FreeBSD 7.X and Nvidia (7500gt)

[H-300]

Fellows, I stopped following BSD (and Unix in general) about four years ago or so... last version of FreeBSD I have installed was 4.11. Anyway, I have built a new pc recently and am interested in installing FreeBSD 7.1 on the machine. The pc has an Nvidia 7500GT ePCI card and am wondering if nvidia driver support is available. It seems Nvidia (download site) only supports FreeBSD 5.x. No support for 6.x or above... However looks like many of you have drivers installed for 7.x. Can you give me some insights on this? Do you need to load a 5.x compatibility mode or are there drivers for 7.x?
Thanks for any info...

[adamk]

$ cd /usr/ports/x11/nvidia-driver && sudo make install clean distclean

:-)

That will only work for FreeBSD/i386 and not for FreeBSD/amd64.

Adam

[Ole]

$ cd /usr/ports/x11/nvidia-driver && sudo make install clean distclean

:-)

That will only work for FreeBSD/i386 and not for FreeBSD/amd64.

Adam

you can install scripts for prepare xorg.conf respectively for nvidia:

cd /usr/ports/x11/nvidia-xconfig && sudo make install

and execute

sudo nvidia-xconfig


Or edit xorg.conf manually, for minimum set "nvidia" instead xorg-base "nv" Driver

[lyuts]

I have Nvidia GeForce 7600 and I'm running FreeBSD 7.0. Works great.

[SirDice]

Yep, me too. Dual screen :)

But you are limited to i386 unfortunately.

It does say it'll only support fbsd5 but i've been using the binary driver on 6 and now 7 without any problems.
Do remember, if you compile a custom kernel, to add options COMPAT_FREEBSD5 to your kernel config.

[Djn]

For the record, I use an 8-current that's a few months old, and it works on that as well.

[H-300]

you can install scripts for prepare xorg.conf respectively for nvidia:

and execute


Or edit xorg.conf manually, for minimum set "nvidia" instead xorg-base "nv" Driver

I was able to configure Xorg with its configuration program. Can start KDE too no problems. However I am using the 'nv' driver. Installing the nvidia driver was no problem with pkg_add. As well as installing nvidia-config. Ran nvidia-config per a previous poster's instruction and nvidia-config ran as well. The config file under /etc was updated. However now kde does not load. I am getting a bunch of error messages when X starts. Looks like the major error is that nvidia is looking for a device entry under /dev... any ideas? Thanks!

[ale]

kldload nvidia ?

If it works, run
echo 'nvidia_load="YES"' >> /boot/loader.conf
so it will be loaded at every boot.
mind the double ">"

Here you can find the minimum set of changes required to adjust a xorg.conf generated for nv
/usr/local/share/doc/NVIDIA_GLX-1.0/html/chapter-04-section-02.html

P.S.
I you don't want to post the whole log, at least show us the output of
egrep '(EE)|(WW)' /var/log/Xorg.0.log

[H-300]

Gentlemen,

Thanks all of you posted to this thread. I did not kldload-ed nvidia. The set up works well. KDE (startx) starts w/o a hitch. Best Regards!

[tmazzotta]

I also wanted to thank everyone for posting this info, it helped me get the driver running on a new (refurb'd) HP 8710p laptop w/ Nvidia's Quadro NVS 320M graphics. Question: I also boot Vista64 on this machine and the Nvidia driver installed in Vista with a control panel applet. Is there a similar applet available with the FreeBSD7 (i386) driver to tweak the capabilities of the graphics?

[DutchDaemon]

x11/nvidia-settings Display Control Panel for X NVidia driver

[tmazzotta]

EXCELLENT, that is just what I was looking for. Thanks again!