeftOf" "Above" "Below" "Clone". Please see Appendix G for details. Default: string is NULL. Option "SecondMonitorHorizSync" "range(s)" This option is like the HorizSync entry in the Monitor section, but is for the second monitor when using TwinView. Please see Appendix G for details. Default: none. Option "SecondMonitorVertRefresh" "range(s)" This option is like the VertRefresh entry in the Monitor section, but is for the second monitor when using TwinView. Please see Appendix G for details. Default: none. Option "MetaModes" "string" This option describes the combination of modes to use on each monitor when using TwinView. Please see Appendix G for details. Default: string is NULL. Option "NoTwinViewXineramaInfo" "boolean" When in TwinView, the NVIDIA X driver normally provides a Xinerama extension that X clients (such as window managers) can use to discover the current TwinView configuration. Some window mangers get confused by this information, so this option is provided to disable this behavior. Default: false (TwinView Xinerama information is provided). Option "TVStandard" "string" Please see Appendix H for details on configuring TV-out. Option "TVOutFormat" "string" Please see Appendix H for details on configuring TV-out. Option "TVOverScan" "Decimal value in the range 0.0 to 1.0" Valid values are in the range 0.0 through 1.0; Please see Appendix H for details on configuring TV-out. Option "Stereo" "integer" Enable offering of quad-buffered stereo visuals on Quadro. Integer indicates the type of stereo equipment being used: Value Equipment -------------- --------------------------------------------------- 1 DDC glasses. The sync signal is sent to the glasses via the DDC signal to the monitor. These usually involve a passthrough cable between the monitor and video card. 2 "Blueline" glasses. These usually involve a passthrough cable between the monitor and video card. The glasses know which eye to display based on the length of a blue line visible at the bottom of the screen. When in this mode, the root window dimensions are one pixel shorter in the Y dimension than requested. This mode does not work with virtual root window sizes larger than the visible root window size (desktop panning). 3 Onboard stereo support. This is usually only found on professional cards. The glasses connect via a DIN connector on the back of the video card. 4 TwinView clone mode stereo (aka "passive" stereo). On video cards that support TwinView, the left eye is displayed on the first display, and the right eye is displayed on the second display. This is normally used in conjunction with special projectors to produce 2 polarized images which are then viewed with polarized glasses. To use this stereo mode, you must also configure TwinView in clone mode with the same resolution, panning offset, and panning domains on each display. 5 Vertical interlaced stereo mode, for use with SeeReal Stereo Digital Flat Panels. 6 Color interleaved stereo mode, for use with Sharp3D Stereo Digital Flat Panels. Stereo is only available on Quadro cards. Stereo options 1, 2, and 3 (aka "active" stereo) may be used with TwinView if all modes within each metamode have identical timing values. Please see Appendix J for suggestions on making sure the modes within your metamodes are identical. The identical modeline requirement is not necessary for Stereo option 4 ("passive" stereo). Currently, stereo operation may be "quirky" on the original Quadro (NV10) chip and left-right flipping may be erratic. We are trying to resolve this issue for a future release. Default: 0 (Stereo is not enabled). UBB must be enabled when stereo is enabled (this is the default behavior). Stereo options 1, 2, and 3 (aka "active" stereo) are not supported on digital flat panels. Option "AllowDFPStereo" "boolean" By default, the NVIDIA X driver performs a check which disables active stereo (stereo options 1, 2, and 3) if the X screen is driving a DFP. The "AllowDFPStereo" option bypasses this check. Option "ForceStereoFlipping" "boolean" Stereo flipping is the process by which left and right eyes are displayed on alternating vertical refreshes. Normally, stereo flipping is only performed when a stereo drawable is visible. This option forces stereo flipping even when no stereo drawables are visible. This is to be used in conjunction with the "Stereo" option. If "Stereo" is 0, the "ForceStereoFlipping" option has no effect. If otherwise, the "ForceStereoFlipping" option will force the behavior indicated by the "Stereo" option, even if no stereo drawables are visible. This option is useful in a multiple-screen environment in which a stereo application is run on a different screen than the stereo master. Possible values: Value Behavior -------------- --------------------------------------------------- 0 Stereo flipping is not forced. The default behavior as indicated by the "Stereo" option is used. 1 Stereo flipping is forced. Stereo is running even if no stereo drawables are visible. The stereo mode depends on the value of the "Stereo" option. Default: 0 (Stereo flipping is not forced). Note that active stereo is not supported on digital flat panels. Option "XineramaStereoFlipping" "boolean" By default, when using Stereo with Xinerama, all physical X screens having a visible stereo drawable will stereo flip. Use this option to allow only one physical X screen to stereo flip at a time. This is to be used in conjunction with the "Stereo" and "Xinerama" options. If "Stereo" is 0 or "Xinerama" is 0, the "XineramaStereoFlipping" option has no effect. If you wish to have all X screens stereo flip all the time, please see the "ForceStereoFlipping" option. Possible values: Value Behavior -------------- --------------------------------------------------- 0 Stereo flipping is enabled on one X screen at a time. Stereo is enabled on the first X screen having the stereo drawable. 1 Stereo flipping in enabled on all X screens. Default: 1 (Stereo flipping is enabled on all X screens). Option "NoBandWidthTest" "boolean" As part of mode validation, the X driver tests if a given mode fits within the hardware's memory bandwidth constraints. This option disables this test. Default: false (the memory bandwidth test is performed). Option "IgnoreDisplayDevices" "string" This option tells the NVIDIA kernel module to completely ignore the indicated classes of display devices when checking what display devices are connected. You may specify a comma-separated list containing any of "CRT", "DFP", and "TV". For example: Option "IgnoreDisplayDevices" "DFP, TV" will cause the NVIDIA driver to not attempt to detect if any digital flat panels or TVs are connected. This option is not normally necessary; however, some video BIOSes contain incorrect information about what display devices may be connected, or what i2c port should be used for detection. These errors can cause long delays in starting X. If you are experiencing such delays, you may be able to avoid this by telling the NVIDIA driver to ignore display devices which you know are not connected. NOTE: anything attached to a 15 pin VGA connector is regarded by the driver as a CRT. "DFP" should only be used to refer to digital flat panels connected via a DVI port. Option "MultisampleCompatibility" "boolean" Enable or disable the use of separate front and back multisample buffers. Enabling this will consume more memory but is necessary for correct output when rendering to both the front and back buffers of a multisample or FSAA drawable. This option is necessary for correct operation of SoftImage XSI. Default: false (a single multisample buffer is shared between the front and back buffers). Option "NoPowerConnectorCheck" "boolean" The NVIDIA X driver will abort X server initialization if it detects that a GPU that requires an external power connector does not have an external power connector plugged in. This option can be used to bypass this test. Default: false (the power connector test is performed). Option "XvmcUsesTextures" "boolean" Forces XvMC to use the 3D engine for XvMCPutSurface requests rather than the video overlay. Default: false (video overlay is used when available). Option "AllowGLXWithComposite" "boolean" Enables GLX even when the Composite X extension is loaded. ENABLE AT YOUR OWN RISK. OpenGL applications will not display correctly in many circumstances with this setting enabled. Default: false (GLX is disabled when Composite is loaded). Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "boolean" Adds a 32-bit ARGB visual for each supported OpenGL configuration. This allows applications to use OpenGL to render with alpha transparency into 32-bit windows and pixmaps. This option requires the Composite extension. ENABLE AT YOUR OWN RISK. Some OpenGL applications may display incorrectly when this setting is enabled. Default: No visuals are added. Option "ExactModeTimingsDVI" "boolean" Forces the initialization of the X server with the exact timings specified in the ModeLine. Default: false (for DVI devices, the X server initializes with the closest mode in the EDID list). Option "Coolbits" "integer" Enables support in the NV-CONTROL X extension for manipulating GPU clock settings. When this option is set to "1" the nvidia-settings utility will contain a page labeled "Clock Frequencies" through which clock settings can be manipulated. Coolbits is only available on GeForce FX, Quadro FX, and newer GPUs. Default 0 (support is disabled). WARNING: this may cause system damage and void warranties. This utility can run your computer system out of the manufacturer's design specifications, including, but not limited to: higher system voltages, above normal temperatures, excessive frequencies, and changes to BIOS that may corrupt the BIOS. Your computer's operating system may hang and result in data loss or corrupted images. Depending on the manufacturer of your computer system, the computer system, hardware and software warranties may be voided, and you may not receive any further manufacturer support. NVIDIA does not provide customer service support for the Coolbits option. It is for these reasons that absolutely no warranty or guarantee is either express or implied. Before enabling and using, you should determine the suitability of the utility for your intended use, and you shall assume all responsibility in connection therewith. Option "SLI" "string" This option controls the configuration of SLI rendering in supported configurations. Value Behavior -------------------------------- -------------------------------- 0, no, off, false, Single Use only a single GPU when rendering 1, yes, on, true, Auto Enable SLI and allow the driver to automatically select the appropriate rendering mode. AFR Enable SLI and use the alternate frame rendering mode. SFR Enable SLI and use the split frame rendering mode. SLIAA Enable SLI and use SLI antialiasing. Use this in conjunction with full scene antialiasing to improve visual quality. Option "TripleBuffer" "boolean" Enable or disable the use of triple buffering. If this option is enabled, OpenGL windows that sync to vblank and are double-buffered will be given a third buffer. This decreases the time an application stalls while waiting for vblank events, but increases latency slightly (delay between user input and displayed result). Option "DPI" "string" This option specifies the Dots Per Inch for the X screen; for example: Option "DPI" "75 x 85" will set the horizontal DPI to 75 and the vertical DPI to 85. By default, the X driver will compute the DPI of the X screen from the EDID of any connected display devices. See Appendix Y for details. Default: string is NULL (disabled). Option "UseEdidDpi" "string" By default, the NVIDIA X driver computes the DPI of an X screen based on the physical size of the display device, as reported in the EDID. If multiple display devices are used by the X screen, then the NVIDIA X screen will choose which display device to use. This option can be used to specify which display device to use. The string argument can be a display device name, such as: Option "UseEdidDpi" "DFP-0" or the argument can be "FALSE" to disable use of EDID-based DPI calculations: Option "UseEdidDpi" "FALSE" See Appendix Y for details. Default: string is NULL (the driver computes the DPI from the EDID of a display device and selects the display device). Option "LoadKernelModule" "boolean" Normally, the NVIDIA Linux X driver module will attempt to load the NVIDIA Linux kernel module. Set this option to "off" to disable automatic loading of the NVIDIA kernel module by the NVIDIA X driver. Default: on (the driver loads the kernel module). ______________________________________________________________________________ Appendix E. OpenGL Environment Variable Settings ______________________________________________________________________________ FULL SCENE ANTIALIASING Antialiasing is a technique used to smooth the edges of objects in a scene to reduce the jagged "stairstep" effect that sometimes appears. Full-scene antialiasing is supported on GeForce or newer hardware. By setting the appropriate environment variable, you can enable full-scene antialiasing in any OpenGL application on these GPUs. Several antialiasing methods are available and you can select between them by setting the __GL_FSAA_MODE environment variable appropriately. Note that increasing the number of samples taken during FSAA rendering may decrease performance. The following tables describe the possible values for __GL_FSAA_MODE and the effects that they have on various NVIDIA GPUs. __GL_FSAA_MODE GeForce, GeForce2, Quadro, and Quadro2 Pro --------------- ------------------------------------------------------ 0 FSAA disabled 1 FSAA disabled 2 FSAA disabled 3 1.5 x 1.5 Supersampling 4 2 x 2 Supersampling 5 FSAA disabled 6 FSAA disabled 7 FSAA disabled __GL_FSAA_MODE GeForce4 MX, GeForce4 4xx Go, Quadro4 380,550,580 XGL, and Quadro4 NVS --------------- ------------------------------------------------------ 0 FSAA disabled 1 2x Bilinear Multisampling 2 2x Quincunx Multisampling 3 FSAA disabled 4 2 x 2 Supersampling 5 FSAA disabled 6 FSAA disabled 7 FSAA disabled __GL_FSAA_MODE GeForce3, Quadro DCC, GeForce4 Ti, GeForce4 4200 Go, and Quadro4 700,750,780,900,980 XGL --------------- ------------------------------------------------------ 