Ubuntu
xorg package

NVidia driver is active but not in use

Asked by Jon Storry

I have recently upgraded my MacBook to Lucid and so far I have been unable to completely activate the NVidia drivers. The farthest I've gotten using the Hardware Drivers configuration application is a message saying the driver is active but not in use for both the current and recommended driver and the older one. Is there anything I can do to get past this? I've tried searching for solutions in the forums and such, but everything is pointing at problems in upgrading from 8.04 to 8.10 and the steps listed don't seem to apply to Lucid. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

Jon

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Jon Storry
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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#1

try running:

sudo nvidia-xconfig

Then rebooting

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George Standish (george-standish-deactivatedaccount) said : 		#2

Jon,

This "active but not currently in use" is an issue with Lucid, this has been the same since at least Alpha 2.

Although Hardware Drivers is reporting this, it probably isn't correct. My system is also inaccurately stating this.

From a terminal if you run the command "lspci -vnvn" look for something similar to the following in your output:

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: nVidia Corporation G92 [GeForce 8800 GT] [10de:0611] (rev a2)
 Subsystem: eVga.com. Corp. Device [3842:c802]
 Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
 Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
 Latency: 0
 Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 18
 Region 0: Memory at fd000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
 Region 1: Memory at d0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
 Region 3: Memory at fa000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=32M]
 Region 5: I/O ports at 9800 [size=128]
 [virtual] Expansion ROM at fe6e0000 [disabled] [size=128K]
 Capabilities: <access denied>
 Kernel driver in use: nvidia
 Kernel modules: nvidia-current, nvidiafb, nouveau

The important line is "Kernel driver in use: nvidia" this says that the proprietary nvidia driver is infact in use!

This is simply a bug, that using the above confirmation you can safely ignore.

Best of luck,
George

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Jon Storry (jon-storry) said : 		#3

nvidia-xconfig appeared to fix something (I now see an NVidia logo at X startup), but as I ran "lspci -vnvn" afterwards, I don't know if what it fixed was related to the message I was receiving from the Hardware Drivers dialog. The nvidia kernel module is being used though so everything appears to be in order.

Thanks guys

Revision history for this message
actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#4

Your monitor isn't reporting refresh rates correctly to the card when asked, the xorg.conf file which nvidia-xconfig makes has some rates specified so the driver will be loaded.

Simples
:)