I got Suse 9.0 as a Xmas gift and have been having difficulty getting it to work right on my main system. My main rig uses an nforce2 chipset motherboard (an Albatron K18D ProII) with the built in LAN and audio. When I downloaded the nforce drivers from nvidia''s website and ran the script, it seems that the modules are not loading, When I do a lsmod, neither nvnet, nor nvaudio are listed as being loaded. After doing a little digging, I found that Suse now has 4 different /etc.module files: /etc.module /etc.module.local /etc.module-nvidia.conf /etc.module.conf I also happened to notice that in all the files the modules had been commented out like #alias eth0 nvnet, so I uncommented them. However, when I boot up, the kernel never loads them. I can manually load nvnet with modprobe, but there''s got to be a better way. I''m also having a problem with the nvaudio module, as it doesn''t want to load at all, and instead uses the i810 module with a few tweaks. Unfortunately, my main system has an SPDIF jack for it''s output, so I can''t get audio to work at all. I looked at Nvidia''s documentation, and I should be able to get this to work by passing in a parameter but to no avail. Also, just as an aside, I''ve not been thrilled with Suse 9.0 at all. At install time, I couldn''t tell it to boot into runlevel 3 (I had to wait till after it was installed and then tinker around YAST), and unlike Mandrake, if you open a terminal in KDE and swith to Superuser mode (with the su command), you can''t connect to the Xserver...so no GUI operations are allowed this way. Maybe it''s a security feature, but I just find it a pain in the butt. So far, I''ve had much better luck with Mandrake 9.2 and Gentoo (both of which installed on both of my systems fine before).

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Original post by Dauntless
I also happened to notice that in all the files the modules had been commented out like #alias eth0 nvnet, so I uncommented them. However, when I boot up, the kernel never loads them. I can manually load nvnet with modprobe, but there''s got to be a better way. I''m also having a problem with the nvaudio module, as it doesn''t want to load at all, and instead uses the i810 module with a few tweaks. Unfortunately, my main system has an SPDIF jack for it''s output, so I can''t get audio to work at all. I looked at Nvidia''s documentation, and I should be able to get this to work by passing in a parameter but to no avail.

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If /etc/module is the same thing as Debian''s /etc/modules you can just put the line "nvnet" in there to load it automatically. SuSE''s boot-time hardware detection really should be handling this (like I have discover to do all my hardware for me in Debian at boot-time), but it might just be an issue with the NVidia motherboard chipset stuff (NVidia''s binary drivers for the motherboard chipset are kind-of mediocre, I''ve heard; no personal experience with it though).

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Original post by Dauntless
Also, just as an aside, I''ve not been thrilled with Suse 9.0 at all. At install time, I couldn''t tell it to boot into runlevel 3 (I had to wait till after it was installed and then tinker around YAST), and unlike Mandrake, if you open a terminal in KDE and swith to Superuser mode (with the su command), you can''t connect to the Xserver...so no GUI operations are allowed this way. Maybe it''s a security feature, but I just find it a pain in the butt. So far, I''ve had much better luck with Mandrake 9.2 and Gentoo (both of which installed on both of my systems fine before).

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About the latter issue: I think it''s up to the display manager and some lower level configuration it relies on whether root@localhost gets access to non-root client X sessions. In the terminal, before you su, type xhost +localhost to make all localhost connections allowed in the current X session.

Ach, I''m a dork. It is /etc/module, not /etc.module.

Unfortunately, I''m in a worse predicament now, because I updated the kernel from a Suse patch, and now I''m getting unresolved symbols when I try to modprobe the module manually.

Soooo, I''m gonna try to use the .tgz file and compile the binary (hmmmm, how do you compile a binary?) since after looking at Nvidia''s site, it does mention that the binary RPM only works on the stock kernel. Bummer.

Okay Nvidia, why don''t you be nice now and just give us Open Source drivers?

The binary is just a core, the parts surrounding it that plug into the linux kernel are open source. LGPL, to be precise.

Just so you know,

The linux kernel doesn''t have native support for the nForce chipset until kernel 2.6 (which was just released). This means that you will probably have trouble getting your onboard sound controllers working until you upgrade to a 2.6 kernel, which probably means building one yourself or getting a kernel package from your distro of choice.

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