0 FSAA disabled 1 2x Bilinear Multisampling 2 2x Quincunx Multisampling 3 FSAA disabled 4 4x Bilinear Multisampling 5 4x Gaussian Multisampling 6 2x Bilinear Multisampling by 4x Supersampling 7 FSAA disabled __GL_FSAA_MODE GeForce FX, GeForce 6xxx, GeForce 7xxx, Quadro FX --------------- ------------------------------------------------------ 0 FSAA disabled 1 2x Bilinear Multisampling 2 2x Quincunx Multisampling 3 FSAA disabled 4 4x Bilinear Multisampling 5 4x Gaussian Multisampling 6 2x Bilinear Multisampling by 4x Supersampling 7 4x Bilinear Multisampling by 4x Supersampling 8 4x Bilinear Multisampling by 2x Supersampling (available on GeForce FX and later GPUS; not available on Quadro GPUs) ANISOTROPIC TEXTURE FILTERING Automatic anisotropic texture filtering can be enabled by setting the environment variable __GL_LOG_MAX_ANISO. The possible values are: __GL_LOG_MAX_ANISO Filtering Type ---------------------------------- ---------------------------------- 0 No anisotropic filtering 1 2x anisotropic filtering 2 4x anisotropic filtering 3 8x anisotropic filtering 4 16x anisotropic filtering 4x and greater are only available on GeForce3 or newer GPUS; 16x is only available on GeForce 6800 or newer GPUs. VBLANK SYNCING Setting the environment variable __GL_SYNC_TO_VBLANK to a non-zero value will force glXSwapBuffers to sync to your monitor's vertical refresh (perform a swap only during the vertical blanking period). When using __GL_SYNC_TO_VBLANK with TwinView, OpenGL can only sync to one of the display devices; this may cause tearing corruption on the display device to which OpenGL is not syncing. You can use the environment variable __GL_SYNC_DISPLAY_DEVICE to specify to which display device OpenGL should sync. You should set this environment variable to the name of a display device; for example "CRT-1". Please look for the line "Connected display device(s):" in your X log file for a list of the display devices present and their names. You may also find it useful to review Appendix G (Configuring Twinview) and the section on Ensuring Identical Mode Timings in Appendix J. DISABLING CPU-SPECIFIC FEATURES Setting the environment variable __GL_FORCE_GENERIC_CPU to a non-zero value will inhibit the use of CPU-specific features such as MMX, SSE, or 3DNOW!. Use of this option may result in performance loss. This option may be useful in conjunction with software such as the Valgrind memory debugger. ______________________________________________________________________________ Appendix F. Configuring AGP ______________________________________________________________________________ There are several choices for configuring the NVIDIA kernel module's use of AGP: you can choose to either use NVIDIA's AGP module (NVAGP), or the AGP module that comes with the Linux kernel (AGPGART). This is controlled through the "NvAGP" option in your X config file: Option "NvAgp" "0" ... disables AGP support Option "NvAgp" "1" ... use NVAGP, if possible Option "NvAgp" "2" ... use AGPGART, if possible Option "NvAGP" "3" ... try AGPGART; if that fails, try NVAGP The default is 3 (the default was 1 until after 1.0-1251). You should use the AGP module that works best with your AGP chip set. If you are experiencing problems with stability, you may want to start by disabling AGP and seeing if that solves the problems. Then you can experiment with either of the other AGP modules. You can query the current AGP status at any time via the /proc filesystem interface (see Appendix M). To use the Linux AGPGART driver, it will need to be compiled with your kernel, either statically linked in, or built as a module. NVIDIA AGP support cannot be used if AGPGART is loaded in the kernel. It is recommended that you compile AGPGART as a module and make sure that it is not loaded when trying to use NVIDIA AGP. Please also note that changing AGP drivers generally requires a reboot before the changes actually take effect. The following AGP chipsets are supported by NVIDIA's AGP driver; for all other chipsets it is recommended that you use the AGPGART module. Supported AGP Chipsets ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Intel 440LX Intel 440BX Intel 440GX Intel 815 ("Solano") Intel 820 ("Camino") Intel 830M Intel 840 ("Carmel") Intel 845 ("Brookdale") Intel 845G Intel 850 ("Tehama") Intel 855 ("Odem") Intel 860 ("Colusa") Intel 865G ("Springdale") Intel 875P ("Canterwood") Intel E7205 ("Granite Bay") Intel E7505 ("Placer") AMD 751 ("Irongate") AMD 761 ("IGD4") AMD 762 ("IGD4 MP") AMD 8151 ("Lokar") VIA 8371 VIA 82C694X VIA KT133 VIA KT266 VIA KT400 VIA P4M266 VIA P4M266A VIA P4X400 VIA K8T800 VIA K8N800 VIA PT880 VIA KT880 RCC CNB20LE RCC 6585HE Micron SAMDDR ("Samurai") Micron SCIDDR ("Scimitar") NVIDIA nForce NVIDIA nForce2 NVIDIA nForce3 ALi 1621 ALi 1631 ALi 1647 ALi 1651 ALi 1671 SiS 630 SiS 633 SiS 635 SiS 645 SiS 646 SiS 648 SiS 648FX SiS 650 SiS 651 SiS 655 SiS 655FX SiS 661 SiS 730 SiS 733 SiS 735 SiS 745 SiS 755 ATI RS200M If you are experiencing AGP stability problems, you should be aware of the following: Additional AGP Information Support for the processor's Page Size Extension on Athlon Processors Some Linux kernels have a conflicting cache attribute bug that is exposed by advanced speculative caching in newer AMD Athlon family processors (AMD Athlon XP, AMD Athlon 4, AMD Athlon MP, and Models 6 and above AMD Duron). This kernel bug usually shows up under heavy use of accelerated 3D graphics with an AGP graphics card. Linux distributions based on kernel 2.4.19 and later *should* incorporate the bug fix, but older kernels require help from the user in ensuring that a small portion of advanced speculative caching is disabled (normally done through a kernel patch) and a boot option is specified in order to apply the whole fix. NVIDIA's driver automatically disables the small portion of advanced speculative caching for the affected AMD processors without the need to patch the kernel; it can be used even on kernels which do already incorporate the kernel bug fix. Additionally, for older kernels the user performs the boot option portion of the fix by explicitly disabling 4MB pages. This can be done from the boot command line by specifying: mem=nopentium Or by adding the following line to /etc/lilo.conf: append = "mem=nopentium" AGP Rate You may want to decrease the AGP rate setting if you are seeing lockups with the value you are currently using. You can do so by extracting the '.run' file: # sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8764-pkg1.run --extract-only # cd NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8764-pkg1/usr/src/nv/ Then edit os-registry.c, and make the following changes: - static int NVreg_ReqAGPRate = 15; + static int NVreg_ReqAGPRate = 4; /* force AGP Rate to 4x */ or + static int NVreg_ReqAGPRate = 2; /* force AGP Rate to 2x */ or + static int NVreg_ReqAGPRate = 1; /* force AGP Rate to 1x */ and enable the "ReqAGPRate" parameter: - { NULL, "ReqAGPRate", &NVreg_ReqAGPRate, 0 }, + { NULL, "ReqAGPRate", &NVreg_ReqAGPRate, 1 }, Then recompile and load the new kernel module. To do this, run 'nvidia-installer' with the -n command line option: # cd ../../..; ./nvidia-installer -n AGP drive strength BIOS setting (Via-based motherboards) Many Via-based motherboards allow adjusting the AGP drive strength in the system BIOS. The setting of this option largely affects system stability, the range between 0xEA and 0xEE seems to work best for NVIDIA hardware. Setting either nibble to 0xF generally results in severe stability problems. If you decide to experiment with this, you need to be aware of the fact that you are doing so at your own risk and that you may render your system unbootable with improper settings until you reset the setting to a working value (w/ a PCI graphics card or by resetting the BIOS to its default values). System BIOS version Make sure you have the latest system BIOS provided by the motherboard manufacturer. On ALi1541 and ALi1647 chipsets, NVIDIA drivers disable AGP to work around timing and signal integrity problems. You can force AGP to be enabled on these chipsets by setting NVreg_EnableALiAGP to 1. Note that this may cause the system to become unstable. Early system BIOS revisions for the ASUS A7V8X-X KT400 motherboard misconfigure the chipset when an AGP 2.x graphics card is installed; if X hangs on your ASUS KT400 system with either Linux AGPGART or NvAGP enabled and the installed graphics card is not an AGP 8x device, make sure that you have the latest system BIOS installed. ______________________________________________________________________________ Appendix G. Configuring TwinView ______________________________________________________________________________ The TwinView feature is only supported on NVIDIA GPUs that support dual-display functionality, such as the GeForce2 MX, GeForce2 Go, Quadro2 MXR, Quadro2 Go, and any of the GeForce4, Quadro4, GeForce FX, or Quadro FX GPUs. Please consult with your video card vendor to confirm that TwinView is supported on your card. TwinView is a mode of operation where two display devices (digital flat panels, CRTs, and TVs) can display the contents of a single X screen in any arbitrary configuration. This method of multiple monitor use has several distinct advantages over other techniques (such as Xinerama): o A single X screen is used. The NVIDIA driver conceals all information about multiple display devices from the X server; as far as X is concerned, there is only one screen. o Both display devices share one frame buffer. Thus, all the the functionality present on a single display (e.g. accelerated OpenGL) is available with TwinView. o No additional overhead is needed to emulate having a single desktop. If you are interested in using each display device as a separate X screen, please see Appendix P. X CONFIG TWINVIEW OPTIONS To enable TwinView, you must specify the following options in the Device section of your X Config file: Option "TwinView" Option "MetaModes" "" You must also specify either: Option "SecondMonitorHorizSync" "" Option "SecondMonitorVertRefresh" "" or: Option "HorizSync" "" Option "VertRefresh" "" You may also use any of the following options, though they are not required: Option "TwinViewOrientation" "" Option "ConnectedMonitor" "" Please see detailed descriptions of each option below. Detailed Description of Options TwinView This option is required to enable TwinView; without it, all other TwinView related options are ignored. SecondMonitorHorizSync SecondMonitorVertRefresh You specify the constraints of the second monitor through these options. The values given should follow the same convention as the "HorizSync" and "VertRefresh" entries in the Monitor section. As the XF86Config man page explains it: the ranges may be a comma separated list of distinct values and/or ranges of values, where a range is given by two distinct values separated by a dash. The HorizSync is given in kHz, and the VertRefresh is given in Hz. These options are normally not needed: by default, the NVIDIA X driver retrieves the valid frequency ranges from the display device's EDID (see Appendix D for a description of the "UseEdidFreqs" option). The SecondMonitor options will override any frequency ranges retrieved from the EDID. HorizSync VertRefresh Which display device is "first" and which is "second" is often unclear. For this reason, you may use these options instead of the SecondMonitor versions. With these options, you can specify a semicolon-separated list of frequency ranges, each optionally prepended with a display device name. For example: Option "HorizSync" "CRT-0: 50-110; DFP-0: 40-70" Option "VertRefresh" "CRT-0: 60-120; DFP-0: 60" Please see Appendix R on Display Device Names for more information. These options are normally not needed: by default, the NVIDIA X driver retrieves the valid frequency ranges from the display device's EDID (see Appendix D for a description of the "UseEdidFreqs" option). The "HorizSync" and "VertRefresh" options override any frequency ranges retrieved from the EDID or any frequency ranges specified with the "SecondMonitorHorizSync" and "SecondMonitorVertRefresh" options. MetaModes A single MetaMode describes what mode should be used on each display device at a given time. Multiple MetaModes list the combinations of modes and the sequence in which they should be used. When the NVIDIA driver tells X what modes are available, it is really the minimal bounding box of the MetaMode that is communicated to X, while the "per display device" mode is kept internal to the NVIDIA driver. In MetaMode syntax, modes within a MetaMode are comma separated, and multiple MetaModes are separated by semicolons. For example: ", ; , " Where is the name of the mode to be used on display device 0 concurrently with used on display device 1. A mode switch will then cause to be used on display device 0 and to be used on display device 1. Here is a real MetaMode entry from the X config sample config file: Option "MetaModes" "1280x1024,1280x1024; 1024x768,1024x768" If you want a display device to not be active for a certain MetaMode, you can use the mode name "NULL", or simply omit the mode name entirely: "1600x1200, NULL; NULL, 1024x768" or "1600x1200; , 1024x768" Optionally, mode names can be followed by offset information to control the positioning of the display devices within the virtual screen space; e.g.: "1600x1200 +0+0, 1024x768 +1600+0; ..." Offset descriptions follow the conventions used in the X "-geometry" command line option; i.e. both positive and negative offsets are valid, though negative offsets are only allowed when a virtual screen size is explicitly given in the X config file. When no offsets are given for a MetaMode, the offsets will be computed following the value of the TwinViewOrientation option (see below). Note that if offsets are given for any one of the modes in a single MetaMode, then offsets will be expected for all modes within that single MetaMode; in such a case offsets will be assumed to be +0+0 when not given. When not explicitly given, the virtual screen size will be computed as the the bounding box of all MetaMode bounding boxes. MetaModes with a bounding box larger than an explicitly given virtual screen