Configuring Nvidia Graphic Driver on Ubuntu Studio

It's nearly a week for me to configure my Geforce FX 5500 on Ubuntu Studio 8.10. It drived me crazy every time I failed to log into my X session. My box was hanged, my keyboard lagly responsed and nothing I could do except pushing reset button. I tried many howtos but failed.

Fortunately I found a thread in the ubuntuforums which helped me solve the issue. Now my box is running breezly and able to play SWAT 4 through Wine 1.0.1.

Story telling:

About a week ago, I bought a new graphic card at Alam Central Plaza, Shah Alam. As I'm using AGP slot, the best option I have at that time was Geforce FX 5500 256MB by Galaxy.

My box was running Fedora 10 before I switch to Ubuntu Studio 8.10. I hate to tell this but I was not able to configure the Nvidia driver under Fedora. I encountered so many IO errors during reboot time right after I installed the driver which I downloaded through rpm fusion.

Ironically, it was not the case in Ubuntu Studio 8.10. First, I downloaded the graphic driver from here and then I installed it manually, "sh the-installer-name.run" in tty3 (Ctrl+Alt+F3). The only issue is the xorg.conf was not configured correctly which caused my box acted wieredly.

Ok, enough for story telling. Here is my correctly configured xorg.conf:
_________________________
# nvidia-settings: X configuration file generated by nvidia-settings
# nvidia-settings: version 1.0 (buildmeister@builder63) Mon Mar 2 12:46:46 PST 2009

# nvidia-xconfig: X configuration file generated by nvidia-xconfig
# nvidia-xconfig: version 1.0 (buildmeister@builder63) Mon Mar 2 12:45:55 PST 2009

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Layout0"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "dbe"
Load "extmod"
Load "type1"
Load "freetype"
Load "glx"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
Option "Xinerama" "0"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"

# generated from default
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "auto"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"

# generated from default
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "Unknown"
ModelName "COMPAQ S510"
HorizSync 30.0 - 61.0
VertRefresh 50.0 - 120.0
Option "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "GeForce FX 5500"
Driver "nvidia"
VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation"
BoardName "GeForce FX 5500"
Option "NvAGP" "1"
Option "RenderAccel" "true"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "GeForce FX 5500"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
Option "TwinView" "0"
Option "TwinViewXineramaInfoOrder" "CRT-0"
Option "metamodes" "1024x768_75 +0+0; 1024x768 +0+0; 800x600 +0+0; 640x480 +0+0"
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection
____________________________

Note: The bold words is edited by myself. You have to make sure that the value is somewhat the same as mine.

Right after you install the driver, follow the instruction below and type:

1. sudo nano -w /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

2. add "blacklist agpgart" and "blacklist intel_agp" at the bottom

3. press ctrl x to exit and save

It should be look like this:
_______________________________
# This file lists those modules which we don't want to be loaded by
# alias expansion, usually so some other driver will be loaded for the
# device instead.

# evbug is a debug tool that should be loaded explicitly
blacklist evbug

# these drivers are very simple, the HID drivers are usually preferred
blacklist usbmouse
blacklist usbkbd

# replaced by e100
blacklist eepro100

# replaced by tulip
blacklist de4x5

# causes no end of confusion by creating unexpected network interfaces
blacklist eth1394

# snd_intel8x0m can interfere with snd_intel8x0, doesn't seem to support much
# hardware on its own (Ubuntu bug #2011, #6810)
blacklist snd_intel8x0m

# Conflicts with dvb driver (which is better for handling this device)
blacklist snd_aw2

# causes failure to suspend on HP compaq nc6000 (Ubuntu: #10306)
blacklist i2c_i801

# replaced by p54pci
blacklist prism54

# replaced by b43 and ssb.
blacklist bcm43xx

# most apps now use garmin usb driver directly (Ubuntu: #114565)
blacklist garmin_gps

# replaced by asus-laptop (Ubuntu: #184721)
blacklist asus_acpi

# low-quality, just noise when being used for sound playback, causes
# hangs at desktop session start (Ubuntu: #246969)
blacklist snd_pcsp
blacklist agpgart
blacklist intel_agp
_______________________________________

Note the bold words.

Then, type:

1. sudo nano /etc/modules

2. Add "nvidia" (without the quote) at the bottom, save and exit

That's it. If you encounter no error(s), your box is ready to reboot. You will see nvidia logo right before your gdm (Gnome Display manager) or kdm (KDE Display Manager) starts.

Good luck!

Lastly, watch the video below to get full idea on what i've explained above.