Removing the nVidia Binary Installer and Replacing it with Kernel Modules

by scott_glaser — last modified Nov 15, 2008 04:06 PM

Contributors: Robert 'Bob' Jensen, daMaestro

— filed under: Video Solutions

At times new users are poorly informed and assume the best way to get 3D and added feature support for their nVidia graphics cards is to install the driver as provided by nVidia. We believe this is not the case. We recommend using the kernel modules provided by RPMFusion.

Requirements

Your yum configuration must be configured per this HOWTO.
Check the HCL to see if your card is supported.
Your system should be fully updated via "yum update".

Doing the Work

Open a terminal and switch to super user.
```
su --login 
```
Change directory to the directory where the nVidia binary installer was executed from.
```
cd /nvidia 
```
Execute the following command replace the question marks with the proper release number for the binary installer that was installed.
```
sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-????-pkg0.run --uninstall 
```
Remove the Mesa files installed by the installer.
```
rpm -ev --nodeps mesa-libGL 
```
Install the correct files from the Fedora Repositories.
```
yum install mesa-libGL  
```
Install the nVidia Kernel Module from RPMFusion using the following directions:

Configuring an nVidia Card and Kernel Modules

Troubleshooting

How to test

Log in and verify that the kernel module is functioning properly by opening a terminal window and running the following command.
```
glxinfo | grep direct 
```
If the response is, "direct rendering: Yes," you are good to go. A reboot may be required for the full effect of the module to be realized on some machines.

More Information

Disclaimer

We test this stuff on our own machines, really we do. But you may run into problems, if you do, come to #fedora on irc.freenode.net

Added Reading

http://rpmfusion.org/

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