size will be discarded. A MetaMode string can be further modified with a "Panning Domain" specification; e.g.: "1024x768 @1600x1200, 800x600 @1600x1200" A panning domain is the area in which a display device's viewport will be panned to follow the mouse. Panning actually happens on two levels with TwinView: first, an individual display device's viewport will be panned within its panning domain, as long as the viewport is contained by the bounding box of the MetaMode. Once the mouse leaves the bounding box of the MetaMode, the entire MetaMode (i.e. all display devices) will be panned to follow the mouse within the virtual screen. Note that individual display devices' panning domains default to being clamped to the position of the display devices' viewports, thus the default behavior is just that viewports remain "locked" together and only perform the second type of panning. The most beneficial use of panning domains is probably to eliminate dead areas -- regions of the virtual screen that are inaccessible due to display devices with different resolutions. For example: "1600x1200, 1024x768" produces an inaccessible region below the 1024x768 display. Specifying a panning domain for the second display device: "1600x1200, 1024x768 @1024x1200" provides access to that dead area by allowing you to pan the 1024x768 viewport up and down in the 1024x1200 panning domain. Offsets can be used in conjunction with panning domains to position the panning domains in the virtual screen space (note that the offset describes the panning domain, and only affects the viewport in that the viewport must be contained within the panning domain). For example, the following describes two modes, each with a panning domain width of 1900 pixels, and the second display is positioned below the first: "1600x1200 @1900x1200 +0+0, 1024x768 @1900x768 +0+1200" Because it is often unclear which mode within a MetaMode will be used on each display device, mode descriptions within a MetaMode can be prepended with a display device name. For example: "CRT-0: 1600x1200, DFP-0: 1024x768" If no MetaMode string is specified, then the X driver uses the modes listed in the relevant "Display" subsection, attempting to place matching modes on each display device. TwinViewOrientation This option controls the positioning of the second display device relative to the first within the virtual X screen, when offsets are not explicitly given in the MetaModes. The possible values are: "RightOf" (the default) "LeftOf" "Above" "Below" "Clone" When "Clone" is specified, both display devices will be assigned an offset of 0,0. Because it is often unclear which display device is "first" and which is "second", TwinViewOrientation can be confusing. You can further clarify the TwinViewOrientation with display device names to indicate which display device is positioned relative to which display device. For example: "CRT-0 LeftOf DFP-0" ConnectedMonitor With this option you can override what the NVIDIA kernel module detects is connected to your video card. This may be useful, for example, if any of your display devices do not support detection using Display Data Channel (DDC) protocols. Valid values are a comma-separated list of display device names; for example: "CRT-0, CRT-1" "CRT" "CRT-1, DFP-0" WARNING: this option overrides what display devices are detected by the NVIDIA kernel module, and is very seldom needed. You really only need this if a display device is not detected, either because it does not provide DDC information, or because it is on the other side of a KVM (Keyboard-Video-Mouse) switch. In most other cases, it is best not to specify this option. Just as in all X config entries, spaces are ignored and all entries are case insensitive. FREQUENTLY ASKED TWINVIEW QUESTIONS Q. Nothing gets displayed on my second monitor; what is wrong? A. Monitors that do not support monitor detection using Display Data Channel (DDC) protocols (this includes most older monitors) are not detectable by your NVIDIA card. You need to explicitly tell the NVIDIA X driver what you have connected using the "ConnectedMonitor" option; e.g.: Option "ConnectedMonitor" "CRT, CRT" Q. Will window managers be able to appropriately place windows (e.g. avoiding placing windows across both display devices, or in inaccessible regions of the virtual desktop)? A. Yes. The NVIDIA X driver provides a Xinerama extension that X clients (such as window managers) can use to discover the current TwinView configuration. Note that the Xinerama protocol provides no way to notify clients when a configuration change occurs, so if you modeswitch to a different MetaMode, your window manager will still think you have the previous configuration. Using the Xinerama extension, in conjunction with the XF86VidMode extension to get modeswitch events, window managers should be able to determine the TwinView configuration at any given time. Unfortunately, the data provided by XineramaQueryScreens() appears to confuse some window managers; to work around such broken window mangers, you can disable communication of the TwinView screen layout with the "NoTwinViewXineramaInfo" X config Option (please see Appendix D for details). Be aware that the NVIDIA driver cannot provide the Xinerama extension if the X server's own Xinerama extension is being used. Explicitly specifying Xinerama in the X config file or on the X server commandline will prohibit NVIDIA's Xinerama extension from installing, so make sure that the X server's log file does not contain: (++) Xinerama: enabled if you want the NVIDIA driver to be able to provide the Xinerama extension while in TwinView. Another solution is to use panning domains to eliminate inaccessible regions of the virtual screen (see the MetaMode description above). A third solution is to use two separate X screens, rather than use TwinView. Please see Appendix P. Q. Why can I not get a resolution of 1600x1200 on the second display device when using a GeForce2 MX? A. Because the second display device on the GeForce2 MX was designed to be a digital flat panel, the Pixel Clock for the second display device is only 150 MHz. This effectively limits the resolution on the second display device to somewhere around 1280x1024 (for a description of how Pixel Clock frequencies limit the programmable modes, see the XFree86 Video Timings HOWTO). This constraint is not present on GeForce4 or GeForce FX chips -- the maximum pixel clock is the same on both heads. Q. Do video overlays work across both display devices? A. Hardware video overlays only work on the first display device. The current solution is that blitted video is used instead on TwinView. Q. How are virtual screen dimensions determined in TwinView? A. After all requested modes have been validated, and the offsets for each MetaMode's viewports have been computed, the NVIDIA driver computes the bounding box of the panning domains for each MetaMode. The maximum bounding box width and height is then found. Note that one side effect of this is that the virtual width and virtual height may come from different MetaModes. Given the following MetaMode string: "1600x1200,NULL; 1024x768+0+0, 1024x768+0+768" the resulting virtual screen size will be 1600 x 1536. Q. Can I play full screen games across both display devices? A. Yes. While the details of configuration will vary from game to game, the basic idea is that a MetaMode presents X with a mode whose resolution is the bounding box of the viewports for that MetaMode. For example, the following: Option "MetaModes" "1024x768,1024x768; 800x600,800x600" Option "TwinViewOrientation" "RightOf" produce two modes: one whose resolution is 2048x768, and another whose resolution is 1600x600. Games such as Quake 3 Arena use the VidMode extension to discover the resolutions of the modes currently available. To configure Quake 3 Arena to use the above MetaMode string, add the following to your q3config.cfg file: seta r_customaspect "1" seta r_customheight "600" seta r_customwidth "1600" seta r_fullscreen "1" seta r_mode "-1" Note that, given the above configuration, there is no mode with a resolution of 800x600 (remember that the MetaMode "800x600, 800x600" has a resolution of 1600x600"), so if you change Quake 3 Arena to use a resolution of 800x600, it will display in the lower left corner of your screen, with the rest of the screen grayed out. To have single head modes available as well, an appropriate MetaMode string might be something like: "800x600,800x600; 1024x768,NULL; 800x600,NULL; 640x480,NULL" More precise configuration information for specific games is beyond the scope of this document, but the above examples coupled with numerous online sources should be enough to point you in the right direction. ______________________________________________________________________________ Appendix H. Configuring TV-Out ______________________________________________________________________________ NVIDIA GPU-based video cards with a TV-Out (S-video) connector can use a television as another display device, just like a CRT or digital flat panel. The TV can be used by itself, or (on appropriate video cards) in conjunction with another display device in a TwinView configuration. If a TV is the only display device connected to your video card, it will be used as the primary display when you boot your system (i.e. the console will come up on the TV just as if it were a CRT). To use your TV with X, there are a few parameters that you should pay special attention to in your X config file: o The VertRefresh and HorizSync values in your monitor section; please make sure these are appropriate for your television. Values are generally: HorizSync 30-50 VertRefresh 60 o The Modes in your screen section; the valid modes for your TV encoder will be reported in a verbose X log file (generated with `startx -- -logverbose 5`) when X is run on a TV. Some modes may be limited to certain TV Standards; if that is the case, it will be noted in the X log file. Generally, at least 800x600 and 640x480 are supported. o The "TVStandard" option should be added to your screen section; valid values are: TVStandard Description ------------- -------------------------------------------------- "PAL-B" used in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Guinea, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland "PAL-D" used in China and North Korea "PAL-G" used in Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, Malaysia, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland "PAL-H" used in Belgium "PAL-I" used in Hong Kong and The United Kingdom "PAL-K1" used in Guinea "PAL-M" used in Brazil "PAL-N" used in France, Paraguay, and Uruguay "PAL-NC" used in Argentina "NTSC-J" used in Japan "NTSC-M" used in Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Puerto Rico, South Korea, Taiwan, United States of America, and Venezuela "HD480i" 480 line interlaced "HD480p" 480 line progressive "HD720p" 720 line progressive "HD1080i" 1080 line interlaced "HD1080p" 1080 line progressive "HD576i" 576 line interlace "HD576p" 576 line progressive The line in your X config file should be something like: Option "TVStandard" "NTSC-M" If you do not specify a TVStandard, or you specify an invalid value, the default "NTSC-M" will be used. Note: if your country is not in the above list, select the country closest to your location. o The "ConnectedMonitor" option can be used to tell X to use the TV for display. This should only be needed if your TV is not detected by the video card, or you use a CRT (or digital flat panel) as your boot display, but want to redirect X to use the TV. The line in your config file should be: Option "ConnectedMonitor" "TV" o The "TVOutFormat" option can be used to force S-video or composite output. Without this option the driver autodetects the output format. Unfortunately, it does not always do this correctly. The output format can be forced with the options: Option "TVOutFormat" "SVIDEO" or Option "TVOutFormat" "COMPOSITE" The "TVOverScan" option can be used to enable Overscan where supported. Valid values are decimal values in the range 1.0 (which means overscan as much as possible: make the image as large as possible) and 0.0 (which means disable overscanning: make the image as small as possible). Overscanning is disabled (0.0) by default. Overscan is currently only available on GeForce4 or newer GPUs with either NVIDIA or Conexant TV encoders. The NVIDIA X driver may not restore the console correctly with XFree86 versions older than 4.3 when the console is a TV. This is due to binary incompatibilities between XFree86 int10 modules. If you use a TV as your console it is recommended that you upgrade to XFree86 4.3 or later. ______________________________________________________________________________ Appendix I. Configuring a Laptop ______________________________________________________________________________ INSTALLATION AND CONFIGURATION Installation and configuration of the NVIDIA Accelerated Linux Driver Set on a laptop is the same as for any desktop environment, with a few minor exceptions, listed below. Starting with the 1.0-2802 release, information about the internal flat panel for use in initializing the display is by default generated on the fly from data stored in the video BIOS. This can be disabled by setting the "SoftEDIDs" kernel option to 0. If "SoftEDIDs" is turned off, then hardcoded data will be chosen from a table, based on the value of the "Mobile" kernel option. The "Mobile" kernel option can be set to any of the following values: Value Meaning --------------- ------------------------------------------------------ 0xFFFFFFFF let the kernel module autodetect the correct value 1 Dell laptops 2 non-Compal Toshiba laptops 3 all other laptops 4 Compal Toshiba laptops 5 Gateway laptops Again, the "Mobile" kernel option is only needed if SoftEDIDs is disabled; when it is used, it is usually safest to let the kernel module autodetect the correct value (this is the default behavior). Should you need to alter either of these options, you may do so in any of the following ways: o editing os-registry.c in the usr/src/nv/ directory of the '.run' file. o setting the value on the modprobe command line (e.g.: `modprobe nvidia NVreg_SoftEDIDs=0 NVreg_Mobile=3`) o