Jaunty beta - lost my nvidia drivers

[sdavmor]

Karl F. Larsen wrote:
> Oliver Grawert wrote:
>> hi,

[snip detail about the nvidia devices]

>> karl, 
>> if you ask people to run a command you dont understand, please dont be
>> rude to people if you cant make sense out of its output  ... 
>>
>> if you ask for lspci -vvn (very verbose numbered) you should make sure
>> to be able to read numbered PCI ids ... (google will give you lots of
>> pages with lists if you just copy paste the id into the search
>> field ...)
>>
>> before the colon you always find the manufacturer id (for nvidia thats
>> 10de), behind it you find the device id ...
>>
>> ;)
>>
>>
>> ciao
>> 	oli
>>   
>     I am looking for one that looks like G7800 Video not the 10de. That 
> is new to me. It is my bad because the vvn drops the simple name.
> 
> Karl

FYI Karl:

lspci -v | grep VGA
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G72 [GeForce
7300 SE] (rev a1)

It's the PCI Express model with 512MB of video ram. Quite nice.

And now on with the issue...I am interested in some help with
resolving my display issue from anyone with practical input to offer.

There's no panic. I am using my system. It's not as if all work has
stopped. But the slightly squashed display I'm looking at is beginning
to be irritating.

I reboot into the recovery startup menu and tell it fix "X", I get the
generic driver and not the level of display I want for my 24" monitor.
Watching as it reboots I see that DKMS is not installing the latest
nvidia device driver (I get a red "fail" message) while it correctly
install other device drivers like Virtualbox.

Going into System --> Administration --> Hardware Drivers I can tell
it to install the latest nvidia but it will never activate it. And
this true for any of the nvidia drivers, the effect is the same.

As soon as I reboot in order to complete the activation "X" crashes.
So I repeat the process of telling the startup menu to fix "X" and
carry on with the squashed display.

When I go into System --> Administration --> nvidia X server settings
I no longer get all the options I used to get for selecting display
values. Instead I get this advisory:

You do not appear to be using the NVIDIA X driver. Please edit your X
configuration file (just run `nvidia-xconfig` as root), and restart
the X server.

In a shell, I run nvidia-xconfig and get this output:

Using X configuration file: "/etc/X11/xorg.conf".

WARNING: No Layout specified, constructing implicit layout section 
using screen
          "Default Screen".

WARNING: Unable to find CorePointer in X configuration; attempting to 
add new
          CorePointer section.

WARNING: The CorePointer device was not specified explicitly in the 
layout;
          using the first mouse device.

WARNING: Unable to find CoreKeyboard in X configuration; attempting to 
add new
          CoreKeyboard section.

WARNING: The CoreKeyboard device was not specified explicitly in the 
layout;
          using the first keyboard device.

ERROR: Unable to write to directory '/etc/X11'.

Here's the current /etc/X11/xorg.conf file:
# xorg.conf (X.Org X Window System server configuration file)
#
# This file was generated by dexconf, the Debian X Configuration tool,
# using values from the debconf database.
#
# Edit this file with caution, and see the xorg.conf manual page.
# (Type "man xorg.conf" at the shell prompt.)
#
# This file is automatically updated on xserver-xorg package upgrades
# *only* if it has not been modified since the last upgrade of the
# xserver-xorg package.
#
# Note that some configuration settings that could be done previously
# in this file, now are automatically configured by the server and
# settings here are ignored.
#
# If you have edited this file but would like it to be automatically
# updated again, run the following command:
# sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier	"Configured Monitor"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier	"Default Screen"
	Monitor		"Configured Monitor"
	Device		"Configured Video Device"
	DefaultDepth	24
EndSection

Section "Module"
	Load	"glx"
EndSection

Section "Device"
	Identifier	"Configured Video Device"
	Driver	"nvidia"
	Option	"NoLogo"	"True"
EndSection

Any thoughts? What would anyone wanting to wade in like me to run
and report? The non-installing of the nvidia 180 (or other nvidia)
restricted driver is causing me concern. I feel like a dog chasing its
tail trying to resolve it.
-- 
Cheers, and thanks, SDM -- a 21st Century Schizoid Man
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