adding an "options" line to your module configuration file, usually '/etc/modules.conf' (e.g.: "options nvidia NVreg_Mobile=5") ADDITIONAL FUNCTIONALITY In this section we discuss additional functionality associated with laptop configuration. TWINVIEW All mobile NVIDIA chips support TwinView. TwinView on a laptop can be configured in the same way as on a desktop machine (please refer to Appendix G ); note that in a TwinView configuration using the laptop's internal flat panel and an external CRT, the CRT is the primary display device (specify its HorizSync and VertRefresh in the Monitor section of your X config file) and the flat panel is the secondary display device (specify its HorizSync and VertRefresh through the SecondMonitorHorizSync and SecondMonitorVertRefresh options). The "UseEdidFreqs" X config option is enabled by default, so normally you should not need to specify the "SecondMonitorHorizSync" and "SecondMonitorVertRefresh" options. Please see the description of the UseEdidFreqs option in Appendix D for details). HOTKEY SWITCHING OF DISPLAY DEVICES Besides TwinView, mobile NVIDIA chips also have the capacity to react to an LCD/CRT hotkey event, toggling between each of the connected display devices and each possible combination of the connected display devices (note that only 2 display devices may be active at a time). TwinView as configured in your X config file and hotkey functionality are mutually exclusive -- if you enable TwinView in your X config file, then the NVIDIA X driver will ignore LCD/CRT hotkey events. Another important aspect of hotkey functionality is that you can dynamically connect and remove display devices to/from your laptop and use the hotkey to activate and deactivate them without restarting X. When X is started, or when a change is detected in the list of connected display devices, a new hotkey sequence list is constructed -- this lists which display devices will be used with each hotkey event. When a hotkey event occurs, the next hotkey state in the sequence is chosen. Each mode requested in the X config file is validated against each display device's constraints, and the resulting modes are made available for that display device. If multiple display devices are to be active at once, then the modes from each display device are paired together; if an exact match (same resolution) cannot be found, then the closest fit is found, and the display device with the smaller resolution is panned within the resolution of the other display device. When switching away from X to a virtual terminal, the VGA console will always be restored to the display device on which it was present when X was started. Similarly, when switching back into X, the same display device configuration will be used as when you switched away, regardless of what LCD/CRT hotkey activity occurred while the virtual terminal was active. NON-STANDARD MODES ON LCD DISPLAYS Some users have had difficulty programming a 1400x1050 mode (the native resolution of some laptop LCDs). In version 4.0.3, XFree86 added several 1400x1050 modes to its database of default modes, but if you are using an older version of XFree86, the following modeline may be useful: # -- 1400x1050 -- # 1400x1050 @ 60Hz, 65.8 kHz hsync Modeline "1400x1050" 129 1400 1464 1656 1960 1050 1051 1054 1100 +HSync +VSync KNOWN LAPTOP ISSUES There are a few known issues associated with laptops: o LCD/CRT hotkey switching is not currently functioning on any Toshiba laptop, with the exception of the Toshiba Satellite 3000 series. o TwinView on Satellite 2800 series Toshiba laptops is not currently functioning. o The video overlay only works on the first display device on which you started X. For example, if you start X on the internal LCD, run a video application that uses the video overlay (uses the "Video Overlay" adapter advertised through the XV extension), and then hotkey switch to add a second display device, the video will not appear on the second display device. To work around this, you can either configure the video application to use the "Video Blitter" adapter advertised through the XV extension (this is always available), or hotkey switch to the display device on which you want to use the video overlay *before* starting X. ______________________________________________________________________________ Appendix J. Programming Modes ______________________________________________________________________________ The NVIDIA Accelerated Linux Driver Set supports all standard VGA and VESA modes, as well as most user-written custom mode lines; double-scan modes are supported on all hardware. Interlaced modes are supported on all GeForce FX/Quadro FX and newer GPUs, and certain older GPUs; the X log file will contain a message "Interlaced video modes are supported on this GPU" if interlaced modes are supported. In general, your display device (monitor/flat panel/television) will be a greater constraint on what modes you can use than either your NVIDIA GPU-based video board or the NVIDIA Accelerated Linux Driver Set. To request one or more standard modes for use in X, you can simply add a "Modes" line such as: Modes "1600x1200" "1024x768" "640x480" in the appropriate Display subsection of your X config file (please see the XF86Config(5x) or xorg.conf(5x) man pages for details). The following documentation is primarily of interest if you compose your own custom mode lines, experiment with xvidtune(1), or are just interested in learning more. Please note that this is neither an explanation nor a guide to the fine art of crafting custom mode lines for X. We leave that, rather, to documents such as the XFree86 Video Timings HOWTO (which can be found at http://www.tldp.org). DEPTH, BITS PER PIXEL, AND PITCH While not directly a concern when programming modes, the bits used per pixel is an issue when considering the maximum programmable resolution; for this reason, it is worthwhile to address the confusion surrounding the terms "depth" and "bits per pixel". Depth is how many bits of data are stored per pixel. Supported depths are 8, 15, 16, and 24. Most video hardware, however, stores pixel data in sizes of 8, 16, or 32 bits; this is the amount of memory allocated per pixel. When you specify your depth, X selects the bits per pixel (bpp) size in which to store the data. Below is a table of what bpp is used for each possible depth: Depth BPP ---------------------------------- ---------------------------------- 8 8 15 16 16 16 24 32 Lastly, the "pitch" is how many bytes in the linear frame buffer there are between one pixel's data, and the data of the pixel immediately below. You can think of this as the horizontal resolution multiplied by the bytes per pixel (bits per pixel divided by 8). In practice, the pitch may be more than this product due to alignment constraints. MAXIMUM RESOLUTIONS The NVIDIA Accelerated Linux Driver Set and NVIDIA GPU-based video boards support resolutions up to 2048x1536, though the maximum resolution your system can support is also limited by the amount of video memory (see USEFUL FORMULAS for details) and the maximum supported resolution of your display device (monitor/flat panel/television). Also note that while use of a video overlay does not limit the maximum resolution or refresh rate, video memory bandwidth used by a programmed mode does effect the overlay quality. USEFUL FORMULAS The maximum resolution is a function both of the amount of video memory and the bits per pixel you elect to use: HR * VR * (bpp/8) = Video Memory Used In other words, the amount of video memory used is equal to the horizontal resolution (HR) multiplied by the vertical resolution (VR) multiplied by the bytes per pixel (bits per pixel divided by eight). Technically, the video memory used is actually the pitch times the vertical resolution, and the pitch may be slightly greater than (HR * (bpp/8)) to accommodate the hardware requirement that the pitch be a multiple of some value. Please note that this is just memory usage for the frame buffer; video memory is also used by other things, such as OpenGL and pixmap caching. Another important relationship is that between the resolution, the pixel clock (aka dot clock) and the vertical refresh rate: RR = PCLK / (HFL * VFL) In other words, the refresh rate (RR) is equal to the pixel clock (PCLK) divided by the total number of pixels: the horizontal frame length (HFL) multiplied by the vertical frame length (VFL) (note that these are the frame lengths, and not just the visible resolutions). As described in the XFree86 Video Timings HOWTO, the above formula can be rewritten as: PCLK = RR * HFL * VFL Given a maximum pixel clock, you can adjust the RR, HFL and VFL as desired, as long as the product of the three is consistent. The pixel clock is reported in the log file when you run X with verbose logging: `startx -- -logverbose 5`. Your X log should contain several lines like: (--) NVIDIA(0): Display Device 0: maximum pixel clock at 8 bpp: 350 MHz (--) NVIDIA(0): Display Device 0: maximum pixel clock at 16 bpp: 350 MHz (--) NVIDIA(0): Display Device 0: maximum pixel clock at 32 bpp: 300 MHz which indicate the maximum pixel clock at each bit per pixel size. HOW MODES ARE VALIDATED During the PreInit phase of the X server, the NVIDIA X driver validates all requested modes by doing the following: o Take the intersection of the HorizSync and VertRefresh ranges given by the user in the X config file with the ranges reported by the monitor in the EDID (Extended Display Identification Data); this behavior can be disabled by using the "IgnoreEDID" option in which case the X driver will blindly accept the HorizSync and VertRefresh ranges given by the user (see Appendix D). o Call the xf86ValidateModes() helper function, which finds modes with the names the user specified in the X config file, pruning out modes with invalid horizontal sync frequencies or vertical refresh rates, pixel clocks larger than the maximum pixel clock for the video card, or resolutions larger than the virtual screen size (if a virtual screen size was specified in the X config file). Several other constraints are applied; see "xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/common/xf86Mode.c: xf86ValidateModes()". o All modes returned from xf86ValidateModes() are then examined to make sure their resolutions are not larger than the largest mode reported by the monitor's EDID (this can be disabled with the "IgnoreEDID" option. If the display is a TV, each mode is checked to make sure it has a resolution that is supported by the TV encoder (usually only 800x600 and 640x480 are supported by the encoder). o All modes are also tested to confirm that they fit within the hardware's memory bandwidth constraints. This test can be disabled with the NoBandWidthTest X config file option. o All remaining modes are then checked to make sure they pass the constraints described below in ADDITIONAL MODE CONSTRAINTS. The last three steps are also done when each mode is programmed, to catch potentially invalid modes submitted by the XF86VidModeExtension (eg xvidtune(1)). For TwinView, the above validation is done for the modes requested for each display device. ADDITIONAL MODE CONSTRAINTS Below is a list of additional constraints on a mode's parameters that must be met. In some cases these are chip-specific. o The horizontal resolution (HR) must be a multiple of 8 and be less than or equal to the value in the table below. o The horizontal blanking width (the maximum of the horizontal frame length and the horizontal sync end minus the minimum of the horizontal resolution and the horizontal sync start (max(HFL,HSE) - min(HR,HSS))) must be a multiple of 8 and be less than or equal to the value in the table below. o The horizontal sync start (HSS) must be a multiple of 8 and be less than or equal to the value in the table below. o The horizontal sync width (the horizontal sync end minus the horizontal sync start (HSE - HSS)) must be a multiple of 8 and be less than or equal to the value in the table below. o The horizontal frame length (HFL) must be a multiple of 8, must be greater than or equal to 40, and must be less than or equal to the value in the table below. o The horizontal frame length (HFL) must be a multiple of 8, must be greater than or equal to 40, and must be less than or equal to the value in the table below. o The vertical resolution (VR) must be less than or equal to the value in the table below. o The vertical blanking width (the maximum of the vertical frame length and the vertical sync end minus the minimum of the vertical resolution and the vertical sync start (max(VFL,VSE) - min(VR,VSS))) must be less than or equal to the value in the table below. o The vertical sync start (VSS) must be less than or equal to the value in the table below. o The vertical sync width (the vertical sync end minus the vertical sync start (VSE - VSS)) must be less than or equal to the value in the table below. o The vertical frame length (VFL) must be greater than or equal to 2 and less than or equal to the value in the table below. The following table provides the maximum DAC values for various hardware generations: GeForce2 and 3 GeForce4 and newer --------------------- --------------------- --------------------- HR 4092 8192 HBW 1016 2040 HSS 4088 8224 HSW 256 512 HFL 4128 8224 VR 4096 8192 VBW 128 256 VSS 4095 8192 VSW 16 16 VFL 4097 8192 Here is an example mode line demonstrating the use of each abbreviation used above: # Custom Mode line for the SGI 1600SW Flat Panel # name PCLK HR HSS HSE HFL VR VSS VSE VFL Modeline "sgi1600x1024" 106.9 1600 1632 1656 1672 1024 1027 1030 1067 ENSURING IDENTICAL MODE TIMINGS Some functionality, such as Active Stereo with TwinView, requires control over exactly which mode timings are used. There are several ways to accomplish that: o If you only want to make sure that both display devices use the same modes, you only need to make sure that both display devices use the same HorizSync and VertRefresh values when performing mode validation; this would be done by making sure the HorizSync and SecondMonitorHorizSync match, and that the VertRefresh and the SecondMonitorVertRefresh match. o A more explicit approach is to specify the modeline you want to use (using one of the modeline generators available), and using a unique name. For example, if you wanted to use 1024x768 at 120 Hz on each monitor in TwinView with active stereo, you might add something like: # 1024x768 @ 120.00 Hz (GTF) hsync: 98.76 kHz; pclk: 139.05 MHz Modeline "1024x768_120" 139.05 1024 1104 1216 1408 768 769 772 823 -HSync +Vsync In the monitor section of your X config file, and then in the Screen section of your X config file, specify a MetaMode like this: Option "MetaModes" "1024x768_120, 1024x768_120" ADDITIONAL INFORMATION An XFree86 modeline generator, conforming to the GTF Standard is available at http://gtf.sourceforge.net/. Additional generators can be found by searching for "modeline" on freshmeat.net. ______________________________________________________________________________ Appendix K. Flipping and UBB ______________________________________________________________________________ The NVIDIA Accelerated Linux Driver Set supports Unified Back Buffer (UBB) and OpenGL Flipping. These features can provide performance gains in certain situations. o Unified Back Buffer (UBB): UBB is available only on the Quadro family of GPUs (Quadro4 NVS excluded) and is enabled by default when there is sufficient video memory available. This can be disabled with the UBB X config option described in Appendix D. When UBB is enabled, all windows share the same back, stencil and depth buffers. When there are many windows, the back, stencil and depth usage will never exceed the size of that used by a full screen window. However, even for a single small window, the back, stencil, and depth video memory usage is that of a full screen window. In that case video memory may be used less efficiently than in the non-UBB case. o Flipping: When OpenGL flipping is enabled, OpenGL can perform buffer swaps by changing which buffer the DAC scans out rather than copying the back buffer contents to the front buffer; this is generally a much higher performance mechanism and allows tearless swapping during the vertical retrace (when __GL_SYNC_TO_VBLANK is set). The conditions under which OpenGL can flip are slightly complicated, but in general: on GeForce or newer hardware, OpenGL can flip when a single full screen unobscured OpenGL application is running, and __GL_SYNC_TO_VBLANK is enabled. Additionally, OpenGL can flip on Quadro hardware even when an OpenGL window is partially obscured or not full screen or __GL_SYNC_TO_VBLANK is not enabled. ______________________________________________________________________________ Appendix L. Known Issues ______________________________________________________________________________ The following problems still exist in this release and are in the process of being resolved. Known Issues OpenGL and dlopen() There are some issues with older versions of the glibc dynamic loader (e.g., the version that shipped with Red Hat Linux 7.2) and applications such as Quake3 and Radiant, that use dlopen(). Please see Chapter 4 for more details. Multicard, Multimonitor In some cases, the secondary card is not initialized correctly by the NVIDIA kernel module. You can work around this by enabling the XFree86 Int10 module to soft-boot all secondary cards. See Appendix D for details. Interaction with pthreads Single-threaded applications that use dlopen() to load NVIDIA's libGL library, and then use dlopen() to load any other library that is linked against libpthread will crash in libGL. This does not happen in NVIDIA's new ELF TLS OpenGL libraries (please see Appendix C for a description of the ELF TLS OpenGL libraries). Possible workarounds for this problem are: 1. Load the library that is linked with libpthread before loading libGL. 2. Link the application with libpthread. The X86-64 platform (AMD64/EM64T) and 2.6 kernels Many 2.4 and 2.6 x86_64 kernels have an accounting problem in their implementation of the change_page_attr kernel interface. Early 2.6 kernels include a check that triggers a BUG() when this situation is encountered (triggering a BUG() results in the current application being killed by the kernel; this application would be your OpenGL application or potentially the X server). The accounting issue has been resolved in the 2.6.11 kernel. We have added checks to recognize that the NVIDIA kernel module is being compiled for the x86-64 platform on a kernel between 2.6.0 and 2.6.11. In this case, we will disable usage of the change_page_attr kernel interface. This will avoid the accounting issue but leaves the system in danger of cache aliasing (see entry below on Cache Aliasing for more information about cache aliasing). Note that this change_page_attr accounting issue and BUG() can be triggered by other kernel subsystems that rely on this interface. If you are using a 2.6 x86_64 kernel, it is recommended that you upgrade to a 2.6.11 or later kernel. IOMMU/SWIOTLB interaction on the X86-64 platform Linux does not currently provide a mechanism for allocating memory with addresses that fall within the first 4GB of the physical memory installed in a Linux/x86-64 system. Addresses within this range are necessary for 32-bit PCI hardware to provide DMA capabilities. Instead, the Linux kernel provides a software I/O TLB on Intel's EM64T and IOMMU support on AMD's AMD64 platform. Unfortunately, some problems exist with both interfaces. Early implementations of the Linux SWIOTLB set aside a very small amount of memory for its memory pool (only 4MB). Also, when this memory pool is exhausted, some SWIOTLB implementations forcibly panic the kernel. This is also true for some implementations of the IOMMU interface. Kernel panics and related stability problems on Intel's EM64T platform can be avoided by increasing the size of the SWIOTLB pool with the 'swiotlb' kernel parameter. This kernel parameter expects the desired size as a number of 4 KB pages. NVIDIA suggests raising the size of the SWIOTLB pool to 64MB; this is accomplished by passing 'swiotlb=16384' to the kernel. note that newer Linux 2.6 kernels already default to a 64MB SWIOTLB pool, see below for more information. Starting with Linux 2.6.9, the default size of the SWIOTLB is 64MB and overflow handling is improved. Both of these changes are expected to greatly improve stability on Intel's EM64T platform. If you consider upgrading your Linux kernel to benefit from these improvements, NVIDIA recommends that you upgrade to Linux 2.6.11 or a more recent Linux kernel. Please see the previous section for additional information. On AMD's AMD64 platform, the size of the IOMMU can be configured in the system BIOS or, if no IOMMU BIOS option is available, using the 'iommu=memaper' kernel parameter. This kernel parameter expects an order and instructs the Linux kernel to create an IOMMU of size 32MB^order overlapping physical memory. If the system's default IOMMU is smaller than 64MB, the Linux kernel automatically replaces it with a 64MB IOMMU. To reduce the risk of stability problems as a result of IOMMU or SWIOTLB exhaustion on the X86-64 platform, the NVIDIA Linux driver internally limits its use of these interfaces. By default, the driver will not use more than 60MB of IOMMU/SWIOTLB space, leaving 4MB for the rest of the system (assuming a 64MB IOMMU/SWIOTLB). This limit can be adjusted with the 'NVreg_RemapLimit' NVIDIA kernel module option. Specifically, if the IOMMU/SWIOTLB is larger than 64MB, the limit can be adjusted to take advantage of the additional space. The 'NVreg_RemapLimit' option expects the size argument in bytes. NVIDIA recommends leaving 4MB available for the rest of the system when changing the limit. For example, if the internal limit is to be relaxed to account for a 128MB IOMMU/SWIOTLB, the recommended remap limit is 124MB. This remap limit can be specified by passing 'NVreg_RemapLimit=0x7c00000' to the NVIDIA kernel module. Please also read the previous known issues section for information on additional stability problems on this platform. Cache Aliasing Cache aliasing occurs when multiple mappings to a physical page of memory have conflicting caching states, such as cached and uncached. Due to these conflicting states, data in that physical page may become corrupted when the processor's cache is flushed. If that page is being used for DMA by a driver such as NVIDIA's graphics driver, this can lead to hardware stability problems and system lockups. NVIDIA has encountered bugs with some Linux kernel versions that lead to cache aliasing. Although some systems will run perfectly fine when cache aliasing occurs, other systems will experience severe stability problems, including random lockups. Users experiencing stability problems due to cache aliasing will benefit from updating to a kernel that does not cause cache aliasing to occur. NVIDIA has added driver logic to detect cache aliasing and to print a warning with a message similar to the following: NVRM: bad caching on address 0x1cdf000: actual 0x46 != expected 0x73 If you see this message in your log files and are experiencing stability problems, you should update your kernel to the latest version. If the message persists after updating your kernel, please send a bug report to NVIDIA. 64-Bit BARs (Base Address Registers) Starting with native PCI Express GPUs, NVIDIA's GPUs will advertise a 64-bit BAR capability (a Base Address Register stores the location of a PCI I/O region, such as registers or a frame buffer). This means that the GPU's PCI I/O regions (registers and frame buffer) can be placed above the 32-bit address space (the first 4 gigabytes of memory). The decision of where the BAR is placed is made by the system BIOS at boot time. If the BIOS supports 64-bit BARs, then the NVIDIA PCI I/O regions may be placed above the 32-bit address space. If the BIOS does not support this feature, then our PCI I/O regions will be placed within the 32-bit address space as they have always been. Unfortunately, current Linux kernels (as of 2.6.11.x) do not understand or support 64-bit BARs. If the BIOS does place any NVIDIA PCI I/O regions above the 32-bit address space, the kernel will reject the BAR and the NVIDIA driver will not work. There is no known workaround at this point. Laptops If you are using a laptop please see the "Known Laptop Issues" in Appendix I. FSAA When FSAA is enabled (the __GL_FSAA_MODE environment variable is set to a value that enables FSAA and a multisample visual is chosen), the rendering may be corrupted when resizing the window. libGL DSO finalizer and pthreads When a multithreaded OpenGL application exits, it is possible for libGL's DSO finalizer (also known as the destructor, or "_fini") to be called while other threads are executing OpenGL code. The finalizer needs to free resources allocated by libGL. This can cause problems for threads that are still using these resources. Setting the environment variable "__GL_NO_DSO_FINALIZER" to "1" will work around this problem by forcing libGL's finalizer to leave its resources in place. These resources will still be reclaimed by the operating system when the process exits. Note that the finalizer is also executed as part of dlclose(3), so if you have an application that dlopens(3) and dlcloses(3) libGL repeatedly, "__GL_NO_DSO_FINALIZER" will cause libGL to leak resources until the process exits. Using this option can improve stability in some multithreaded applications, including Java3D applications. XVideo and the Composite X extension XVideo will not work correctly when Composite is enabled. See Appendix S. This section describes problems that will not be fixed. Usually, the source of the problem is beyond the control of NVIDIA. Following is the list of problems: Problems that Will Not Be Fixed Gigabyte GA-6BX Motherboard This motherboard uses a LinFinity regulator on the 3.3 V rail that is only rated to 5 A -- less than the AGP specification, which requires 6 A. When diagnostics or applications are running, the temperature of the regulator rises, causing the voltage to the NVIDIA chip to drop as low as 2.2 V. Under these circumstances, the regulator cannot supply the current on the 3.3 V rail that the NVIDIA chip requires. This problem does not occur when the graphics board has a switching regulator or when an external power supply is connected to the 3.3 V rail. VIA KX133 and 694X Chip sets with AGP 2x On Athlon motherboards with the VIA KX133 or 694X chip set, such as the ASUS K7V motherboard, NVIDIA drivers default to AGP 2x mode to work around insufficient drive strength on one of the signals. Irongate Chip sets with AGP 1x AGP 1x transfers are used on Athlon motherboards with the Irongate chipset to work around a problem with signal integrity. ALi chipsets, ALi1541 and ALi1647 On ALi1541 and ALi1647 chipsets, NVIDIA drivers disable AGP to work around timing issues and signal integrity issues. See Chapter 5 for more information on ALi chipsets. I/O APIC (SMP) If you are experiencing stability problems with a Linux SMP machine and seeing I/O APIC warning messages from the Linux kernel, system reliability may be greatly improved by setting the "noapic" kernel parameter. Local APIC (UP) On some systems, setting the "Local APIC Support on Uniprocessors" kernel configuration option can have adverse effects on system stability and performance. If you are experiencing lockups with a Linux UP machine and have this option set, try disabling local APIC support. ______________________________________________________________________________ Appendix M. Proc Interface ______________________________________________________________________________ You can use the /proc filesystem interface to obtain run-time information about the driver, any installed NVIDIA graphics cards, and the AGP status. This information is contained in several files in /proc/driver/nvidia /proc/driver/nvidia/version Lists the installed driver revision and the version of the GNU C compiler used to build the Linux kernel module. /proc/driver/nvidia/warnings The NVIDIA graphics driver tries to detect potential problems with the host system's kernel and warns about them using the kernel's printk() mechanism, typically logged by the system to '/var/log/messages'. Important NVIDIA warning messages are also logged to dedicated text files in this /proc directory. /proc/driver/nvidia/cards/0...3 Provide information about each of the installed NVIDIA graphics adapters (model name, IRQ, BIOS version, Bus Type). Please note that the BIOS version is only available while X is running. /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/card Information about the installed AGP card's AGP capabilities. /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/host-bridge Information about the host bridge (model and AGP capabilities). /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/status The current AGP status. If AGP support has been enabled on your system, the AGP driver being used, the AGP rate, and information about the status of AGP Fast Writes and Side Band Addressing is shown. The AGP driver is either NVIDIA (NVIDIA's built-in AGP driver) or AGPGART (the Linux kernel's agpgart.o driver). If you see "inactive" next to AGPGART, then this means that the AGP chipset was programmed by AGPGART, but is not currently in use. SBA and Fast Writes indicate whether either one of these features is currently in use. Please note that several factors determine whether support for either will be enabled. Even if both the AGP card and the host bridge support them, the driver may decide not to use these features in favor of system stability. This is particularly true of AGP Fast Writes. ______________________________________________________________________________ Appendix N. XvMC Support ______________________________________________________________________________ This release includes support for the XVideo Motion Compensation (XvMC) version 1.0 API on GeForce4, GeForce FX and newer products. There is a static library "libXvMCNVIDIA.a" and a dynamic one "libXvMCNVIDIA_dynamic.so" which is suitable for dlopening. GeForce4 MX, GeForce FX and newer products support both XvMC's "IDCT" and "motion-compensation" levels of acceleration. GeForce4 Ti products only support the motion-compensation level. AI44 and IA44 subpictures are supported. 4:2:0 Surfaces up to 2032x2032 are supported. libXvMCNVIDIA observes the XVMC_DEBUG environment variable and will provide some debug output to stderr when set to an appropriate integer value. '0' disables debug output. '1' enables debug output for failure conditions. '2' or higher enables output of warning messages. ______________________________________________________________________________ Appendix O. GLX Support ______________________________________________________________________________ This release supports GLX 1.4. Additionally, the following GLX extensions are supported on appropriate GPUs: o GLX_EXT_visual_info o GLX_EXT_visual_rating o GLX_SGIX_fbconfig o GLX_SGIX_pbuffer o GLX_ARB_get_proc_address o GLX_SGI_video_sync o GLX_SGI_swap_control o GLX_ARB_multisample o GLX_NV_float_buffer o GLX_ARB_fbconfig_float o GLX_NV_swap_group o GLX_NV_video_out For a description of these extensions, please see the OpenGL extension registry at http://oss.sgi.com/projects/ogl-sample/registry/index.html Some of the above extensions exist as part of core GLX 1.4 functionality, however, they are also exported as extensions for backwards compatibility. ______________________________________________________________________________ Appendix P. Configuring Multiple X Screens on One Card ______________________________________________________________________________ Graphics chips that support TwinView (Appendix G) can also be configured to treat each connected display device as a separate X screen. While there are several disadvantages to this approach as compared to TwinView (e.g.: windows cannot be dragged between X screens, hardware accelerated OpenGL cannot span the two X screens), it does offer several advantages over TwinView: o If each display device is a separate X screen, then properties that may vary between X screens may vary between displays (e.g.: depth, root window size, etc). o Hardware that can only be used on one display at a time (e.g.: video overlays, hardware accelerated RGB overlays), and which consequently cannot be used at all when in TwinView, can be exposed on the first X screen when each display is a separate X screen. o TwinView is a fairly new feature. X has historically used one screen per display device. To configure two separate X screens to share one graphics chip, here is what you will need to do: First, create two separate Device sections, each listing the BusID of the graphics card to be shared and listing the driver as "nvidia", and assign each a separate screen: Section "Device" Identifier "nvidia0" Driver "nvidia" # Edit the BusID with the location of your graphics card BusID "PCI:2:0:0" Screen 0 EndSection Section "Device" Identifier "nvidia1" Driver "nvidia" # Edit the BusID with the location of your graphics card BusId "PCI:2:0:0" Screen 1 EndSection Then, create two Screen sections, each using one of the Device sections: Section "Screen" Identifier "Screen0" Device "nvidia0" Monitor "Monitor0" DefaultDepth 24 Subsection "Display" Depth 24 Modes "1600x1200" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480" EndSubsection EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "Screen1" Device "nvidia1" Monitor "Monitor1" DefaultDepth 24 Subsection "Display" Depth 24 Modes "1600x1200" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480" EndSubsection EndSection (Note: You'll also need to create a second Monitor section) Finally, update the ServerLayout section to use and position both Screen sections: Section "ServerLayout" ... Screen 0 "Screen0" Screen 1 "Screen1" leftOf "Screen0" ... EndSection For further details, please refer to the XF86Config(5x) or xorg.conf(5x) manpages. ______________________________________________________________________________ Appendix Q. Power Management Support ______________________________________________________________________________ This release includes support for APM-based power management. This means that our driver will support suspend and resume, but will not support standby. Your laptop's system BIOS will need to support APM, rather than ACPI. Many, but not all, of the GeForce2- and GeForce4-based laptops include APM support. You can check for APM support via the procfs interface (check for the existence of /proc/apm) or via the kernel's boot output: % dmesg | grep -i apm a message similar to this indicates APM support: apm: BIOS version 1.2 Flags 0x03 (Driver version 1.16) or a message like this indicates no APM support: No APM support in Kernel Although ACPI support is advancing in development kernels and some backported patches for 2.4 kernels exist, the NVIDIA graphics driver does not yet provide support for ACPI. We hope to finish this support in the near future. Note that standby is not supported, but that the kernel will attempt to enter standby if told to do so. When changing power levels, many system services are alerted of the change so that they can handle the change appropriately. For example, networking will be disabled before suspending, then reenabled when resuming. When the kernel attempts to enter standby, the BIOS will fail the attempt. The kernel will print out the error message "standby: Parameter out of range", but will fail to notify the system services of the failure. As a result, the system will not go into suspension, but all system services will be disabled and the system will appear to be hung. The best way to recover from this situation is to enter suspend, then resume. Power management support is still under development and is a beta feature. As a result, some functionality is still missing or unreliable. Known problems include: Sometimes chipsets lose their AGP configuration during suspend, and may cause corruption on the bus upon resume. The AGP driver is required to save and restore relevant register state on such systems; NVIDIA's NvAGP is notified of power management events and ensures its configuration is kept intact across suspend/resume cycles. Linux 2.4 AGPGART does not support power management, Linux 2.6 AGPGART does, but only for a few select chipsets. If you use either of these two AGP drivers and find your system fails to resume reliably, you may have more success with NVIDIA's NvAGP driver. Disabling AGP support (please see Appendix F for more details on disabling AGP) will also work around this problem. For ACPI, only S3 "Suspend to Ram" is currently supported. This means that S4 "Suspend to Disk", otherwise known as "Software Suspend" or "swsusp" does not currently work reliably. ______________________________________________________________________________ Appendix R. Display Device Names ______________________________________________________________________________ A "Display Device" refers to some piece of hardware capable of displaying an image. Display devices are separated into three categories: analog CRTs, digital flat panels (DFPs), and televisions. Note that analog flat panels are considered the same as analog CRTs by the driver. A "Display Device Name" is a string description that uniquely identifies a display device; it follows the format "-", for example: "CRT-0", "CRT-1", "DFP-0", or "TV-0". Note that the number indicates how the display device connector is wired on the graphics board, and has nothing to do with how many of that kind of display device are present. This means, for example, that you may have a "CRT-1", even if you do not have a "CRT-0". To determine which display devices are currently connected, you may check your X log file for a line similar to the following: (II) NVIDIA(0): Connected display device(s): CRT-0, DFP-0 Display device names can be used in the MetaMode, HorizSync, and VertRefresh X config options to indicate which display device a setting should be applied to. For example: Option "MetaModes" "CRT-0: 1600x1200, DFP-0: 1024x768" Option "HorizSync" "CRT-0: 50-110; DFP-0: 40-70" Option "VertRefresh" "CRT-0: 60-120; DFP-0: 60" Specifying the display device name in these options is not required; if display device names are not specified, then the driver attempts to infer which display device a setting applies to. In the case of MetaModes, for example, the first mode listed is applied to the "first" display device, and the second mode listed is applied to the "second" display device. Unfortunately, it is often unclear which display device is the "first" or "second". That is why specifying the display device name is preferable. When specifying display device names, you may also omit the number part of the name, though this is only useful if you only have one of that type of display device. For example, if you have one CRT and one DFP connected, you may reference them in the MetaMode string as follows: Option "MetaModes" "CRT: 1600x1200, DFP: 1024x768" ______________________________________________________________________________ Appendix S. The X Composite Extension ______________________________________________________________________________ X.org version X11R6.8.0 contains experimental support for a new X protocol extension called Composite. This extension allows windows to be drawn into pixmaps instead of directly onto the screen. In conjunction with the DAMAGE and RENDER extensions, this allows a program called a composite manager to blend windows together to draw the screen. Performance will be degraded significantly if the "RenderAccel" option is disabled in xorg.conf. See Appendix D for more details. Full Composite support will require additional driver support. Currently, direct rendering clients such as GLX have no way of knowing that they are supposed to render into a pixmap, and will draw directly to the screen instead. We are currently investigating what is necessary for such clients to interoperate seamlessly with Composite. In the meantime, GLX will be disabled by default when the Composite extension is detected. An option has been provided to re-enable it. See "AllowGLXWithComposite" in Appendix D. This issue was discussed on the xorg mailing list: http://freedesktop.org/pipermail/xorg/2004-May/000607.html Composite also causes problems with other driver components: o Xv cannot draw into pixmaps that have been redirected offscreen and will draw directly onto the screen instead. For some programs you can work around this issue by using an alternative video driver. For example, "mplayer -vo x11" will work correctly, as will "xine -V xshm". If you want to use Xv, you can simply disable the compositing manager and re-enable it when you are finished. o Workstation overlays are incompatible with Composite. This driver supports OpenGL rendering to 32-bit ARGB windows when the "AddARGBGLXVisuals" X config file option is enabled. If you are an application developer, you can use these new visuals in conjunction with a composite manager to create translucent OpenGL applications: int attrib[] = { GLX_RENDER_TYPE, GLX_RGBA_BIT, GLX_DRAWABLE_TYPE, GLX_WINDOW_BIT, GLX_RED_SIZE, 1, GLX_GREEN_SIZE, 1, GLX_BLUE_SIZE, 1, GLX_ALPHA_SIZE, 1, GLX_DOUBLEBUFFER, True, GLX_DEPTH_SIZE, 1, None }; GLXFBConfig *fbconfigs, fbconfig; int numfbconfigs, render_event_base, render_error_base; XVisualInfo *visinfo; XRenderPictFormat *pictFormat; /* Make sure we have the RENDER extension */ if(!XRenderQueryExtension(dpy, &render_event_base, &render_error_base)) { fprintf(stderr, "No RENDER extension found\n"); exit(EXIT_FAILURE); } /* Get the list of FBConfigs that match our criteria */ fbconfigs = glXChooseFBConfig(dpy, scrnum, attrib, &numfbconfigs); if (!fbconfigs) { /* None matched */ exit(EXIT_FAILURE); } /* Find an FBConfig with a visual that has a RENDER picture format that * has alpha */ for (i = 0; i < numfbconfigs; i++) { visinfo = glXGetVisualFromFBConfig(dpy, fbconfigs[i]); if (!visinfo) continue; pictFormat = XRenderFindVisualFormat(dpy, visinfo->visual); if (!pictFormat) continue; if(pictFormat->direct.alphaMask > 0) { fbconfig = fbconfigs[i]; break; } XFree(visinfo); } if (i == numfbconfigs) { /* None of the FBConfigs have alpha. Use a normal (opaque) * FBConfig instead */ fbconfig = fbconfigs[0]; visinfo = glXGetVisualFromFBConfig(dpy, fbconfig); pictFormat = XRenderFindVisualFormat(dpy, visinfo->visual); } XFree(fbconfigs); When rendering to a 32-bit window, keep in mind that the X RENDER extension, used by most composite managers, expects "premultiplied alpha" colors. This means that if your color has components (r,g,b) and alpha value a, then you must render (a*r, a*g, a*b, a) into the target window. More information about Composite can be found at http://freedesktop.org/Software/CompositeExt ______________________________________________________________________________ Appendix T. The nvidia-settings Utility ______________________________________________________________________________ A graphical configuration utility, 'nvidia-settings', is included with the NVIDIA Linux graphics driver. After installing the driver and starting X, you can run this configuration utility by running: % nvidia-settings in a terminal window. Detailed information about the configuration options available are documented in the help window in the utility. For more information, please see the nvidia-settings man page or the user guide available here: ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/nvidia-settings-user-guide.txt The source code to nvidia-settings is released as GPL and is available here: ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/nvidia-settings/ If you have trouble running the nvidia-settings binary shipped with the NVIDIA Linux Graphics Driver, please refer to the nvidia-settings entry in Chapter 5. ______________________________________________________________________________ Appendix U. The XRandR Extension ______________________________________________________________________________ X.org version X11R6.8.1 contains support for the rotation component of the XRandR extension. This allows screens to be rotated at 90 degree increments. The driver supports rotation with the extension when 'Option "RandRRotation"' is enabled in the X config file. Workstation RGB or CI overlay visuals will function at lower performance and the video overlay will not be available when RandRRotation is enabled. You can query the available rotations using the 'xrandr' command line interface to the RandR extension by running: xrandr -q You can set the rotation orientation of the screen by running any of: xrandr -o left xrandr -o right xrandr -o inverted xrandr -o normal Rotation may also be set through the nvidia-settings configuration utility in the "Rotation Settings" panel. Note that rotation is currently not supported when TwinView is enabled. ______________________________________________________________________________ Appendix V. Support for GLX in Xinerama ______________________________________________________________________________ This driver supports GLX when Xinerama is enabled on similar GPUs. The Xinerama extension takes multiple physical X screens (possibly spanning multiple GPUs), and binds them into one logical X screen. This allows windows to be dragged between GPUs and to span across multiple GPUs. The NVIDIA driver supports hardware accelerated OpenGL rendering across all NVIDIA GPUs when Xinerama is enabled. To configure Xinerama: configure multiple X screens (please refer to the XF86Config(5x) or xorg.conf(5x) manpages for details). The Xinerama extension can be enabled by adding the line Option "Xinerama" "True" to the "ServerFlags" section of your X config file. Requirements: o It is recommended to use identical GPUs. Some combinations of non-identical, but similar, GPUs are supported. If a GPU is incompatible with the rest of a Xinerama desktop then no OpenGL rendering will appear on the screens driven by that GPU. Rendering will still appear normally on screens connected to other supported GPUs. In this situation the X log file will include a message of the form: (WW) NVIDIA(2): The GPU driving screen 2 is incompatible with the rest of (WW) NVIDIA(2): the GPUs composing the desktop. OpenGL rendering will (WW) NVIDIA(2): be disabled on screen 2. o The NVIDIA X driver must be used for all X screens in the server. o Only the intersection of capabilities across all GPUs will be advertised. o X configuration options that affect GLX operation (e.g.: stereo, overlays) should be set consistently across all X screens in the X server. Known Issues: o The maximum renderable window dimension is 4096 pixels. o Versions of XFree86 prior to 4.5 and versions of X.org prior to 6.8.0 lack the required interfaces to properly implement overlays with the Xinerama extension. On earlier server versions mixing overlays and Xinerama will result in rendering corruption. If you are using the Xinerama extension with overlays, it is recommended that you upgrade to XFree86 4.5, X.org 6.8.0, or newer. ______________________________________________________________________________ Appendix W. SLI FrameRendering ______________________________________________________________________________ This driver contains support for the NVIDIA SLI FrameRendering. SLI FrameRendering allows an OpenGL application to take advantage of two graphics cards at the same time to improve performance. In Linux, SLI can operate in one of three modes: Alternate Frame Rendering (AFR), Split Frame Rendering (SFR), and SLI Antialiasing (SLIAA). When AFR mode is active, one GPU draws the next frame while the other one works on the frame after that. In SFR mode, each frame is split horizontally into two pieces, with one GPU rendering each piece. The split line is adjusted to balance the load between the two GPUs. SLIAA mode splits antialiasing work between the two GPUs. Both GPUs work on the same scene and the result is blended together to produce the final frame. This mode is useful for applications that spend most of their time processing with the CPU and cannot benefit from AFR. SLI is enabled by setting the "SLI" option in the X configuration file; see Appendix D for more details about the SLI option. The nvidia-xconfig utility can be used to set the SLI option, rather than modifying the X configuration file by hand. For example: % nvidia-xconfig --sli=on See Appendix D for more details about the SLI option. SLI requires two identical PCI-Express graphics cards, a supported motherboard chipset, and in most cases a "video bridge" connecting the two graphics cards. Please note that no mobile GPUs are supported, and SLI on Quadro always requires a video bridge. For the latest in supported SLI configurations, including SLI-capable GPUs and SLI-capable motherboards, please see http://www.slizone.com. Only one display can be used when SLI is enabled. If X is configured to use multiple screens and screen 0 has SLI enabled, the other screens will be disabled. TwinView is also not supported with SLI. FREQUENTLY ASKED SLI QUESTIONS Q. Why is glxgears slower when SLI is enabled? A. When SLI is enabled, the NVIDIA driver must coordinate the operations of both GPUs when each new frame is swapped (made visible). For most applications, this GPU synchronization overhead is negligible. However, because glxgears renders so many frames per second, the GPU synchronization overhead consumes a significant portion of the total time, and the framerate is reduced. Q. Why is Doom 3 slower when SLI is enabled? A. The NVIDIA Accelerated Linux Driver Set does not automatically detect the optimal SLI settings for games such as Doom 3 and Quake 4. To work around this issue, the environment variable __GL_DOOM3 can be set to tell OpenGL that Doom 3's optimal settings should be used. In Bash, this can be done in the same command that launches Doom 3 so the environment variable does not remain set for other OpenGL applications started in the same session: % __GL_DOOM3=1 doom3 Doom 3's startup script can also be modified to set this environment variable: #!/bin/sh # Needed to make symlinks/shortcuts work. # the binaries must run with correct working directory cd "/usr/local/games/doom3/" export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:. export __GL_DOOM3=1 exec ./doom.x86 "$@" This environment variable is temporary and will be removed in the future. Q. Why does SLI fail to initialize? A. There are several reasons why SLI may fail to initialize. Most of these should be clear from the warning message in the X log file; e.g.: o "SLI is only supported on PCI-E" o "GPUs do not match" o "GPU video BIOS does not support SLI" The message "Failed to initialize SLI! Reason: Operating system error" is likely due to problems with your Linux kernel. The NVIDIA driver must have access to the PCI Bridge (often called the Root Bridge) that each NVIDIA GPU is connected to in order to configure SLI correctly. There are many kernels that do not properly recognize this bridge and, as a result, do not allow the NVIDIA driver to access this bridge. Please see the below "How can I determine if my kernel correctly detects my PCI Bridge?" FAQ for details. Below are some specific troubleshooting steps to help deal with SLI initialization failures. o Make sure that ACPI is enabled in your kernel. NVIDIA's experience has been that ACPI is needed for the kernel to correctly recognize the Root Bridge. Note that in some cases, the kernel's version of ACPI may still have problems and require an update to a newer kernel. o Run 'lspci' to check that multiple NVIDIA GPUs can be identified by the operating system; e.g: % /sbin/lspci | grep -i nvidia If 'lspci' does not report all the GPUs that are in your system, then this is a problem with your Linux kernel, and it is recommended that you use a different kernel. o Make sure you have the most recent SBIOS available for your motherboard. Q. How can I determine if my kernel correctly detects my PCI Bridge? A. As discussed above, the NVIDIA driver must have access to the PCI Bridge that each NVIDIA GPU is connected to in order to configure SLI correctly. The following steps will identify whether the kernel correctly recognizes the PCI Bridge: o Identify both NVIDIA GPUs: % /sbin/lspci | grep -i vga 0a:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation [...] 81:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation [...] o Verify that each GPU is connected to a bus connected to the Root Bridge (note that the GPUs in the above example are on buses 0a and 81): % /sbin/lspci -t good: -+-[0000:80]-+-00.0 | +-01.0 | \-0e.0-[0000:81]----00.0 ... \-[0000:00]-+-00.0 +-01.0 +-01.1 +-0e.0-[0000:0a]----00.0 bad: -+-[0000:81]---00.0 ... \-[0000:00]-+-00.0 +-01.0 +-01.1 +-0e.0-[0000:0a]----00.0 Note that in the first example, bus 81 is connected to Root Bridge 80, but that in the second example there is no Root Bridge 80 and bus 81 is incorrectly connected at the base of the device tree. In the bad case, the only solution is to upgrade your kernel to one that properly detects your PCI bus layout. ______________________________________________________________________________ Appendix X. Frame Lock and Genlock ______________________________________________________________________________ Visual computing applications that involve multiple displays, or even multiple windows within a display, can require special signal processing and application controls in order to function properly. For example, in order to produce quality video recording of animated graphics, the graphics display must be synchronized with the video camera. As another example, applications presented on multiple displays must be synchronized in order to complete the illusion of a larger, virtual canvas. This synchronization is enabled through the frame lock and genlock capabilities of the NVIDIA driver. This section describes the setup and use of frame lock and genlock. DEFINITION OF TERMS GENLOCK: Genlock refers to the process of synchronizing the pixel scanning of one or more displays to an external synchronization source. NVIDIA genlock requires the external signal to be either TTL or composite, such as used for NTSC, PAL, or HDTV. It should be noted that the NVIDIA genlock implementation is guaranteed only to be frame-synchronized, and not necessarily pixel-synchronized. FRAME LOCK: Frame Lock involves the use of hardware to synchronize the frames on each display in a connected system. When graphics and video are displayed across multiple monitors, frame locked systems help maintain image continuity to create a virtual canvas. Frame lock is especially critical for stereo viewing, where the left and right fields must be in sync across all displays. Swap sync refers to the synchronization of buffer swaps of multiple application windows. By means of swap sync, applications running on multiple systems can synchronize the application buffer swaps between all the systems. In order to work across multiple systems, swap sync requires that the systems are frame locked. In short, to enable genlock means to sync to an external signal. To enable frame lock means to sync 2 or more X Screens to a signal generated internally by the hardware, and to use both means to sync 2 or more X Screens to an external signal. SUPPORTED HARDWARE Frame lock and genlock are supported for the following hardware: Board ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Quadro FX 3000G Quadro FX G-Sync, used in conjunction with a Quadro FX 4400 or Quadro FX 4500 HARDWARE SETUP Before you begin, you should check that your hardware has been properly installed. If you are using the Quadro FX 3000G, the genlock/frame lock signal processing hardware is located on the dual-slot card itself, and after installing the card, no additional setup is necessary. If you are using the Quadro FX G-Sync board in conjunction with a graphics card, the following additional setup steps are required. These steps must be performed when the system is off. 1. On the Quadro FX G-Sync board, locate the fourteen-pin connector labeled "primary". If the associated ribbon cable is not already joined to this connector, do so now. 2. Install the Quadro FX G-Sync board in any available slot. Note that the slot itself is only used for support, so even a known "bad" slot is acceptable. The slot must be close enough to the graphics card that the ribbon cable can reach. 3. Connect the other end of the ribbon cable to the fourteen-pin connector on the graphics card. You may now boot the system and begin to setup genlock and/or frame lock. These instructions assume that you have already successfully installed the NVIDIA Accelerated Linux Driver Set. If you have not done so, please see Chapter 2. CONFIGURATION WITH NVIDIA-SETTINGS Frame lock and genlock are configured through the nvidia-settings utility. Please see the 'nvidia-settings(1)' man page, and the nvidia-settings online help (click the "Help" button in the lower right corner of the interface for per-page help information). From the nvidia-settings frame lock panel, you may control the addition of X screens to the frame lock/genlock group, monitor the status of that group, and enable/disable frame lock and genlock. After the system has booted and X Windows has been started, run nvidia-settings as % nvidia-settings You may wish to start this utility before continuing, as we refer to it frequently in the subsequent discussion. The setup of genlock and frame lock are described separately. We then describe the use of genlock and frame lock together. GENLOCK SETUP After the system has been booted, connect the external signal to the house sync connector (the BNC connector) on either the graphics card or the G-Sync card. There is a status LED next to the connector. A solid red LED indicates that the hardware cannot detect the timing signal, and you should check the signal source before proceeding. A green LED indicates that the hardware is detecting a timing signal. An occasional red flash is okay. In the frame lock panel of the nvidia-settings interface, add the X screen that you would like to sync to this external source by clicking the "Add X Screen" button. An X Screen is typically specified in the format "system:m.n", e.g.: mycomputer.domain.com:0.0 or localhost:0.0 Note that in genlock-only mode, the X screen to synchronize must be backed by the system attached to the external sync source. After adding an X screen, a row will appear in the table on the frame lock panel that displays relevant status information about the X screen. In particular, the "House" column of this table contains an LED image whose state mirrors the state of the physical LED next to the house sync connector. Thus, you may monitor the status of this signal from the software interface. If you are using a G-Sync card, you must also click the "Use House Sync" checkbox. To enable synchronization of this X screen to the external source, click the "Enable Frame Lock" button. The screen may take a moment to stabilize. If it does not stabilize, you may have selected a synchronization signal that the system cannot support. You should disable synchronization by clicking the "Disable Frame Lock" button and check the external sync signal. Modifications to genlock settings (e.g., "Use House Sync", "Add X Screen") must be done while synchronization is disabled. FRAME LOCK SETUP Frame Lock is supported across an arbitrary number of Quadro FX 3000 or Quadro FX G-Sync systems, although mixing the two in the same frame lock group is not supported. Additionally, each system to be included in the frame lock group must be configured with identical mode timings. Please see Appendix J for information on mode timings. Connect the systems through their RJ45 ports using standard CAT5 patch cables. These ports are located on the frame lock board itself (either the Quadro FX 3000 or the Quadro FX G-Sync board). DO NOT CONNECT A FRAME LOCK PORT TO AN ETHERNET CARD OR HUB. DOING SO MAY PERMANENTLY DAMAGE THE HARDWARE The connections should be made in a daisy-chain fashion: each card has two RJ45 ports, call them 1 and 2. Connect port 1 of system A to port 2 of system B, connect port 1 of system B to port 2 of system C, etc. Note that you will always have two empty ports in your frame lock group. The ports self-configure as inputs or outputs once frame lock is enabled. Each port has a yellow and a green LED that reflect this state. A flashing yellow LED indicates an output and a flashing green LED indicates an input. A solid green LED indicates that the port has not yet configured. In the frame lock panel of the nvidia-settings interface, add the X screens that you would like to include in the frame lock group by clicking the "Add X Screen" button (see the description for adding X screens in the previous section on GENLOCK SETUP. Like he genlock status indicators, the "Port0" and "Port1" columns in the table on the frame lock panel contain indicators whose states mirror the states of the physical LEDs on the RJ45 ports. Thus, you may monitor the status of these ports from the software interface. Any X screen can be added to the frame lock group, provided that 1. The system supporting the X Screen is configured to support frame lock and is connected via RJ45 cable to the other systems in the frame lock group. 2. The system driving nvidia-settings can locate and has display privileges on the X screen that is to be included for frame lock. A system can gain display privileges on a remote system by executing % xhost + on the remote system. Please see the xhost(1) man page for details. Typically, frame lock is controlled through one of the systems that will be included in the frame lock group. While this is not a requirement, note that nvidia-settings will only display the frame lock panel when running on an X screen that supports frame lock. To enable synchronization on these X screens, click the "Enable Frame Lock" button. The screens may take a moment to stabilize. If they do not stabilize, you may have selected a mode timing that one or more of the systems cannot support. In this case you should disable synchronization by clicking the "Disable Frame Lock" button and refer to Appendix J for information on mode timings. Modifications to frame lock settings (e.g. "Add/Remove X Screen") must be done while synchronization is disabled. FRAME LOCK + GENLOCK The use of frame lock and genlock together is a simple extension of the above instructions for using them separately. You should first follow the instructions for Frame Lock Setup, and then to one of the systems that will be included in the frame lock group, attach an external sync source. In order to sync the frame lock group to this single external source, you must select the X Screen connected to the external source to be the signal master for the group. This is done by selecting the radio button in the "Master" column of the table on the frame lock panel in nvidia-settings. If you are using a G-Sync based frame lock group, you must also select the "Use House Sync" checkbox. Enable synchronization by clicking the "Enable Frame Lock" button. As with other frame lock/genlock controls, you must select the signal master while synchronization is disabled. LEVERAGING FRAME LOCK/GENLOCK IN OPENGL With the GLX_NV_swap_group extension, OpenGL applications can be implemented to join a group of applications within a system for local swap sync, and bind the group to a barrier for swap sync across a frame lock group. A universal frame counter is also provided to promote synchronization across applications. ______________________________________________________________________________ Appendix Y. Dots Per Inch ______________________________________________________________________________ DPI (Dots Per Inch), also known as PPI (Pixels Per Inch), is a property of an X screen that describes the physical size of pixels. Some X applications, such as xterm, can use the DPI of an X screen to determine how large (in pixels) to draw an object in order for that object to be displayed at the desired physical size on the display device. You can query the DPI of your X screen by running: % xdpyinfo | grep -B1 dot which should generate output like this: dimensions: 1280x1024 pixels (382x302 millimeters) resolution: 85x86 dots per inch The NVIDIA X driver performs several steps to determine the DPI of each X screen: o If the display device provides an EDID, and the EDID contains information about the physical size of the display device, that is used to compute the DPI. If multiple display devices are used by this X screen, then the NVIDIA X screen will choose which display device to use. This can be overriden this with the "UseEdidDpi" X configuration option: you can specify a particular display device to use; e.g.: Option "UseEdidDpi" "DFP-1" or disable EDID-computed DPI by setting this option to false: Option "UseEdidDpi" "FALSE" EDID-based DPI computation is enabled by default when an EDID is available. o If the "-dpi" commandline option to the X server is specified, that is used to set the DPI (see `X -h` for details). This will override the "UseEdidDpi" option. o If the "DPI" X configuration option is specified (see Appendix D for details), that will be used to set the DPI. This will override the "UseEdidDpi" option. o If none of the above are available, then the "DisplaySize" X config file Monitor section information will be used to determine the DPI, if provided; see the xorg.conf or XF86Config man pages for details. o If none of the above is available, the DPI defaults to 75x75. You can find how the NVIDIA X driver determined the DPI by looking in your X log file. There will be a line that looks something like the following: (--) NVIDIA(0): DPI set to (101, 101); computed from "UseEdidDpi" X config option Note that the physical size of the X screen, as reported through `xdpyinfo` is computed based on the DPI and the size of the X screen in pixels. The DPI of an X screen can be confusing when TwinView is enabled: with TwinView, multiple display devices (possibly with different DPIs) display portions of the same X screen, yet DPI can only be advertised from the X server to the X application with X screen granularity. Solutions for this include: o Use separate X screens, rather than TwinView; see Appendix P for details. o Experiment with different DPI settings to find a DPI that is suitable for both display devices. ame lock. To enable synchronization on these X screens, click the "Enable Frame Lock" button. The screens may take a moment to stabilize. If they do not stabilize, you may have selected a mode timing that one or more of the systems cannot support. In this case you should disable synchronization by clicking the "Disable Frame Lock" button and refer to Appendix J for information on mode timings. Modifications to frame lock settings (e.g. "Add/Remove X Screen") must be done while synchronization is disabled. FRAME LOCK + GENLOCK The use of frame lock and genlock together is a simple extension of the above instructions for using them separately. You should first follow the instructions for Frame Lock Setup, and then to one of the systems that will be included in the frame lock group, attach an external sync source. In order to sync the frame lock group to this single external source, you must select the X Screen connected to the external source to be the signal master for the group. This is done by selecting the radio button in the "Master" column of the table on the frame lock panel in nvidia-settings. If you are using a G-Sync based frame lock group, you must also select the "Use House Sync" checkbox. Enable synchronization by clicking the "Enable Frame Lock" button. As with other frame lock/genlock controls, you must select the signal master while synchronization is disabled. LEVERAGING FRAME LOCK/GENLOCK IN OPENGL With the GLX_NV_swap_group extension, OpenGL applications can be implemented to join a group of applications within a system for local swap sync, and bind the group to a barrier for swap sync across a frame lock group. A universal frame counter is also provided to promote synchronization across applications. ______________________________________________________________________________ Appendix Y. Dots Per Inch ______________________________________________________________________________ DPI (Dots Per Inch), also known as PPI (Pixels Per Inch), is a property of an X screen that describes the physical size of pixels. Some X applications, such as xterm, can use the DPI of an X screen to determine how large (in pixels) to draw an object in order for that object to be displayed at the desired physical size on the display device. You can query the DPI of your X screen by running: % xdpyinfo | grep -B1 dot which should generate output like this: dimensions: 1280x1024 pixels (382x302 millimeters) resolution: 85x86 dots per inch The NVIDIA X driver performs several steps to determine the DPI of each X screen: o If the display device provides an EDID, and the EDID contains information about the physical size of the display device, that is used to compute the DPI. If multiple display devices are used by this X screen, then the NVIDIA X screen will choose which display device to use. This can be overriden this with the "UseEdidDpi" X configuration option: you can specify a particular display device to use; e.g.: Option "UseEdidDpi" "DFP-1" or disable EDID-computed DPI by setting this option to false: Option "UseEdidDpi" "FALSE" EDID-based DPI computation is enabled by default when an EDID is available. o If the "-dpi" commandline option to the X server is specified, that is used to set the DPI (see `X -h` for details). This will override the "UseEdidDpi" option. o If the "DPI" X configuration option is specified (see Appendix D for details), that will be used to set the DPI. This will override the "UseEdidDpi" option. o If none of the above are available, then the "DisplaySize" X config file Monitor section information will be used to determine the DPI, if provided; see the xorg.conf or XF86Config man pages for details. o If none of the above is available, the DPI defaults to 75x75. You can find how the NVIDIA X driver determined the DPI by looking in your X log file. There will be a line that looks something like the following: (--) NVIDIA(0): DPI set to (101, 101); computed from "UseEdidDpi" X config option Note that the physical size of the X screen, as reported through `xdpyinfo` is computed based on the DPI and the size of the X screen in pixels. The DPI of an X screen can be confusing when TwinView is enabled: with TwinView, multiple display devices (possibly with different DPIs) display portions of the same X screen, yet DPI can only be advertised from the X server to the X application with X screen granularity. Solutions for this include: o Use separate X screens, rather than TwinView; see Appendix P for details. o Experiment with different DPI settings to find a DPI that is suitable for both display devices. o Experiment with different DPI settings to find a DPI that is suitable for both display devices.